Читать книгу Condemned to Devil's Island - Mary Blair Rice - Страница 6

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Prison possessed Michel. St. Martin had been but a clearing house, a place where one awaited transportation. But Guiana was permanent. Guiana was the land of the deported. And Michel was there to serve his seven-year prison sentence, to be followed by an equal term of exile. Of course it was far from his intention to submit to any such period of servitude. He constantly reminded himself of that. Yet he would do nothing prematurely. While he was learning all that prison had to teach he would be perfecting his plans.

On board ship, lying wakeful in his hammock, watching the great tattooed eye thrown into relief by the shaft of light which fell across Pierre’s chest, he had thought out what was to be his policy.

And now overwhelmingly the prison had possessed him. He was an explorer in that strange world whose avowed reason for existence was set down as “expiation of crime, regeneration of the guilty, and the protection of Society.” This world had its own code, its own customs, its distinctive slang, its abiding tragedy, its frail pleasures. And Michel’s curious, adventuring mind would investigate it all.

This attitude of inquiry carried him through the dreadful day when he had stood stripped in the office where authorities registered finger prints and made inventories of men’s bodies, recording every distinguishing mark, every wart or mole, every birth blotch and every tattooed design, making measurements, and adding these things to one’s name and age and birthplace, and to the individual crime histories and sentences sent over by the French courts—all indexed and cross-indexed to facilitate emergency reference.

In that office, Paul Arthur thought, part of a man seemed amputated and preserved in card catalogues; much as entomologists impale upon pins all that is mortal of once-living insects, classifying as hymenoptera, lepidoptera, and so on and so on, the brittle remains of creatures who had known life. With the same conscientious precision the prison files catalogued something which was vitally part of a man’s being. They robbed him of inviolability of personality, of privacy of body, privacy of possessions and of correspondence; collecting, as it were, his human rights.

And standing naked in the room, man after man looked on with a sense of horror while that which had been an integral part of his ego was inventoried; impaled for all time in the criminal archives of Guiana; impaled while it still lived. It was as though it struggled there on its merciless pin.

And man after man submitted, each in his own way. Michel burying his hot resentment under an inquisitive bravado, a questioning “What next?” Pierre with a strong hatred, Félix with mute terror, Paul Arthur with the detachment which was his refuge. He drove his spirit out of the unclothed body which officers of justice examined, itemized, and recorded. He forced it to occupy itself with impersonal reflections. As convicts seated in niches along the side of a barred cage had suggested to him monks gazing at some dim stained-glass-lit painting of a Christ hanging between thieves, so now Paul thought of entomologists scrupulously arranging their collection.

He saw himself as but one in the procession of men stripped to the “body, parts, and passions,” about which theologians once argued with futile violence. And he pictured the hundreds of such bodies, parts, and passions which are yearly cast into the prison vortex; to be starved for the protection of Society, for their own reformation, and for the expiation of deeds known as crimes.

Looking thus upon the physical man, he realized for the first time the marvel of creation there unveiled; man in his erect position above all four-footed things, a being of inalienable dignity even in his humiliation.

“A convict,” he thought, “but still a man. Remove their uniforms and revolvers, and are these officials more than that? Why are they then officials? While I ... I am a convict? Why? What has happened to make that enormous difference in the fate of bodies cast in the same mold; with the same extraordinary motors propelling blood through the same intricate pipes and valves; with the same amazing factories converting vegetable, mineral, and animal substances into energy and tissue; with the same perfect mechanical appliances for self-expression; bodies each with directing brains, with telegraphic nervous systems, and with organs of miraculous creative powers?

“Evolved into the same image, why then are some of us convicts and others officials? What happened to bring that about?”

These were questions which Paul often put to himself, emphasizing the unbelievable word “convict.” Thus he fluctuated between devices for forgetting and attempts to accustom himself to the fact.

There were vacancies in one of the dormitories of seasoned convicts. Half a dozen of the new arrivals were to be transferred to fill the empty places, and among them were Michel and Paul. This would plunge them immediately into the reality of the Guiana prison, and Michel, with his resolve to learn as soon as possible all that there was to know, considered the change a great piece of luck.

They found their new quarters a boiling caldron. Outside, while the turnkey fumbled at the lock, they heard loud, excited voices. But the door opened upon a sudden silence in which words seemed congealed upon the lips of a group whose very gestures appeared solidified by the unexpected opening of the door. The prisoners had been as usual locked in for the noon hour, and the reappearance of the turnkey was startling.

What was up?

“Bah, just a lot of the new gang.”

The door was closed, locked, and the turnkey went away.

The six looked about. No one offered to show them a place. No one, in fact, took any sort of notice of them. The men went back to their interrupted discussion, but speaking now in lowered voices.

Along each side of the room, in groups of three, were ranged planks facing end on, out from the wall into the center of the room; each group roped to a supporting frame and separated from its neighbor by perhaps twelve inches. Between the two rows an aisle some six feet wide ran the length of the room.

Each convict was entitled to one of these groups of planks, to the segment of wall to which it was attached, and to a corresponding portion of a single wall-shelf. The planks formed his narrow bed. Upon the wall and the shelf he might keep his few possessions.

Michel and his companions established themselves in the scattered places which appeared to be unclaimed. Michel unrolled his blanket, put on the shelf the small canvas knapsack containing his extra blouse and cotton trousers, placed his wide-brimmed, flat-crowned straw hat on top of the knapsack, and on two unappropriated nails hung his tin cup and bowl.

These, with a pair of wooden sandals, he had received from the prison in exchange for all of which it had robbed him. Also, as the scientist’s beetle has its tag, so he had a number, stenciled large and black across his blouse and below the waist-line of his trousers.

Having disposed of his equipment, he lay down on his blanket to rest until the bell should order work squads to gather in the courtyard. He didn’t venture to join the men crowded at the far end of the room. But now that he was settled he would listen.

The door had opened again, this time to admit two men delayed at the sawmill which rented them from the penitentiary administration. They were now being let in on the discussion. It seemed that some one named Darnal had hanged himself that morning.

“Dead?”

“Certainly, dead. Isn’t that what happens to you when you hang yourself?”

“Well, I’m glad of it.”

“Much good it does us except to prove what everybody knows.”

“What of that? Who does it prove it to? They’ll just put another like him in his place.”

“Yes, and maybe the next bird won’t have the grace to swing himself.”

“If it could get back to France!”

“You know damn well it won’t do that!”

“There’s one thing that seldom leaves prison—the truth. It’s exiled—en perpétuité, like the rest of us.”

“We can prove that our bread is watered.”

“And that boxes of sardines and condensed milk disappear from the cargo.”

“And beans and rice and sugar out of our storehouses.”

“We know what sort of meat we get, while the difference in price goes into somebody’s pockets.”

“And we know the doctors haven’t proper medicines.”

“But what good does it do us to know all that?”

“Hasn’t the Director laughed at the idea that there’s such a thing as public opinion?”

“Much good it would do us if it did get back to France!”

“Much good anything does pariahs! And that’s what we are.”

A wasted little man, with singularly bright eyes which seemed to have burned two deep holes under his bristling iron-gray brows, jeered:

“Ho! You all forget that at least they teach us how to steal. We should be grateful!”^[1]

Michel raised himself on one elbow. “Are you saying that the keepers steal from us?” he asked.

“Good God!” some one shouted. “Hear the infant! Hear him!”

“Steal from us?” The gray man turned the fiery embers of deep-sunk eyes upon the boy, who sat up now, waiting for the answer, with scarlet spots of excitement burning on his cheeks.

“Steal from us? How do you think they’re able to live in this God-damned, God-forsaken country? Do you suppose they’re drawing magnificent pay? Not a bit of it. They’re getting a good part of their living out of us—out of the food we’re entitled to, little enough as that is, heaven knows. Their houses ... those are free, too. And we do their work. Cook for them. Grow their vegetables and raise their chickens. They pay us in some favor which costs them nothing. And when their time is up, they retire on a pension. Whatever they do here, they know we’re afraid to tell. We’re craven, and they know it. They’ve all got revolver courage, you understand.

“Now here’s the first time one of them has gone so far that the authorities had to jail him. Misappropriating some thousands of francs belonging to the Administration. That’s all. But could he face what we’ve marched to, revolvers at our backs? No, the cur couldn’t see a prison sentence through!

“Knew too much about prison, that was his trouble.”

The group dissolved; four to play belote, some to smoke, others to sleep on their planks until the two o’clock bell sounded. Only Eugène Bassières, still smoldering, remained talking in a high nervous voice.

“Do they steal? Yes, they steal and we steal. Pretty nearly every cursed one of us, from the top straight down to the bottom and back again, steals. But we—” his tone was dry with the dregs of his bitterness—“we steal because otherwise we’d die!

“Can a man live and work on a cup of black coffee at daybreak; at noon half a loaf of bread with only enough flour in it to make it stand up, a chunk of boiled meat—a hundred grams, to be exact—and at night a cup of rice or beans? Yes, and we get the water they’ve boiled the rice and the meat in. I mustn’t forget the water. They call that bouillon. Sounds well, doesn’t it? Bouillon! Sounds like a menu. Waiter, bring me bouillon!

“Can you live on this sort of fare, you think? Not for a week, with the strength of France still in your blood; but live on it for months and then years? With disease in you, too. Try fighting hookworm and dysentery and fever with our seven hundred and fifty grams of bread and our hundred grams of meat and our quarter of a liter of rice—always remembering the water they’ve been cooked in!”

“Listen to Eugène!” The man dealing three cards to each, twice around, held up the game. “Listen to Eugène! He’s found a new pair of ears.”

“Can you live on that?” Eugène shouted. “Try it and see. Ten centimes a day spending money. That’ll have to do you until you get promoted out of class three up to the first class, where, if you’re lucky, they may hire you out to a civilian and let you earn fifty francs a month. That’s the limit of your ambition, and you’ve got to have ‘good behavior’ to get it. Wait and see whether it’s easy to get ‘good behavior’ here. If you’re a tale-bearer, yes. If you’re a spineless jelly-fish, perhaps. Always remember to say nothing but ‘Oui, monsieur’ and ‘Non, monsieur.’ That’s their idea of a good convict.”

“Everybody passes. Deal again.”

“One, two, three; one, two, three; one, two, three; one, two, three.” The cards fell in little crimson heaps before each player.

“Not so much noise over there, Eugène.”

But Eugène went on as though he’d not heard:

“Now you see, don’t you, that if you’re honest you can’t do much more than keep yourself in tobacco? That’s why we steal. Because it’s the only way we can live. You’ll soon learn how ... that is, if you don’t know already.

“You’ll steal wood if you work in the jungle. If they send you to the coffin factory you’ll steal enough timber to make paper-knives and boxes and what not in your spare time. Maybe you’ll be able to sell them, and maybe you won’t. If you’re a clerk you’ll steal paper and pencils. Or if you work in the kitchen or the store-house you’ll steal some of our food. You’ll have to. It is the mode of the prison. That is, unless you are willing to sell your body and be some man’s brat,^[2] and then he’ll steal for you as well as for himself. Look around, and wherever you see a young convict who seems better fed and better dressed than the rest, put him down as somebody’s brat.

“You’re young yourself and not ill-looking. That may be your way.”

“Never that,” said Michel. “I’m clever enough to steal for myself.”

Eugène looked at him searchingly and then raised his voice to announce:

“Here’s a boy who isn’t going to be brat to any of you.”

“Who says so?” A derisive hoot from the belote game.

“I do. I know character when I see it. No use wasting your time. He’s not that sort.”

And from the corner where he turned the pages of a book, Paul said, “You’re right there. I crossed in the same cage with him. He’ll only go his own way—and it’s not that way.”

Michel wondered how he knew. On board ship he’d scarcely noticed the quiet man with the deep, level voice. Only his horn-rimmed spectacles had registered with Michel.

It had rained in the afternoon.

While they waited in the courtyard for the final roll-call before dormitories were locked for the night, the convict work squads shivered in clammy wet garments. So little stood between their bodies and the Guiana rain.

Looking across the yard, Michel had caught sight of Félix and left his place in the line to go over to speak to him.

“How do you get on?” he asked—anxiously, because the skin of Félix’s face seemed pale and drawn, taut like a drumhead. “How goes it with you?”

And out of dazed, blurred eyes Félix had recognized Michel.

“Oh, I’m in Pierre’s dormitory now. He bribed the turnkey to get me moved.”

There was no more, for, angrily waving his umbrella, the short-legged, long-waisted, rampant-mustachioed Corsican keeper ran up to curse Michel back to his place.

“If you weren’t a damned greenhorn you’d be reported for this,” he bellowed.

Michel stepped into line.

“These keepers are dogs,” he heard an Arab convict mutter.

And Michel, prison-broken to silence, mentally chalked the incident up in the long score which he kept against what he called Society.

The keeper moved away.

“Your friend over there looks good for the bamboos,” whispered Eugène Bassières, who stood next Michel in the waiting squad.

“What?”

“Your friend—the boy you went over to speak to—he looks, as we say, good for the bamboos.”

“What does that mean?”

“The bamboos? That’s the cemetery—at least the part of it where they throw us when we’re finished. No frills like funeral rites and tombstones, you understand. Why should a Guiana convict expect a blessing? Has he any money to pay for the rest of his soul? Nobody’s going to say a mass to get him out of purgatory. No, when you go to the bamboos you’re just dumped somewhere in a piece of ground set aside for the condemned. It’s the prison of the dead, and instead of a wall, it’s got bamboos growing around it.... That’s the end— Deceased; ‘D.C.D.’ in blue pencil on your registration card. And it’s all over with you....”

So Félix was going to die.... Poor Félix wasn’t much more than a child. It couldn’t be possible that he would die.

“Yes,” Eugène continued, “prison has shocked your friend. I’ve seen a lot go off that way.... They go fast. No special disease. Just prison.”

“What’s your name?”

“Michel Arnaud.”

“Where from?”

“Paris.”

“What did you do?” The man on the plank bed to his left put the questions to Michel that night after they’d both stretched out to sleep. “I mean why are you here?”

“Because I wanted the things money buys,” was Michel’s prompt reply.

“Oh, I see. And you tried to get them?”

“Yes, in the only way I could. Once I lived in a prince’s house—a Russian prince. I suppose you don’t know what a prince’s house is like?”

Michel took in the big young figure which lay next him. A heavily built man, not more than twenty, with the slow, mild manner of the country-bred.

“A prince’s house? No, I couldn’t say what that was like. How did you happen to be there?”

“I was valet de chambre. I picked up the trade after the war. It’s easy enough, and any other sort of work was scarce. This prince had been living for years in France. That’s how the revolution didn’t hit him. He had everything—money and honor. And he never earned a sou of it himself.

“It seemed as if I was born for the luxurious life that man lived. I loved everything about it—the silver, the wine out of red and gold glasses, the smell of flowers in the rooms, the soft carpets, and at night candles everywhere—the way they are on the altars of a church. I liked the women, too. The scent they used and the way they kept their bodies like silk.

“The prince had all this, and I knew he’d never earned it. My way of getting a little of what he had was more honest than the way it had all come to him. What he had was the life’s blood of the poor.”

“Well, you’re here, and I suppose he’s still a prince?”

“Yes.” Then after a silence: “And now what’s your name?”

“Antoine Godefrey ... Matricule 46,207.” He added the number as though it were an address.

“You’re from?”

“Avignon.”

“And you’re here for?”

“Murder.”

Then Antoine Godefrey turned his back and closed his eyes as though he slept. His left arm lay along the brown blanket and Michel saw that the forefinger was missing. He wondered how that had happened.

On the right Michel’s neighbor lay staring mutely at the ceiling. He’d not seemed to observe the presence of a newcomer on the planks next him. Looking straight ahead, with apparently unseeing eyes, he’d eaten his cup of rice, and then stretched out on his planks, lying on his back and staring up, as stiff as a corpse but for the rise and fall of his chest and an occasional twitching of the lines of agony drawn about his finely-modeled mouth. The grief on his upturned face seemed permanently carved, as unalterable as the expression of an effigy in marble; forever looking up with unchanging expression.

Outside, dull, steady rain fell. It had begun in the afternoon; at first a light, pearly drizzle, then, with a rush of wind through the palms of the Avenue des Cocotiers, it had come roaring like a waterfall. Wrapped in wings like shiny black waterproof coats, vultures had perched on the roofs, gargoyles of wretched resignation. The gutters of the village streets had run red like blood. And there’d been a faint, derisive whistle in the wind.

How cold and wet they’d all been, Michel remembered. Perhaps that was what had made Félix look, as Eugène had said, “good for the bamboos.” It must have been the rain, and not what Eugène had thought. Yet in the first year—he suddenly recalled that even the Administration figures admitted that of every shipment, at least half died in the first year....

There was no break in the thud of rain on the roof. The man across the aisle snored faintly. What had he done? Michel wondered. For that matter, what had all the others in the room done? Ninety men stretched on planks, with twelve inches separating convict from convict. Eugène Bassières, for example, and Paul Arthur, the man with the low, even voice, who so seldom spoke, so that when he did, you listened. What had they done to be locked in behind bars while they slept?

The rain checked his flickering speculations. He wouldn’t have thought there was so much water in the sky. He’d heard some one say that this being the month of May, rain was to be expected every day. Something about the way it fell made him horribly nervous. He felt as though he could stand it if it would only let up just a minute. Then he could pull himself together, and it might go on again. This, he thought, is how you feel about the ocean when you’re seasick. And the thing that’s so awful to you is knowing you’re helpless, that nothing you or anybody can do will stop it.

Prison, he decided, is something like this; something you want to have stop for just a minute. But could anybody stop it? he wondered. Or would it be just as impossible as stopping rain or the sea? Now the rain sounded as though endless buckets of water were being dumped on the roof. And that would go on, no matter what anybody did. He could hear it sliding off the roof into the great puddles on the ground. And he couldn’t think why it made him so nervous.

Antoine Godefrey seemed to sleep. The rigid man who stared up at nothing breathed slowly, and the number stamped on his blouse rose and fell with the measure of his heart.

“Ah,” Michel thought, “I didn’t know there could be so sorrowful a place.”

[1]	An authority for instances of official graft in the Guiana prisons is George Le Fèvre, a French journalist who visited the penal colony under the aegis of Ex-Governor Chanel. He published the result of his observations in a book whose title is Bagnards et Chercheurs d’Or.

[2]	In the womanless world of the Guiana prisons the men who satisfy Adam’s desire for Eve are called mômes. The English “brat” is of course necessarily an inadequate rendering of the local significance of môme.