Papillon by Henri Charrière

There was a mec in the courtyard who always wore handcuffs. I made friends with him. We would smoke the same cigar; it was long, thin and very strong, but I smoked it. I gathered that he smuggled contraband between Venezuela and the island of Aruba. He had been accused of killing some guards on the coast and was awaiting trial. Some days he was very calm, others he was nervous and excitable. I began to realize that he was calm when he'd had a visitor and was chewing the leaves he was brought. One day he gave me half a leaf and I understood. My tongue, palate and lips lost all feeling. The leaves were coca. He was thirty-five, with arms and chest covered with curly jet-black hair, and unusually strong. His feet were so callused that he could step on a piece of glass or a nail without feeling it.

"You and me we fuga," I said to him one evening. (On one of the Haitian's visits I had asked him for a French-Spanish dictionary.) The mec understood and indicated he would like to escape, but what about his handcuffs? They were American handcuffs with a slot for a flat key. The Breton made me a hook out of metal thread flattened at one end. After a little practice I was able to open my friend's handcuffs whenever I liked. At night he was put in a dungeon with very thick bars. Those in our room were thin, and I was sure we could bend them easily. So there would be only one bar that needed sawing-Antonio's (his name was "Antonio, the Colombian"). "How do we get a saw? " "Money. " "How much? " "One hundred pesos. " "In dollars? " "Ten. " So, for ten dollars, which I gave him, he got two hacksaws. I explained by drawing on the dirt in the yard that each time he had sawed a little, he was to mix the metal sawdust with some paste from our rice balls and fill the cut.