Henri Charrière - Banco - the Further Adventures of Papillon

I know my way of telling my story will make some people smile; but you have to understand that when I am talking about my childhood it is not a man of sixty-five who is writing but a kid-it is Riri of Pont-d'Ucel who writes, so deeply is that childhood imprinted on his mind, and he writes with the words he used then.

My childhood… A garden with gooseberries that my sisters and I ate before they were ripe, and pears that we were forbidden to pick before Papa said we could. (By crawling like a Red Indian so that no one could see me from a window in the apartment I had my fill from the pear tree, and a bellyache afterward.)

I was eight, but still I would often go to sleep on my father's lap or in my mother's arms. Sometimes, when she tucked me into my little bed, I would half wake up, put my arms around her neck and hold her tight, and we would stay like that for what seemed to me a long, long time, our breath mingling; and at last I would go to sleep without knowing when she left me.

How beautiful Mama was! Tall, slim, always elegant. You ought to have seen how she played the piano, even when I knelt on a chair behind her music stool and closed her eyes with my little hands. Mama was never meant to be a schoolmistress. My grandfather was very rich, and Mama and her sister Léontine had been to the most expensive schools in Avignon. It was not Mama's fault that my grandfather Thierry had liked living high; her father was very kind, but because he had loved giving splendid parties in Avignon and meeting too many pretty farmers' wives, Mama had no dowry, and she was forced to earn her own living.

My grandfather was terrific. He had a little goatee and a snowwhite moustache. Hand in hand we went round the farms in the morning, and as he was secretary of the _mairie_ ("He has to earn his tobacco money," said Tante Léontine), he always had papers to take to the peasants or to fetch from their homes. I noticed how right my aunt was when she said he always lingered at a certain farm where the woman of the house was good-looking. I was delighted, because it was the only farm where they let me ride the little donkey and where I could meet Mireille, a girl of my age who was much better at playing papa and mama than the girl next door at Pont-d'Ucel.

Eight, and already I was beginning to fool around. Secretly I went to swim in the Ardèche. I had learned by myself in the canal; it was deep, but it was only five yards across. We had no bathing suits, of course, so we swam naked, seven or eight of us, all boys together. Oh, those sunny days in the water of my Ardèche! The trout we caught with our hands! I never went home until I was quite dry.

1914. The war, and Papa was called up. We went with him as far as the train. He was going with the Chasseurs Alpins, and he would soon be back. He said to us, "Be good children and always obey your mother. And you girls must help with the housework, because she is going to look after both classes, mine and hers, all by herself. This war won't last long; everybody says so." And standing there on the platform, the four of us watched the train go, with my father leaning half out of the window to wave at us a little longer. Those four years of war had no influence on our happiness at home. We drew a little closer to one another. I slept in the big bed with Mama; I took the place of my father, who was fighting at the front.

Four years in the history of the world is nothing. Four years for a kid of eight was an eternity.

I was growing fast; we played at soldiers and at battles. I would come home covered with bruises and with my clothes torn, but whether I had won or lost I always came home happy, never crying. Mama bandaged the scrapes and put raw meat on a black eye. She would scold me a little, but gently, never shouting. Her reproaches were more like a whisper. "Be kind, little Riri, your mama is tired. This class of sixty children is utterly exhausting. I am completely worn out, you see; it's more than I can manage. Darling, you must help me by being good and obedient." It always ended with kisses and a promise to behave well.

Somebody was stealing our wood, stacked under the lean-to in the playground; and at night Mama was frightened. I cuddled close, putting my child's arm round her to make her feel that I was a protection. "Don't be afraid, Mama; I'm the man of the house and I'm big enough to defend you." I took down Papa's gun and slipped two buckshot cartridges into it-he used them for wild boar.

One night Mama woke up, shook me and whispered in my ear, "I heard the thieves. They made a noise, pulling out a log." She was sweating.

"Don't be afraid, Mama."

I got up very quietly, with the gun in my hands. With infinite care I opened the window; it squeaked a little, and I held my breath. Then, pulling the shutter toward me with one hand, I unhooked it with the barrel; holding the butt against my shoulder, ready to fire on the thieves, I pushed the shutter. It opened without a sound. The moon lit up the courtyard as though it were day, and I saw perfectly well that there was nobody at all in the playground. The heap of wood was still neatly arranged. "There's no one, Mama; come and see." And, clinging to one another, we stayed at the window for some time, both comforted by seeing there were no thieves, and Mama happy at finding that her little boy was brave.

In spite of all this happiness, I would sometimes behave badly. A cat tied by the tail to a front-door bell; the water bailiff's bicycle thrown over the bridge into the Ardèche-he had gone down to the river to catch poachers fishing with a net. And other things… sometimes we hunted birds with slings; and twice, when I was between ten and eleven, little Riquet Debannes and I went off into the country with Papa's gun to shoot a rabbit Riquet had seen skipping about in a field. Getting the gun in and out of the house without my mother's noticing, and twice at that, was a tremendous feat.

1917. Papa was wounded. He had many little shell splinters in his head, but his life was not in danger. The news came by the Red Cross. Twenty-four hours passed. Mama taught her class as usual-nobody knew a thing. I watched my mother, and I admired her. Normally I was in the front row in class; that day I sat at the back to keep an eye on all the pupils, determined to step in if any of them fooled about during lessons. By half past three Mama was at the end of her rope; I knew it, because we should have had natural science, but she went out, writing an arithmetic problem on the blackboard and saying, "I must go out for a few minutes: do this sum in your arithmetic books."

I went out after her; she was leaning against the mimosa just to the right of the gate. She was crying; my poor dear mama had given in.

I hugged her tight; and of course _I_ did not cry. I tried to comfort her, and when she said to me, sobbing, "Your poor papa is wounded," just as if I did not know, my kid's heart found this reply, "So much the better, Mama. This way the war is over for him and we can be sure he'll come back alive." And all at once Mama realized that I was right.

"Why, that's perfectly true! You're quite right, darling; Papa will come back to us alive!"

A kiss on my forehead, a kiss on my cheek, and we went back to the classroom hand in hand.

The Spanish coast was quite visible, and I could make out the specks of white that must be houses. The coast was becoming more distinct, just like those holidays in 1917 that we spent at Saint-Chamas, where Papa had been sent to guard the powderworks. His wounds were not very serious, but the minute splinters could not be removed yet. He was classed as an auxiliary; no more front line for him.

We were all together again, full of happiness.

Mama was radiant: we had got right out of this horrible war; but for other people it was still going on, and she said to us, "Darlings, you must not be selfish and spend all your days running about and picking jujubes; you must set aside three hours a day for thinking of others."