Colony. Hugo Wilcken
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queuing for their dinner ration. Theoretically, it’s the keeper’s job to collect the rations from the kitchen and dole them out – but no doubt Carpette’s paid someone else to do it. There’s nothing you absolutely have to do in this colony, if you have the money to avoid it.
‘Edouard used to work in the botanical gardens,’ Carpette now continues as they walk. ‘But he has his enemies in Saint-Laurent. That’s why he was sent to the camp. That’s why they won’t transfer him back. And that’s why I bribed my way into this job, out here. It cost me all my savings. Back in Saint-Laurent, I used to run the postal service. It was a damn good job. We were happy in Saint-Laurent!’ He spits out the word happy with a bizarre violence. ‘So now we’ll escape. We’ll need a boat and sail; that’s not a problem. I don’t know why, but Edouard trusts you. If you want in, though, you’ll need two hundred francs up front. A hundred for the boat, fifty for the sails, fifty for the food and water. Then another few hundred for when we get to Colombia, if you want to make a go of it. The problem is finding someone to sail the boat. If there’s anyone in your barracks who’s likely, sound him out. Tell him his expenses’ll be covered.’
Night again. The knife in his hand makes him feel no safer. It just emphasises the fact that in here everyone has knives. They’re locked in behind heavy iron doors, the guards are nowhere near, and there’s no way out in case of trouble. Certainly, everyone’s extremely wary tonight and practically nobody’s asleep. Antillais is stretched out on the bed board, hands behind his head. He’s spent the past half-hour at work on a toy boat he’s building, using the wood from his cat’s manger. Masque is in the corner near the privy, arguing with another fort-à-bras. He looks drawn, tired. The atmosphere is weirdly calm. Sabir forces his mind onto other things.
He thinks back to his conversation with Carpette. something new has happened. For the first time since he’s been here, escape is not just an abstract project, but a real, concrete prospect. Visions of a different world come to mind. Dark-haired men with large moustaches and sombreros. Is that Colombia? Or maybe it’s Mexico he’s thinking of. Sabir knows nothing of any of these countries, except that they all speak Spanish there – a language of which he has no knowledge. He knows nothing of boats either. And yet Carpette’s proposing an epic ocean voyage of, what, hundreds of kilometres? Or thousands? In a way, it’s all the same. His dreams are a blank canvas that he can colour with whatever images he chooses.
What of Carpette and Edouard? He didn’t see it at first, but Sabir now recognises Carpette as one of two ‘types’ who generally manage the best here. The first are the forts-à-bras, who use brute force, intimidation and protection rackets to get what they want. And then there are the hustler types like Carpette, the small-time capitalists who keep a low profile but build up networks of accomplices to create mini-trading empires. The forts-à-bras are to be avoided, but it’s useful to know the hustlers.
Carpette is also a somewhat effeminate man. In a mainland prison, he’d have to hide it, or get regularly beaten up. Not here. The hyper-virility of the bagne craves its opposite. It’s the men in the middle – men like Sabir – who are the invisible ones, who play no part in the sexual economy. Without even really thinking about it, Sabir assumes that Carpette and Edouard are lovers. It’s the only form of solidarity that exists out here, after all. Otherwise, you’re utterly on your own. There’s no such thing as friendship or camaraderie, as there was at the front.
Sabir tries to remember what Edouard was like in those days, when they shared a trench section and much else besides. It’s not easy. In a relationship like theirs, the other person is the mirror you gaze into, and his real nature remains obscure. Edouard now strikes Sabir as something of a mysterious character, although he didn’t feel that at the time. Taciturn, given to acid remarks and black humour. There was that day he let slip that he was a widower: ‘She was thrown from a horse and died the next day. We were married just long enough for us to realise we couldn’t stand each other!’ No, he certainly wasn’t like other enlisted men. For a start, he wasn’t even working class. He was educated, he read educated books. He had a business, he’d been an importer of exotic plants. Why did he join the infantry, when he was clearly officer class? He had the reputation of being a brave soldier, in any case. Scrambling up the dirt walls to take potshots at the German wire-cutters with his old hunting rifle, in full view of the enemy lines. Reckless, death-wish behaviour. Sabir also recalls that Edouard used to be a keen sketcher. He always carried a little sketchbook with him. Sabir once flicked through one of them and found it full of desolate landscapes. A single tree stump in a field, a dark farmhouse against the sky …
Darkness smothers the barracks. Over by the night-light, a card game is getting under way. The game they play here is called the marseillaise, a version of baccarat. Often it goes on until dawn. Not that Sabir has ever joined in. It’s too easy to get addicted to gambling, and once that happens, it’s the end. You’ll never get out. You’ll start winning, maybe huge amounts; you’ll find yourself living for the game, thinking about it incessantly all day and playing it all night. Then, after a while, you’ll start losing. When you’ve exhausted your funds, you’ll borrow money you can’t hope to pay back. Soon you’ll owe half the barracks. You’ll become an outcast, no one will play with you. You start receiving threats. Your nerves are gone, you’re pulling your knife at the slightest provocation. You’re in a hopeless spiral that can only end one way.
Masque is the banker. He rattles the money box and a few convicts get off the bed board to join in. It’s the banker’s job to deal the cards, manage the game, settle any disputes. He gets a ten per cent cut of all the winnings, so it’s a lucrative position. You’ve got to be ruthless to do it, though, ready to defend yourself and draw your knife the moment there’s any trouble. Consequently, it’s always the toughest fort-à-bras who takes the job. Masque has been banker for the past month, but lately he’s let his second take over the role almost every night. Maybe he thinks it makes him too vulnerable to an attack from Antillais. If so, he seems to have changed his mind tonight. The tension in the barracks visibly eases: if Masque doesn’t think he’s going to be attacked, he must have good reason.
Sabir watches the game from his corner. Behind the players, several people wait in attendance. There’s the man who earns a few sous spreading the blanket they play on. Another convict puts the cigarettes in front of each player; yet another pours the coffee: an entire mini-economy revolves around the game. Masque says nothing as he deals. His tattoos are a carnival joke. He’s bald on top but has tattooed in his hair. Around his eyes, tattooed glasses. On one cheek, an ace of spades; on the other, an ace of clubs. On his upper lip, a purple moustache. In civil society, he’d be a freak. But men like Masque rarely try to escape; the bagne is their life and it’s impossible for them to live outside it.
One by one, the makeshift lamps go out. But the game goes on. One of the players, Sabir notices, is the Basque boy Say-Say, the one who’d come up from Saint-Laurent with the story of Bonifacio’s escape. He looks about seventeen, has freckles, big jug-handle ears and bad teeth. Too ugly to appeal to the forts-à-bras, but they’ve found another way to misuse him anyway. He had a full plan on arrival in the camp, and was too young and inexperienced to shut up about it. So the forts-à-bras coerced him into the card game and are in the process of picking him clean. Once they’ve done that, there’ll no longer be any future for him in this camp. Being from the Basque country, though, Say-Say probably knows his way around a sailing boat. As he watches the boy lose again, Sabir recalls the lad who’d bunked beside him on the journey out. Gaspard, with the country accent you could hardly understand. What happened to him, he wonders. Is he still alive? He remembers the promise he made to the boy to look out for him and feels a stab of shame. Perhaps he can redeem himself by transferring the promise to this other hopeless case.
Hard rain starts to pound the roof. That means it’s about midnight. Before coming here, Sabir would never have believed how clockwork the weather could be. Life’s uncertainties have become certain, and vice versa. He listens to the dead sound of cards being shuffled, fingered, slapped down onto the blanket. There’s an occasional muttered curse. Everyone not involved in the game is lying down now, except a toothless old convict who’s darning a pair of trousers. Out of the corner of his eye, Sabir notices