Title: The Enormous Room
Author: Cummings, E. E. (Edward Estlin)
Language: English
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The Enormous Room

by E. E. Cummings


Contents

 INTRODUCTION
 I. I BEGIN A PILGRIMAGE
 II. EN ROUTE
 III. A PILGRIM’S PROGRESS
 IV. LE NOUVEAU
 V. A GROUP OF PORTRAITS
 VI. APOLLYON
 VII. AN APPROACH TO THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS
 VIII. THE WANDERER
 IX. ZOO-LOO
 X. SURPLICE
 XI. JEAN LE NÈGRE
 XII. THREE WISE MEN
 XIII. I SAY GOOD-BYE TO LA MISÈRE



INTRODUCTION


“FOR THIS MY SON WAS DEAD, AND IS ALIVE AGAIN; HE WAS LOST; AND IS
FOUND.”


He was lost by the Norton-Harjes Ambulance Corps.

He was officially dead as a result of official misinformation.

He was entombed by the French Government.

It took the better part of three months to find him and bring him back
to life—with the help of powerful and willing friends on both sides of
the Atlantic. The following documents tell the story:

104 Irving Street,
Cambridge, December 8, 1917.


President Woodrow Wilson,
White House,
Washington, D. C.


Mr. President:

It seems criminal to ask for a single moment of your time. But I am
strongly advised that it would be more criminal to delay any longer
calling to your attention a crime against American citizenship in which
the French Government has persisted for many weeks—in spite of constant
appeals made to the American Minister at Paris; and in spite of
subsequent action taken by the State Department at Washington, on the
initiative of my friend, Hon. ——.

The victims are two American ambulance drivers, Edward Estlin Cummings
of Cambridge, Mass., and W—— S—— B——….

More than two months ago these young men were arrested, subjected to
many indignities, dragged across France like criminals, and closely
confined in a Concentration Camp at La Ferté Macé; where, according to
latest advices they still remain—awaiting the final action of the
Minister of the Interior upon the findings of a Commission which passed
upon their cases as long ago as October 17.

Against Cummings both private and official advices from Paris state
that there is no charge whatever. He has been subjected to this
outrageous treatment solely because of his intimate friendship with
young B——, whose sole crime is—so far as can be learned—that certain
letters to friends in America were misinterpreted by an over-zealous
French censor.

It only adds to the indignity and irony of the situation to say that
young Cummings is an enthusiastic lover of France and so loyal to the
friends he has made among the French soldiers, that even while
suffering in health from his unjust confinement, he excuses the
ingratitude of the country he has risked his life to serve by calling
attention to the atmosphere of intense suspicion and distrust that has
naturally resulted from the painful experience which France has had
with foreign emissaries.

Be assured, Mr. President, that I have waited long—it seems like
ages—and have exhausted all other available help before venturing to
trouble you.

1. After many weeks of vain effort to secure effective action by the
American Ambassador at Paris, Richard Norton of the Norton-Harjes
Ambulance Corps to which the boys belonged, was completely discouraged,
and advised me to seek help here.

2. The efforts of the State Department at Washington resulted as
follows:

i. A cable from Paris saying that there was no charge against Cummings
and intimating that he would speedily be released.

ii. A little later a second cable advising that Edward Estlin Cummings
had sailed on the Antilles and was reported lost.

iii. A week later a third cable correcting this cruel error and saying
the Embassy was renewing efforts to locate Cummings—apparently still
ignorant even of the place of his confinement.

After such painful and baffling experiences, I turn to you—burdened
though I know you to be, in this world crisis, with the weightiest task
ever laid upon any man.

But I have another reason for asking this favor. I do not speak for my
son alone; or for him and his friend alone. My son has a mother—as
brave and patriotic as any mother who ever dedicated an only son to a
great cause. The mothers of our boys in France have rights as well as
the boys themselves. My boy’s mother had a right to be protected from
the weeks of horrible anxiety and suspense caused by the inexplicable
arrest and imprisonment of her son. My boy’s mother had a right to be
spared the supreme agony caused by a blundering cable from Paris saying
that he had been drowned by a submarine. (An error which Mr. Norton
subsequently cabled that he had discovered six weeks before.) My boy’s
mother and all American mothers have a right to be protected against
all needless anxiety and sorrow.

Pardon me, Mr. President, but if I were President and your son were
suffering such prolonged injustice at the hands of France; and your
son’s mother had been needlessly kept in Hell as many weeks as my boy’s
mother has—I would do something to make American citizenship as sacred
in the eyes of Frenchmen as Roman citizenship was in the eyes of the
ancient world. Then it was enough to ask the question, “Is it lawful to
scourge a man that is a Roman, and uncondemned?” Now, in France, it
seems lawful to treat like a condemned criminal a man that is an
American, uncondemned and admittedly innocent!

Very respectfully,
EDWARD CUMMINGS


This letter was received at the White House. Whether it was received
with sympathy or with silent disapproval is still a mystery. A
Washington official, a friend in need and a friend indeed in these
trying experiences, took the precaution to have it delivered by
messenger. Otherwise, fear that it had been “lost in the mail” would
have added another twinge of uncertainty to the prolonged and exquisite
tortures inflicted upon parents by alternations of misinformation and
official silence. Doubtless the official stethoscope was on the heart
of the world just then; and perhaps it was too much to expect that even
a post-card would be wasted on private heart-aches.

In any event this letter told where to look for the missing
boys—something the French government either could not or would not
disclose, in spite of constant pressure by the American Embassy at
Paris and constant efforts by my friend Richard Norton, who was head of
the Norton-Harjes Ambulance organization from which they had been
abducted.

Release soon followed, as narrated in the following letter to Major ——
of the staff of the Judge Advocate General in Paris.

February 20, 1921.

My dear ——

Your letter of January 30th, which I have been waiting for with great
interest ever since I received your cable, arrived this morning. My son
arrived in New York on January 1st. He was in bad shape physically as a
result of his imprisonment: very much under weight, suffering from a
bad skin infection which he had acquired at the concentration camp.
However, in view of the extraordinary facilities which the detention
camp offered for acquiring dangerous diseases, he is certainly to be
congratulated on having escaped with one of the least harmful. The
medical treatment at the camp was quite in keeping with the general
standards of sanitation there; with the result that it was not until he
began to receive competent surgical treatment after his release and on
board ship that there was much chance of improvement. A month of
competent medical treatment here seems to have got rid of this painful
reminder of official hospitality. He is, at present, visiting friends
in New York. If he were here, I am sure he would join with me and with
his mother in thanking you for the interest you have taken and the
efforts you have made.

W—— S—— B—— is, I am happy to say, expected in New York this week by
the S. S. Niagara. News of his release and subsequently of his
departure came by cable. What you say about the nervous strain under
which he was living, as an explanation of the letters to which the
authorities objected, is entirely borne out by first-hand information.
The kind of badgering which the youth received was enough to upset a
less sensitive temperament. It speaks volumes for the character of his
environment that such treatment aroused the resentment of only one of
his companions, and that even this manifestation of normal human
sympathy was regarded as “suspicious.” If you are right in
characterizing B——’s condition as more or less hysterical, what shall
we say of the conditions which made possible the treatment which he and
his friend received? I am glad B—— wrote the very sensible and manly
letter to the Embassy, which you mention. After I have had an
opportunity to converse with him, I shall be in better position to
reach a conclusion in regard to certain matters about which I will not
now express an opinion.

I would only add that I do not in the least share your complacency in
regard to the treatment which my son received. The very fact that, as
you say, no charges were made and that he was detained on suspicion for
many weeks after the Commission passed on his case and reported to the
Minister of the Interior that he ought to be released, leads me to a
conclusion exactly opposite to that which you express. It seems to me
impossible to believe that any well-ordered government would fail to
acknowledge such action to have been unreasonable. Moreover, “detention
on suspicion” was a small part of what actually took place. To take a
single illustration, you will recall that after many weeks’ persistent
effort to secure information, the Embassy was still kept so much in the
dark about the facts, that it cabled the report that my son had
embarked on The Antilles and was reported lost. And when convinced of
that error, the Embassy cabled that it was renewing efforts to locate
my son. Up to that moment, it would appear that the authorities had not
even condescended to tell the United States Embassy where this innocent
American citizen was confined; so that a mistaken report of his death
was regarded as an adequate explanation of his disappearance. If I had
accepted this report and taken no further action, it is by no means
certain that he would not be dead by this time.

I am free to say, that in my opinion no self-respecting government
could allow one of its own citizens, against whom there has been no
accusation brought, to be subjected to such prolonged indignities and
injuries by a friendly government without vigorous remonstrance. I
regard it as a patriotic duty, as well as a matter of personal
self-respect, to do what I can to see that such remonstrance is made. I
still think too highly both of my own government and of the government
of France to believe that such an untoward incident will fail to
receive the serious attention it deserves. If I am wrong, and American
citizens must expect to suffer such indignities and injuries at the
hands of other governments without any effort at remonstrance and
redress by their own government, I believe the public ought to know the
humiliating truth. It will make interesting reading. It remains for my
son to determine what action he will take.

I am glad to know your son is returning. I am looking forward with
great pleasure to conversing with him.

I cannot adequately express my gratitude to you and to other friends
for the sympathy and assistance I have received. If any expenses have
been incurred on my behalf or on behalf of my son, I beg you to give me
the pleasure of reimbursing you. At best, I must always remain your
debtor.

With best wishes,

Sincerely yours,
EDWARD CUMMINGS


I yield to no one in enthusiasm for the cause of France. Her cause was
our cause and the cause of civilization; and the tragedy is that it
took us so long to find it out. I would gladly have risked my life for
her, as my son risked his and would have risked it again had not the
departure of his regiment overseas been stopped by the armistice.

France was beset with enemies within as well as without. Some of the
“suspects” were members of her official household. Her Minister of
Interior was thrown into prison. She was distracted with fear. Her
existence was at stake. Under such circumstances excesses were sure to
be committed. But it is precisely at such times that American citizens
most need and are most entitled to the protection of their own
government.

EDWARD CUMMINGS



THE ENORMOUS ROOM



I.
I BEGIN A PILGRIMAGE


In October, 1917, we had succeeded, my friend B. and I, in dispensing
with almost three of our six months’ engagement as Voluntary Drivers,
Sanitary Section 21, Ambulance Norton Harjes, American Red Cross, and
at the moment which subsequent experience served to capitalize, had
just finished the unlovely job of cleaning and greasing (_nettoyer_ is
the proper word) the own private flivver of the chief of section, a
gentleman by the convenient name of Mr. A. To borrow a
characteristic-cadence from Our Great President: the lively
satisfaction which we might be suspected of having derived from the
accomplishment of a task so important in the saving of civilization
from the clutches of Prussian tyranny was in some degree inhibited,
unhappily, by a complete absence of cordial relations between the man
whom fate had placed over us and ourselves. Or, to use the vulgar
American idiom, B. and I and Mr. A. didn’t get on well. We were in
fundamental disagreement as to the attitude which we, Americans, should
uphold toward the poilus in whose behalf we had volunteered assistance,
Mr. A. maintaining “you boys want to keep away from those dirty
Frenchmen” and “we’re here to show those bastards how they do things in
America,” to which we answered by seizing every opportunity for
fraternization. Inasmuch as eight “dirty Frenchmen” were attached to
the section in various capacities (cook, provisioner, chauffeur,
mechanician, etc.) and the section itself was affiliated with a branch
of the French army, fraternization was easy. Now when he saw that we
had not the slightest intention of adopting his ideals, Mr. A.
(together with the _sous-lieutenant_ who acted as his translator—for
the chief’s knowledge of the French language, obtained during several
years’ heroic service, consisted for the most part in “_Sar var_,”
“_Sar marche_,” and “_Deet donk moan vieux_”) confined his efforts to
denying us the privilege of acting as drivers, on the ground that our
personal appearance was a disgrace to the section. In this, I am bound
to say, Mr. A. was but sustaining the tradition conceived originally by
his predecessor, a Mr. P., a Harvard man, who until his departure from
Vingt-et-Un succeeded in making life absolutely miserable for B. and
myself. Before leaving this painful subject I beg to state that, at
least as far as I was concerned, the tradition had a firm foundation in
my own predisposition for uncouthness plus what _Le Matin_ (if we
remember correctly) cleverly nicknamed _La Boue Héroïque_.

Having accomplished the _nettoyage_ (at which we were by this time
adepts, thanks to Mr. A.’s habit of detailing us to wash any car which
its driver and _aide_ might consider too dirty a task for their own
hands) we proceeded in search of a little water for personal use. B.
speedily finished his ablutions. I was strolling carelessly and solo
from the cook-wagon toward one of the two tents—which protestingly
housed some forty huddling Americans by night—holding in my hand an
historic _morceau de chocolat_, when a spick, not to say span,
gentleman in a suspiciously quiet French uniform allowed himself to be
driven up to the _bureau_, by two neat soldiers with tin derbies, in a
Renault whose painful cleanliness shamed my recent efforts. This must
be a general at least, I thought, regretting the extremely undress
character of my uniform, which uniform consisted of overalls and a
cigarette.

Having furtively watched the gentleman alight and receive a ceremonious
welcome from the chief and the aforesaid French lieutenant who
accompanied the section for translatory reasons, I hastily betook
myself to one of the tents, where I found B. engaged in dragging all
his belongings into a central pile of frightening proportions. He was
surrounded by a group of fellow-heroes who hailed my coming with
considerable enthusiasm. “Your bunky’s leaving” said somebody. “Going
to Paris” volunteered a man who had been trying for three months to get
there. “Prison you mean” remarked a confirmed optimist whose
disposition had felt the effects of French climate.

Albeit confused by the eloquence of B.’s unalterable silence, I
immediately associated his present predicament with the advent of the
mysterious stranger, and forthwith dashed forth, bent on demanding from
one of the tin-derbies the high identity and sacred mission of this
personage. I knew that with the exception of ourselves everyone in the
section had been given his seven days’ leave—even two men who had
arrived later than we and whose turn should, consequently, have come
after ours. I also knew that at the headquarters of the Ambulance, _7
rue François Premier_, was Monsieur Norton, the supreme head of the
Norton Harjes fraternity, who had known my father in other days.
Putting two and two together I decided that this potentate had sent an
emissary to Mr. A. to demand an explanation of the various and sundry
insults and indignities to which I and my friend had been subjected,
and more particularly to secure our long-delayed permission.
Accordingly I was in high spirits as I rushed toward the _bureau_.

I didn’t have to go far. The mysterious one, in conversation with
_monsieur le sous-lieutenant_, met me half-way. I caught the words:
“And Cummings” (the first and last time that my name was correctly
pronounced by a Frenchman), “where is he?”

“Present,” I said, giving a salute to which neither of them paid the
slightest attention.

“Ah yes” impenetrably remarked the mysterious one in positively
sanitary English. “You shall put all your baggage in the car, at
once”—then, to tin-derby-the-first, who appeared in an occult manner at
his master’s elbow—“Go with him, get his baggage, at once.”

My things were mostly in the vicinity of the _cuisine_, where lodged
the _cuisinier, mécanicien, menuisier_, etc., who had made room for me
(some ten days since) on their own initiative, thus saving me the
humiliation of sleeping with nineteen Americans in a tent which was
always two-thirds full of mud. Thither I led the tin-derby, who
scrutinised everything with surprising interest. I threw _mes affaires_
hastily together (including some minor accessories which I was going to
leave behind, but which the t-d bade me include) and emerged with a
duffle-bag under one arm and a bed-roll under the other, to encounter
my excellent friends, the “dirty Frenchmen,” aforesaid. They all popped
out together from one door, looking rather astonished. Something by way
of explanation as well as farewell was most certainly required, so I
made a speech in my best French:

“Gentlemen, friends, comrades—I am going away immediately and shall be
guillotined tomorrow.”

—“Oh hardly guillotined I should say,” remarked t-d, in a voice which
froze my marrow despite my high spirits; while the cook and carpenter
gaped audibly and the mechanician clutched a hopelessly smashed
carburetor for support.

One of the section’s _voitures_, a F.I.A.T., was standing ready.
General Nemo sternly forbade me to approach the Renault (in which B.’s
baggage was already deposited) and waved me into the F.I.A.T., bed,
bed-roll and all; whereupon t-d leaped in and seated himself opposite
me in a position of perfect unrelaxation, which, despite my aforesaid
exultation at quitting the section in general and Mr. A. in particular,
impressed me as being almost menacing. Through the front window I saw
my friend drive away with t-d Number 2 and Nemo; then, having waved
hasty farewell to all _les Américains_ that I knew—three in number—and
having exchanged affectionate greetings with Mr. A. (who admitted he
was very sorry indeed to lose us), I experienced the jolt of the
clutch—and we were off in pursuit.

Whatever may have been the forebodings inspired by t-d Number 1’s
attitude, they were completely annihilated by the thrilling joy which I
experienced on losing sight of the accursed section and its asinine
inhabitants—by the indisputable and authentic thrill of going somewhere
and nowhere, under the miraculous auspices of someone and no one—of
being yanked from the putrescent banalities of an official
non-existence into a high and clear adventure, by a _deus ex machina_
in a grey-blue uniform, and a couple of tin derbies. I whistled and
sang and cried to my _vis-à-vis_: “By the way, who is yonder
distinguished gentleman who has been so good as to take my friend and
me on this little promenade?”—to which, between lurches of the groaning
F.I.A.T., t-d replied awesomely, clutching at the window for the
benefit of his equilibrium: “Monsieur le Ministre de Sureté de Noyon.”

Not in the least realizing what this might mean, I grinned. A
responsive grin, visiting informally the tired cheeks of my _confrère_,
ended by frankly connecting his worthy and enormous ears which were
squeezed into oblivion by the oversize _casque_. My eyes, jumping from
those ears, lit on that helmet and noticed for the first time an
emblem, a sort of flowering little explosion, or hair-switch rampant.
It seemed to me very jovial and a little absurd.

“We’re on our way to Noyon, then?”

T-d shrugged his shoulders.

Here the driver’s hat blew off. I heard him swear, and saw the hat
sailing in our wake. I jumped to my feet as the F.I.A.T. came to a
sudden stop, and started for the ground—then checked my flight in
mid-air and landed on the seat, completely astonished. T-d’s revolver,
which had hopped from its holster at my first move, slid back into its
nest. The owner of the revolver was muttering something rather
disagreeable. The driver (being an American of Vingt-et-Un) was backing
up instead of retrieving his cap in person. My mind felt as if it had
been thrown suddenly from fourth into reverse. I pondered and said
nothing.

On again—faster, to make up for lost time. On the correct assumption
that t-d does not understand English the driver passes the time of day
through the minute window:

“For Christ’s sake, Cummings, what’s up?”

“You got me,” I said, laughing at the delicate naiveté of the question.

“Did y’ do something to get pinched?”

“Probably,” I answered importantly and vaguely, feeling a new dignity.

“Well, if you didn’t, maybe B—— did.”

“Maybe,” I countered, trying not to appear enthusiastic. As a matter of
fact I was never so excited and proud. I was, to be sure, a criminal!
Well, well, thank God that settled one question for good and all—no
more _Section Sanitaire_ for me! No more Mr. A. and his daily lectures
on cleanliness, deportment, etc.! In spite of myself I started to sing.
The driver interrupted:

“I heard you asking the tin lid something in French. Whadhesay?”

“Said that gink in the Renault is the head cop of Noyon,” I answered at
random.

“GOODNIGHT. Maybe we’d better ring off, or you’ll get in wrong with”—he
indicated t-d with a wave of his head that communicated itself to the
car in a magnificent skid; and t-d’s derby rang out as the skid pitched
t-d the length of the F.I.A.T.

“You rang the bell then,” I commented—then to t-d: “Nice car for the
wounded to ride in,” I politely observed. T-d answered nothing….

Noyon.

We drive straight up to something which looks unpleasantly like a
feudal dungeon. The driver is now told to be somewhere at a certain
time, and meanwhile to eat with the Head Cop, who may be found just
around the corner—(I am doing the translating for t-d)—and, oh yes, it
seems that the Head Cop has particularly requested the pleasure of this
distinguished American’s company at _déjeuner_.

“Does he mean me?” the driver asked innocently.

“Sure,” I told him.

Nothing is said of B. or me.

Now, cautiously, t-d first and I a slow next, we descend. The F.I.A.T.
rumbles off, with the distinguished one’s backward-glaring head poked
out a yard more or less and that distinguished face so completely
surrendered to mystification as to cause a large laugh on my part.

“You are hungry?”

It was the erstwhile-ferocious speaking. A criminal, I remembered, is
somebody against whom everything he says and does is very cleverly made
use of. After weighing the matter in my mind for some moments I decided
at all cost to tell the truth, and replied:

“I could eat an elephant.”

Hereupon t-d led me to the Kitchen Itself, set me to eat upon a stool,
and admonished the cook in a fierce voice:

“Give this great criminal something to eat in the name of the French
Republic!”

And for the first time in three months I tasted Food.

T-d seated himself beside me, opened a huge jack-knife, and fell to,
after first removing his tin derby and loosening his belt.

One of the pleasantest memories connected with that irrevocable meal is
of a large, gentle, strong woman who entered in a hurry, and seeing me
cried out:

“What is it?”

“It’s an American, my mother,” t-d answered through fried potatoes.

“Why is he here?” the woman touched me on the shoulder, and satisfied
herself that I was real.

“The good God is doubtless acquainted with the explanation,” said t-d
pleasantly. “Not myself being the—”

“Ah, _mon pauvre_” said this very beautiful sort of woman. “You are
going to be a prisoner here. Everyone of the prisoners has a
_marraine_, do you understand? I am their _marraine_. I love them and
look after them. Well, listen: I will be your _marraine_, too.”

I bowed and looked around for something to pledge her in. T-d was
watching. My eyes fell on a huge glass of red pinard. “Yes, drink,”
said my captor, with a smile. I raised my huge glass.

“_A la santé de ma marraine charmante!_”

—This deed of gallantry quite won the cook (a smallish, agile
Frenchman) who shovelled several helps of potatoes on my already empty
plate. The tin derby approved also: “That’s right, eat, drink, you’ll
need it later perhaps.” And his knife guillotined another delicious
hunk of white bread.

At last, sated with luxuries, I bade adieu to my _marraine_ and allowed
t-d to conduct me (I going first, as always) upstairs and into a little
den whose interior boasted two mattresses, a man sitting at the table,
and a newspaper in the hands of the man.

“_C’est un Américain_,” t-d said by way of introduction. The newspaper
detached itself from the man who said: “He’s welcome indeed: make
yourself at home, Mr. American”—and bowed himself out. My captor
immediately collapsed on one mattress.

I asked permission to do the same on the other, which favor was
sleepily granted. With half-shut eyes my Ego lay and pondered: the
delicious meal it had just enjoyed; what was to come; the joys of being
a great criminal … then, being not at all inclined to sleep, I read _Le
Petit Parisien_ quite through, even to _Les Voies Urinaires._

Which reminded me—and I woke up t-d and asked: “May I visit the
_vespasienne_?”

“Downstairs,” he replied fuzzily, and readjusted his slumbers.

There was no one moving about in the little court. I lingered somewhat
on the way upstairs. The stairs were abnormally dirty. When I
reentered, t-d was roaring to himself. I read the journal through
again. It must have been about three o’clock.

Suddenly t-d woke up, straightened and buckled his personality, and
murmured: “It’s time, come on.”

_Le bureau de_ Monsieur le Ministre was just around the corner, as it
proved. Before the door stood the patient F.I.A.T. I was ceremoniously
informed by t-d that we would wait on the steps.

Well! Did I know any more?—the American driver wanted to know.

Having proved to my own satisfaction that my fingers could still roll a
pretty good cigarette, I answered: “No,” between puffs.

The American drew nearer and whispered spectacularly: “Your friend is
upstairs. I think they’re examining him.”

T-d got this; and though his rehabilitated dignity had accepted the
“makin’s” from its prisoner, it became immediately incensed:

“That’s enough,” he said sternly.

And dragged me _tout-à-coup_ upstairs, where I met B. and his t-d
coming out of the _bureau_ door. B. looked peculiarly cheerful. “I
think we’re going to prison all right,” he assured me.

Braced by this news, poked from behind by my t-d, and waved on from
before by M. le Ministre himself, I floated vaguely into a very washed,
neat, business-like and altogether American room of modest proportions,
whose door was immediately shut and guarded on the inside by my escort.

Monsieur le Ministre said:

“Lift your arms.”

Then he went through my pockets. He found cigarettes, pencils, a
jack-knife and several francs. He laid his treasures on a clean table
and said: “You are not allowed to keep these. I shall be responsible.”
Then he looked me coldly in the eye and asked if I had anything else?

I told him that I believed I had a handkerchief.

He asked me: “Have you anything in your shoes?”

“My feet,” I said, gently.

“Come this way,” he said frigidly, opening a door which I had not
remarked. I bowed in acknowledgment of the courtesy, and entered room
number 2.

I looked into six eyes which sat at a desk.

Two belonged to a lawyerish person in civilian clothes, with a bored
expression, plus a moustache of dreamy proportions with which the owner
constantly imitated a gentleman ringing for a drink. Two appertained to
a splendid old dotard (a face all ski-jumps and toboggan slides), on
whose protruding chest the rosette of the Legion pompously squatted.
Numbers five and six had reference to Monsieur, who had seated himself
before I had time to focus my slightly bewildered eyes.

Monsieur spoke sanitary English, as I have said.

“What is your name?”—“Edward E. Cummings.”

—“Your second name?”—“E-s-t-l-i-n,” I spelled it for him.—“How do you
say that?”—I didn’t understand.—“How do you say your name?”—“Oh,” I
said; and pronounced it. He explained in French to the moustache that
my first name was Edouard, my second “A-s-tay-l-ee-n,” and my third
“Kay-umm-ee-n-gay-s”—and the moustache wrote it all down. Monsieur then
turned to me once more:

“You are Irish?”—“No,” I said, “American.”—“You are Irish by
family?”—“No, Scotch.”—“You are sure that there was never an Irishman
in your parents?”—“So far as I know,” I said, “there never was an
Irishman there.”—“Perhaps a hundred years back?” he insisted.—“Not a
chance,” I said decisively. But Monsieur was not to be denied: “Your
name it is Irish?”—“Cummings is a very old Scotch name,” I told him
fluently, “it used to be Comyn. A Scotchman named The Red Comyn was
killed by Robert Bruce in a church. He was my ancestor and a very
well-known man.”—“But your second name, where have you got that?”—“From
an Englishman, a friend of my father.” This statement seemed to produce
a very favorable impression in the case of the rosette, who murmured:
“_Un ami de son père, un Anglais, bon!_” several times. Monsieur, quite
evidently disappointed, told the moustache in French to write down that
I denied my Irish parentage; which the moustache did.

“What does your father in America?”—“He is a minister of the gospel,” I
answered. “Which church?”—“Unitarian.” This puzzled him. After a moment
he had an inspiration: “That is the same as a Free Thinker?”—I
explained in French that it wasn’t and that _mon père_ was a holy man.
At last Monsieur told the moustache to write: Protestant; and the
moustache obediently did so.

From this point on our conversation was carried on in French, somewhat
to the chagrin of Monsieur, but to the joy of the rosette and with the
approval of the moustache. In answer to questions, I informed them that
I was a student for five years at Harvard (expressing great surprise
that they had never heard of Harvard), that I had come to New York and
studied painting, that I had enlisted in New York as _conducteur
volontaire_, embarking for France shortly after, about the middle of
April.

Monsieur asked: “You met B—— on the _paquebot_?” I said I did.

Monsieur glanced significantly around. The rosette nodded a number of
times. The moustache rang.

I understood that these kind people were planning to make me out the
innocent victim of a wily villain, and could not forbear a smile.
_C’est rigolo_, I said to myself; they’ll have a great time doing it.

“You and your friend were together in Paris?” I said “yes.” “How long?”
“A month, while we were waiting for our uniforms.”

A significant look by Monsieur, which is echoed by his _confrères_.

Leaning forward Monsieur asked coldly and carefully: “What did you do
in Paris?” to which I responded briefly and warmly: “We had a good
time.”

This reply pleased the rosette hugely. He wagged his head till I
thought it would have tumbled off. Even the mustache seemed amused.
Monsieur le Ministre de la Sureté de Noyon bit his lip. “Never mind
writing that down,” he directed the lawyer. Then, returning to the
charge:

“You had a great deal of trouble with Lieutenant A.?”

I laughed outright at this complimentary nomenclature. “Yes, we
certainly did.”

He asked: “Why?”—so I sketched “Lieutenant” A. in vivid terms, making
use of certain choice expressions with which one of the “dirty
Frenchmen” attached to the section, a Parisien, master of argot, had
furnished me. My phraseology surprised my examiners, one of whom (I
think the moustache) observed sarcastically that I had made good use of
my time in Paris.

Monsieur le Ministre asked: Was it true (a) that B. and I were always
together and (b) preferred the company of the attached Frenchmen to
that of our fellow-Americans?—to which I answered in the affirmative.
Why? he wanted to know. So I explained that we felt that the more
French we knew and the better we knew the French the better for us;
expatiating a bit on the necessity for a complete mutual understanding
of the Latin and Anglo-Saxon races if victory was to be won.

Again the rosette nodded with approbation.

Monsieur le Ministre may have felt that he was losing his case, for he
played his trump card immediately: “You are aware that your friend has
written to friends in America and to his family very bad letters.” “I
am not,” I said.

In a flash I understood the motivation of Monsieur’s visit to
_Vingt-et-Un_: the French censor had intercepted some of B.’s letters,
and had notified Mr. A. and Mr. A.’s translator, both of whom had
thankfully testified to the bad character of B. and (wishing very
naturally to get rid of both of us at once) had further averred that we
were always together and that consequently I might properly be regarded
as a suspicious character. Whereupon they had received instructions to
hold us at the section until Noyon could arrive and take charge—hence
our failure to obtain our long-overdue permission.

“Your friend,” said Monsieur in English, “is here a short while ago. I
ask him if he is up in the aeroplane flying over Germans will he drop
the bombs on Germans and he say no, he will not drop any bombs on
Germans.”

By this falsehood (such it happened to be) I confess that I was
nonplussed. In the first place, I was at the time innocent of
third-degree methods. Secondly, I remembered that, a week or so since,
B., myself and another American in the section had written a
letter—which, on the advice of the _sous-lieutenant_ who accompanied
_Vingt-et-Un_ as translator, we had addressed to the Under-Secretary of
State in French Aviation—asking that inasmuch as the American
Government was about to take over the Red Cross (which meant that all
the Sanitary Sections would be affiliated with the American, and no
longer with the French, Army) we three at any rate might be allowed to
continue our association with the French by enlisting in l’Esquadrille
Lafayette. One of the “dirty Frenchmen” had written the letter for us
in the finest language imaginable, from data supplied by ourselves.

“You write a letter, your friend and you, for French aviation?”

Here I corrected him: there were three of us; and why didn’t he have
the third culprit arrested, might I ask? But he ignored this little
digression, and wanted to know: Why not American aviation?—to which I
answered: “Ah, but as my friend has so often said to me, the French are
after all the finest people in the world.”

This double-blow stopped Noyon dead, but only for a second.

“Did your friend write this letter?”—“No,” I answered truthfully.—“Who
did write it?”—“One of the Frenchmen attached to the section.”—“What is
his name?”—“I’m sure I don’t know,” I answered; mentally swearing that,
whatever might happen to me the scribe should not suffer. “At my urgent
request,” I added.

Relapsing into French, Monsieur asked me if I would have any hesitation
in dropping bombs on Germans? I said no, I wouldn’t. And why did I
suppose I was fitted to become aviator? Because, I told him, I weighed
135 pounds and could drive any kind of auto or motorcycle. (I hoped he
would make me prove this assertion, in which case I promised myself
that I wouldn’t stop till I got to Munich; but no.)

“Do you mean to say that my friend was not only trying to avoid serving
in the American Army but was contemplating treason as well?” I asked.

“Well, that would be it, would it not?” he answered coolly. Then,
leaning forward once more, he fired at me: “Why did you write to an
official so high?”

At this I laughed outright. “Because the excellent _sous-lieutenant_
who translated when Mr. Lieutenant A. couldn’t understand advised us to
do so.”

Following up this _sortie_, I addressed the mustache: “Write this down
in the testimony—that I, here present, refuse utterly to believe that
my friend is not as sincere a lover of France and the French people as
any man living!—Tell him to write it,” I commanded Noyon stonily. But
Noyon shook his head, saying: “We have the very best reason for
supposing your friend to be no friend of France.” I answered: “That is
not my affair. I want my opinion of my friend written in; do you see?”
“That’s reasonable,” the rosette murmured; and the moustache wrote it
down.

“Why do you think we volunteered?” I asked sarcastically, when the
testimony was complete.

Monsieur le Ministre was evidently rather uncomfortable. He writhed a
little in his chair, and tweaked his chin three or four times. The
rosette and the moustache were exchanging animated phrases. At last
Noyon, motioning for silence and speaking in an almost desperate tone,
demanded:

“_Est-ce-que vous détestez les boches?_”

I had won my own case. The question was purely perfunctory. To walk out
of the room a free man I had merely to say yes. My examiners were sure
of my answer. The rosette was leaning forward and smiling
encouragingly. The moustache was making little _ouis_ in the air with
his pen. And Noyon had given up all hope of making me out a criminal. I
might be rash, but I was innocent; the dupe of a superior and malign
intelligence. I would probably be admonished to choose my friends more
carefully next time and that would be all….

Deliberately, I framed the answer:

“_Non. J’aime beaucoup les français._”

Agile as a weasel, Monsieur le Ministre was on top of me: “It is
impossible to love Frenchmen and not to hate Germans.”

I did not mind his triumph in the least. The discomfiture of the
rosette merely amused me. The surprise of the moustache I found very
pleasant.

Poor rosette! He kept murmuring desperately: “Fond of his friend, quite
right. Mistaken of course, too bad, meant well.”

With a supremely disagreeable expression on his immaculate face the
victorious minister of security pressed his victim with regained
assurance: “But you are doubtless aware of the atrocities committed by
the boches?”

“I have read about them,” I replied very cheerfully.

“You do not believe?”

“_Ça se peut._”

“And if they are so, which of course they are” (tone of profound
conviction) “you do not detest the Germans?”

“Oh, in that case, of course anyone must detest them,” I averred with
perfect politeness.

And my case was lost, forever lost. I breathed freely once more. All my
nervousness was gone. The attempt of the three gentlemen sitting before
me to endow my friend and myself with different fates had irrevocably
failed.

At the conclusion of a short conference I was told by Monsieur:

“I am sorry for you, but due to your friend you will be detained a
little while.”

I asked: “Several weeks?”

“Possibly,” said Monsieur.

This concluded the trial.

Monsieur le Ministre conducted me into room number 1 again. “Since I
have taken your cigarettes and shall keep them for you, I will give you
some tobacco. Do you prefer English or French?”

Because the French (_paquet bleu_) are stronger and because he expected
me to say English, I said “French.”

With a sorrowful expression Noyon went to a sort of bookcase and took
down a blue packet. I think I asked for matches, or else he had given
back the few which he found on my person.

Noyon, t-d and the grand criminal (alias I) now descended solemnly to
the F.I.A.T. The more and more mystified _conducteur_ conveyed us a
short distance to what was obviously a prison-yard. Monsieur le
Ministre watched me descend my voluminous baggage.

This was carefully examined by Monsieur at the _bureau_, of the prison.
Monsieur made me turn everything topsy-turvy and inside out. Monsieur
expressed great surprise at a huge shell: where did I get it?—I said a
French soldier gave it to me as a souvenir.—And several _têtes
d’obus_?—also souvenirs, I assured him merrily. Did Monsieur suppose I
was caught in the act of blowing up the French Government, or what
exactly?—But here are a dozen sketch-books, what is in them?—Oh,
Monsieur, you flatter me: drawings.—Of fortifications? Hardly; of
poilus, children, and other ruins.—Ummmm. (Monsieur examined the
drawings and found that I had spoken the truth.) Monsieur puts all
these trifles into a small bag, with which I had been furnished (in
addition to the huge duffle-bag) by the generous Red Cross. Labels them
(in French): “Articles found in the baggage of Cummings and deemed
_inutile_ to the case at hand.” This leaves in the duffle-bag
aforesaid: my fur coat, which I brought from New York; my bed and
blankets and bed-roll, my civilian clothes, and about twenty-five
pounds of soiled linen. “You may take the bed-roll and the folding bed
into your cell”—the rest of my _affaires_ would remain in safe keeping
at the _bureau_.

“Come with me,” grimly croaked a lank turnkey creature.

Bed-roll and bed in hand, I came along.

We had but a short distance to go; several steps in fact. I remember we
turned a corner and somehow got sight of a sort of square near the
prison. A military band was executing itself to the stolid delight of
some handfuls of ragged _civiles_. My new captor paused a moment;
perhaps his patriotic soul was stirred. Then we traversed an alley with
locked doors on both sides, and stopped in front of the last door on
the right. A key opened it. The music could still be distinctly heard.

The opened door showed a room, about sixteen feet short and four feet
narrow, with a heap of straw in the further end. My spirits had been
steadily recovering from the banality of their examination; and it was
with a genuine and never-to-be-forgotten thrill that I remarked, as I
crossed what might have been the threshold: “_Mais, on est bien ici_.”

A hideous crash nipped the last word. I had supposed the whole prison
to have been utterly destroyed by earthquake, but it was only my door
closing….



II.
EN ROUTE


I put the bed-roll down. I stood up.

I was myself.

An uncontrollable joy gutted me after three months of humiliation, of
being bossed and herded and bullied and insulted. I was myself and my
own master.

In this delirium of relief (hardly noticing what I did) I inspected the
pile of straw, decided against it, set up my bed, disposed the roll on
it, and began to examine my cell.

I have mentioned the length and breadth. The cell was ridiculously
high; perhaps ten feet. The end with the door in it was peculiar. The
door was not placed in the middle of this end, but at one side,
allowing for a huge iron can waist-high which stood in the other
corner. Over the door and across the end, a grating extended. A slit of
sky was always visible.

Whistling joyously to myself, I took three steps which brought me to
the door-end. The door was massively made, all of iron or steel I
should think. It delighted me. The can excited my curiosity. I looked
over the edge of it. At the bottom reposefully lay a new human turd.

I have a sneaking mania for wood-cuts, particularly when used to
illustrate the indispensable psychological crisis of some outworn
romance. There is in my possession at this minute a masterful depiction
of a tall, bearded, horrified man who, clad in an anonymous rig of goat
skins, with a fantastic umbrella clasped weakly in one huge paw, bends
to examine an indication of humanity in the somewhat cubist wilderness
whereof he had fancied himself the owner….

It was then that I noticed the walls. Arm-high they were covered with
designs, mottos, pictures. The drawing had all been done in pencil. I
resolved to ask for a pencil at the first opportunity.

There had been Germans and Frenchmen imprisoned in this cell. On the
right wall, near the door-end, was a long selection from Goethe,
laboriously copied. Near the other end of this wall a satiric landscape
took place. The technique of this landscape frightened me. There were
houses, men, children. And there were trees. I began to wonder what a
tree looks like, and laughed copiously.

The back wall had a large and exquisite portrait of a German officer.

The left wall was adorned with a yacht, flying a number 13. “My beloved
boat” was inscribed in German underneath. Then came a bust of a German
soldier, very idealized, full of unfear. After this, a masterful
crudity—a doughnut-bodied rider, sliding with fearful rapidity down the
acute backbone of a totally transparent sausage-shaped horse, who was
moving simultaneously in five directions. The rider had a bored
expression as he supported the stiff reins in one fist. His further leg
assisted in his flight. He wore a German soldier’s cap and was smoking.
I made up my mind to copy the horse and rider at once, so soon, that
is, as I should have obtained a pencil.

Last, I found a drawing surrounded by a scrolled motto. The drawing was
a potted plant with four blossoms. The four blossoms were elaborately
dead. Their death was drawn with a fearful care. An obscure
deliberation was exposed in the depiction of their drooping petals. The
pot tottered very crookedly on a sort of table, as near as I could see.
All around ran a funereal scroll. I read: “My farewell to my beloved
wife, Gaby.” A fierce hand, totally distinct from the former, wrote in
proud letters above: “Punished for desertion. Six years of
prison—military degradation.”

It must have been five o’clock. Steps. A vast cluttering of the
exterior of the door—by whom? Whang opens the door. Turnkey-creature
extending a piece of chocolate with extreme and surly caution. I say
“_Merci_” and seize chocolate. Klang shuts the door.

I am lying on my back, the twilight does mistily bluish miracles
through the slit over the whang-klang. I can just see leaves, meaning
tree.

Then from the left and way off, faintly, broke a smooth whistle, cool
like a peeled willow-branch, and I found myself listening to an air
from Petroushka, Petroushka, which we saw in Paris at the _Châtelet,
mon ami et moi_….

The voice stopped in the middle—and I finished the air. This code
continued for a half-hour.

It was dark.

I had laid a piece of my piece of chocolate on the window-sill. As I
lay on my back a little silhouette came along the sill and ate that
piece of a piece, taking something like four minutes to do so. He then
looked at me, I then smiled at him, and we parted, each happier than
before.

My _cellule_ was cool, and I fell asleep easily.

(Thinking of Paris.)

… Awakened by a conversation whose vibrations I clearly felt through
the left wall:

Turnkey-creature: “What?”

A moldly moldering molish voice, suggesting putrefying tracts and
orifices, answers with a cob-webbish patience so far beyond despair as
to be indescribable: “_La soupe_.”

“Well, the soup, I just gave it to you, Monsieur Savy.”

“Must have a little something else. My money is _chez le directeur_.
Please take my money which is _chez le directeur_ and give me anything
else.”

“All right, the next time I come to see you to-day I’ll bring you a
salad, a nice salad, Monsieur.”

“Thank you, Monsieur,” the voice moldered.

Klang!!—and says the turnkey-creature to somebody else; while turning
the lock of Monsieur Savy’s door; taking pains to raise his voice so
that Monsieur Savy will not miss a single word through the slit over
Monsieur Savy’s whang-klang:

“That old fool! Always asks for things. When supposest thou will he
realize that he’s never going to get anything?”

Grubbing at my door. Whang!

The faces stood in the doorway, looking me down. The expression of the
faces identically turnkeyish, i.e., stupidly gloating, ponderously and
imperturbably tickled. Look who’s here, who let that in?

The right body collapsed sufficiently to deposit a bowl just inside.

I smiled and said: “Good morning, sirs. The can stinks.”

They did not smile and said: “Naturally.” I smiled and said: “Please
give me a pencil. I want to pass the time.” They did not smile and
said: “Directly.”

I smiled and said: “I want some water, if you please.”

They shut the door, saying “Later.”

Klang and footsteps.

I contemplate the bowl which contemplates me. A glaze of greenish
grease seals the mystery of its content, I induce two fingers to
penetrate the seal. They bring me up a flat sliver of cabbage and a
large, hard, thoughtful, solemn, uncooked bean. To pour the water off
(it is warmish and sticky) without committing a nuisance is to lift the
cover off _Ça Pue_. I did.

Thus leaving beans and cabbage-slivers. Which I ate hurryingly, fearing
a ventral misgiving.

I pass a lot of time cursing myself about the pencil, looking at my
walls, my unique interior.

Suddenly I realize the indisputable grip of nature’s humorous hand. One
evidently stands on _Ça Pue_ in such cases. Having finished, panting
with stink, I tumble on the bed and consider my next move.

The straw will do. Ouch, but it’s Dirty.—Several hours elapse….

Steps and fumble. Klang. Repetition of promise to Monsieur Savy, etc.

Turnkeyish and turnkeyish. Identical expression. One body collapses
sufficiently to deposit a hunk of bread and a piece of water.

“Give your bowl.”

I gave it, smiled and said: “Well, how about that pencil?”

“Pencil?” T-c looked at T-c.

They recited then the following word: “To-morrow.” Klang and footsteps.

So I took matches, burnt, and with just 60 of them wrote the first
stanza of a ballade. To-morrow I will write the second. Day after
to-morrow the third. Next day the refrain. After—oh, well.

My whistling of Petroushka brought no response this evening.

So I climbed on _Ça Pue_, whom I now regarded with complete
friendliness; the new moon was unclosing sticky wings in dusk, a far
noise from near things.

I sang a song the “dirty Frenchmen” taught us, _mon ami et moi_. The
song says _Bon soir, Madame de la Lune_…. I did not sing out loud,
simply because the moon was like a mademoiselle, and I did not want to
offend the moon. My friends: the silhouette and _la lune_, not counting
_Ça Pue_, whom I regarded almost as a part of me.

Then I lay down, and heard (but could not see the silhouette eat
something or somebody) … and saw, but could not hear, the incense of
_Ça Pue_ mount gingerly upon the taking air of twilight.

The next day.—Promise to M. Savy. Whang. “My pencil?”—“You don’t need
any pencil, you’re going away.”—“When?”—“Directly.”—“How directly?”—“In
an hour or two: your friend has already gone before. Get ready.”

Klang and steps.

Everyone very sore about me. I should worry, however.

One hour, I guess.

Steps. Sudden throwing of door open. Pause.

“Come out, American.”

As I came out, toting bed and bed-roll, I remarked: “I’m sorry to leave
you,” which made T-c furiously to masticate his insignificant
moustache.

Escorted to _bureau_, where I am turned over to a very fat _gendarme_.

“This is the American.” The v-f-g eyed me, and I read my sins in his
porklike orbs. “Hurry, we have to walk,” he ventured sullenly and
commandingly.

Himself stooped puffingly to pick up the segregated sack. And I placed
my bed, bed-roll, blankets and ample _pelisse_ under one arm, my
150-odd pound duffle-bag under the other; then I paused. Then I said,
“Where’s my cane?”

The v-f-g hereat had a sort of fit, which perfectly became him.

I repeated gently: “When I came to the _bureau_ I had a cane.”

“I don’t give a damn about your cane,” burbled my new captor frothily,
his pink evil eyes swelling with wrath.

“I’m staying,” I replied calmly, and sat down on a curb, in the midst
of my ponderous trinkets.

A crowd of _gendarmes_ gathered. One didn’t take a cane with one to
prison (I was glad to know where I was bound, and thanked this
communicative gentleman); or criminals weren’t allowed canes; or where
exactly did I think I was, in the Tuileries? asks a rube movie-cop
personage.

“Very well, gentlemen,” I said. “You will allow me to tell you
something.” (I was beet-colored.) “In America that sort of thing isn’t
done.”

This haughty inaccuracy produced an astonishing effect, namely, the
prestidigitatorial vanishment of the v-f-g. The v-f-g’s numerous
_confrères_ looked scared and twirled their whiskers.

I sat on the curb and began to fill a paper with something which I
found in my pockets, certainly not tobacco.

Splutter-splutter-fizz-Poop—the v-f-g is back, with my oak-branch in
his raised hand, slithering opprobria and mostly crying: “Is that huge
piece of wood what you call a cane? It is, is it? What? How? What
the—,” so on.

I beamed upon him and thanked him, and explained that a “dirty
Frenchman” had given it to me as a souvenir, and that I would now
proceed.

Twisting the handle in the loop of my sack, and hoisting the vast
parcel under my arm, I essayed twice to boost it on my back. This to
the accompaniment of HurryHurryHurryHurryHurryHurryHurry…. The third
time I sweated and staggered to my feet, completely accoutred.

Down the road. Into the _ville_. Curious looks from a few pedestrians.
A driver stops his wagon to watch the spider and his outlandish fly. I
chuckled to think how long since I had washed and shaved. Then I nearly
fell, staggered on a few steps, and set down the two loads.

Perhaps it was the fault of a strictly vegetarian diet. At any rate, I
couldn’t move a step farther with my bundles. The sun sent the sweat
along my nose in tickling waves. My eyes were blind.

Hereupon I suggested that the v-f-g carry part of one of my bundles
with me, and received the answer: “I am doing too much for you as it
is. No _gendarme_ is supposed to carry a prisoner’s baggage.”

I said then: “I’m too tired.”

He responded: “You can leave here anything you don’t care to carry
further; I’ll take care of it.”

I looked at the _gendarme_. I looked several blocks through him. My lip
did something like a sneer. My hands did something like fists.

At this crisis along comes a little boy. May God bless all males
between seven and ten years of age in France!

The _gendarme_ offered a suggestion, in these words: “Have you any
change about you?” He knew, of course, that the sanitary official’s
first act had been to deprive me of every last cent. The _gendarme’s_
eyes were fine. They reminded me of … never mind. “If you have change,”
said he, “you might hire this kid to carry some of your baggage.” Then
he lit a pipe which was made in his own image, and smiled fattily.

But herein the v-f-g had bust his milk-jug. There is a slit of a pocket
made in the uniform of his criminal on the right side, and completely
covered by the belt which his criminal always wears. His criminal had
thus outwitted the gumshoe fraternity.

The _gosse_ could scarcely balance my smaller parcel, but managed after
three rests to get it to the station platform; here I tipped him
something like two cents (all I had) which, with dollar-big eyes, he
took and ran.

A strongly-built, groomed _apache_ smelling of cologne and onions
greeted my v-f-g with that affection which is peculiar to _gendarmes_.
On me he stared cynically, then sneered frankly.

With a little tooty shriek the funny train tottered in. My captors had
taken pains to place themselves at the wrong end of the platform. Now
they encouraged me to HurryHurryHurry.

I managed to get under the load and tottered the length of the train to
a car especially reserved. There was one other criminal, a
beautifully-smiling, shortish man, with a very fine blanket wrapped in
a water-proof oilskin cover. We grinned at each other (the most cordial
salutation, by the way, that I have ever exchanged with a human being)
and sat down opposite one another—he, plus my baggage which he helped
me lift in, occupying one seat; the _gendarme_-sandwich, of which I
formed the _pièce de résistance_, the other.

The engine got under way after several feints; which pleased the
Germans so that they sent several scout planes right over the station,
train, us _et tout_. All the French anticraft guns went off together
for the sake of sympathy; the guardians of the peace squinted
cautiously from their respective windows, and then began a debate on
the number of the enemy while their prisoners smiled at each other
appreciatively.

“_Il fait chaud_,” said this divine man, prisoner, criminal, or what
not, as he offered me a glass of wine in the form of a huge tin cup
overflowed from the canteen in his slightly unsteady and delicately
made hand. He is a Belgian. Volunteered at beginning of war. Permission
at Paris, overstayed by one day. When he reported to his officer, the
latter announced that he was a deserter—I said to him, “It is funny. It
is funny I should have come back, of my own free will, to my company. I
should have thought that being a deserter I would have preferred to
remain in Paris.” The wine was terribly cold, and I thanked my divine
host.

Never have I tasted such wine.

They had given me a chunk of war-bread in place of blessing when I left
Noyon. I bit into it with renewed might. But the divine man across from
me immediately produced a sausage, half of which he laid simply upon my
knee. The halving was done with a large keen poilu’s knife.

I have not tasted a sausage since.

The pigs on my either hand had by this time overcome their respective
inertias and were chomping cheek-murdering chunks. They had quite a
layout, a regular picnic-lunch elaborate enough for kings or even
presidents. The v-f-g in particular annoyed me by uttering alternate
chompings and belchings. All the time he ate he kept his eyes
half-shut; and a mist overspread the sensual meadows of his coarse
face.

His two reddish eyes rolled devouringly toward the blanket in its
waterproof roll. After a huge gulp of wine he said thickly (for his
huge moustache was crusted with saliva-tinted half-moistened shreds of
food), “You will have no use for that _machine là-bas_. They are going
to take everything away from you when you get there, you know. I could
use it nicely. I have wanted such a piece of rubber for a great while,
in order to make me a raincoat. Do you see?” (Gulp. Swallow.)

Here I had an inspiration. I would save the blanket-cover by drawing
these brigands’ attention to myself. At the same time I would satisfy
my inborn taste for the ridiculous. “Have you a pencil?” I said.
“Because I am an artist in my own country, and will do your picture.”

He gave me a pencil. I don’t remember where the paper came from. I
posed him in a pig-like position, and the picture made him chew his
moustache. The apache thought it very droll. I should do his picture,
too, at once. I did my best; though protesting that he was too
beautiful for my pencil, which remark he countered by murmuring (as he
screwed his moustache another notch), “Never mind, you will try.” Oh,
yes, I would try all right, all right. He objected, I recall, to the
nose.

By this time the divine “deserter” was writhing with joy. “If you
please, Monsieur,” he whispered radiantly, “it would be too great an
honor, but if you could—I should be overcome….”

Tears (for some strange reason) came into my eyes.

He handled his picture sacredly, criticised it with precision and care,
finally bestowed it in his inner pocket. Then we drank. It happened
that the train stopped and the _apache_ was persuaded to go out and get
his prisoner’s canteen filled. Then we drank again.

He smiled as he told me he was getting ten years. Three years at
solitary confinement was it, and seven working in a gang on the road?
That would not be so bad. He wished he was not married, had not a
little child. “The bachelors are lucky in this war”—he smiled.

Now the gendarmes began cleaning their beards, brushing their stomachs,
spreading their legs, collecting their baggage. The reddish eyes,
little and cruel, woke from the trance of digestion and settled with
positive ferocity on their prey. “You will have no use….”

Silently the sensitive, gentle hands of the divine prisoner undid the
blanket-cover. Silently the long, tired, well-shaped arms passed it
across to the brigand at my left side. With a grunt of satisfaction the
brigand stuffed it in a large pouch, taking pains that it should not
show. Silently the divine eyes said to mine: “What can we do, we
criminals?” And we smiled at each other for the last time, the eyes and
my eyes.

A station. The _apache_ descends. I follow with my numerous _affaires_.
The divine man follows me—the v-f-g him.

The blanket-roll containing my large fur-coat got more and more
unrolled; finally I could not possibly hold it.

It fell. To pick it up I must take the sack off my back.

Then comes a voice, “allow me if you please, monsieur”—and the sack has
disappeared. Blindly and dumbly I stumble on with the roll; and so at
length we come into the yard of a little prison; and the divine man
bowed under my great sack…. I never thanked him. When I turned, they’d
taken him away, and the sack stood accusingly at my feet.

Through the complete disorder of my numbed mind flicker jabbings of
strange tongues. Some high boy’s voice is appealing to me in Belgian,
Italian, Polish, Spanish and—beautiful English. “Hey, Jack, give me a
cigarette, Jack….”

I lift my eyes. I am standing in a tiny oblong space. A sort of court.
All around, two-story wooden barracks. Little crude staircases lead up
to doors heavily chained and immensely padlocked. More like ladders
than stairs. Curious hewn windows, smaller in proportion than the slits
in a doll’s house. Are these faces behind the slits? The doors bulge
incessantly under the shock of bodies hurled against them from within.
The whole dirty _nouveau_ business about to crumble.

Glance one.

Glance two: directly before me. A wall with many bars fixed across one
minute opening. At the opening a dozen, fifteen, grins. Upon the bars
hands, scraggy and bluishly white. Through the bars stretching of lean
arms, incessant stretchings. The grins leap at the window, hands
belonging to them catch hold, arms belonging to the hands stretch in my
direction … an instant; the new grins leap from behind and knock off
the first grins which go down with a fragile crashing like glass
smashed: hands wither and break, arms streak out of sight, sucked
inward.

In the huge potpourri of misery a central figure clung, shaken but
undislodged. Clung like a monkey to central bars. Clung like an angel
to a harp. Calling pleasantly in a high boyish voice: “O Jack, give me
a cigarette.”

A handsome face, dark, Latin smile, musical fingers strong.

I waded suddenly through a group of gendarmes (they stood around me
watching with a disagreeable curiosity my reaction to this). Strode
fiercely to the window.

Trillions of hands.

Quadrillions of itching fingers.

The angel-monkey received the package of cigarettes politely,
disappearing with it into howling darkness. I heard his high boy’s
voice distributing cigarettes. Then he leaped into sight, poised
gracefully against two central bars, saying “Thank you, Jack, good boy”
… “Thanks, _merci_, _gracias_…” a deafening din of gratitude reeked
from within.

“Put your baggage in here,” quoth an angry voice. “No, you will not
take anything but one blanket in your cell, understand.” In French.
Evidently the head of the house speaking. I obeyed. A corpulent soldier
importantly lead me to my cell. My cell is two doors away from the
monkey-angel, on the same side. The high boy-voice, centralized in a
torrent-like halo of stretchings, followed my back. The head himself
unlocked a lock. I marched coldly in. The fat soldier locked and
chained my door. Four feet went away. I felt in my pocket, finding four
cigarettes. I am sorry I did not give these also to the monkey—to the
angel. Lifted my eyes and saw my own harp.



III.
A PILGRIM’S PROGRESS


Through the bars I looked into that little and dirty lane whereby I had
entered; in which a sentinel, gun on shoulder, and with a huge revolver
strapped at his hip, monotonously moved. On my right was an old wall
overwhelmed with moss. A few growths stemmed from its crevices. Their
leaves were of a refreshing colour. I felt singularly happy, and
carefully throwing myself on the bare planks sang one after another all
the French songs which I had picked up in my stay at the ambulance;
sang La Madelon, sang AVec avEC DU, and Les Galiots Sont Lourds Dans
Sac—concluding with an inspired rendering of La Marseillaise, at which
the guard (who had several times stopped his round in what I choose to
interpret as astonishment) grounded arms and swore appreciatively.
Various officials of the jail passed by me and my lusty songs; I cared
no whit. Two or three conferred, pointing in my direction, and I sang a
little louder for the benefit of their perplexity. Finally out of voice
I stopped.

It was twilight.

As I lay on my back luxuriously, I saw through the bars of my twice
padlocked door a boy and a girl about ten years old. I saw them climb
on the wall and play together, obliviously and exquisitely, in the
darkening air. I watched them for many minutes; till the last moment of
light failed; till they and the wall itself dissolved in a common
mystery, leaving only the bored silhouette of the soldier moving
imperceptibly and wearily against a still more gloomy piece of autumn
sky.

At last I knew that I was very thirsty; and leaping up began to clamor
at my bars. “Something to drink, please.” After a long debate with the
sergeant of guards who said very angrily: “Give it to him,” a guard
took my request and disappeared from view, returning with a more
heavily armed guard and a tin cup full of water. One of these gentry
watched the water and me, while the other wrestled with the padlock.
The door being minutely opened, one guard and the water painfully
entered. The other guard remained at the door, gun in readiness. The
water was set down, and the enterer assumed a perpendicular position
which I thought merited recognition; accordingly I said “_Merci_”
politely, without getting up from the planks. Immediately he began to
deliver a sharp lecture on the probability of my using the tin cup to
saw my way out; and commended haste in no doubtful terms. I smiled,
asked pardon for my inherent stupidity (which speech seemed to anger
him) and guzzled the so-called water without looking at it, having
learned something from Noyon. With a long and dangerous look at their
prisoner, the gentlemen of the guard withdrew, using inconceivable
caution in the relocking of the door.

I laughed and fell asleep.

After (as I judged) four minutes of slumber, I was awakened by at least
six men standing over me. The darkness was intense, it was
extraordinarily cold. I glared at them and tried to understand what new
crime I had committed. One of the six was repeating: “Get up, you are
going away. Four o’clock.” After several attempts I got up. They formed
a circle around me; and together we marched a few steps to a sort of
storeroom, where my great sack, small sack, and overcoat were handed to
me. A rather agreeably voiced guard then handed me a half-cake of
chocolate, saying (but with a tolerable grimness): “You’ll need it,
believe me.” I found my stick, at which “piece of furniture” they
amused themselves a little until I showed its use, by catching the ring
at the mouth of my sack in the curved end of the stick and swinging the
whole business unaided on my back. Two new guards—or rather
_gendarmes_—were now officially put in charge of my person; and the
three of us passed down the lane, much to the interest of the sentinel,
to whom I bade a vivid and unreturned adieu. I can see him perfectly as
he stares stupidly at us, a queer shape in the gloom, before turning on
his heel.

Toward the very station whereat some hours since I had disembarked with
the Belgian deserter and my former escorts, we moved. I was stiff with
cold and only half awake, but peculiarly thrilled. The gendarmes on
either side moved grimly, without speaking; or returning monosyllables
to my few questions. Yes, we were to take the train. I was going
somewhere, then? “_B’en sûr._”—“Where?”—“You will know in time.”

After a few minutes we reached the station, which I failed to
recognize. The yellow flares of lamps, huge and formless in the night
mist, some figures moving to and fro on a little platform, a rustle of
conversation: everything seemed ridiculously suppressed, beautifully
abnormal, deliciously insane. Every figure was wrapped with its
individual ghostliness; a number of ghosts each out on his own
promenade, yet each for some reason selecting this unearthly patch of
the world, this putrescent and uneasy gloom. Even my guards talked in
whispers. “Watch him, I’ll see about the train.” So one went off into
the mist. I leaned dizzily against the wall nearest me (having plumped
down my baggage) and stared into the darkness at my elbow, filled with
talking shadows. I recognized _officiers anglais_ wandering helplessly
up and down, supported with their sticks; French lieutenants talking to
each other here and there; the extraordinary sense-bereft station
master at a distance looking like a cross between a jumping-jack and a
goblin; knots of _permissionnaires_ cursing wearily or joking
hopelessly with one another or stalking back and forth with imprecatory
gesticulations. “It’s a joke, too, you know, there are no more
trains?”—“The conductor is dead. I know his sister.”—“Old chap, I am
all in.”—“Say, we are all lost.”—“What time is it?”—“My dear fellow,
there is no more time, the French Government forbids it.” Suddenly
burst out of the loquacious opacity a dozen handfuls of Algériens,
their feet swaggering with fatigue, their eyes burning, apparently by
themselves—faceless in the equally black mist. By threes and fives they
assaulted the goblin who wailed and shook his withered fist in their
faces. There was no train. It had been taken away by the French
Government. “How do I know how the poilus can get back to their
regiments on time? Of course you’ll all of you be deserters, but is it
my fault?” (I thought of my friend, the Belgian, at this moment lying
in a pen at the prison which I had just quitted by some miracle.) … One
of these fine people from uncivilized, ignorant, unwarlike Algeria was
drunk and knew it, as did two of his very fine friends who announced
that as there was no train he should have a good sleep at a farmhouse
hard by, which farmhouse one of them claimed to espy through the
impenetrable night. The drunk was accordingly escorted into the dark,
his friends’ abrupt steps correcting his own large slovenly procedure
out of earshot…. Some of the Black People sat down near me and smoked.
Their enormous faces, wads of vital darkness, swooned with fatigue.
Their vast gentle hands lay noisily about their knees.

The departed _gendarme_ returned, with a bump, out of the mist. The
train for Paris would arrive _de suite_. We were just in time, our
movement had so far been very creditable. All was well. It was cold,
eh?

Then with the ghastly miniature roar of an insane toy the train for
Paris came fumbling into the station….

We boarded it, due caution being taken that I should not escape. As a
matter of fact I held up the would-be passengers for nearly a minute by
my unaided attempts to boost my uncouth baggage aboard. Then my captors
and I blundered heavily into a compartment in which an Englishman and
two French women were seated. My _gendarmes_ established themselves on
either side of the door, a process which woke up the Anglo-Saxon and
caused a brief gap in the low talk of the women. Jolt—we were off.

I find myself with a _française_ on my left and an _anglais_ on my
right. The latter has already uncomprehendingly subsided into sleep.
The former (a woman of about thirty) is talking pleasantly to her
friend, whom I face. She must have been very pretty before she put on
the black. Her friend is also a _veuve_. How pleasantly they talk, of
_la guerre_, of Paris, of the bad service; talk in agreeably modulated
voices, leaning a little forward to each other, not wishing to disturb
the dolt at my right. The train tears slowly on. Both the _gendarmes_
are asleep, one with his hand automatically grasping the handle of the
door. Lest I escape. I try all sorts of positions, for I find myself
very tired. The best is to put my cane between my legs and rest my chin
on it; but even that is uncomfortable, for the Englishman has writhed
all over me by this time and is snoring creditably. I look him over; an
Etonian, as I guess. Certain well-bred-well-fedness. Except for the
position—well, _c’est la guerre_. The women are speaking softly. “And
do you know, my dear, that they had raids again in Paris? My sister
wrote me.”—“One has excitement always in a great city, my dear.”—

Bump, slowing down. BUMP—BUMP.

It is light outside. One sees the world. There is a world still, the
_gouvernement français_ has not taken it away, and the air must be
beautifully cool. In the compartment it is hot. The _gendarmes_ smell
worst. I know how I smell. What polite women.

“_Enfin, nous voilà._” My guards awoke and yawned pretentiously. Lest I
should think they had dozed off. It is Paris.

Some _permissionaires_ cried “Paris.” The woman across from me said
“Paris, Paris.” A great shout came up from every insane drowsy brain
that had travelled with us—a fierce and beautiful cry, which went the
length of the train…. Paris, where one forgets, Paris, which is
Pleasure, Paris, in whom our souls live, Paris, the beautiful, Paris at
last.

The Englishman woke up and said heavily to me: “I say, where are
we?”—“Paris,” I answered, walking carefully on his feet as I made my
baggage-laden way out of the compartment. It was Paris.

My guards hurried me through the station. One of them (I saw for the
first time) was older than the other, and rather handsome with his Van
Dyck blackness of curly beard. He said that it was too early for the
_metro_, it was closed. We should take a car. It would bring us to the
other station from which our next train left. We should hurry. We
emerged from the station and its crowds of crazy men. We boarded a car
marked something. The conductress, a strong, pink-cheeked, rather
beautiful girl in black, pulled my baggage in for me with a gesture
which filled all of me with joy. I thanked her, and she smiled at me.
The car moved along through the morning.

We descended from it. We started off on foot. The car was not the right
car. We would have to walk to the station. I was faint and almost dead
from weariness and I stopped when my overcoat had fallen from my
benumbed arm for the second time: “How far is it?” The older _gendarme_
returned briefly, “Twenty minutes.” I said to him: “Will you help me
carry these things?” He thought, and told the younger to carry my small
sack filled with papers. The latter grunted, “_C’est défendu._” We went
a little farther, and I broke down again. I stopped dead, and said: “I
can’t go any farther.” It was obvious to my escorts that I couldn’t, so
I didn’t trouble to elucidate. Moreover, I was past elucidation.

The older stroked his beard. “Well,” he said, “would you care to take a
cab?” I merely looked at him. “If you wish to call a cab, I will take
out of your money, which I have here and which I must not give to you,
the necessary sum, and make a note of it, subtracting from the original
amount a sufficiency for our fare to the Gare. In that case we will not
walk to the Gare, we will in fact ride.” “Please,” was all I found to
reply to this eloquence.

Several empty cabs had gone by during the peroration of the law, and no
more seemed to offer themselves. After some minutes, however, one
appeared and was duly hailed. Nervously (he was shy in the big city)
the older asked if the driver knew where the Gare was. “_Laquelle?_”
demanded the _cocher_ angrily. And when he was told—“Of course, I know,
why not?” We got in; I being directed to sit in the middle, and my two
bags and fur coat piled on top of us all.

So we drove through the streets in the freshness of the full morning,
the streets full of a few divine people who stared at me and nudged one
another, the streets of Paris … the drowsy ways wakening at the horses’
hoofs, the people lifting their faces to stare.

We arrived at the Gare, and I recognized it vaguely. Was it D’Orléans?
We dismounted, and the tremendous transaction of the fare was
apparently very creditably accomplished by the older. The _cocher_ gave
me a look and remarked whatever it is Paris drivers remark to Paris cab
horses, pulling dully at the reins. We entered the station and I
collapsed comfortably on a bench; the younger, seating himself with
enormous pomposity at my side, adjusted his tunic with a purely
feminine gesture expressive at once of pride and nervousness. Gradually
my vision gained in focus. The station has a good many people in it.
The number increases momently. A great many are girls. I am in a new
world—a world of _chic_ femininity. My eyes devour the inimitable
details of costume, the inexpressible nuances of pose, the
indescribable _démarche_ of the _midinette_. They hold themselves
differently. They have even a little bold color here and there on skirt
or blouse or hat. They are not talking about La Guerre. Incredible.
They appear very beautiful, these Parisiennes.

And simultaneously with my appreciation of the crisp persons about me
comes the hitherto unacknowledged appreciation of my uncouthness. My
chin tells my hand of a good quarter inch of beard, every hair of it
stiff with dirt. I can feel the dirt-pools under my eyes. My hands are
rough with dirt. My uniform is smeared and creased in a hundred
thousand directions. My puttees and shoes are prehistoric in
appearance….

My first request was permission to visit the _vespasienne_. The younger
didn’t wish to assume any unnecessary responsibilities; I should wait
till the older returned. There he was now. I might ask him. The older
benignly granted my petition, nodding significantly to his
fellow-guard, by whom I was accordingly escorted to my destination and
subsequently back to my bench. When we got back the _gendarmes_ held a
consultation of terrific importance; in substance, the train which
should be leaving at that moment (six something) did not run to-day. We
should therefore wait for the next train, which leaves at
twelve-something-else. Then the older surveyed me and said almost
kindly: “How would you like a cup of coffee?”—“Much,” I replied
sincerely enough.—“Come with me,” he commanded, resuming instantly his
official manner. “And you” (to the younger) “watch his baggage.”

Of all the very beautiful women whom I had seen the most very beautiful
was the large and circular lady who sold a cup of perfectly hot and
genuine coffee for two cents, just on the brink of the station,
chatting cheerfully with her many customers. Of all the drinks I ever
drank, hers was the most sacredly delicious. She wore, I remember, a
tight black dress in which enormous and benignant breasts bulged and
sank continuously. I lingered over my tiny cup, watching her swift big
hands, her round nodding face, her large sudden smile. I drank two
coffees, and insisted that my money should pay for our drinks. Of all
the treating which I shall ever do, the treating of my captor will
stand unique in pleasure. Even he half appreciated the sense of humor
involved; though his dignity did not permit a visible acknowledgment
thereof.

_Madame la vendeuse de café_, I shall remember you for more than a
little while.

Having thus consummated breakfast, my guardian suggested a walk.
Agreed. I felt I had the strength of ten because the coffee was pure.
Moreover it would be a novelty to _me promener sans_ l50-odd pounds of
baggage. We set out.

As we walked easily and leisurely the by this time well peopled streets
of the vicinity, my guard indulged himself in pleasant conversation.
Did I know Paris much? He knew it all. But he had not been in Paris for
several (eight was it?) years. It was a fine place, a large city to be
sure. But always changing. I had spent a month in Paris while waiting
for my uniform and my assignment to a _section sanitaire_? And my
friend was with me? H-mmm-mm.

A perfectly typical runt of a Paris bull eyed us. The older saluted him
with infinite respect, the respect of a shabby rube deacon for a
well-dressed burglar. They exchanged a few well-chosen words, in French
of course. “What ya got there?”—“An American.”—“What’s wrong with
him?”—“H-mmm” mysterious shrug of the shoulders followed by a whisper
in the ear of the city thug. The latter contented himself with
“Ha-aaa”—plus a look at me which was meant to wipe me off the earth’s
face (I pretended to be studying the morning meanwhile). Then we moved
on, followed by ferocious stares from the Paris bull. Evidently I was
getting to be more of a criminal every minute; I should probably be
shot to-morrow, not (as I had assumed erroneously) the day after. I
drank the morning with renewed vigor, thanking heaven for the coffee,
Paris; and feeling complete confidence in myself. I should make a great
speech (in Midi French). I should say to the firing squad: “Gentlemen,
_c’est de la blague, tu sais? Moi, je connais la soeur du conducteur._”
… They would ask me when I preferred to die. I should reply, “Pardon
me, you wish to ask me when I prefer to become immortal?” I should
answer: “What matter? It’s all the same to me, because there isn’t any
more time—the French Government forbids it.”

My laughter surprised the older considerably. He would have been more
astonished had I yielded to the well-nigh irrepressible inclination,
which at the moment suffused me, to clap him heartily upon the back.

Everything was _blague_. The driver, the café, the police, the morning,
and least and last the excellent French Government.

We had walked for a half hour or more. My guide and protector now
inquired of a workingman the location of the _boucheries_? “There is
one right in front of you,” he was told. Sure enough, not a block away.
I laughed again. It was eight years all right.

The older bought a great many things in the next five minutes: sausage,
cheese, bread, chocolate, _pinard rouge_. A _bourgeoise_ with an
unagreeable face and suspicion of me written in headlines all over her
mouth served us with quick hard laconicisms of movement. I hated her
and consequently refused my captor’s advice to buy a little of
everything (on the ground that it would be a long time till the next
meal), contenting myself with a cake of chocolate—rather bad chocolate,
but nothing to what I was due to eat during the next three months. Then
we retraced our steps, arriving at the station after several mistakes
and inquiries, to find the younger faithfully keeping guard over my two
_sacs_ and overcoat.

The older and I sat down, and the younger took his turn at promenading.
I got up to buy a Fantasio at the stand ten steps away, and the older
jumped up and escorted me to and from it. I think I asked him what he
would read? and he said “Nothing.” Maybe I bought him a journal. So we
waited, eyed by everyone in the Gare, laughed at by the officers and
their _marraines_, pointed at by sinewy dames and decrepit
_bonhommes_—the centre of amusement for the whole station. In spite of
my reading I felt distinctly uncomfortable. Would it never be Twelve?
Here comes the younger, neat as a pin, looking fairly sterilized. He
sits down on my left. Watches are ostentatiously consulted. It is time.
_En avant._ I sling myself under my bags.

“Where are we going now?” I asked the older. Curling the tips of his
mustachios, he replied, “Mah-say.”

Marseilles! I was happy once more. I had always wanted to go to that
great port of the Mediterranean, where one has new colors and strange
customs, and where the people sing when they talk. But how
extraordinary to have come to Paris—and what a trip lay before us. I
was much muddled about the whole thing. Probably I was to be deported.
But why from Marseilles? Where was Marseilles anyway? I was probably
all wrong about its location. Who cared, after all? At least we were
leaving the pointings and the sneers and the half-suppressed titters….

Two fat and respectable _bonhommes_, the two _gendarmes_, and I, made
up one compartment. The former talked an animated stream, the guards
and I were on the whole silent. I watched the liquidating landscape and
dozed happily. The _gendarmes_ dozed, one at each door. The train
rushed lazily across the earth, between farmhouses, into fields, along
woods … the sunlight smacked my eye and cuffed my sleepy mind with
colour.

I was awakened by a noise of eating. My protectors, knife in hand, were
consuming their meat and bread, occasionally tilting their _bidons_ on
high and absorbing the thin streams which spurted therefrom. I tried a
little chocolate. The _bonhommes_ were already busy with their repast.
The older gendarme watched me chewing away at the chocolate, then
commanded, “Take some bread.” This astonished me, I confessed, beyond
anything which had heretofore occurred. I gazed mutely at him,
wondering whether the _gouvernement français_ had made away with his
wits. He had relaxed amazingly: his cap lay beside him, his tunic was
unbuttoned, he slouched in a completely undisciplined posture—his face
seemed to have been changed for a peasant’s, it was almost open in
expression and almost completely at ease. I seized the offered hunk,
and chewed vigorously on it. Bread was bread. The older appeared
pleased with my appetite; his face softened still more, as he remarked:
“Bread without wine doesn’t taste good,” and proffered his _bidon_. I
drank as much as I dared, and thanked him: “_Ca va mieux._” The
_pinard_ went straight to my brain, I felt my mind cuddled by a
pleasant warmth, my thoughts became invested with a great contentment.
The train stopped; and the younger sprang out, carrying the empty
canteens of himself and his comrade. When they and he returned, I
enjoyed another cup. From that moment till we reached our destination
at about eight o’clock the older and I got on extraordinarily well.
When the gentlemen descended at their station he waxed almost familiar.
I was in excellent spirits; rather drunk; extremely tired. Now that the
two guardians and myself were alone in the compartment, the curiosity
which had hitherto been stifled by etiquette and pride of capture came
rapidly to light. Why was I here, anyway? I seemed well enough to
them.—Because my friend had written some letters, I told them.—But I
had done nothing myself?—I explained that we used to be together all
the time, _mon ami et moi_; that was the only reason which I knew
of.—It was very funny to see how this explanation improved matters. The
older in particular was immensely relieved.—I would without doubt, he
said, be set free immediately upon my arrival. The French government
didn’t keep people like me in prison.—They fired some questions about
America at me, to which I imaginatively replied. I think I told the
younger that the average height of buildings in America was nine
hundred metres. He stared and shook his head doubtfully, but I
convinced him in the end. Then in my turn I asked questions, the first
being: Where was my friend?—It seems that my friend had left Gré (or
whatever it was) the morning of the day I had entered it.—Did they know
where my friend was going?—They couldn’t say. They had been told that
he was very dangerous.—So we talked on and on: How long had I studied
French? I spoke very well. Was it hard to learn English?—

Yet when I climbed out to relieve myself by the roadside one of them
was at my heels.

Finally watches were consulted, tunics buttoned, hats donned. I was
told in a gruff voice to prepare myself; that we were approaching the
end of our journey. Looking at the erstwhile participants in
conversation, I scarcely knew them. They had put on with their caps a
positive ferocity of bearing. I began to think that I had dreamed the
incidents of the preceding hours.

We descended at a minute, dirty station which possessed the air of
having been dropped by mistake from the bung of the _gouvernement
français_. The older sought out the station master, who having nothing
to do was taking a siesta in a miniature waiting-room. The general
countenance of the place was exceedingly depressing; but I attempted to
keep up my spirits with the reflection that after all all this was but
a junction, and that from here we were to take a train for Marseilles
herself. The name of the station, Briouse, I found somewhat dreary. And
now the older returned with the news that our train wasn’t running
today, and that the next train didn’t arrive till early morning and
should we walk to Marseilles? I could check my great _sac_ and
overcoat. The small _sac_ I should carry along—it was only a step,
after all.

With a glance at the desolation of Briouse I agreed to the stroll. It
was a fine night for a little promenade; not too cool, and with a
promise of a moon stuck into the sky. The _sac_ and coat were
accordingly checked by the older; the station master glanced at me and
haughtily grunted (having learned that I was an American); and my
protectors and I set out.

I insisted that we stop at the first café and have some wine on me. To
this my escorts agreed, making me go ten paces ahead of them, and
waiting until I was through before stepping up to the bar—not from
politeness, to be sure, but because (as I soon gathered) _gendarmes_
were not any too popular in this part of the world, and the sight of
two _gendarmes_ with a prisoner might inspire the habitués to attempt a
rescue. Furthermore, on leaving the café (a desolate place if I ever
saw one, with a fearful _patronne_) I was instructed sharply to keep
close to them but on no account to place myself between them, there
being sundry villagers to be encountered before we struck the highroad
for Marseilles. Thanks to their forethought and my obedience the rescue
did not take place, nor did our party excite even the curiosity of the
scarce and soggy inhabitants of the unlovely town of Briouse.

The highroad won, all of us relaxed considerably. The _sac_ full of
suspicious letters which I bore on my shoulder was not so light as I
had thought, but the kick of the Briouse _pinard_ thrust me forward at
a good clip. The road was absolutely deserted; the night hung loosely
around it, here and there tattered by attempting moonbeams. I was
somewhat sorry to find the way hilly, and in places bad underfoot; yet
the unknown adventure lying before me, and the delicious silence of the
night (in which our words rattled queerly like tin soldiers in a
plush-lined box) boosted me into a condition of mysterious happiness.
We talked, the older and I, of strange subjects. As I suspected, he had
been not always a _gendarme_. He had seen service among the Arabs. He
had always liked languages and had picked up Arabian with great ease—of
this he was very proud. For instance—the Arabian way of saying “Give me
to eat” was this; when you wanted wine you said so and so; “Nice day”
was something else. He thought I could pick it up inasmuch as I had
done so creditably with French. He was absolutely certain that English
was much easier to learn than French, and would not be moved. Now what
was the American language like? I explained that it was a sort of
Argot-English. When I gave him some phrases he was astonished—“It
sounds like English!” he cried, and retailed his stock of English
phrases for my approval. I tried hard to get his intonation of the
Arabian, and he helped me on the difficult sounds. America must be a
strange place, he thought….

After two hours walking he called a halt, bidding us rest. We all lay
flat on the grass by the roadside. The moon was still battling with
clouds. The darkness of the fields on either side was total. I crawled
on hands and knees to the sound of silver-trickling water and found a
little spring-fed stream. Prone, weight on elbows, I drank heavily of
its perfect blackness. It was icy, talkative, minutely alive.

The older presently gave a perfunctory “_alors_”; we got up; I hoisted
my suspicious utterances upon my shoulder, which recognized the renewal
of hostilities with a neuralgic throb. I banged forward with bigger and
bigger feet. A bird, scared, swooped almost into my face. Occasionally
some night-noise pricked a futile, minute hole in the enormous curtain
of soggy darkness. Uphill now. Every muscle thoroughly aching, head
spinning, I half-straightened my no longer obedient body; and jumped:
face to face with a little wooden man hanging all by itself in a grove
of low trees.

—The wooden body, clumsy with pain, burst into fragile legs with
absurdly large feet and funny writhing toes; its little stiff arms made
abrupt cruel equal angles with the road. About its stunted loins clung
a ponderous and jocular fragment of drapery. On one terribly brittle
shoulder the droll lump of its neckless head ridiculously lived. There
was in this complete silent doll a gruesome truth of instinct, a
success of uncanny poignancy, an unearthly ferocity of rectangular
emotion.

For perhaps a minute the almost obliterated face and mine eyed one
another in the silence of intolerable autumn.

Who was this wooden man? Like a sharp black mechanical cry in the
spongy organism of gloom stood the coarse and sudden sculpture of his
torment; the big mouth of night carefully spurted the angular actual
language of his martyred body. I had seen him before in the dream of
some mediaeval saint, with a thief sagging at either side, surrounded
with crisp angels. Tonight he was alone; save for myself, and the
moon’s minute flower pushing between slabs of fractured cloud.

I was wrong, the moon and I and he were not alone…. A glance up the
road gave me two silhouettes at pause. The _gendarmes_ were waiting. I
must hurry to catch up or incur suspicions by my sloth. I hastened
forward, with a last look over my shoulder … the wooden man was
watching us.

When I came abreast of them, expecting abuse, I was surprised by the
older’s saying quietly “We haven’t far to go,” and plunging forward
imperturbably into the night.

Nor had we gone a half hour before several dark squat forms confronted
us: houses. I decided that I did not like houses—particularly as now my
guardian’s manner abruptly changed; once more tunics were buttoned,
holsters adjusted, and myself directed to walk between and keep always
up with the others. Now the road became thoroughly afflicted with
houses, houses not, however, so large and lively as I had expected from
my dreams of Marseilles. Indeed we seemed to be entering an extremely
small and rather disagreeable town. I ventured to ask what its name
was. “Mah-say” was the response. By this I was fairly puzzled. However
the street led us to a square, and I saw the towers of a church sitting
in the sky; between them the round, yellow, big moon looked immensely
and peacefully conscious … no one was stirring in the little streets,
all the houses were keeping the moon’s secret.

We walked on.

I was too tired to think. I merely felt the town as a unique unreality.
What was it? I knew—the moon’s picture of a town. These streets with
their houses did not exist, they were but a ludicrous projection of the
moon’s sumptuous personality. This was a city of Pretend, created by
the hypnotism of moonlight.—Yet when I examined the moon she too seemed
but a painting of a moon and the sky in which she lived a fragile echo
of colour. If I blew hard the whole shy mechanism would collapse gently
with a neat soundless crash. I must not, or lose all.

We turned a corner, then another. My guides conferred concerning the
location of something, I couldn’t make out what. Then the older nodded
in the direction of a long dull dirty mass not a hundred yards away,
which (as near as I could see) served either as a church or a tomb.
Toward this we turned. All too soon I made out its entirely dismal
exterior. Grey long stone walls, surrounded on the street side by a
fence of ample proportions and uniformly dull colour. Now I perceived
that we made toward a gate, singularly narrow and forbidding, in the
grey long wall. No living soul appeared to inhabit this desolation.

The older rang at the gate. A _gendarme_ with a revolver answered his
ring; and presently he was admitted, leaving the younger and myself to
wait. And now I began to realize that this was the _gendarmerie_ of the
town, into which for safe-keeping I was presently to be inducted for
the night. My heart sank, I confess, at the thought of sleeping in the
company of that species of humanity which I had come to detest beyond
anything in hell or on earth. Meanwhile the doorman had returned with
the older, and I was bidden roughly enough to pick up my baggage and
march. I followed my guides down a corridor, up a staircase, and into a
dark, small room where a candle was burning. Dazzled by the light and
dizzied by the fatigue of my ten or twelve mile stroll, I let my
baggage go; and leaned against a convenient wall, trying to determine
who was now my tormentor.

Facing me at a table stood a man of about my own height, and, as I
should judge, about forty years old. His face was seedy sallow and
long. He had bushy semi-circular eyebrows which drooped so much as to
reduce his eyes to mere blinking slits. His cheeks were so furrowed
that they leaned inward. He had no nose, properly speaking, but a large
beak of preposterous widthlessness, which gave his whole face the
expression of falling gravely downstairs, and quite obliterated the
unimportant chin. His mouth was made of two long uncertain lips which
twitched nervously. His cropped black hair was rumpled; his blouse,
from which hung a croix de guerre, unbuttoned; and his unputteed shanks
culminated in bed-slippers. In physique he reminded me a little of
Ichabod Crane. His neck was exactly like a hen’s: I felt sure that when
he drank he must tilt his head back as hens do in order that the liquid
may run down their throats. But his method of keeping himself upright,
together with certain spasmodic contractions of his fingers and the
nervous “uh-ah, uh-ah” which punctuated his insecure phrases like
uncertain commas, combined to offer the suggestion of a rooster; a
rather moth-eaten rooster, which took itself tremendously seriously and
was showing off to an imaginary group of admiring hens situated
somewhere in the background of his consciousness.

“_Vous êtes, uh-ah, l’Am-é-ri-cain?_”

“_Je suis Américain_,” I admitted.

“_Eh-bi-en uh-ah uh-ah_—We were expecting you.” He surveyed me with
great interest.

Behind this seedy and restless personage I noted his absolute likeness,
adorning one of the walls. The rooster was faithfully depicted à la
Rembrandt at half-length in the stirring guise of a fencer, foil in
hand, and wearing enormous gloves. The execution of this masterpiece
left something to be desired; but the whole betokened a certain spirit
and verve, on the part of the sitter, which I found difficulty in
attributing to the being before me.

“_Vous êtes uh-ah KEW-MANGZ?_”

“What?” I said, completely baffled by this extraordinary dissyllable.

“_Comprenez vous fran-çais?_”

“_Un peu._”

“_Bon. Alors, vous vous ap-pel-lez KEW MANGZ, m’est-ce pas? Edouard
KEW-MANGZ?_”

“Oh,” I said, relieved, “yes.” It was really amazing, the way he
writhed around the G.

“_Comment ça se prononce en anglais?_”

I told him.

He replied benevolently, somewhat troubled “uh-ah uh-ah uh-ah—why are
you here, KEW-MANGZ?”

At this question I was for one moment angrier than I had ever before
been in all my life. Then I realized the absurdity of the situation,
and laughed.—“_Sais pas_.”

The questionnaire continued:

“You were in the Red Cross?”—“Surely, in the Norton Harjes Ambulance,
Section Sanitaire Vingt-et-Un.”—“You had a friend
there?”—“Naturally.”—“_Il a écrit, votre ami, des bêtises, n’est ce
pas?_”—“So they told me. _N’en sais rien._”—“What sort of person was
your friend?”—“He was a magnificent person, always _très gentil_ with
me.”—(With a queer pucker the fencer remarked) “Your friend got you
into a lot of trouble, though.”—(To which I replied with a broad grin)
“_N’importe_, we are _camarades_.”

A stream of puzzled uh-ahs followed this reply. The fencer, or rooster
or whatever he might be, finally, picking up the lamp and the lock,
said: “_Alors, viens avec moi, KEW-MANGZ._” I started to pick up the
_sac_, but he told me it would be kept in the office (we being in the
office). I said I had checked a large _sac_ and my fur overcoat at
Briouse, and he assured me they would be sent on by train. He now
dismissed the _gendarmes_, who had been listening curiously to the
examination. As I was conducted from the bureau I asked him
point-blank: “How long am I to stay here?”—to which he answered “_Oh,
peut-être un jour, deux jours, je ne sais pas._”

Two days in a _gendarmerie_ would be enough, I thought. We marched out.

Behind me the bedslippered rooster uhahingly shuffled. In front of me
clumsily gamboled the huge imitation of myself. It descended the
terribly worn stairs. It turned to the right and disappeared….

We were standing in a chapel.

The shrinking light which my guide held had become suddenly minute; it
was beating, senseless and futile, with shrill fists upon a thick
enormous moisture of gloom. To the left and right through lean oblongs
of stained glass burst dirty burglars of moonlight. The clammy stupid
distance uttered dimly an uncanny conflict—the mutterless tumbling of
brutish shadows. A crowding ooze battled with my lungs. My nostrils
fought against the monstrous atmospheric slime which hugged a sweet
unpleasant odour. Staring ahead, I gradually disinterred the pale
carrion of the darkness—an altar, guarded with the ugliness of unlit
candles, on which stood inexorably the efficient implements for eating
God.

I was to be confessed, then, of my guilty conscience, before retiring?
It boded well for the morrow.

… the measured accents of the fencer: “_Prenez votre paillasse._” I
turned. He was bending over a formless mass in one corner of the room.
The mass stretched halfway to the ceiling. It was made of
mattress-shapes. I pulled at one—burlap, stuffed with prickly straw. I
got it on my shoulder. “_Alors._” He lighted me to the door-way by
which we had entered. (I was somewhat pleased to leave the place.)

Back, down a corridor, up more stairs; and we were confronted by a
small scarred pair of doors from which hung two of the largest padlocks
I had ever seen. Being unable to go further, I stopped: he produced a
huge ring of keys. Fumbled with the locks. No sound of life: the keys
rattled in the locks with surprising loudness; the latter, with an evil
grace, yielded—the two little miserable doors swung open.

Into the square blackness I staggered with my _paillasse_. There was no
way of judging the size of the dark room which uttered no sound. In
front of me was a pillar. “Put it down by that post, and sleep there
for tonight, in the morning _nous allons voir_” directed the fencer.
“You won’t need a blanket,” he added; and the doors clanged, the light
and fencer disappeared.

I needed no second invitation to sleep. Fully dressed, I fell on my
_paillasse_ with a weariness which I have never felt before or since.
But I did not close my eyes: for all about me there rose a sea of most
extraordinary sound… the hitherto empty and minute room became suddenly
enormous: weird cries, oaths, laughter, pulling it sideways and
backward, extending it to inconceivable depth and width, telescoping it
to frightful nearness. From all directions, by at least thirty voices
in eleven languages (I counted as I lay Dutch, Belgian, Spanish,
Turkish, Arabian, Polish, Russian, Swedish, German, French—and English)
at distances varying from seventy feet to a few inches, for twenty
minutes I was ferociously bombarded. Nor was my perplexity purely
aural. About five minutes after lying down, I saw (by a hitherto
unnoticed speck of light which burned near the doors which I had
entered) two extraordinary looking figures—one a well-set man with a
big, black beard, the other a consumptive with a bald head and sickly
moustache, both clad only in their knee-length chemises, hairy legs
naked, feet bare—wander down the room and urinate profusely in the
corner nearest me. This act accomplished, the figures wandered back,
greeted with a volley of ejaculatory abuse from the invisible
co-occupants of my new sleeping-apartment; and disappeared in darkness.

I remarked to myself that the _gendarmes_ of this _gendarmerie_ were
peculiarly up in languages, and fell asleep.



IV.
LE NOUVEAU


_“Vous ne voulez pas de café?”_

The threatening question recited in a hoarse voice woke me like a shot.
Sprawled half on and half off my _paillasse_, I looked suddenly up into
a juvenile pimply face with a red tassel bobbing in its eyes. A boy in
a Belgian uniform was stooping over me. In one hand a huge pail a third
full of liquid slime. I said fiercely: “_Au contraire, je veux bien._”
And collapsed on the mattress.

“_Pas de quart, vous?_” the face fired at me.

“_Comprends pas_,” I replied, wondering what on earth the words meant.

“English?”

“American.”

At this moment a tin cup appeared mysteriously out of the gloom and was
rapidly filled from the pail, after which operation the tassel
remarked: “Your friend here” and disappeared.

I decided I had gone completely crazy.

The cup had been deposited near me. Not daring to approach it, I
boosted my aching corpse on one of its futile elbows and gazed blankly
around. My eyes, wading laboriously through a dark atmosphere, a
darkness gruesomely tactile, perceived only here and there lively
patches of vibrating humanity. My ears recognised English, something
which I took to be low-German and which was Belgian, Dutch, Polish, and
what I guessed to be Russian.

Trembling with this chaos, my hand sought the cup. The cup was not
warm; the contents, which I hastily gulped, were not even tepid. The
taste was dull, almost bitter, clinging, thick, nauseating. I felt a
renewed interest in living as soon as the deathful swallow descended to
my abdomen, very much as a suicide who changes his mind after the fatal
dose. I decided that it would be useless to vomit. I sat up. I looked
around.

The darkness was rapidly going out of the sluggish stinking air. I was
sitting on my mattress at one end of a sort of room, filled with
pillars; ecclesiastical in feeling. I already perceived it to be of
enormous length. My mattress resembled an island: all around it on the
floor at distances varying from a quarter of an inch to ten feet (which
constituted the limit of distinct vision) reposed startling identities.
There was blood in some of them. Others consisted of a rind of blueish
matter sustaining a core of yellowish froth. From behind me a chunk of
hurtling spittle joined its fellows. I decided to stand up.

At this moment, at the far end of the room, I seemed to see an
extraordinary vulture-like silhouette leap up from nowhere. It rushed a
little way in my direction crying hoarsely “_Corvée d’eau!_”—stopped,
bent down at what I perceived to be a _paillasse_ like mine, jerked
what was presumably the occupant by the feet, shook him, turned to the
next, and so on up to six. As there seemed to be innumerable
_paillasses_, laid side by side at intervals of perhaps a foot with
their heads to the wall on three sides of me, I was wondering why the
vulture had stopped at six. On each mattress a crude imitation of
humanity, wrapped ear-high in its blanket, lay and drank from a cup
like mine and spat long and high into the room. The ponderous reek of
sleepy bodies undulated toward me from three directions. I had lost
sight of the vulture in a kind of insane confusion which arose from the
further end of the room. It was as if he had touched off six high
explosives. Occasional pauses in the minutely crazy din were accurately
punctuated by exploding bowels; to the great amusement of innumerable
somebodies, whose precise whereabouts the gloom carefully guarded.

I felt that I was the focus of a group of indistinct recumbents who
were talking about me to one another in many incomprehensible tongues.
I noticed beside every pillar (including the one beside which I had
innocently thrown down my mattress the night before) a good sized pail,
overflowing with urine, and surrounded by a large irregular puddle. My
mattress was within an inch of the nearest puddle. What I took to be a
man, an amazing distance off, got out of bed and succeeded in locating
the pail nearest to him after several attempts. Ten invisible
recumbents yelled at him in six languages.

All at once a handsome figure rose from the gloom at my elbow. I smiled
stupidly into his clear hardish eyes. And he remarked pleasantly:

“Your friend’s here, Johnny, and wants to see you.”

A bulge of pleasure swooped along my body, chasing aches and numbness,
my muscles danced, nerves tingled in perpetual holiday.

B. was lying on his camp-cot, wrapped like an Eskimo in a blanket which
hid all but his nose and eyes.

“Hello, Cummings,” he said smiling. “There’s a man here who is a friend
of Vanderbilt and knew Cézanne.”

I gazed somewhat critically at B. There was nothing particularly insane
about him, unless it was his enthusiastic excitement, which might
almost be attributed to my jack-in-the-box manner of arriving. He said:
“There are people here who speak English, Russian, Arabian. There are
the finest people here! Did you go to Gré? I fought rats all night
there. Huge ones. They tried to eat me. And from Gré to Paris? I had
three gendarmes all the way to keep me from escaping, and they all fell
asleep.”

I began to be afraid that I was asleep myself. “Please be frank,” I
begged. “Strictly _entre nous_: am I dreaming, or is this a bug-house?”

B. laughed, and said: “I thought so when I arrived two days ago. When I
came in sight of the place a lot of girls waved from the window and
yelled at me. I no sooner got inside than a queer looking duck whom I
took to be a nut came rushing up to me and cried: ‘Too late for
soup!’—This is Campe de Triage de la Ferté Macé, Orne, France, and all
these fine people were arrested as spies. Only two or three of them can
speak a word of French, and that’s _soupe!_”

I said, “My God, I thought Marseilles was somewhere on the
Mediterranean Ocean, and that this was a _gendarmerie_.”

“But this is M-a-c-é. It’s a little mean town, where everybody snickers
and sneers at you if they see you’re a prisoner. They did at me.”

“Do you mean to say we’re _espions_ too?”

“Of course!” B. said enthusiastically. “Thank God! And in to stay.
Every time I think of the _section sanitaire_, and A. and his thugs,
and the whole rotten red-taped Croix Rouge, I have to laugh. Cummings,
I tell you this is the finest place on earth!”

A vision of the Chef de la section Sanitaire Ving-et-Un passed through
my mind. The doughy face. Imitation-English-officer swagger. Large
calves, squeaking puttees. The daily lecture: “I doughno what’s
th’matter with you fellers. You look like nice boys. Well-edjucated.
But you’re so dirty in your habits. You boys are always kickin’ because
I don’t put you on a car together. I’m ashamed to do it, that’s why. I
doughtwanta give this section a black eye. We gotta show these lousy
Frenchmen what Americans are. We gotta show we’re superior to ’em.
Those bastards doughno what a bath means. And you fellers are always
hangin’ ’round, talkin’ with them dirty frog-eaters that does the
cookin’ and the dirty work ’round here. How d’you boys expect me to
give you a chance? I’d like to put you fellers on a car, I wanta see
you boys happy. But I don’t dare to, that’s why. If you want me to send
you out, you gotta shave and look neat, and _keep away from them dirty
Frenchmen_. We Americans are over here to learn them lousy bastards
something.”

I laughed for sheer joy.

A terrific tumult interrupted my mirth. “_Par ici!_”—“Get out of the
way you damn Polak!”—“M’sieu, M’sieu!”—“Over here!”—“_Mais
non!_”—“_Gott-ver-dummer!_” I turned in terror to see my _paillasse_ in
the clutches of four men who were apparently rending it in as many
directions.

One was a clean-shaven youngish man with lively eyes, alert and
muscular, whom I identified as the man who had called me “Johnny.” He
had hold of a corner of the mattress and was pulling against the
possessor of the opposite corner: an incoherent personage enveloped in
a buffoonery of amazing rags and patches, with a shabby head on which
excited wisps of dirty hair stood upright in excitement, and the tall,
ludicrous, extraordinary, almost noble figure of a dancing bear. A
third corner of the _paillasse_ was rudely grasped by a six-foot
combination of yellow hair, red hooligan face, and sky-blue trousers;
assisted by the undersized tasseled mucker in Belgian uniform, with a
pimply rogue’s mug and unlimited impertinence of diction, who had
awakened me by demanding if I wanted coffee. Albeit completely dazed by
the uncouth vocal fracas, I realised in some manner that these hostile
forces were contending, not for the possession of the mattress, but
merely for the privilege of presenting the mattress to myself.

Before I could offer any advice on this delicate topic, a childish
voice cried emphatically beside my ear: “Put the mattress here! What
are you trying to do? There’s no use destroy-ing a mat-tress!”—at the
same moment the mattress rushed with cobalt strides in my direction,
propelled by the successful efforts of the Belgian uniform and the
hooligan visage, the clean-shaven man and the incoherent bear still
desperately clutching their respective corners; and upon its arrival
was seized with surprising strength by the owner of the child’s voice—a
fluffy little gnome-shaped man with a sensitive face which had suffered
much—and indignantly deposited beside B.’s bed in a space mysteriously
cleared for its reception. The gnome immediately kneeled upon it and
fell to carefully smoothing certain creases caused by the recent
conflict, exclaiming slowly syllable by syllable: “Mon Dieu. Now,
that’s better, you mustn’t do things like that.” The clean-shaven man
regarded him loftily with folded arms, while the tassel and the
trousers victoriously inquired if I had a cigarette?—and upon receiving
one apiece (also the gnome, and the clean-shaven man, who accepted his
with some dignity) sat down without much ado on B.’s bed—which groaned
ominously in protest—and hungrily fired questions at me. The bear
meanwhile, looking as if nothing had happened, adjusted his ruffled
costume with a satisfied air and (calmly gazing into the distance)
began with singularly delicate fingers to stuff a stunted and ancient
pipe with what appeared to be a mixture of wood and manure.

I was still answering questions, when a gnarled voice suddenly
threatened, over our head: “Broom? You. Everybody. Clean. _Surveillant_
says. Not me, no?”—I started, expecting to see a parrot.

It was the silhouette.

A vulture-like figure stood before me, a demoralised broom clenched in
one claw or fist: it had lean legs cased in shabby trousers, muscular
shoulders covered with a rough shirt open at the neck, knotted arms,
and a coarse insane face crammed beneath the visor of a cap. The face
consisted of a rapid nose, droopy moustache, ferocious watery small
eyes, a pugnacious chin, and sunken cheeks hideously smiling. There was
something in the ensemble at once brutal and ridiculous, vigorous and
pathetic.

Again I had not time to speak; for the hooligan in azure trousers
hurled his butt at the bear’s feet, exclaiming: “There’s another for
you, Polak!”—jumped from the bed, seized the broom, and poured upon the
vulture a torrent of _Gott-ver-dummers_, to which the latter replied
copiously and in kind. Then the red face bent within a few inches of my
own, and for the first time I saw that it had recently been young—“I
say I do your sweep for you” it translated pleasantly. I thanked it;
and the vulture, exclaiming: “Good. Good. Not me. _Surveillant._ Harree
does it for everybody. Hee, hee”—rushed off, followed by Harree and the
tassel. Out of the corner of my eye I watched the tall, ludicrous,
extraordinary, almost proud figure of the bear stoop with quiet
dignity, the musical fingers close with a singular delicacy upon the
moist indescribable eighth-of-an-inch of tobacco.

I did not know that this was a Delectable Mountain….

The clean-shaven man (who appeared to have been completely won over by
his smoke), and the fluffy gnome, who had completed the arrangement of
my _paillasse_, now entered into conversation with myself and B.; the
clean-shaven one seating himself in Harree’s stead, the gnome declining
(on the grounds that the bed was already sufficiently loaded) to occupy
the place left vacant by the tassel’s exit, and leaning against the
drab, sweating, poisonous wall. He managed, however, to call our
attention to the shelf at B.’s head which he himself had constructed,
and promised me a similar luxury _toute de suite_. He was a Russian,
and had a wife and _gosse_ in Paris. “My name is Monsieur Au-guste, at
your service”—and his gentle pale eyes sparkled. The clean-shaven
talked distinct and absolutely perfect English. His name was Fritz. He
was a Norwegian, a stoker on a ship. “You mustn’t mind that feller that
wanted you to sweep. He’s crazy. They call him John the Baigneur. He
used to be the bathman. Now he’s _Maître de Chambre_. They wanted me to
take it—I said, ‘F—— it, I don’t want it.’ Let him have it. That’s no
kind of a job, everyone complaining and on top of you morning till
night. ‘Let them that wants the job take it’ I said. That crazy
Dutchman’s been here for two years. They told him to get out and he
wouldn’t, he was too fond of the booze” (I jumped at the slang) “and
the girls. They took it away from John and give it to that little
Ree-shar feller, that doctor. That was a swell job he had, _baigneur_,
too. All the bloody liquor you can drink and a girl every time you want
one. He ain’t never had a girl in his life, that Ree-shar feller.” His
laughter was hard, clear, cynical. “That Pompom, the little Belgian
feller was just here, he’s a great one for the girls. He and Harree.
Always getting _cabinot_. I got it twice myself since I been here.”

All this time the enormous room was filling gradually with dirty light.
In the further end six figures were brooming furiously, yelling to each
other in the dust like demons. A seventh, Harree, was loping to and fro
splashing water from a pail and enveloping everything and everybody in
a ponderous and blasphemous fog of _Gott-ver-dummers_. Along three
sides (with the exception, that is, of the nearer end, which boasted
the sole door) were laid, with their lengths at right angles to the
wall, at intervals of three or four feet, something like forty
_paillasses_. On each, with half a dozen exceptions (where the
occupants had not yet finished their coffee or were on duty for the
_corvée_) lay the headless body of a man smothered in its blanket, only
the boots showing.

The demons were working towards our end of the room. Harree had got his
broom and was assisting. Nearer and nearer they came; converging, they
united their separate heaps of filth in a loudly stinking single mound
at the door. Brooms were stacked against the wall in the corner. The
men strolled back to their mattresses.

Monsieur Auguste, whose French had not been able to keep pace with
Fritz’s English, saw his chance, and proposed “now that the Room is all
clean, let us go take a little walk, the three of us.” Fritz understood
perfectly, and rose, remarking as he fingered his immaculate chin
“Well, I guess I’ll take a shave before the bloody _planton_ comes”—and
Monsieur Auguste, B., and I started down the room.

It was in shape oblong, about 80 feet by 40, unmistakably
ecclesiastical in feeling; two rows of wooden pillars, spaced at
intervals of fifteen feet, rose to a vaulted ceiling 25 or 30 feet
above the floor. As you stood with your back to the door, and faced
down the room, you had in the near right-hand corner (where the brooms
stood) six pails of urine. On the right-hand long wall, a little beyond
the angle of this corner, a few boards, tacked together in any fashion
to make a two-sided screen four feet in height, marked the position of
a _cabinet d’aisance_, composed of a small coverless tin pail identical
with the other six, and a board of the usual design which could be
placed on the pail or not as desired. The wooden floor in the
neighborhood of the booth and pails was of a dark colour, obviously
owing to the continual overflow of their contents.

The right-hand long wall contained something like ten large windows, of
which the first was commanded by the somewhat primitive cabinet. There
were no other windows in the remaining walls; or they had been
carefully rendered useless. In spite of this fact, the inhabitants had
contrived a couple of peep-holes—one in the door-end and one in the
left-hand long wall; the former commanding the gate by which I had
entered, the latter a portion of the street by which I had reached the
gate. The blocking of all windows on three sides had an obvious
significance: _les hommes_ were not supposed to see anything which went
on in the world without; _les hommes_ might, however, look their fill
on a little washing-shed, on a corner of what seemed to be another wing
of the building, and on a bleak lifeless abject landscape of scrubby
woods beyond—which constituted the view from the ten windows on the
right. The authorities had miscalculated a little in one respect: a
merest fraction of the barb-wire pen which began at the corner of the
above-mentioned building was visible from these windows, which windows
(I was told) were consequently thronged by fighting men at the time of
the girl’s promenade. A _planton_, I was also told, made it his
business, by keeping _les femmes_ out of this corner of their _cour_ at
the point of the bayonet to deprive them of the sight of their
admirers. In addition, it was dry bread or _cabinot_ for any of either
sex who were caught communicating with each other. Moreover the
promenades of the men and the women occurred at roughly speaking the
same hour, so that a man or woman who remained upstairs on the chance
of getting a smile or a wave from his or her girl or lover lost the
promenade thereby….

We had in succession gazed from the windows, crossed the end of the
room, and started down the other side, Monsieur Auguste marching
between us—when suddenly B. exclaimed in English “Good morning! How are
you today?” And I looked across Monsieur Auguste, anticipating another
Harree or at least a Fritz. What was my surprise to see a spare
majestic figure of manifest refinement, immaculately apparelled in a
crisp albeit collarless shirt, carefully mended trousers in which the
remains of a crease still lingered, a threadbare but perfectly fitting
swallow-tail coat, and newly varnished (if somewhat ancient) shoes.
Indeed for the first time since my arrival at La Ferté I was confronted
by a perfect type: the apotheosis of injured nobility, the humiliated
victim of perfectly unfortunate circumstances, the utterly respectable
gentleman who had seen better days. There was about him, moreover,
something irretrievably English, nay even pathetically Victorian—it was
as if a page of Dickens was shaking my friend’s hand. “Count Bragard, I
want you to meet my friend Cummings”—he saluted me in modulated and
courteous accents of indisputable culture, gracefully extending his
pale hand. “I have heard a great deal about you from B., and wanted
very much to meet you. It is a pleasure to find a friend of my friend
B., someone congenial and intelligent in contrast to these swine”—he
indicated the room with a gesture of complete contempt. “I see you were
strolling. Let us take a turn.” Monsieur Auguste said tactfully, “I’ll
see you soon, friends,” and left us with an affectionate shake of the
hand and a sidelong glance of jealousy and mistrust at B.’s respectable
friend.

“You’re looking pretty well today, Count Bragard,” B. said amiably.

“I do well enough,” the Count answered. “It is a frightful strain—you
of course realise that—for anyone who has been accustomed to the
decencies, let alone the luxuries, of life. This filth”—he pronounced
the word with indescribable bitterness—“this herding of men like
cattle—they treat us no better than pigs here. The fellows drop their
dung in the very room where they sleep. What is one to expect of a
place like this? _Ce n’est pas une existence_”—his French was glib and
faultless.

“I was telling my friend that you knew Cézanne,” said B. “Being an
artist he was naturally much interested.”

Count Bragard stopped in astonishment, and withdrew his hands slowly
from the tails of his coat. “Is it possible!” he exclaimed, in great
agitation. “What an astonishing coincidence! I am myself a painter. You
perhaps noticed this badge”—he indicated a button attached to his left
lapel, and I bent and read the words: On War Service. “I always wear
it,” he said with a smile of faultless sorrow, and resumed his walk.
“They don’t know what it means here, but I wear it all the same. I was
a special representative for The London Sphere at the front in this
war. I did the trenches and all that sort of thing. They paid me well;
I got fifteen pounds a week. And why not? I am an R.A. My specialty was
horses. I painted the finest horses in England, among them the King’s
own entry in the last Derby. Do you know London?” We said no. “If you
are ever in London, go to the” (I forget the name) “Hotel—one of the
best in town. It has a beautiful large bar, exquisitely furnished in
the very best taste. Anyone will tell you where to find the ——. It has
one of my paintings over the bar: “Straight-jacket” (or some such name)
“the Marquis of ——’s horse, who won last time the race was run. I was
in America in 1910. You know Cornelius Vanderbilt perhaps? I painted
some of his horses. We were the best of friends, Vanderbilt and I. I
got handsome prices, you understand, three, five, six thousand pounds.
When I left, he gave me this card—I have it here somewhere—” he again
stopped, sought in his breastpocket a moment, and produced a visiting
card. On one side I read the name “Cornelius Vanderbilt”—on the other,
in bold handwriting—“to my very dear friend Count F.A. de Bragard” and
a date. “He hated to have me go.”

I was walking in a dream.

“Have you your sketch-books and paints with you? What a pity. I am
always intending to send to England for mine, but you know—one can’t
paint in a place like this. It is impossible—all this dirt and these
filthy people—it stinks! Ugh!”

I forced myself to say: “How did you happen to come here?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “How indeed, you may well ask! I cannot tell
you. It must have been some hideous mistake. As soon as I got here I
spoke to the Directeur and to the Surveillant. The Directeur said he
knew nothing about it; the Surveillant told me confidentially that it
was a mistake on the part of the French government; that I would be out
directly. He’s not such a bad sort. So I am waiting; every day I expect
orders from the English government for my release. The whole thing is
preposterous. I wrote to the Embassy and told them so. As soon as I set
foot outside this place, I shall sue the French government for ten
thousand pounds for the loss of time it has occasioned me. Imagine it—I
had contracts with countless members of The Lords—and the war came.
Then I was sent to the front by The Sphere—and here I am, every day
costing me dear, rotting away in this horrible place. The time I have
wasted here has already cost me a fortune.”

He paused directly in front of the door and spoke with solemnity: “A
man might as well be dead.”

Scarcely had the words passed his lips when I almost jumped out of my
skin, for directly before us on the other side of the wall arose the
very noise which announced to Scrooge the approach of Marley’s ghost—a
dismal clanking and rattling of chains. Had Marley’s transparent figure
walked straight through the wall and up to the Dickensian character at
my side, I would have been less surprised than I was by what actually
happened.

The doors opened with an uncanny bang and in the bang stood a fragile
minute queer figure, remotely suggesting an old man. The chief
characteristic of the apparition was a certain disagreeable nudity
which resulted from its complete lack of all the accepted appurtenances
and prerogatives of old age. Its little stooping body, helpless and
brittle, bore with extraordinary difficulty a head of absurd largeness,
yet which moved on the fleshless neck with a horrible agility. Dull
eyes sat in the clean-shaven wrinkles of a face neatly hopeless. At the
knees a pair of hands hung, infantile in their smallness. In the loose
mouth a tiny cigarette had perched and was solemnly smoking itself.

Suddenly the figure darted at me with a spiderlike entirety.

I felt myself lost.

A voice said mechanically from the vicinity of my feet: “_II vous faut
prendre la douche_”—I stared stupidly. The spectre was poised before
me; its averted eyes contemplated the window. “Take your bath,” it
added as an afterthought, in English—“Come with me.” It turned
suddenly. It hurried to the doorway. I followed. Its rapid deadly
doll-like hands shut and skillfully locked the doors in a twinkling.
“Come,” its voice said.

It hurried before me down two dirty flights of narrow mutilated stairs.
It turned left, and passed through an open door.

I found myself in the wet sunless air of morning.

To the right it hurried, following the wall of the building. I pursued
it mechanically. At the corner, which I had seen from the window
upstairs, the barbed-wire fence eight feet in height began. The thing
paused, produced a key and unlocked a gate. The first three or four
feet of wire swung inward. He entered. I after him.

In a flash the gate was locked behind me, and I was following along a
wall at right angles to the first. I strode after the thing. A moment
before I had been walking in a free world: now I was again a prisoner.
The sky was still over me, the clammy morning caressed me; but walls of
wire and stone told me that my instant of freedom had departed. I was
in fact traversing a lane no wider than the gate; on my left,
barbed-wire separated me from the famous _cour_ in which _les femmes se
promenent_—a rectangle about 50 feet deep and 200 long, with a stone
wall at the further end of it and otherwise surrounded by wire;—on my
right, grey sameness of stone, the _ennui_ of the regular and the
perpendicular, the ponderous ferocity of silence….

I had taken automatically some six or eight steps in pursuit of the
fleeing spectre when, right over my head, the grey stone curdled with a
female darkness; the hard and the angular softening in a putrescent
explosion of thick wriggling laughter. I started, looked up, and
encountered a window stuffed with four savage fragments of crowding
Face: four livid, shaggy disks focussing hungrily; four pair of uncouth
eyes rapidly smouldering; eight lips shaking in a toothless and viscous
titter. Suddenly above and behind these terrors rose a single horror of
beauty—a crisp vital head, a young ivory, actual face, a night of firm,
alive, icy hair, a white, large, frightful smile.

… The thing was crying two or three paces in front of me: “Come!” The
heads had vanished as by magic.

I dived forward; followed through a little door in the wall into a room
about fifteen feet square, occupied by a small stove, a pile of wood,
and a ladder. He plunged through another even smaller door, into a
bleak rectangular place, where I was confronted on the left by a large
tin bath and on the right by ten wooden tubs, each about a yard in
diameter, set in a row against the wall. “Undress” commanded the
spectre. I did so. “Go into the first one.” I climbed into the tub.
“You shall pull the string,” the spectre said, hurriedly throwing his
cigarette into a corner. I stared upward, and discovered a string
dangling from a kind of reservoir over my head: I pulled: and was
saluted by a stabbing crash of icy water. I leaped from the tub. “Here
is your napkin. Make dry yourself”—he handed me a piece of cloth a
little bigger than a handkerchief. “Hurree.” I donned my clothes, wet
and shivering and altogether miserable. “Good. Come now!” I followed
him, through the room with the stove, into the barbed-wire lane. A
hoarse shout rose from the yard—which was filled with women, girls,
children, and a baby or two. I thought I recognised one of the four
terrors who had saluted me from the window, in a girl of 18 with a
soiled slobby body huddling beneath its dingy dress; her bony shoulders
stifled in a shawl upon which excremental hair limply spouted; a huge
empty mouth; and a red nose, sticking between the bluish cheeks that
shook with spasms of coughing. Just inside the wire a figure
reminiscent of Gré, gun on shoulder, revolver on hip, moved
monotonously.

The apparition hurried me through the gate, and along the wall into the
building, where instead of mounting the stairs he pointed down a long,
gloomy corridor with a square of light at the end of it, saying
rapidly, “Go to the promenade”—and vanished.

With the laughter of the Five still ringing in my ears, and no very
clear conception of the meaning of existence, I stumbled down the
corridor; bumping squarely into a beefy figure with a bull’s neck and
the familiar revolver who demanded furiously: “What are you doing
there? _Nom de Dieu!_”—“_Pardon. Les douches_,” I answered, quelled by
the collision.—He demanded in wrathy French “Who took you to the
douches?”—For a moment I was at a complete loss—then Fritz’s remark
about the new _baigneur_ flashed through my mind: “Ree-shar” I answered
calmly.—The bull snorted satisfactorily. “Get into the _cour_ and hurry
up about it” he ordered.—“_C’est par là?_” I inquired politely.—He
stared at me contemptuously without answering; so I took it upon myself
to use the nearest door, hoping that he would have the decency not to
shoot me. I had no sooner crossed the threshold when I found myself
once more in the welcome air; and not ten paces away I espied B.
peacefully lounging, with some thirty others, within a _cour_ about one
quarter the size of the women’s. I marched up to a little dingy gate in
the barbed-wire fence, and was hunting for the latch (as no padlock was
in evidence) when a scared voice cried loudly “_Qu’est ce que vous
faites là!_” and I found myself stupidly looking into a rifle. B.,
Fritz, Harree, Pompom, Monsieur Auguste, The Bear, and the last but not
least Count de Bragard immediately informed the trembling _planton_
that I was a _Nouveau_ who had just returned from the _douches_ to
which I had been escorted by Monsieur Reeshar, and that I should be
admitted to the _cour_ by all means. The cautious watcher of the skies
was not, however, to be fooled by any such fol-de-rol and stood his
ground. Fortunately at this point the beefy _planton_ yelled from the
doorway “Let him in,” and I was accordingly let in, to the
gratification of my friends, and against the better judgment of the
guardian of the _cour_, who muttered something about having more than
enough to do already.

I had not been mistaken as to the size of the men’s yard: it was
certainly not more than twenty yards deep and fifteen wide. By the
distinctness with which the shouts of _les femmes_ reached my ears I
perceived that the two _cours_ adjoined. They were separated by a stone
wall ten feet in height, which I had already remarked (while _en route_
to _les douches_) as forming one end of the _cour des femmes_. The
men’s _cour_ had another stone wall slightly higher than the first, and
which ran parallel to it; the two remaining sides, which were property
ends, were made by the familiar barbed-wire.

The furniture of the _cour_ was simple: in the middle of the further
end, a wooden sentry-box was placed just inside the wire; a curious
contrivance, which I discovered to be a sister to the booth upstairs,
graced the wall on the left which separated the two _cours_, while
further up on this wall a horizontal iron bar projected from the stone
at a height of seven feet and was supported at its other end by a
wooden post, the idea apparently being to give the prisoners a little
taste of gymnastics; a minute wooden shed filled the right upper corner
and served secondarily as a very partial shelter for the men and
primarily as a stable for an extraordinary water-wagon, composed of a
wooden barrel on two wheels with shafts which would not possibly
accommodate anything larger than a diminutive donkey (but in which I
myself was to walk not infrequently, as it proved); parallel to the
second stone wall, but at a safe distance from it, stretched a couple
of iron girders serving as a barbarously cold seat for any unfortunate
who could not remain on his feet the entire time; on the ground close
by the shed lay amusement devices numbers two and three—a huge iron
cannon-ball and the six-foot iron axle of a departed wagon—for testing
the strength of the prisoners and beguiling any time which might lie
heavily on their hands after they had regaled themselves with the
horizontal bar; and finally, a dozen mangy apple-trees, fighting for
their very lives in the angry soil, proclaimed to all the world that
the _cour_ itself was in reality a _verger_.

“Les pommiers sont pleins de pommes;
Allons au verger, Simone….”


A description of the _cour_ would be incomplete without an enumeration
of the manifold duties of the _planton_ in charge, which were as
follows: to prevent the men from using the horizontal bar, except for
chinning, since if you swung yourself upon it you could look over the
wall into the women’s _cour_; to see that no one threw anything over
the wall into said _cour_; to dodge the cannon-ball which had a
mysterious habit of taking advantage of the slope of the ground and
bounding along at a prodigious rate of speed straight for the
sentry-box; to watch closely anyone who inhabited the _cabinet
d’aisance_, lest he should make use of it to vault over the wall; to
see that no one stood on the girders, for a similar reason; to keep
watch over anyone who entered the shed; to see that everyone urinated
properly against the wall in the general vicinity of the cabinet; to
protect the apple-trees into which well-aimed pieces of wood and stone
were continually flying and dislodging the sacred fruit; to mind that
no one entered or exited by the gate in the upper fence without
authority; to report any signs, words, tokens, or other immoralities
exchanged by prisoners with girls sitting in the windows of the women’s
wing (it was from one of these windows that I had recently received my
salutation), also names of said girls, it being forbidden to exhibit
any part of the female person at a window while the males were on
promenade; to quell all fights and especially to prevent people from
using the wagon axle as a weapon of defense or offense; and last, to
keep an eye on the sweeper when he and his wheelbarrow made use of a
secondary gate situated in the fence at the further end, not far from
the sentry-box, to dump themselves.

Having acquainted me with the various _défendus_ which limited the
activities of a man on promenade, my friends proceeded to enliven the
otherwise somewhat tedious morning by shattering one after another all
rules and regulations. Fritz, having chinned himself fifteen times,
suddenly appeared astride of the bar, evoking a reprimand; Pompom
bowled the _planton_ with the cannon-ball, apologising in profuse and
vile French; Harree the Hollander tossed the wagon-axle lightly half
the length of the _cour_, missing The Bear by an inch; The Bear bided
his time and cleverly hurled a large stick into one of the holy trees,
bringing to the ground a withered apple for which at least twenty
people fought for several minutes; and so on. The most open gestures
were indulged in for the benefit of several girls who had braved the
official wrath and were enjoying the morning at their windows. The
girders were used as a race-track. The beams supporting the shed-roof
were shinned. The water-wagon was dislocated from its proper position.
The cabinet and urinal were misused. The gate was continually admitting
and emitting persons who said they were thirsty, and must get a drink
at a tub of water which stood around the corner. A letter was
surreptitiously thrown over the wall into the _cour des femmes_.

The _planton_ who suffered all these indignities was a solemn youth
with wise eyes situated very far apart in a mealy expressionless
ellipse of face, to the lower end of which clung a piece of down,
exactly like a feather sticking to an egg. The rest of him was fairly
normal with the exception of his hands, which were not mates; the left
being considerably larger, and made of wood.

I was at first somewhat startled by this eccentricity; but soon learned
that with the exception of two or three, who formed the _Surveillant’s_
permanent staff and of whom the beefy one was a shining example, all
the _plantons_ were supposed to be unhealthy; they were indeed the
disabled whom _le gouvernement français_ sent from time to time to La
Ferté and similar institutions for a little outing, and as soon as they
had recovered their health under these salubrious influences they were
shipped back to do their bit for world-safety, democracy, freedom,
etc., in the trenches. I also learned that, of all the ways of
attaining _cabinot_, by far the simplest was to apply to a _planton_,
particularly to a permanent _planton_, say the beefy one (who was
reputed to be peculiarly touchy on this point) the term _embusqué_.
This method never failed. To its efficacy many of the men and more of
the girls (by whom the _plantons_, owing to their habit of taking
advantage of the weaker sex at every opportunity, were even more
despised) attested by not infrequent spasms of consumptive coughing,
which could be plainly heard from the further end of one _cour_ to the
other.

In a little over two hours I learned an astonishing lot about La Ferté
itself: it was a co-educational receiving station whither were sent
from various parts of France (a) males suspected of espionage and (b)
females of a well-known type found in the zone of the armies. It was
pointed out to me that the task of finding such members of the human
race was _pas difficile:_ in the case of the men, any foreigner would
do provided his country was neutral (e.g. Holland); as for the girls,
inasmuch as the armies of the Allies were continually retreating, the
_zone des armées_ (particularly in the case of Belgium) was always
including new cities, whose _petites femmes_ became automatically
subject to arrest. It was not to be supposed that all the women of La
Ferté were _putains_: there were a large number of respectable women,
the wives of prisoners, who met their husbands at specified times on
the floor below the men’s quarters, whither man and woman were duly and
separately conducted by _plantons_. In this case no charges had been
preferred against the women; they were voluntary prisoners, who had
preferred to freedom this living in proximity to their husbands. Many
of them had children; some babies. In addition there were certain
_femmes honnêtes_ whose nationality, as in the case of the men, had
cost them their liberty; Marguerite the washerwoman, for example, was a
German.

La Ferté Macé was not properly speaking a prison, but a Porte or
Detention Camp: that is to say, persons sent to it were held for a
Commission, composed of an official, a lawyer, and a captain of
_gendarmes_, which inspected the Camp and passed upon each case in turn
for the purpose of determining the guiltiness of the suspected party.
If the latter were found guilty by the Commission, he or she was sent
off to a regular prison camp for the duration of the war; if not
guilty, he or she was (in theory) set free. The Commission came to La
Ferté once every three months. It should be added that there were
prisoners who had passed the Commission, two, three, four, and even
five times, without any appreciable result; there were _prisonnierès_
who had remained in La Ferté a year, and even eighteen months.

The authorities at La Ferté consisted of the _Directeur_, or general
overlord, the _Surveillant_, who had the _plantons_ (orderlies) under
him and was responsible to the _Directeur_ for the administration of
the camp, and the _Gestionnaire_ (who kept the accounts). As assistant,
the _Surveillant_ had a mail clerk who acted as translator on occasion.
Twice a week the camp was visited by a regular French army doctor
(_médecin major_) who was supposed to prescribe in severe cases and to
give the women venereal inspection at regular intervals. The daily
routine of attending to minor ailments and injuries was in the hands of
Monsieur Ree-shar (Richard), who knew probably less about medicine than
any man living and was an ordinary prisoner like all of us, but whose
impeccable conduct merited cosy quarters. A sweeper was appointed from
time to time by the _Surveillant_, acting for the _Directeur_, from the
inhabitants of La Ferté; as was also a cook’s assistant. The regular
cook was a fixture, and a Boche like the other fixtures, Marguerite and
Richard. This fact might seem curious were it not that the manner,
appearance and actions of the _Directeur_ himself proved beyond a
shadow of a doubt that he was all which the term Boche could possibly
imply.

“He’s a son-of-a-bitch,” B. said heartily. “They took me up to him when
I came two days ago. As soon as he saw me he bellowed: ‘_Imbécile et
inchrétien!_’; then he called me a great lot of other things, including
Shame of my country, Traitor to the sacred cause of Liberty,
Contemptible coward and Vile sneaking spy. When he got all through I
said ‘I don’t understand French.’ You should have seen him then.”

Separation of the sexes was enforced, not, it is true, with success,
but with a commendable ferocity. The punishments for both men and girls
were dry bread and _cabinot_.

“What on earth is _cabinot?_” I demanded.

There were various _cabinots_: each sex had its regular _cabinot_, and
there were certain extra ones. B. knew all about them from Harree and
Pompom, who spent nearly all their time in the _cabinot_. They were
rooms about nine feet square and six feet high. There was no light and
no floor, and the ground (three were on the ground floor) was always
wet and often a good many inches under water. The occupant on entering
was searched for tobacco, deprived of his or her mattress and blanket,
and invited to sleep on the ground on some planks. One didn’t need to
write a letter to a member of the opposite sex to get _cabinot_, or
even to call a _planton embusqué_—there was a woman, a foreigner, who,
instead of sending a letter to her embassy through the bureau (where
all letters were read by the mail clerk to make sure that they said
nothing disagreeable about the authorities or conditions of La Ferté)
tried to smuggle it outside, and got twenty-eight days of _cabinot_.
She had previously written three times, handing the letters to the
_Surveillant_, as per regulations, and had received no reply. Fritz,
who had no idea why he was arrested and was crazy to get in touch with
his embassy, had likewise written several letters, taking the utmost
care to state the facts only and always handing them in; but he had
never received a word in return. The obvious inference was that letters
from a foreigner to his embassy were duly accepted by the _Surveillant_
(Warden), but rarely, if ever, left La Ferté.

B. and I were conversing merrily à propos the God-sent miracle of our
escape from Vingt-et-Un, when a benign-faced personage of about fifty
with sparse greyish hair and a Benjamin Franklin expression appeared on
the other side of the fence, from the direction of the door through
which I had passed after bumping the beefy bull. “_Planton_” it cried
heavily to the wooden-handed one, “Two men to go get water.” Harree and
Pompom were already at the gate with the archaic water-wagon, the
former pushing from behind and the latter in the shafts. The guardian
of the _cour_ walked up and opened the gate for them, after
ascertaining that another _planton_ was waiting at the corner of the
building to escort them on their mission. A little way from the _cour_,
the stone wall (which formed one of its boundaries and which ran
parallel to the other stone wall dividing the two _cours_) met the
prison building; and here was a huge double door, twice padlocked,
through which the waterseekers passed on to the street. There was a
sort of hydrant up the street a few hundred yards, I was told. The cook
(Benjamin F., that is) required from three to six wagonfuls of water
twice a day, and in reward for the labour involved in its capture was
in the habit of giving a cup of coffee to the captors. I resolved that
I would seek water at the earliest opportunity.

Harree and Pompom had completed their third and final trip and returned
from the kitchen, smacking their lips and wiping their mouths with the
backs of their hands. I was gazing airily into the muddy sky, when a
roar issued from the door-way:

“_Montez les hommes!_” or “Send the men up!”

It was the beefy-necked. We filed from the _cour_, through the door,
past a little window which I was told belonged to the kitchen, down the
clammy corridor, up the three flights of stairs, to the door of The
Enormous Room. Padlocks were unlocked, chains rattled, and the door
thrown open. We entered. The Enormous Room received us in silence. The
door was slammed and locked behind us by the _planton_, whom we could
hear descending the gnarled and filthy stairs.

In the course of a half-hour, which time, as I was informed, intervened
between the just-ended morning promenade and the noon meal which was
the next thing on the program, I gleaned considerable information
concerning the daily schedule of La Ferté. A typical day was divided by
planton-cries as follows:

“_Café_,” “_Corvée d’eau_,” “_Nettoyage de Chambre_,” “_Montez les
Hommes_,” “_A la soupe les hommes_.”

The most terrible cry of all, and which was not included in the regular
program of planton-cries, consisted of the words:

“_Aux douches les hommes_”—when all, sick, dead and dying not excepted,
descended to the baths. Although _les douches_ came only once in 15
days, such was the terror they inspired that it was necessary for the
_planton_ to hunt under mattresses for people who would have preferred
death itself.

Upon remarking that _corvée d’eau_ must be excessively disagreeable, I
was informed that it had its bright side, viz., that in going to and
from the sewer one could easily exchange a furtive signal with the
women who always took pains to be at their windows at that moment.
Influenced perhaps by this, Harree and Pompom were in the habit of
doing their friends’_corvées_ for a consideration. The girls, I was
further instructed, had their _corvée_ (as well as their meals) just
after the men; and the miraculous stupidity of the _plantons_ had been
known to result in the coincidence of the two.

At this point somebody asked me how I had enjoyed my shower?

I was replying in terms of unmeasured opprobrium when I was interrupted
by that gruesome clanking and rattling which announced the opening of
the door. A moment later it was thrown wide, and the beefy-neck stood
in the doorway, a huge bunch of keys in his paw, and shouted:

“_A la soupe les hommes._”

The cry was lost in a tremendous confusion, a reckless
thither-and-hithering of humanity, everyone trying to be at the door,
spoon in hand, before his neighbour. B. said calmly, extracting his own
spoon from beneath his mattress on which we were seated: “They’ll give
you yours downstairs and when you get it you want to hide it or it’ll
be pinched”—and in company with Monsieur Bragard, who had refused the
morning promenade, and whose gentility would not permit him to hurry
when it was a question of such a low craving as hunger, we joined the
dancing roaring throng at the door. I was not too famished myself to be
unimpressed by the instantaneous change which had come over The
Enormous Room’s occupants. Never did Circe herself cast upon men so
bestial an enchantment. Among these faces convulsed with utter
animalism I scarcely recognised my various acquaintances. The
transformation produced by the _planton’s_ shout was not merely
amazing; it was uncanny, and not a little thrilling. These eyes
bubbling with lust, obscene grins sprouting from contorted lips, bodies
unclenching and clenching in unctuous gestures of complete savagery,
convinced me by a certain insane beauty. Before the arbiter of their
destinies some thirty creatures, hideous and authentic, poised,
cohering in a sole chaos of desire; a fluent and numerous cluster of
vital inhumanity. As I contemplated this ferocious and uncouth miracle,
this beautiful manifestation of the sinister alchemy of hunger, I felt
that the last vestige of individualism was about utterly to disappear,
wholly abolished in a gambolling and wallowing throb.

The beefy-neck bellowed:

“Are you all here?”

A shrill roar of language answered. He looked contemptuously around
him, upon the thirty clamouring faces each of which wanted to eat
him—puttees, revolver and all. Then he cried:

“_Allez, descendez._”

Squirming, jostling, fighting, roaring, we poured slowly through the
doorway. Ridiculously. Horribly. I felt like a glorious microbe in huge
absurd din irrevocably swathed. B. was beside me. A little ahead
Monsieur Auguste’s voice protested. Count Bragard brought up the rear.

When we reached the corridor nearly all the breath was knocked out of
me. The corridor being wider than the stairs allowed me to inhale and
look around. B. was yelling in my ear:

“Look at the Hollanders and the Belgians! They’re always ahead when it
comes to food!”

Sure enough: John the Bathman, Harree and Pompom were leading this
extraordinary procession. Fritz was right behind them, however, and
pressing the leaders hard. I heard Monsieur Auguste crying in his
child’s voice:

“If every-body goes slow-er we will ar-rive soon-er. You mustn’t act
like that!”

Then suddenly the roar ceased. The mêlée integrated. We were marching
in orderly ranks. B. said:

“The Surveillant!”

At the end of the corridor, opposite the kitchen window, there was a
flight of stairs. On the third stair from the bottom stood (teetering a
little slowly back and forth, his lean hands joined behind him and
twitching regularly, a kepi tilted forward on his cadaverous head so
that its visor almost hid the weak eyes sunkenly peering from under
droopy eyebrows, his pompous rooster-like body immaculately attired in
a shiny uniform, his puttees sleeked, his cross polished)—The Fencer.
There was a renovated look about him which made me laugh. Also his pose
was ludicrously suggestive of Napoleon reviewing the armies of France.

Our column’s first rank moved by him. I expected it to continue ahead
through the door and into the open air, as I had myself done in going
from _les douches_ to _le cour;_ but it turned a sharp right and then
sharp left, and I perceived a short hall, almost hidden by the stairs.
In a moment I had passed The Fencer myself and entered the hall. In
another moment I was in a room, pretty nearly square, filled with rows
of pillars. On turning into the hall the column had come almost to a
standstill. I saw that the reason for this slowing-down lay in the fact
that on entering the room every man in turn passed a table and received
a piece of bread from the chef. When B. and I came opposite the table
the dispenser of bread smiled pleasantly and nodded to B., then
selected a large hunk and pushed it rapidly into B.’s hands with an air
of doing something which he shouldn’t. B. introduced me, whereupon the
smile and selection was repeated.

“He thinks I’m a German,” B. explained in a whisper, “and that you are
a German too.” Then aloud, to the cook: “My friend here needs a spoon.
He just got here this morning and they haven’t given him one.”

The excellent person at the bread table hereupon said to me: “You shall
go to the window and say I tell you to ask for spoon and you will catch
one spoon”—and I broke through the waiting line, approached the
kitchen-window, and demanded of a roguish face within:

“A spoon, please.”

The roguish face, which had been singing in a high faint voice to
itself, replied critically but not unkindly:

“You’re a new one?”

I said that I was, that I had arrived late last night.

It disappeared, reappeared, and handed me a tin spoon and cup, saying:

“You haven’t a cup?”—“No” I said.

“Here. Take this. Quick.” Nodding in the direction of the Surveillant,
who was standing all this time on the stairs behind me.

I had expected from the cook’s phrase that something would be thrown at
me which I should have to catch, and was accordingly somewhat relieved
at the true state of affairs. On re-entering the _salle à manger_ I was
greeted by many cries and wavings, and looking in their direction
perceived everybody uproariously seated at wooden benches which were
placed on either side of an enormous wooden table. There was a tiny gap
on one bench where a place had been saved for me by B., with the
assistance of Monsieur Auguste, Count Bragard, Harree and several other
fellow-convicts. In a moment I had straddled the bench and was
occupying the gap, spoon and cup in hand, and ready for anything.

The din was perfectly terrific. It had a minutely large quality. Here
and there, in a kind of sonal darkness, solid sincere unintelligible
absurd wisps of profanity heavily flickered. Optically the phenomenon
was equally remarkable: seated waggingly swaying corpselike figures,
swaggering, pounding with their little spoons, roaring, hoarse,
unkempt. Evidently Monsieur le Surveillant had been forgotten. All at
once the roar bulged unbearably. The roguish man, followed by the
_chef_ himself, entered with a suffering waddle, each of them bearing a
huge bowl of steaming something. At least six people immediately rose,
gesturing and imploring: “_Ici_”—“_Mais non, ici_”—“_Mettez par ici_”—

The bearers plumped their burdens carefully down, one at the head of
the table and one in the middle. The men opposite the bowls stood up.
Every man seized the empty plate in front of him and shoved it into his
neighbour’s hand; the plates moved toward the bowls, were filled amid
uncouth protestations and accusations—“_Mettez plus que ça_”—“_C’est
pas juste, alors_”—“_Donnez-moi encore de pommes_”—“_Nom de Dieu, il
n’y a pas assez_”—“_Cochon, qu’est-ce qu’il veut?_”—“_Shut
up_”—“_Gott-ver-dummer_”—and returned one by one. As each man received
his own, he fell upon it with a sudden guzzle.

Eventually, in front of me, solemnly sat a faintly-smoking
urine-coloured circular broth, in which soggily hung half-suspended
slabs of raw potato. Following the example of my neighbours, I too
addressed myself to _La Soupe_. I found her luke-warm, completely
flavourless. I examined the hunk of bread. It was almost bluish in
colour; in taste mouldy, slightly sour. “If you crumb some into the
soup,” remarked B., who had been studying my reactions from the corner
of his eye, “they both taste better.” I tried the experiment. It was a
complete success. At least one felt as if one were getting nourishment.
Between gulps I smelled the bread furtively. It smelled rather much
like an old attic in which kites and other toys gradually are forgotten
in a gentle darkness.

B. and I were finishing our soup together when behind and somewhat to
the left there came the noise of a lock being manipulated. I turned and
saw in one corner of the _salle à manger_ a little door, shaking
mysteriously. Finally it was thrown open, revealing a sort of minute
bar and a little closet filled with what appeared to be groceries and
tobacco; and behind the bar, standing in the closet, a husky,
competent-looking lady. “It’s the canteen,” B. said. We rose, spoon in
hand and breadhunk stuck on spoon, and made our way to the lady. I had,
naturally, no money; but B. reassured me that before the day was over I
should see the Gestionnaire and make arrangements for drawing on the
supply of ready cash which the _gendarmes_ who took me from Gré had
confided to The Surveillant’s care; eventually I could also draw on my
account with Norton-Harjes in Paris; meantime he had _quelques sous_
which might well go into chocolate and cigarettes. The large lady had a
pleasant quietness about her, a sort of simplicity, which made me
extremely desirous of complying with B.’s suggestion. Incidentally I
was feeling somewhat uncertain in the region of the stomach, due to the
unique quality of the lunch which I had just enjoyed, and I brightened
at the thought of anything as solid as chocolate. Accordingly we
purchased (or rather B. did) a _paquet jaune_ and a cake of something
which was not Meunier. And the remaining _sous_ we squandered on a
glass apiece of red acrid _pinard_, gravely and with great happiness
pledging the hostess of the occasion and then each other.

With the exception of ourselves hardly anyone patronized the canteen,
noting which I felt somewhat conspicuous. When, however, Harree Pompom
and John the Bathman came rushing up and demanded cigarettes my fears
were dispelled. Moreover the _pinard_ was excellent.

“Come on! Arrange yourselves!” the bull-neck cried hoarsely as the five
of us were lighting up; and we joined the line of fellow-prisoners with
their breads and spoons, gaping, belching, trumpeting fraternally, by
the doorway.

“_Tout le monde en haut!_” this _planton_ roared.

Slowly we filed through the tiny hall, past the stairs (empty now of
their Napoleonic burden), down the corridor, up the creaking gnarled
damp flights, and (after the inevitable pause in which the escort
rattled chains and locks) into The Enormous Room.

This would be about ten thirty.

Just what I tasted, did, smelled, saw, and heard, not to mention
touched, between ten thirty and the completion of the evening meal
(otherwise the four o’clock soup) I am quite at a loss to say. Whether
it was that glass of _pinard_ (plus, or rather times, the astonishing
exhaustion bequeathed me by my journey of the day before) which caused
me to enter temporarily the gates of forgetfulness, or whether the
sheer excitement attendant upon my ultra-novel surroundings proved too
much for an indispensable part of my so-called mind—I do not in the
least know. I am fairly certain that I went on afternoon promenade.
After which I must surely have mounted to await my supper in The
Enormous Room. Whence (after the due and proper interval) I doubtless
descended to the clutches of _La Soupe Extraordinaire_… yes, for I
perfectly recall the cry which made me suddenly to re-enter the
dimension of distinctness … and by Jove I had just finished a glass of
_pinard_… somebody must have treated me … we were standing together,
spoon in hand … when we heard—

“_A la promenade_,” … we issued _en queue_, firmly grasping our spoons
and bread, through the dining-room door. Turning right we were emitted,
by the door opposite the kitchen, from the building itself into the
open air. A few steps and we passed through the little gate in the
barbed wire fence of the _cour_.

Greatly refreshed by my second introduction to the canteen, and with
the digestion of the somewhat extraordinary evening meal apparently
assured, I gazed almost intelligently around me. Count Bragard had
declined the evening promenade in favour of The Enormous Room, but I
perceived in the crowd the now familiar faces of the three
Hollanders—John, Harree and Pompom—likewise of The Bear, Monsieur
Auguste, and Fritz. In the course of the next hour I had become, if not
personally, at least optically acquainted with nearly a dozen others.

Somewhat overawed by the animals Harree and Pompom (but nevertheless
managing to overawe a goodly portion of his fellow-captives) an
extraordinary human being paced the _cour_. On gazing for the first
time directly at him I experienced a feeling of nausea. A figure
inclined to corpulence, dressed with care, remarkable only above the
neck—and then what a head! It was large, and had a copious mop of limp
hair combed back from the high forehead—hair of a disagreeable blond
tint, dutch-cut behind, falling over the pinkish soft neck almost to
the shoulders. In this pianist’s or artist’s hair, which shook en masse
when the owner walked, two large and outstanding and altogether brutal
white ears tried to hide themselves. The face, a cross between classic
Greek and Jew, had a Reynard expression, something distinctly wily and
perfectly disagreeable. An equally with the hair blond moustache—or
rather mustachios projectingly important—waved beneath the prominent
nostrils, and served to partially conceal the pallid mouth, weak and
large, whose lips assumed from time to time a smile which had something
almost foetal about it. Over the even weaker chin was disposed a blond
goatee. The cheeks were fatty. The continually perspiring forehead
exhibited innumerable pinkish pock-marks. In conversing with a
companion this being emitted a disgusting smoothness, his very gestures
were oily like his skin. He wore a pair of bloated wristless hands, the
knuckles lost in fat, with which he smoothed the air from time to time.
He was speaking low and effortless French, completely absorbed in the
developing ideas which issued fluently from his mustachios. About him
there clung an aura of cringing. His hair whiskers and neck looked as
if they were trick neck whiskers and hair, as if they might at any
moment suddenly disintegrate, as if the smoothness of his eloquence
alone kept them in place.

We called him Judas.

Beside him, clumsily keeping the pace but not the step, was a tallish
effeminate person whose immaculate funereal suit hung loosely upon an
aged and hurrying anatomy. He wore a big black cap on top of his
haggard and remarkably clean-shaven face, the most prominent feature of
which was a red nose, which sniffed a little now and then as if its
owner was suffering from a severe cold. This person emanated age,
neatness and despair. Aside from the nose which compelled immediate
attention, his face consisted of a few large planes loosely juxtaposed
and registering pathos. His motions were without grace. He had a
certain refinement. He could not have been more than forty-five. There
was worry on every inch of him. Possibly he thought that he might die.
B. said “He’s a Belgian, a friend of Count Bragard, his name is
Monsieur Pet-airs.” From time to time Monsieur Pet-airs remarked
something delicately and pettishly in a gentle and weak voice. His
adam’s-apple, at such moments, jumped about in a longish slack wrinkled
skinny neck which was like the neck of a turkey. To this turkey the
approach of Thanksgiving inspired dread. From time to time M. Pet-airs
looked about him sidewise as if he expected to see a hatchet. His hands
were claws, kind, awkward and nervous. They twitched. The bony and
wrinkled things looked as if they would like to close quickly upon a
throat.

B. called my attention to a figure squatting in the middle of the
_cour_ with his broad back against one of the more miserable trees.
This figure was clothed in a remarkably picturesque manner: it wore a
dark sombrero-like hat with a large drooping brim, a bright red gipsy
shirt of some remarkably fine material with huge sleeves loosely
falling, and baggy corduroy trousers whence escaped two brown, shapely,
naked feet. On moving a little I discovered a face—perhaps the
handsomest face that I have ever seen, of a gold brown color, framed in
an amazingly large and beautiful black beard. The features were finely
formed and almost fluent, the eyes soft and extraordinarily sensitive,
the mouth delicate and firm beneath a black moustache which fused with
the silky and wonderful darkness falling upon the breast. The face
contained a beauty and dignity which, as I first saw it, annihilated
the surrounding tumult without an effort. Around the carefully formed
nostrils there was something almost of contempt. The cheeks had known
suns of which I might not think. The feet had travelled nakedly in
countries not easily imagined. Seated gravely in the mud and noise of
the _cour_, under the pitiful and scraggly _pommier_… behind the eyes
lived a world of complete strangeness and silence. The composure of the
body was graceful and Jovelike. This being might have been a prophet
come out of a country nearer to the sun. Perhaps a god who had lost his
road and allowed himself to be taken prisoner by _le gouvernement
français_. At least a prince of a dark and desirable country, a king
over a gold-skinned people who would return when he wished to his
fountains and his houris. I learned upon inquiry that he travelled in
various countries with a horse and cart and his wife and children,
selling bright colours to the women and men of these countries. As it
turned out, he was one of the Delectable Mountains; to discover which I
had come a long and difficult way. Wherefore I shall tell you no more
about him for the present, except that his name was Joseph Demestre.

We called him The Wanderer.

I was still wondering at my good luck in occupying the same miserable
yard with this exquisite personage when a hoarse, rather thick voice
shouted from the gate: “_L’américain!_”

It was a _planton_, in fact the chief _planton_ for whom all ordinary
_plantons_ had unutterable respect and whom all mere men unutterably
hated. It was the _planton_ into whom I had had the distinguished
honour of bumping shortly after my visit to _le bain_.

The Hollanders and Fritz were at the gate in a mob, all shouting
“Which” in four languages.

This _planton_ did not deign to notice them. He repeated roughly
“_L’américain._” Then, yielding a point to their frenzied entreaties:
“Le nouveau.”

B. said to me “Probably he’s going to take you to the Gestionnaire.
You’re supposed to see him when you arrive. He’s got your money and
will keep it for you, and give you an allowance twice a week. You can’t
draw more than 20 francs. I’ll hold your bread and spoon.”

“Where the devil is the American?” cried the _planton_.

“Here I am.”

“Follow me.”

I followed his back and rump and holster through the little gate in the
barbed wire fence and into the building, at which point he commanded
“Proceed.”

I asked “Where?”

“Straight ahead” he said angrily.

I proceeded. “Left!” he cried. I turned. A door confronted me.
“_Entrez_,” he commanded. I did. An unremarkable looking gentleman in a
French uniform, sitting at a sort of table. “_Monsieur le médecin, le
nouveau._” The doctor got up. “Open your shirt.” I did. “Take down your
pants.” I did. “All right.” Then, as the _planton_ was about to escort
me from the room: “English?” he asked with curiosity. “No” I said,
“American.” “_Vraiment_”—he contemplated me with attention. “South
American are you?” “United States” I explained. “_Vraiment_”—he looked
curiously at me, not disagreeably in the least. “_Pourquoi vous êtes
ici?_” “I don’t know” I said smiling pleasantly, “except that my friend
wrote some letters which were intercepted by the French censor.” “Ah,”
he remarked. “_C’est tout._”

And I departed. “Proceed!” cried the Black Holster. I retraced my
steps, and was about to exit through the door leading to the _cour_,
when “Stop! _Nom de Dieu!_ Proceed!”

I asked “Where?” completely bewildered.

“Up,” he said angrily.

I turned to the stairs on the left, and climbed.

“Not so fast there,” he roared behind me.

I slowed up. We reached the landing. I was sure that the Gestionnaire
was a very fierce man—probably a lean slight person who would rush at
me from the nearest door saying “Hands up” in French, whatever that may
be. The door opposite me stood open. I looked in. There was the
Surveillant standing, hands behind back, approvingly regarding my
progress. I was asking myself, Should I bow? when a scurrying and a
tittering made me look left, along a dark and particularly dirty hall.
Women’s voices … I almost fell with surprise. Were not those shadows’
faces peering a little boldly at me from doors? How many girls were
there—it sounded as if there were a hundred—

“_Qu’est-ce que vous faites_,” etc., and the _planton_ gave me a good
shove in the direction of another flight of stairs. I obligingly
ascended; thinking of the Surveillant as a spider, elegantly poised in
the centre of his nefarious web, waiting for a fly to make too many
struggles….

At the top of this flight I was confronted by a second hall. A shut
door indicated the existence of a being directly over the Surveillant’s
holy head. Upon this door, lest I should lose time in speculating, was
in ample letters inscribed:

GESTIONNAIRE


I felt unutterably lost. I approached the door. I even started to push
it.

“_Attends, Nom de Dieu._” The _planton_ gave me another shove, faced
the door, knocked twice, and cried in accents of profound respect:
“Monsieur le Gestionnaire”—after which he gazed at me with really
supreme contempt, his neat pig-like face becoming almost circular.

I said to myself: This Gestionnaire, whoever he is, must be a very
terrible person, a frightful person, a person utterly without mercy.

From within a heavy, stupid, pleasant voice lazily remarked:

“_Entrez._”

The _planton_ threw the door open, stood stiffly on the threshold, and
gave me the look which _plantons_ give to eggs when _plantons_ are a
little hungry.

I crossed the threshold, trembling with (let us hope) anger.

Before me, seated at a table, was a very fat personage with a black
skull cap perched upon its head. Its face was possessed of an enormous
nose, on which pince-nez precariously roosted; otherwise the face was
large, whiskered, very German and had three chins. Extraordinary
creature. Its belly, as it sat, was slightly dented by the table-top,
on which table-top rested several enormous tomes similar to those
employed by the recording angel on the Day of Judgment, an inkstand or
two, innumerable pens and pencils, and some positively fatal looking
papers. The person was dressed in worthy and semi-dismal clothes amply
cut to afford a promenade for the big stomach. The coat was of that
extremely thin black material which occasionally is affected by clerks
and dentists and more often by librarians. If ever I looked upon an
honest German jowl, or even upon a caricature thereof, I looked upon
one now. Such a round fat red pleasant beer-drinking face as reminded
me only and immediately of huge meerschaum pipes, Deutsche Verein
mottos, sudsy seidels of Wurtzburger, and Jacob Wirth’s (once upon a
time) brachwurst. Such pinlike pink merry eyes as made me think of Kris
Kringle himself. Such extraordinarily huge reddish hands as might have
grasped six seidels together in the Deutsche Küchen on 13th street. I
gasped with pleasurable relief.

Monsieur le Gestionnaire looked as if he was trying very hard, with the
aid of his beribboned glasses and librarian’s jacket (not to mention a
very ponderous gold watch-chain and locket that were supported by his
copious equator) to appear possessed of the solemnity necessarily
emanating from his lofty and responsible office. This solemnity,
however, met its Waterloo in his frank and stupid eyes, not to say his
trilogy of cheerful chins—so much so that I felt like crying “Wie
gehts!” and cracking him on his huge back. Such an animal! A contented
animal, a bulbous animal; the only living hippopotamus in captivity,
fresh from the Nile.

He contemplated me with a natural, under the circumstances, curiosity.
He even naively contemplated me. As if I were hay. My hay-coloured head
perhaps pleased him, as a hippopotamus. He would perhaps eat me. He
grunted, exposing tobacco-yellow tusks, and his tiny eyes twittered.
Finally he gradually uttered, with a thick accent, the following
extremely impressive dictum:

“_C’est l’américain._”

I felt much pleased, and said “_Oui, j’suis américain, Monsieur._”

He rolled half over backwards in his creaking chair with wonderment at
such an unexpected retort. He studied my face with a puzzled air,
appearing slightly embarrassed that before him should stand
_l’américain_ and that _l’américain_ should admit it, and that it
should all be so wonderfully clear. I saw a second dictum, even more
profound than the first, ascending from his black vest. The chain and
fob trembled with anticipation. I was wholly fascinated. What vast blob
of wisdom would find its difficult way out of him? The bulbous lips
wiggled in a pleasant smile.

“_Voo parlez français._”

This was delightful. The _planton_ behind me was obviously angered by
the congenial demeanour of Monsieur le Gestionnaire, and rasped with
his boot upon the threshold. The maps to my right and left, maps of
France, maps of the Mediterranean, of Europe, even, were abashed. A
little anaemic and humble biped whom I had not previously noted, as he
stood in one corner with a painfully deferential expression, looked all
at once relieved. I guessed, and correctly guessed, that this little
thing was the translator of La Ferté. His weak face wore glasses of the
same type as the hippopotamus’, but without a huge black ribbon. I
decided to give him a tremor; and said to the hippo “_Un peu,
Monsieur_,” at which the little thing looked sickly.

The hippopotamus benevolently remarked “_Voo parlez bien_,” and his
glasses fell off. He turned to the watchful _planton_:

“_Voo poovez aller. Je vooz appelerai._”

The watchful _planton_ did a sort of salute and closed the door after
him. The skullcapped dignitary turned to his papers and began mouthing
them with his huge hands, grunting pleasantly. Finally he found one,
and said lazily:

“_De quelle endroit que vooz êtes?_”

“_De Massachusetts_,” said I.

He wheeled round and stared dumbly at the weak faced one, who looked at
a complete loss, but managed to stammer simperingly that it was a part
of the United States.

“UH.” The hippopotamus said.

Then he remarked that I had been arrested, and I agreed that I had been
arrested.

Then he said “Have you got any money?” and before I could answer
clambered heavily to his feet and, leaning over the table before which
I stood, punched me gently.

“Uh,” said the hippopotamus, sat down, and put on his glasses.

“I have your money here,” he said. “You are allowed to draw a little
from time to time. You may draw 20 francs, if you like. You may draw it
twice a week.”

“I should like to draw 20 francs now” I said, “in order to buy
something at the canteen.”

“You will give me a receipt,” said the hippopotamus. “You want to draw
20 francs now, quite so.” He began, puffing and grunting, to make
handwriting of a peculiarly large and somewhat loose variety.

The weak face now stepped forward, and asked me gently: “Hugh er a
merry can?”—so I carried on a brilliant conversation in pidgeon English
about my relatives and America until interrupted by

“Uh.”

The hip had finished.

“Sign your name, here,” he said, and I did. He looked about in one of
the tomes and checked something opposite my name, which I enjoyed
seeing in the list of inmates. It had been spelled, erased, and
re-spelled several times.

Monsieur le Gestionnaire contemplated my signature. Then he looked up,
smiled and nodded recognition to someone behind me. I turned. There
stood (having long since noiselessly entered) The Fencer Himself,
nervously clasping and unclasping his hands behind his back and
regarding me with approval, or as a keeper regards some rare monkey
newly forwarded from its habitat by Hagenbeck.

The hippo pulled out a drawer. He found, after hunting, some notes. He
counted two off, licking his big thumb with a pompous gesture, and
having recounted them passed them heavily to me. I took them as a
monkey takes a cocoanut.

“Do you wish?”—the Gestionnaire nodded toward me, addressing the
Fencer.

“No, no” the Fencer said bowingly. “I have talked to him already.”

“Call that _planton!_” cried Monsieur le Gestionnaire, to the little
thing. The little thing ran out dutifully and called in a weak voice
“_Planton!_”

A gruff but respectful “_Oui_” boomed from below-stairs. In a moment
the _planton_ of _plantons_ had respectfully entered.

“The promenade being over, you can take him to the men’s room,” said
the Surveillant, as the Hippo (immensely relieved and rather proud of
himself) collapsed in his creaking chair.

Feeling like a suit-case in the clutches of a porter, I obediently
preceded my escort down two flights, first having bowed to the
hippopotamus and said “_Merci_”—to which courtesy the Hippo paid no
attention. As we went along the dank hall on the ground floor, I
regretted that no whispers and titters had greeted my descent. Probably
the furious _planton_ had seen to it that _les femmes_ kept their rooms
in silence. We ascended the three flights at the farther end of the
corridor, the _planton_ of all _plantons_ unlocked and unbolted the
door at the top landing, and I was swallowed by The Enormous Room.

I made for B., in my excitement allowing myself to wave the bank-notes.
Instantly a host had gathered at my side. On my way to my bed—a
distance of perhaps thirty feet—I was patted on the back by Harree,
Pompom and Bathhouse John, congratulated by Monsieur Auguste, and
saluted by Fritz. Arriving, I found myself the centre of a stupendous
crowd. People who had previously had nothing to say to me, who had even
sneered at my unwashed and unshaven exterior, now addressed me in terms
of more than polite interest. Judas himself stopped in a promenade of
the room, eyed me a moment, hastened smoothly to my vicinity, and made
a few oily remarks of a pleasant nature. Simultaneously by Monsieur
Auguste Harree and Fritz I was advised to hide my money and hide it
well. There were people, you know … who didn’t hesitate, you
understand…. I understood, and to the vast disappointment of the
clamorous majority reduced my wealth to its lowest terms and crammed it
in my trousers, stuffing several trifles of a bulky nature on top of
it. Then I gazed quietly around with a William S. Hart expression
calculated to allay any undue excitement. One by one the curious and
enthusiastic faded from me, and I was left with the few whom I already
considered my friends; with which few B. and myself proceeded to wile
away the time remaining before _Lumières Éteintes_.

Incidentally, I exchanged (in the course of the next two hours) a
considerable mass of two legged beings for a number of extremely
interesting individuals. Also, in that somewhat limited period of time,
I gained all sorts of highly enlightening information concerning the
lives, habits and likes of half a dozen of as fine companions as it has
ever been my luck to meet or, so far as I can now imagine, ever will
be. In prison one learns several million things—if one is _l’américain_
from _Mass-a-chu-setts_. When the ominous and awe-inspiring rattle on
the further side of the locked door announced that the captors were
come to bid the captives good night, I was still in the midst of
conversation and had been around the world a number of times. At the
clanking sound our little circle centripetally disintegrated, as if by
sheer magic; and I was left somewhat dizzily to face a renewal of
reality.

The door shot wide. The _planton’s_ almost indistinguishable figure in
the doorway told me that the entire room was dark. I had not noticed
the darkness. Somebody had placed a candle (which I recalled having
seen on a table in the middle of the room when I looked up once or
twice during the conversation) on a little shelf hard by the cabinet.
There had been men playing at cards by this candle—now everybody was
quietly reposing upon the floor along three sides of The Enormous Room.
The _planton_ entered. Walked over to the light. Said something about
everybody being present, and was answered by a number of voices in a
more or less profane affirmative. Strutted to and fro, kicked the
cabinet, flashed an electric torch, and walked up the room examining
each _paillasse_ to make sure it had an occupant. Crossed the room at
the upper end. Started down on my side. The white circle was in my
eyes. The _planton_ stopped. I stared stupidly and wearily into the
glare. The light moved all over me and my bed. The rough voice behind
the glare said:

“_Vous êtes le nouveau?_”

Monsieur Auguste, from my left, said quietly:

“_Oui, c’est le nouveau._”

The holder of the torch grunted, and (after pausing a second at B.’s
bed to inspect a picture of perfect innocence) banged out through the
door which whanged to behind him and another _planton_, of whose
presence I had been hitherto unaware. A perfect symphony of “_Bonne
nuits_” “_Dormez biens_” and other affectionate admonitions greeted the
exeunt of the authorities. They were advised by various parts of the
room in divers tongues to dream of their wives, to be careful of
themselves in bed, to avoid catching cold, and to attend to a number of
personal wants before retiring. The symphony gradually collapsed,
leaving me sitting in a state of complete wonderment, dead tired and
very happy, upon my _paillasse_.

“I think I’ll turn in” I said to the neighbouring darkness.

“That’s what I’m doing” B.’s voice said.

“By God” I said, “this is the finest place I’ve ever been in my life.”

“It’s the finest place in the world” said B.’s voice.

“Thank Heaven, we’re out of A.’s way and the —— _Section Sanitaire_,” I
grunted as I placed my boots where a pillow might have been imagined.

“Amen” B.’s voice said.

“If you put your shoes un-der your mat-tress” Monsieur Auguste’s voice
said, “you’ll sleep well.”

I thanked him for the suggestion, and did so. I reclined in an ecstasy
of happiness and weariness. There could be nothing better than this. To
sleep.

“Got a _gottverdummer_ cigarette?” Harree’s voice asked of Fritz.

“No bloody fear,” Fritz’s voice replied coolly.

Snores had already begun in various keys at various distances in
various directions. The candle flickered a little; as if darkness and
itself were struggling to the death, and darkness were winning.

“I’ll get a chew from John” Harree’s voice said.

Three or four _paillasses_ away, a subdued conversation was proceeding.
I found myself listening sleepily.

“_Et puis_,” a voice said, “_je suis reformé…._”



V.
A GROUP OF PORTRAITS


With the reader’s permission I beg, at this point of my narrative, to
indulge in one or two extrinsic observations.

In the preceding pages I have described my Pilgrim’s Progress from the
Slough of Despond, commonly known as Section Sanitaire Vingt-et-Un
(then located at Germaine) through the mysteries of Noyon, Gré and
Paris to the Porte de Triage de La Ferté Macé, Orne. With the end of my
first day as a certified inhabitant of the latter institution a
definite progression is brought to a close. Beginning with my second
day at La Ferté a new period opens. This period extends to the moment
of my departure and includes the discovery of The Delectable Mountains,
two of which—The Wanderer and I shall not say the other—have already
been sighted. It is like a vast grey box in which are laid
helter-skelter a great many toys, each of which is itself completely
significant apart from the always unchanging temporal dimension which
merely contains it along with the rest. I make this point clear for the
benefit of any of my readers who have not had the distinguished
privilege of being in jail. To those who have been in jail my meaning
is at once apparent; particularly if they have had the highly
enlightening experience of being in jail with a perfectly indefinite
sentence. How, in such a case, could events occur and be remembered
otherwise than as individualities distinct from Time Itself? Or, since
one day and the next are the same to such a prisoner, where does Time
come in at all? Obviously, once the prisoner is habituated to his
environment, once he accepts the fact that speculation as to when he
will regain his liberty cannot possibly shorten the hours of his
incarceration and may very well drive him into a state of unhappiness
(not to say morbidity), events can no longer succeed each other:
whatever happens, while it may happen in connection with some other
perfectly distinct happenings, does not happen in a scale of temporal
priorities—each happening is self-sufficient, irrespective of minutes,
months and the other treasures of freedom.

It is for this reason that I do not purpose to inflict upon the reader
a diary of my alternative aliveness and non-existence at La Ferté—not
because such a diary would unutterably bore him, but because the diary
or time method is a technique which cannot possibly do justice to
timelessness. I shall (on the contrary) lift from their grey box at
random certain (to me) more or less astonishing toys; which may or may
not please the reader, but whose colours and shapes and textures are a
part of that actual Present—without future and past—whereof they alone
are cognizant who—so to speak—have submitted to an amputation of the
world.

I have already stated that La Ferté was a Porte de Triage—that is to
say, a place where suspects of all varieties were herded by _le
gouvernement français_ preparatory to their being judged as to their
guilt by a Commission. If the Commission found that they were wicked
persons or dangerous persons, or undesirable persons, or puzzling
persons, or persons in some way insusceptible of analysis, they were
sent from La Ferté to a “regular” prison, called Précigne, in the
province of Sarthe. About Précigne the most awful rumors were spread.
It was whispered that it had a huge moat about it, with an infinity of
barbed wire fences thirty-feet high, and lights trained on the walls
all night to discourage the escape of prisoners. Once in Précigne you
were “in” for good and all, _pour la durée de la guerre_, which _durée_
was a subject of occasional and dismal speculation—occasional for
reasons, as I have mentioned, of mental health; dismal for unreasons of
diet, privation, filth, and other trifles. La Ferté was, then, a
stepping stone either to freedom or to Précigne. But the excellent and
inimitable and altogether benignant French Government was not satisfied
with its own generosity in presenting one merely with Précigne—beyond
that lurked a _cauchemar_ called by the singularly poetic name: Isle de
Groix. A man who went to Isle de Groix was done.

As the Surveillant said to us all, leaning out of a littlish window,
and to me personally upon occasion—

“You are not prisoners. Oh, no. No indeed, I should say not. Prisoners
are not treated like this. You are lucky.”

I had _de la chance_ all right, but that was something which the
_pauvre_ M. Surveillant wot altogether not of. As for my
fellow-prisoners, I am sorry to say that he was—it seems to my humble
personality—quite wrong. For who was eligible to La Ferté? Anyone whom
the police could find in the lovely country of France (a) who was not
guilty—of treason (b) who could not prove that he was not guilty of
treason. By treason I refer to any little annoying habits of
independent thought or action which _en temps de guerre_ are put in a
hole and covered over, with the somewhat naïve idea that from their
cadavers violets will grow, whereof the perfume will delight all good
men and true and make such worthy citizens forget their sorrows. Fort
Leavenworth, for instance, emanates even now a perfume which is utterly
delightful to certain Americans. Just how many La Fertés France boasted
(and for all I know may still boast) God Himself knows. At least, in
that Republic, amnesty has been proclaimed, or so I hear.—But to return
to the Surveillants remark.

_J’avais de la chance._ Because I am by profession a painter and a
writer. Whereas my very good friends, all of them deeply suspicious
characters, most of them traitors, without exception lucky to have the
use of their cervical vertebrae, etc., etc., could (with a few
exceptions) write not a word and read not a word; neither could they
_faire la photographie_ as Monsieur Auguste chucklingly called it (at
which I blushed with pleasure): worst of all, the majority of these
dark criminals who had been caught in nefarious plots against the
honour of France were totally unable to speak French. Curious thing.
Often I pondered the unutterable and inextinguishable wisdom of the
police, who—undeterred by facts which would have deceived less astute
intelligences into thinking that these men were either too stupid or
too simple to be connoisseurs of the art of betrayal—swooped upon their
helpless prey with that indescribable courage which is the prerogative
of policemen the world over, and bundled it into the La Fertés of that
mighty nation upon some, at least, of whose public buildings it seems
to me that I remember reading:

Liberté.

Egalité.

Fraternité.

And I wondered that France should have a use for Monsieur Auguste, who
had been arrested (because he was a Russian) when his fellow munition
workers struck and whose wife wanted him in Paris because she was
hungry and because their child was getting to look queer and white.
Monsieur Auguste, that desperate ruffian exactly five feet tall
who—when he could not keep from crying (one must think about one’s wife
or even one’s child once or twice, I merely presume, if one loves
them—“_et ma femme est très gen-tille, elle est fran-çaise et très
belle, très, très belle, vraiment; elle n’est pas comme moi, un pet-it
homme laid, ma femme est grande et belle, elle sait bien lire et
é-crire, vraiment; et notre fils … vous dev-ez voir notre pet-it
fils…._”)—used to start up and cry out, taking B. by one arm and me by
the other,

“_Allons, mes amis! Chan-tons ‘Quackquackquack_.’”

Whereupon we would join in the following song, which Monsieur Auguste
had taught us with great care, and whose renditions gave him
unspeakable delight:

  “_ Un canard, déployant ses ailes
                             (Quackquackquack)
  Il disait à sa canarde fidèle
                             (Quackquackquack)
  Il disait (Quackquackquack)
  Il faisait (Quackquackquack)
       Quand_” (spelling mine)
  “_finirons nos desseins,
                          Quack.
                             Quack.
                                Quack.
                                  Quack._”


I suppose I will always puzzle over the ecstasies of That Wonderful
Duck. And how Monsieur Auguste, the merest gnome of a man, would bend
backwards in absolute laughter at this song’s spirited conclusion upon
a note so low as to wither us all.

Then, too, the Schoolmaster.

A little fragile old man. His trousers were terrifically too big for
him. When he walked (in an insecure and frightened way) his trousers
did the most preposterous wrinkles. If he leaned against a tree in the
_cour_, with a very old and also fragile pipe in his pocket—the stem
(which looked enormous in contrast to the owner) protruding
therefrom—his three-sizes too big collar would leap out so as to make
his wizened neck appear no thicker than the white necktie which flowed
upon his two-sizes too big shirt. He always wore a coat which reached
below his knees, which coat, with which knees, perhaps someone had once
given him. It had huge shoulders which sprouted, like wings, on either
side of his elbows when he sat in The Enormous Room quietly writing at
a tiny three-legged table, a very big pen walking away with his weak
bony hand. His too big cap had a little button on top which looked like
the head of a nail; and suggested that this old doll had once lost its
poor grey head and had been repaired by means of tacking its head upon
its neck, where it should be and properly belonged. Of what hideous
crime was this being suspected? By some mistake he had three
moustaches, two of them being eyebrows. He used to teach school in
Alsace-Lorraine, and his sister is there. In speaking to you his kind
face is peacefully reduced to triangles. And his tie buttons on every
morning with a Bang! And off he goes; led about by his celluloid
collar, gently worried about himself, delicately worried about the
world. At eating time he looks sidelong as he stuffs soup into stiff
lips. There are two holes where cheeks might have been. Lessons hide in
his wrinkles. Bells ding in the oldness of eyes. Did he, by any chance,
tell the children that there are such monstrous things as peace and
good will … a corrupter of youth, no doubt … he is altogether incapable
of anger, wholly timid and tintinnabulous. And he had always wanted so
much to know—if there were wild horses in America?

Yes, probably the Schoolmaster was a notorious seditionist. The
all-wise French Government has its ways, which like the ways of God are
wonderful.

I had almost forgot The Bear—number two, not to be confused with the
seeker of cigarette-ends. A big, shaggy person, a farmer, talked about
“_mon petit jardin_,” an anarchist, wrote practically all the time (to
the gentle annoyance of The Schoolmaster) at the queer-legged table;
wrote letters (which he read aloud with evident satisfaction to
himself) addressing “my confrères”, stimulating them to even greater
efforts, telling them that the time was ripe, that the world consisted
of brothers, etc. I liked The Bear. He had a sincerity which, if
somewhat startlingly uncouth, was always definitely compelling. His
French itself was both uncouth and startling. I hardly think he was a
dangerous bear. Had I been the French Government I should have let him
go berrying, as a bear must and should, to his heart’s content. Perhaps
I liked him best for his great awkward way of presenting an idea—he
scooped it out of its environment with a hearty paw in a way which
would have delighted anyone save _le gouvernement français_. He had, I
think,

VIVE LA LIBERTÉ


tattooed in blue and green on his big hairy chest. A fine bear. A bear
whom no twitchings at his muzzle nor any starvation nor yet any beating
could ever teach to dance … but then, I am partial to bears. Of course
none of this bear’s letters ever got posted—Le Directeur was not that
sort of person; nor did this bear ever expect that they would go
elsewhere than into the official waste-basket of La Ferté, which means
that he wrote because he liked to; which again means that he was
essentially an artist—for which reason I liked him more than a little.
He lumbered off one day—I hope to his brier-patch, and to his children,
and to his _confrères_, and to all things excellent and livable and
highly desirable to a bruin.

The Young Russian and The Barber escaped while I was enjoying my little
visit at Orne. The former was an immensely tall and very strong boy of
nineteen or under; who had come to our society by way of solitary
confinement, bread and water for months, and other reminders that to
err is human, etc. Unlike Harree, whom, if anything, he exceeded in
strength, he was very quiet. Everyone let him alone. I “caught water”
in the town with him several times and found him an excellent
companion. He taught me the Russian numerals up to ten, and was very
kind to my struggles over 10 and 9. He picked up the cannon-ball one
day and threw it so hard that the wall separating the men’s _cour_ from
the _cour des femmes_ shook, and a piece of stone fell off. At which
the cannon-ball was taken away from us (to the grief of its daily
wielders, Harree and Fritz) by four perspiring _plantons_, who almost
died in the performance of their highly patriotic duty. His friend, The
Barber, had a little shelf in The Enormous Room, all tricked out with
an astonishing array of bottles, atomizers, tonics, powders, scissors,
razors and other deadly implements. It has always been a _mystère_ to
me that our captors permitted this array of obviously dangerous weapons
when we were searched almost weekly for knives. Had I not been in the
habit of using B.’s safety razor I should probably have become better
acquainted with The Barber. It was not his price, nor yet his
technique, but the fear of contamination which made me avoid these
instruments of hygiene. Not that I shaved to excess. On the contrary,
the Surveillant often, nay bi-weekly (so soon as I began drawing
certain francs from Norton Harjes) reasoned with me upon the subject of
appearance; saying that I was come of a good family, and I had enjoyed
(unlike my companions) an education, and that I should keep myself neat
and clean and be a shining example to the filthy and ignorant—adding
slyly that the “hospital” would be an awfully nice place for me and my
friend to live, and that there we could be by ourselves like gentlemen
and have our meals served in the room, avoiding the _salle a manger_;
moreover, the food would be what we liked, delicious food, especially
cooked … all (quoth the Surveillant with the itching palm of a Grand
Central Porter awaiting his tip) for a mere trifle or so, which if I
liked I could pay him on the spot—whereat I scornfully smiled, being
inhibited by a somewhat selfish regard for my own welfare from kicking
him through the window. To The Barber’s credit be it said: he never
once solicited my trade, although the Surveillant’s “_Soi-même_”
(oneself) lectures (as B. and I referred to them) were the delight of
our numerous friends and must, through them, have reached his alert
ears. He was a good-looking quiet man of perhaps thirty, with
razor-keen eyes—and that’s about all I know of him except that one day
The Young Russian and The Barber, instead of passing from the _cour_
directly to the building, made use of a little door in an angle between
the stone wall and the kitchen; and that to such good effect that we
never saw them again. Nor were the ever-watchful guardians of our
safety, the lion-hearted _plantons_, aware of what had occurred until
several hours after; despite the fact that a ten-foot wall had been
scaled, some lesser obstructions vanquished, and a run in the open made
almost (one unpatriotically minded might be tempted to say) before
their very eyes. But then—who knows? May not the French Government
deliberately have allowed them to escape, after—through its
incomparable spy system—learning that The Barber and his young friend
were about to attempt the life of the Surveillant with an atomizer
brim-full of T.N.T.? Nothing could after all be more highly probable.
As a matter of fact a couple of extra-fine razors (presented by the
_Soi-même_-minded Surveillant to the wily coiffeur in the interests of
public health) as well as a knife which belonged to the kitchen and had
been lent to The Barber for the purpose of peeling potatoes—he having
complained that the extraordinary safety-device with which, on
alternate days, we were ordinarily furnished for that purpose, was an
insult to himself and his profession—vanished into the rather thick air
of Orne along with The Barber _lui-même_. I remember him perfectly in
The Enormous Room, cutting apples deliberately with his knife and
sharing them with the Young Russian. The night of the escape—in order
to keep up our morale—we were helpfully told that both refugees had
been snitched e’er they had got well without the limits of the town,
and been remanded to a punishment consisting among other things, in
_travaux forcés à perpetuité—verbum sapientibus_, he that hath ears,
etc. Also a nightly inspection was instituted; consisting of our being
counted thrice by a _planton_, who then divided the total by three and
vanished.

_Soi-même_ reminds me of a pleasant spirit who graced our little
company with a good deal of wit and elegance. He was called by B. and
myself, after a somewhat exciting incident which I must not describe,
but rather outline, by the agreeable title of Même le Balayeur. Only a
few days after my arrival the incident in question happened. It seems
(I was in _la cour_ promenading for the afternoon) that certain more
virile inhabitants of The Enormous Room, among them Harree and Pom Pom
_bien entendu_, declined to _se promener_ and kept their habitat. Now
this was in fulfilment of a little understanding with three or more
girls—such as Celina, Lily and Renée—who, having also declined the
promenade, managed in the course of the afternoon to escape from their
quarters on the second floor, rush down the hall and upstairs, and gain
that landing on which was the only and well-locked door to The Enormous
Room. The next act of this little comedy (or tragedy, as it proved for
the participants, who got _cabinot_ and _pain sec_—male and female
alike—for numerous days thereafter) might well be entitled “Love will
find a way.” Just how the door was opened, the lock picked, etc., from
the inside is (of course) a considerable mystery to anyone possessing a
limited acquaintance with the art of burglary. Anyway it was
accomplished, and that in several fifths of a second. Now let the
curtain fall, and the reader be satisfied with the significant word
“Asbestos,” which is part of all first-rate performances.

The Surveillant, I fear, distrusted his _balayeur_. _Balayeurs_ were
always being changed because _balayeurs_ were (in shameful contrast to
the _plantons_) invariably human beings. For this deplorable reason
they inevitably carried notes to and fro between _les hommes_ and _les
femmes_. Upon which ground the _balayeur_ in this case—a well-knit
keen-eyed agile man, with a sense of humour and sharp perception of
men, women and things in particular and in general—was called before
the bar of an impromptu court, held by M. le Surveillant in The
Enormous Room after the promenade. I shall not enter in detail into the
nature of the charges pressed in certain cases, but confine myself to
quoting the close of a peroration which would have done Demosthenes
credit:

“_Même le balayeur a tiré un coup!_”

The individual in question mildly deprecated M. le Surveillant’s
opinion, while the audience roared and rocked with laughter of a
somewhat ferocious sort. I have rarely seen the Surveillant so pleased
with himself as after producing this _bon mot_. Only fear of his
superior, the ogre-like Directeur, kept him from letting off entirely
all concerned in what after all (from the European point of view) was
an essentially human proceeding. As nobody could prove anything about
Même, he was not locked up in a dungeon; but he lost his job of
sweeper—which was quite as bad, I am sure, from his point of view—and
from that day became a common inhabitant of The Enormous Room like any
of the rest of us.

His successor, Garibaldi, was a corker.

How the Almighty French Government in its Almighty Wisdom ever found
Garibaldi a place among us is more than I understand or ever will. He
was a little tot in a faded blue-grey French uniform; and when he
perspired he pushed a _kepi_ up and back from his worried forehead
which a lock of heavy hair threateningly overhung. As I recollect
Garibaldi’s terribly difficult, not to say complicated, lineage, his
English mother had presented him to his Italian father in the country
of France. However this trilogy may be, he had served at various times
in the Italian, French and English armies. As there was (unless we call
Garibaldi Italian, which he obviously was not) nary a subject of King
Ponzi or Carruso or whatever be his name residing at La Ferté Macé,
Garibaldi was in the habit of expressing himself—chiefly at the card
table, be it said—in a curious language which might have been mistaken
for French. To B. and me he spoke an equally curious language, but a
perfectly recognizable one, i.e., Cockney Whitechapel English. He
showed us a perfectly authentic mission-card which certified that his
family had received a pittance from some charitable organisation
situated in the Whitechapel neighbourhood, and that, moreover, they
were in the habit of receiving this pittance; and that, finally, their
claim to such pittance was amply justified by the poverty of their
circumstances. Beyond this valuable certificate, Garibaldi (which
everyone called him) attained great incoherence. He had been wronged.
He was always being misunderstood. His life had been a series of
mysterious tribulations. I for one have the merest idea that Garibaldi
was arrested for the theft of some peculiarly worthless trifle, and
sent to the Limbo of La Ferté as a penance. This merest idea is
suggested by something which happened when The Clever Man instituted a
search for his missing knife—but I must introduce The Clever Man to my
reader before describing that rather beguiling incident.

Conceive a tall, well-dressed, rather athletic, carefully kept, clean
and neat, intelligent, not for a moment despondent, altogether superior
man, fairly young (perhaps twenty-nine) and quite bald. He wins enough
every night at _banque_ to enable him to pay the less fortunate to
perform his _corvée d’eau_ for him. As a consequence he takes his vile
coffee in bed every morning, then smokes a cigarette or two lazily,
then drops off for a nap, and gets up about the middle of the morning
promenade. Upon arising he strops a razor of his own (nobody knows how
he gets away with a regular razor), carefully lathers his face and
neck—while gazing into a rather classy mirror which hangs night and day
over his head, above a little shelf on which he displays at such times
a complete toilet outfit—and proceeds to annihilate the inconsiderable
growth of beard which his mirror reveals to him. Having completed the
annihilation, he performs the most extensive ablutions per one of the
three or four pails which The Enormous Room boasts, which pail is by
common consent dedicated to his personal and exclusive use. All this
time he has been singing loudly and musically the following sumptuously
imaginative ditty:

“mEEt me tonIght in DREAmland,
UNder the SIL-v’ry mOOn,
meet me in DREAmland,
sweet dreamy DREAmland—
there all my DRE-ams come trUE.”


His English accent is excellent. He pronounces his native language,
which is the language of the Hollanders, crisply and firmly. He is not
given to Gottverdummering. In addition to Dutch and English he speaks
French clearly and Belgian distinctly. I daresay he knows half a dozen
languages in all. He gives me the impression of a man who would never
be at a loss, in whatever circumstances he might find himself. A man
capable of extricating himself from the most difficult situation; and
that with the greatest ease. A man who bides his time; and improves the
present by separating, one after one, his monied fellow-prisoners from
their banknotes. He is, by all odds, the coolest player that I ever
watched. Nothing worries him. If he loses two hundred francs tonight, I
am sure he will win it and fifty in addition tomorrow. He accepts
opponents without distinction—the stupid, the wily, the vain, the
cautious, the desperate, the hopeless. He has not the slightest pity,
not the least fear. In one of my numerous notebooks I have this
perfectly direct paragraph:

Card table: 4 stares play banque with 2 cigarettes (1 dead) & A pipe
the clashing faces yanked by a leanness of one candle bottle-stuck
(Birth of X) (where sits The Clever Man who pyramids,) sings (mornings)
“Meet Me…”


which specimen of telegraphic technique, being interpreted, means:
Judas, Garibaldi, and The Holland Skipper (whom the reader will meet
_de suite_)—Garibaldi’s cigarette having gone out, so greatly is he
absorbed—play _banque_ with four intent and highly focussed individuals
who may or may not be The Schoolmaster, Monsieur Auguste, The Barber,
and Même; with The Clever Man (as nearly always) acting as banker. The
candle by whose somewhat uncorpulent illumination the various
physiognomies are yanked into a ferocious unity is stuck into the mouth
of a bottle. The lighting of the whole, the rhythmic disposition of the
figures, construct a sensuous integration suggestive of The Birth of
Christ by one of the Old Masters. The Clever Man, having had his usual
morning warble, is extremely quiet. He will win, he pyramids—and he
pyramids because he has the cash and can afford to make every play a
big one. All he needs is the rake of a _croupier_ to complete his
disinterested and wholly nerveless poise. He is a born gambler, is The
Clever Man—and I dare say that to play cards in time of war constituted
a heinous crime and I am certain that he played cards before he arrived
at La Ferté; moreover, I suppose that to win at cards in time of war is
an unutterable crime, and I know that he has won at cards before in his
life—so now we have a perfectly good and valid explanation of the
presence of The Clever Man in our midst. The Clever Man’s chief
opponent was Judas. It was a real pleasure to us whenever of an evening
Judas sweated and mopped and sweated and lost more and more and was
finally cleaned out.

But The Skipper, I learned from certain prisoners who escorted the
baggage of The Clever Man from The Enormous Room when he left us one
day (as he did for some reason, to enjoy the benefits of freedom), paid
the mastermind of the card table 150 francs at the gate—poor Skipper!
upon whose vacant bed lay down luxuriously the Lobster, immediately to
be wheeled fiercely all around The Enormous Room by the Guard Champêtre
and Judas, to the boisterous plaudits of _tout le monde_—but I started
to tell about the afternoon when the master-mind lost his knife; and
tell it I will forthwith. B. and I were lying prone upon our respective
beds when—presto, a storm arose at the further end of The Enormous
Room. We looked, and beheld The Clever Man, thoroughly and efficiently
angry, addressing, threatening and frightening generally a constantly
increasing group of fellow-prisoners. After dismissing with a few sharp
linguistic cracks of the whip certain theories which seemed to be
advanced by the bolder auditors with a view to palliating, persuading
and tranquilizing his just wrath, he made for the nearest _paillasse_,
turned it topsy-turvy, slit it neatly and suddenly from stem to stem
with a jack-knife, banged the hay about, and then went with careful
haste through the pitifully minute baggage of the _paillasse’s_ owner.
Silence fell. No one, least of all the owner, said anything. From this
bed The Clever Man turned to the next, treated it in the same fashion,
searched it thoroughly, and made for the third. His motions were those
of a perfectly oiled machine. He proceeded up the length of the room,
varying his procedure only by sparing an occasional mattress, throwing
_paillasses_ about, tumbling _sacs_ and boxes inside out; his face
somewhat paler than usual but otherwise immaculate and expressionless.
B. and I waited with some interest to see what would happen to our
belongings. Arriving at our beds he paused, seemed to consider a
moment, then, not touching our _paillasses_ proper, proceeded to open
our duffle bags and hunt half-heartedly, remarking that “somebody might
have put it in;” and so passed on. “What in hell is the matter with
that guy?” I asked of Fritz, who stood near us with a careless air,
some scorn and considerable amusement in his eyes. “The bloody fool’s
lost his knife,” was Fritz’s answer. After completing his rounds The
Clever Man searched almost everyone except ourselves and Fritz, and
absolutely subsided on his own _paillasse_ muttering occasionally “if
he found it” what he’d do. I think he never did find it. It was a
“beautiful” knife, John the Baigneur said. “What did it look like?” I
demanded with some curiosity. “It had a naked woman on the handle”
Fritz said, his eyes sharp with amusement.

And everyone agreed that it was a great pity that The Clever Man had
lost it, and everyone began timidly to restore order and put his
personal belongings back in place and say nothing at all.

But what amused me was to see the little tot in a bluish-grey French
uniform, Garibaldi, who—about when the search approached his
_paillasse_—suddenly hurried over to B. (his perspiring forehead more
perspiring than usual, his _kepi_ set at an angle of insanity) and
hurriedly presented B. with a long-lost German silver folding
camp-knife, purchased by B. from a fellow-member of Vingt-et-Un who was
known to us as “Lord Algie”—a lanky, effeminate, brittle, spotless
creature who was en route to becoming an officer and to whose finicky
tastes the fat-jowled A. tirelessly pandered, for, doubtless, financial
considerations—which knife according to the trembling and altogether
miserable Garibaldi had “been found” by him that day in the _cour_;
which was eminently and above all things curious, as the treasure had
been lost weeks before.

Which again brings us to the Skipper, whose elaborate couch has already
been mentioned—he was a Hollander and one of the strongest, most gentle
and altogether most pleasant of men, who used to sit on the water-wagon
under the shed in the _cour_ and smoke his pipe quietly of an
afternoon. His stocky even tightly-knit person, in its heavy-trousers
and jersey sweater, culminated in a bronzed face which was at once as
kind and firm a piece of supernatural work as I think I ever knew. His
voice was agreeably modulated. He was utterly without affectation. He
had three sons. One evening a number of _gendarmes_ came to his house
and told him that he was arrested, “so my three sons and I threw them
all out of the window into the canal.”

I can still see the opening smile, squared kindness of cheeks, eyes
like cool keys—his heart always with the Sea.

The little Machine-Fixer (_le petit bonhomme avec le bras cassé_ as he
styled himself, referring to his little paralysed left arm) was so
perfectly different that I must let you see him next. He was slightly
taller than Garibaldi, about of a size with Monsieur Auguste. He and
Monsieur Auguste together were a fine sight, a sight which made me feel
that I came of a race of giants. I am afraid it was more or less as
giants that B. and I pitied the Machine-Fixer—still this was not really
our fault, since the Machine-Fixer came to us with his troubles much as
a very minute and helpless child comes to a very large and omnipotent
one. And God knows we did not only pity him, we liked him—and if we
could in some often ridiculous manner assist the Machine-Fixer I think
we nearly always did. The assistance to which I refer was wholly
spiritual; since the minute Machine-Fixer’s colossal self-pride
eliminated any possibility of material assistance. What we did, about
every other night, was to entertain him (as we entertained our other
friends) _chez nous_; that is to say, he would come up late every
evening or every other evening, after his day’s toil—for he worked as
co-sweeper with Garibaldi and he was a tremendous worker; never have I
seen a man who took his work so seriously and made so much of it—to
sit, with great care and very respectfully, upon one or the other of
our beds at the upper end of The Enormous Room, and smoke a black small
pipe, talking excitedly and strenuously and fiercely about _La Misère_
and himself and ourselves, often crying a little but very bitterly, and
from time to time striking matches with a short angry gesture on the
sole of his big, almost square boot. His little, abrupt, conscientious,
relentless, difficult self lived always in a single dimension—the
somewhat beautiful dimension of Sorrow. He was a Belgian, and one of
two Belgians in whom I have ever felt the least or slightest interest;
for the Machine-Fixer might have been a Polak or an Idol or an Esquimo
so far as his nationality affected his soul. By and large, that was the
trouble—the Machine-Fixer had a soul. Put the bracelets on an ordinary
man, tell him he’s a bad egg, treat him rough, shove him into the jug
or its equivalent (you see I have regard always for M. le Surveillant’s
delicate but no doubt necessary distinction between La Ferté and
Prison), and he will become one of three animals—a rabbit, that is to
say timid; a mole, that is to say stupid; or a hyena, that is to say
Harree the Hollander. But if, by some fatal, some incomparably fatal
accident, this man has a soul—ah, then we have and truly have most
horribly what is called in La Ferté Macé by those who have known it:
_La Misère_. Monsieur Auguste’s valiant attempts at cheerfulness and
the natural buoyancy of his gentle disposition in a slight degree
protected him from _La Misère_. The Machine-Fixer was lost. By nature
he was tremendously sensible, he was the very apotheosis of _l’ame
sensible_ in fact. His sensibilité made him shoulder not only the
inexcusable injustice which he had suffered but the incomparable and
overwhelming total injustice which everyone had suffered and was
suffering en masse day and night in The Enormous Room. His woes, had
they not sprung from perfectly real causes, might have suggested a
persecution complex. As it happened there was no possible method of
relieving them—they could be relieved in only one way: by Liberty. Not
simply by his personal liberty, but by the liberation of every single
fellow-captive as well. His extraordinarily personal anguish could not
be selfishly appeased by a merely partial righting, in his own case, of
the Wrong—the ineffable and terrific and to be perfectly avenged
Wrong—done to those who ate and slept and wept and played cards within
that abominable and unyielding Symbol which enclosed the immutable
vileness of our common life. It was necessary, for its appeasement,
that a shaft of bright lightning suddenly and entirely should wither
the human and material structures which stood always between our filthy
and pitiful selves and the unspeakable cleanness of Liberty.

B. recalls that the little Machine-Fixer said or hinted that he had
been either a socialist or an anarchist when he was young. So that is
doubtless why we had the privilege of his society. After all, it is
highly improbable that this poor socialist suffered more at the hands
of the great and good French government than did many a Conscientious
Objector at the hands of the great and good American government;
or—since all great governments are _per se_ good and vice versa—than
did many a man in general who was cursed with a talent for thinking
during the warlike moments recently passed; during, that is to say, an
epoch when the g. and g. nations demanded of their respective peoples
the exact antithesis to thinking; said antitheses being vulgarly called
Belief. Lest which statement prejudice some members of the American
Legion in disfavour of the Machine-Fixer or rather of myself—awful
thought—I hasten to assure everyone that the Machine-Fixer was a highly
moral person. His morality was at times almost gruesome; as when he got
started on the inhabitants of the women’s quarters. Be it understood
that the Machine-Fixer was human, that he would take a letter—provided
he liked the sender—and deliver it to the sender’s _adorée_ without a
murmur. That was simply a good deed done for a friend; it did not imply
that he approved of the friend’s choice, which for strictly moral
reasons he invariably and to the friend’s very face violently
deprecated. To this little man of perhaps forty-five, with a devoted
wife waiting for him in Belgium (a wife whom he worshipped and loved
more than he worshipped and loved anything in the world, a wife whose
fidelity to her husband and whose trust and confidence in him echoed in
the letters which—when we three were alone—the little Machine-Fixer
tried always to read to us, never getting beyond the first sentence or
two before he broke down and sobbed from his feet to his eyes), to such
a little person his reaction to _les femmes_ was more than natural. It
was in fact inevitable.

Women, to him at least, were of two kinds and two kinds only. There
were _les femmes honnêtes_ and there were _les putains_. In La Ferté,
he informed us—and as _balayeur_ he ought to have known whereof he
spoke—there were as many as three ladies of the former variety. One of
them he talked with often. She told him her story. She was a Russian,
of a very fine education, living peacefully in Paris up to the time
that she wrote to her relatives a letter containing the following
treasonable sentiment:

“_Je m’ennuie pour les neiges de Russie._”

The letter had been read by the French censor, as had B.’s letter; and
her arrest and transference from her home in Paris to La Ferté Macé
promptly followed. She was as intelligent as she was virtuous and had
nothing to do with her frailer sisters, so the Machine-Fixer informed
us with a quickly passing flash of joy. Which sisters (his little
forehead knotted itself and his big bushy eyebrows plunged together
wrathfully) were wicked and indecent and utterly despicable disgraces
to their sex—and this relentless Joseph fiercely and jerkily related
how only the day before he had repulsed the painfully obvious
solicitations of a Madame Potiphar by turning his back, like a good
Christian, upon temptation and marching out of the room, broom tightly
clutched in virtuous hand.

“_M’sieu Jean_” (meaning myself) “_savez-vous_”—with a terrific gesture
which consisted in snapping his thumbnail between his teeth—“_CA PUE!_”

Then he added: “And what would my wife say to me if I came home to her
and presented her with that which this creature had presented to me?
They are animals,” cried the little Machine-Fixer; “all they want is a
man. They don’t care who he is; they want a man. But they won’t get
me!” And he warned us to beware.

Especially interesting, not to say valuable, was the Machine-Fixer’s
testimony concerning the more or less regular “inspections” (which were
held by the very same doctor who had “examined” me in the course of my
first day at La Ferté) for _les femmes_; presumably in the interest of
public safety. _Les femmes_, quoth the Machine-Fixer, who had been many
times an eye-witness of this proceeding, lined up talking and laughing
and—crime of crimes—smoking cigarettes, outside the bureau of M. le
Médecin Major. “_Une femme entre. Elle se lève les jupes jusqu’au
menton et se met sur le banc. Le médecin major la regarde. Il dit de
suite ‘Bon. C’est tout.’ Elle sort. Une autre entre. La même chose.
‘Bon. C’est fini’…. M’sieu’ Jean: prenez garde!_”

And he struck a match fiercely on the black, almost square boot which
lived on the end of his little worn trouser-leg, bending his small body
forward as he did so, and bringing the flame upward in a violent curve.
The flame settled on his little black pipe, his cheeks sucked until
they must have met, and a slow unwilling noise arose, and with the
return of his cheeks a small colorless wisp of possibly smoke came upon
the air.—“That’s not tobacco. Do you know what it is? It’s wood! And I
sit here smoking wood in my pipe when my wife is sick with worrying….
_M’sieu! Jean_”—leaning forward with jaw protruding and a oneness of
bristly eyebrows, “_Ces grands messieurs qui ne foutent pas mal si l’on
CREVE de faim, savez-vous ils croient chacun qu’il est Le Bon Dieu
LUI-Même. Et M’sieu’ Jean, savez-vous, ils sont tous_”—leaning right in
my face, the withered hand making a pitiful fist of itself—“_ils. Sont.
Des. CRAPULES!_”

And his ghastly and toylike wizened and minute arm would try to make a
pass at their lofty lives. O _gouvernement français_, I think it was
not very clever of you to put this terrible doll in La Ferté; I should
have left him in Belgium with his little doll-wife if I had been You;
for when governments are found dead there is always a little doll on
top of them, pulling and tweaking with his little hands to get back the
microscopic knife which sticks firmly in the quiet meat of their
hearts.

One day only did I see him happy or nearly happy—when a Belgian
baroness for some reason arrived, and was bowed and fed and wined by
the delightfully respectful and perfectly behaved Official Captors—“and
I know of her in Belgium, she is a great lady, she is very powerful and
she is generous; I fell on my knees before her, and implored her in the
name of my wife and _Le Bon Dieu_ to intercede in my behalf; and she
has made a note of it, and she told me she would write the Belgian King
and I will be free in a few weeks, FREE!”

The little Machine-Fixer, I happen to know, did finally leave La
Ferté—for Précigne.

… In the kitchen worked a very remarkable person. Who wore _sabots_.
And sang continuously in a very subdued way to himself as he stirred
the huge black kettles. We, that is to say, B. and I, became acquainted
with Afrique very gradually. You did not know Afrique suddenly. You
became cognisant of Afrique gradually. You were in the _cour_, staring
at ooze and dead trees, when a figure came striding from the kitchen
lifting its big wooden feet after it rhythmically, unwinding a
particoloured scarf from its waist as it came, and singing to itself in
a subdued manner a jocular, and I fear, unprintable ditty concerning
Paradise. The figure entered the little gate to the _cour_ in a
business-like way, unwinding continuously, and made stridingly for the
cabinet situated up against the stone wall which separated the
promenading sexes—dragging behind it on the ground a tail of
ever-increasing dimensions. The cabinet reached, tail and figure parted
company; the former fell inert to the limitless mud, the latter
disappeared into the contrivance with a Jack-in-the-box rapidity. From
which contrivance the continuing ditty

“_le paradis est une maison…._”

—Or again, it’s a lithe pausing poise, intensely intelligent, certainly
sensitive, delivering dryingly a series of sure and rapid hints that
penetrate the fabric of stupidity accurately and whisperingly; dealing
one after another brief and poignant instupidities, distinct and
uncompromising, crisp and altogether arrowlike. The poise has a
cigarette in its hand, which cigarette it has just pausingly rolled
from material furnished by a number of carefully saved butts (whereof
Afrique’s pockets are invariably full). Its neither old nor young, but
rather keen face hoards a pair of greyish-blue witty eyes, which face
and eyes are directed upon us through the open door of a little room.
Which little room is in the rear of the _cuisine_; a little room filled
with the inexpressibly clean and soft odour of newly cut wood. Which
wood we are pretending to split and pile for kindling. As a matter of
fact we are enjoying Afrique’s conversation, escaping from the bleak
and profoundly muddy _cour_, and (under the watchful auspices of the
Cook, who plays sentinel) drinking something approximating coffee with
something approximating sugar therein. All this because the Cook thinks
we’re boches and being the Cook and a boche _lui-même_ is consequently
peculiarly concerned for our welfare.

Afrique is talking about _les journaux_, and to what prodigious pains
they go to not tell the truth; or he is telling how a native stole up
on him in the night armed with a spear two metres long, once on a time
in a certain part of the world; or he is predicting that the Germans
will march upon the French by way of Switzerland; or he is teaching us
to count and swear in Arabic; or he is having a very good time in the
Midi as a tinker, sleeping under a tree outside of a little town….

Afrique’s is an alert kind of mind, which has been and seen and
observed and penetrated and known—a bit there, somewhat here, chiefly
everywhere. Its specialty being politics, in which case Afrique has had
the inestimable advantage of observing without being observed—until La
Ferté; whereupon Afrique goes on uninterruptedly observing, recognising
that a significant angle of observation has been presented to him
gratis. _Les journaux_ and politics in general are topics upon which
Afrique can say more, without the slightest fatigue, than a book as big
as my two thumbs.

“Why yes, they got water, and then I gave them coffee,” Monsieur, or
more properly Mynheer _le chef_, is expostulating; the _planton_ is
stupidly protesting that we are supposed to be upstairs; Afrique is
busily stirring a huge black pot, winking gravely at us and singing
softly

“_Le bon Dieu, Soûl comme un cochon…._”



VI.
APOLLYON


The inhabitants of The Enormous Room whose portraits I have attempted
in the preceding chapter, were, with one or two exceptions, inhabiting
at the time of my arrival. Now the thing which above all things made
death worth living and life worth dying at La Ferté Macé was the
kinetic aspect of that institution; the arrivals, singly or in groups,
of _nouveaux_ of sundry nationalities whereby our otherwise more or
less simple existence was happily complicated, our putrescent placidity
shaken by a fortunate violence. Before, however, undertaking this
aspect I shall attempt to represent for my own benefit as well as the
reader’s certain more obvious elements of that stasis which greeted the
candidates for disintegration upon their admittance to our select, not
to say distinguished, circle. Or: I shall describe, briefly, Apollyon
and the instruments of his power, which instruments are three in
number: Fear, Women and Sunday.

By Apollyon I mean a very definite fiend. A fiend who, secluded in the
sumptuous and luxurious privacy of his own personal _bureau_ (which as
a rule no one of lesser rank than the Surveillant was allowed, so far
as I might observe—and I observed—to enter) compelled to the
unimaginable meanness of his will by means of the three potent
instruments in question all within the sweating walls of La Ferté—that
was once upon a time human. I mean a very complete Apollyon, a Satan
whose word is dreadful not because it is painstakingly unjust, but
because it is incomprehensibly omnipotent. I mean, in short, Monsieur
le Directeur.

I shall discuss first of all Monsieur le Directeur’s most obvious
weapon.

Fear was instilled by three means into the erstwhile human entities
whose presence at La Ferté gave Apollyon his job. The three means were:
through his subordinates, who being one and all fearful of his power
directed their energies to but one end—the production in ourselves of a
similar emotion; through two forms of punishment, which supplied said
subordinates with a weapon over any of us who refused to find room for
this desolating emotion in his heart of hearts; and, finally, through
direct contact with his unutterable personality.

Beneath the Demon was the Surveillant. I have already described the
Surveillant. I wish to say, however, that in my opinion the Surveillant
was the most decent official at La Ferté. I pay him this tribute gladly
and honestly. To me, at least, he was kind: to the majority he was
inclined to be lenient. I honestly and gladly believe that the
Surveillant was incapable of that quality whose innateness, in the case
of his superior, rendered that gentleman a (to my mind) perfect
representative of the Almighty French Government: I believe that the
Surveillant did not enjoy being cruel, that he was not absolutely
without pity or understanding. As a personality I therefore pay him my
respects. I am myself incapable of caring whether, as a tool of the
Devil, he will find the bright firelight of Hell too warm for him or
no.

Beneath the Surveillant were the Secrétaire, Monsieur Richard, the
Cook, and the _plantons_. The first I have described sufficiently,
since he was an obedient and negative—albeit peculiarly responsible—cog
in the machine of decomposition. Of Monsieur Richard, whose portrait is
included in the account of my first day at La Ferté, I wish to say that
he had a very comfortable room of his own filled with primitive and
otherwise imposing medicines; the walls of this comfortable room being
beauteously adorned by some fifty magazine covers representing the
female form in every imaginable state of undress, said magazine-covers
being taken chiefly from such amorous periodicals as _Le Sourire_ and
that old stand-by of indecency, _La Vie Parisienne_. Also Monsieur
Richard kept a pot of geraniums upon his window-ledge, which haggard
and aged-looking symbol of joy he doubtless (in his spare moments)
peculiarly enjoyed watering. The Cook is by this time familiar to my
reader. I beg to say that I highly approve of The Cook; exclusive of
the fact that the coffee, which went up to The Enormous Room _tous les
matins_, was made every day with the same grounds plus a goodly
injection of checkerberry—for the simple reason that the Cook had to
supply our captors and especially Apollyon with real coffee, whereas
what he supplied to _les hommes_ made no difference. The same is true
of sugar: our morning coffee, in addition to being a water-thin, black,
muddy, stinking liquid, contained not the smallest suggestion of
sweetness, whereas the coffee which went to the officials—and the
coffee which B. and I drank in recompense for “catching water”—had all
the sugar you could possibly wish for. The poor Cook was fined one day
as a result of his economies, subsequent to a united action on the part
of the fellow-sufferers. It was a day when a gent immaculately dressed
appeared—after duly warning the Fiend that he was about to inspect the
Fiend’s ménage—an, I think, public official of Orne. Judas (at the time
_chef de chambre_) supported by the sole and unique indignation of all
his fellow-prisoners save two or three out of whom Fear had made
rabbits or moles, early carried the pail (which by common agreement not
one of us had touched that day) downstairs, along the hall, and up one
flight—where he encountered the Directeur, Surveillant and Handsome
Stranger all amicably and pleasantly conversing. Judas set the pail
down; bowed; and begged, as spokesman for the united male gender of La
Ferté Macé, that the quality of the coffee be examined. “We won’t any
of us drink it, begging your pardon, Messieurs,” he claims that he
said. What happened then is highly amusing. The _petit balayeur_, an
eye-witness of the proceeding, described it to me as follows:

“The Directeur roared ‘_COMMENT?_’ He was horribly angry. ‘_Oui,
Monsieur_,’ said the _maitre de chambre_ humbly—‘_Pourquoi?_’ thundered
the Directeur.—‘Because it’s undrinkable,’ the _maitre de chambre_ said
quietly.—‘Undrinkable? Nonsense!’ cried the Directeur furiously.—‘Be so
good as to taste it, Monsieur le Directeur.’—‘_I_ taste it? Why should
I taste it? The coffee is perfectly good, plenty good for you men. This
is ridiculous—’—‘Why don’t we all taste it?’ suggested the Surveillant
ingratiatingly.—‘Why, yes,’ said the Visitor mildly.—‘Taste it? Of
course not. This is ridiculous and I shall punish—’—‘I should like, if
you don’t mind, to try a little,’ the Visitor said.—‘Oh, well, of
course, if you like,’ the Directeur mildly agreed. ‘Give me a cup of
that coffee, you!’—‘With pleasure, sir,’ said the _maitre de chambre._
The Directeur—M’sieu’ Jean, you would have burst laughing—seized the
cup, lifted it to his lips, swallowed with a frightful expression (his
eyes almost popping out of his head) and cried fiercely, ‘DELICIOUS!’
The Surveillant took a cupful; sipped; tossed the coffee away, looking
as if he had been hit in the eyes, and remarked, ‘Ah.’ The _maitre de
chambre_—M’sieu’ Jean he is clever—scooped the third cupful from the
bottom of the pail, and very politely, with a big bow, handed it to the
Visitor; who took it, touched it to his lips, turned perfectly green,
and cried out ‘Impossible!’ M’sieu’ Jean, we all thought—the Directeur
and the Surveillant and the _maitre de chambre_ and myself—that he was
going to vomit. He leaned against the wall a moment, quite green; then
recovering said faintly—‘The Kitchen.’ The Directeur looked very
nervous and shouted, trembling all over, ‘Yes, indeed! We’ll see the
cook about this perfectly impossible coffee. I had no idea that my men
were getting such coffee. It’s abominable! That’s what it is, an
outrage!’—And they all tottered downstairs to The Cook; and M’sieu
Jean, they searched the kitchen; and what do you think? They found ten
pounds of coffee and twelve pounds of sugar all neatly hidden away,
that The Cook had been saving for himself out of our allowance. He’s a
beast, the Cook!”

I must say that, although the morning coffee improved enormously for as
much as a week, it descended afterwards to its original level of
excellence.

The Cook, I may add, officiated three times a week at a little table to
the left as you entered the dining-room. Here he stood, and threw at
everyone (as everyone entered) a hunk of the most extraordinary meat
which I have ever had the privilege of trying to masticate—it could not
be tasted. It was pale and leathery. B. and myself often gave ours away
in our hungriest moments; which statement sounds as if we were generous
to others, whereas the reason for these donations was that we couldn’t
eat, let alone stand the sight of this staple of diet. We had to do our
donating on the sly, since the _chef_ always gave us choice pieces and
we were anxious not to hurt the _chef’s_ feelings. There was a good
deal of spasmodic protestation _apropos la viande_, but the Cook always
bullied it down—nor was the meat his fault; since, from the miserable
carcases which I have often seen carried into the kitchen from without,
the Cook had to select something which would suit the meticulous
stomach of the Lord of Hell, as also the less meticulous digestive
organs of his minions; and it was only after every _planton_ had got a
piece of viande to his plantonic taste that the captives, female and
male, came in for consideration.

On the whole, I think I never envied the Cook his strange and
difficult, not to say gruesome, job. With the men en masse he was bound
to be unpopular. To the good-will of those above he was necessarily
more or less a slave. And on the whole, I liked the Cook very much, as
did B.—for the very good and sufficient reason that he liked us both.

About the _plantons_ I have something to say, something which it gives
me huge pleasure to say. I have to say, about the _plantons_, that as a
bunch they struck me at the time and will always impress me as the next
to the lowest species of human organism; the lowest, in my experienced
estimation, being the _gendarme_ proper. The _plantons_ were, with one
exception—he of the black holster with whom I collided on the first
day—changed from time to time. Again with this one exception, they were
(as I have noted) apparently disabled men who were enjoying a vacation
from the trenches in the lovely environs of Orne. Nearly all of them
were witless. Every one of them had something the matter with him
physically as well. For instance, one _planton_ had a large wooden
hand. Another was possessed of a long unmanageable left leg made, as
nearly as I could discover, of tin. A third had a huge glass eye.

These peculiarities of physique, however, did not inhibit the
_plantons_ from certain essential and normal desires. On the contrary.
The _plantons_ probably realised that, in competition with the male
world at large, their glass legs and tin hands and wooden eyes would
not stand a Chinaman’s chance of winning the affection and admiration
of the fair sex. At any rate they were always on the alert for
opportunities to triumph over the admiration and affection of _les
femmes_ at La Ferté, where their success was not endangered by
competition. They had the bulge on everybody; and they used what bulge
they had to such good advantage that one of them, during my stay, was
pursued with a revolver by their sergeant, captured, locked up and
shipped off for court-martial on the charge of disobedience and
threatening the life of a superior officer. He had been caught with the
goods—that is to say, in the girl’s _cabinot_—by said superior: an
incapable, strutting, undersized, bepimpled person in a bright uniform
who spent his time assuming the poses of a general for the benefit of
the ladies; of his admiration for whom and his intentions toward whom
he made no secret. By all means one of the most disagreeable petty
bullies whom I ever beheld. This arrest of a _planton_ was, so long as
I inhabited La Ferté, the only case in which abuse of the weaker sex
was punished. That attempts at abuse were frequent I know from
allusions and direct statements made in the letters which passed by way
of the sweeper from the girls to their captive admirers. I might say
that the senders of these letters, whom I shall attempt to portray
presently, have my unmitigated and unqualified admiration. By all odds
they possessed the most terrible vitality and bravery of any human
beings, women or men, whom it has ever been my extraordinary luck to
encounter, or ever will be (I am absolutely sure) in this world.

The duties of the _plantons_ were those simple and obvious duties which
only very stupid persons can perfectly fulfill, namely: to take turns
guarding the building and its inhabitants; not to accept bribes,
whether in the form of matches, cigarettes or conversation, from their
prisoners; to accompany anyone who went anywhere outside the walls (as
did occasionally the _balayeurs_, to transport baggage; the men who did
_corvée_; and the catchers of water for the cook, who proceeded as far
as the hydrant situated on the outskirts of the town—a momentous
distance of perhaps five hundred feet); and finally to obey any and all
orders from all and any superiors without thinking. _Plantons_ were
supposed—but only supposed—to report any schemes for escaping which
they might overhear during their watch upon _les femmes et les hommes
en promenade_. Of course they never overheard any, since the least
intelligent of the watched was a paragon of wisdom by comparison with
the watchers. B. and I had a little ditty about _plantons_, of which I
can quote (unfortunately) only the first line and refrain:

“A _planton_ loved a lady once
      (Cabbages and cauliflowers!)”


It was a very fine song. In concluding my remarks upon _plantons_ I
must, in justice to my subject, mention the three prime plantonic
virtues—they were (1) beauty, as regards face and person and bearing,
(2) chivalry, as regards women, (3) heroism, as regards males.

The somewhat unique and amusing appearance of the _plantons_ rather
militated against than served to inculcate Fear—it was therefore not
wonderful that they and the desired emotion were supported by two
strictly enforced punishments, punishments which were meted out with
equal and unflinching severity to both sexes alike. The less
undesirable punishment was known as _pain sec_—which Fritz, shortly
after my arrival, got for smashing a window-pane by accident; and which
Harree and Pom Pom, the incorrigibles, were getting most of the time.
This punishment consisted in denying to the culprit all nutriment save
two stone-hard morsels of dry bread per diem. The culprit’s intimate
friends, of course, made a point of eating only a portion of their own
morsels of soft, heavy, sour bread (we got two a day, with each
_soupe_) and presenting the culprit with the rest. The common method of
getting _pain sec_ was also a simple one—it was for a man to wave,
shout or make other signs audible or visual to an inhabitant of the
women’s quarters; and, for a girl, to be seen at her window by the
Directeur at any time during the morning and afternoon promenades of
the men. The punishment for sending a letter to a girl might possibly
be _pain sec_, but was more often—I pronounce the word even now with a
sinking of the heart, though curiously enough I escaped that for which
it stands— _cabinot_.

There were (as already mentioned) a number of _cabinots_, sometimes
referred to as _cachots_ by persons of linguistic propensities. To
repeat myself a little: at least three were situated on the ground
floor; and these were used whenever possible in preference to the one
or ones upstairs, for the reason that they were naturally more damp and
chill and dark and altogether more dismal and unhealthy. Dampness and
cold were considerably increased by the substitution, for a floor, of
two or three planks resting here and there in mud. I am now describing
what my eyes saw, not what was shown to the inspectors on their rare
visits to the Directeur’s little shop for making criminals. I know what
these occasional visitors beheld, because it, too, I have seen with my
own eyes: seen the two _balayeurs_ staggering downstairs with a bed
(consisting of a high iron frame, a huge mattress of delicious
thickness, spotless sheets, warm blankets, and a sort of quilt neatly
folded over all); seen this bed placed by the panting sweepers in the
thoroughly cleaned and otherwise immaculate _cabinot_ at the foot of
the stairs and opposite the kitchen, the well-scrubbed door being left
wide open. I saw this done as I was going to dinner. While the men were
upstairs recovering from _la soupe_, the gentleman-inspectors were
invited downstairs to look at a specimen of the Directeur’s kindness—a
kindness which he could not restrain even in the case of those who were
guilty of some terrible wrong. (The little Belgian with the Broken Arm,
alias the Machine-Fixer, missed not a word nor a gesture of all this;
and described the scene to me with an indignation which threatened his
sanity.) Then, while _les hommes_ were in the _cour_ for the afternoon,
the sweepers were rushed to The Enormous Room, which they cleaned to
beat the band with the fear of Hell in them; after which, the Directeur
led his amiable guests leisurely upstairs and showed them the way the
men kept their quarters; kept them without dictation on the part of the
officials, so fond were they of what was to them one and all more than
a delightful temporary residence—was in fact a home. From The Enormous
Room the procession wended a gentle way to the women’s quarters
(scrubbed and swept in anticipation of their arrival) and so departed;
conscious—no doubt—that in the Directeur France had found a rare
specimen of whole-hearted and efficient generosity.

Upon being sentenced to _cabinot_, whether for writing an intercepted
letter, fighting, threatening a _planton_, or committing some minor
offense for the _n_th time, a man took one blanket from his bed,
carried it downstairs to the _cachot_, and disappeared therein for a
night or many days and nights as the case might be. Before entering he
was thoroughly searched and temporarily deprived of the contents of his
pockets, whatever they might include. It was made certain that he had
no cigarettes nor tobacco in any other form upon his person, and no
matches. The door was locked behind him and double and triple locked—to
judge by the sound—by a _planton_, usually the Black Holster, who on
such occasions produced a ring of enormous keys suggestive of a
burlesque jailer. Within the stone walls of his dungeon (into which a
beam of light no bigger than a ten-cent piece, and in some cases no
light at all, penetrated) the culprit could shout and scream his or her
heart out if he or she liked, without serious annoyance to His Majesty
King Satan. I wonder how many times, en route to _la soupe_ or The
Enormous Room or promenade, I have heard the unearthly smouldering
laughter of girls or of men entombed within the drooling greenish walls
of La Ferté Macé. A dozen times, I suppose, I have seen a friend of the
entombed stoop adroitly and shove a cigarette or a piece of chocolate
under the door, to the girls or the men or the girl or man screaming,
shouting, and pommeling faintly behind that very door—but, you would
say by the sound, a good part of a mile away…. Ah well, more of this
later, when we come to _les femmes_ on their own account.

The third method employed to throw Fear into the minds of his captives
lay, as I have said, in the sight of the Captor Himself. And this was
by far the most efficient method.

He loved to suddenly dash upon the girls when they were carrying their
slops along the hall and downstairs, as (in common with the men) they
had to do at least twice every morning and twice every afternoon. The
_corvée_ of girls and men were of course arranged so as not to
coincide; yet somehow or other they managed to coincide on the average
about once a week, or if not coincide, at any rate approach
coincidence. On such occasions, as often as not under the _planton’s_
very stupid nose, a kiss or an embrace would be stolen—provocative of
much fierce laughter and some scurrying. Or else, while the moneyed
captives (including B. and Cummings) were waiting their turn to enter
the bureau de M. le Gestionnaire, or even were ascending the stairs
with a _planton_ behind them, en route to Mecca, along the hall would
come five or six women staggering and carrying huge pails full to the
brim of everyone knew what; five or six heads lowered, ill-dressed
bodies tense with effort, free arms rigidly extended from the shoulder
downward and outward in a plane at right angles to their difficult
progress and thereby helping to balance the disconcerting load—all
embarrassed, some humiliated, others desperately at ease—along they
would come under the steady sensual gaze of the men, under a gaze which
seemed to eat them alive … and then one of them would laugh with the
laughter which is neither pitiful nor terrible, but horrible….

And BANG! would a door fly open, and ROAR! a well-dressed animal about
five feet six inches in height, with prominent cuffs and a sportive
tie, the altogether decently and neatly clothed thick-built figure
squirming from top to toe with anger, the large head trembling and
white-faced beneath a flourishing mane of coarse blackish bristly
perhaps hair, the arm crooked at the elbow and shaking a huge fist of
pinkish well-manicured flesh, the distinct, cruel, brightish eyes
sprouting from their sockets under bushily enormous black eyebrows, the
big, weak, coarse mouth extended almost from ear to ear, and spouting
invective, the soggily brutal lips clinched upward and backward,
showing the huge horse-like teeth to the froth-shot gums—

And I saw once a little girl eleven years old scream in terror and drop
her pail of slops, spilling most of it on her feet; and seize it in a
clutch of frail child’s fingers, and stagger, sobbing and shaking, past
the Fiend—one hand held over her contorted face to shield her from the
Awful Thing of Things—to the head of the stairs, where she collapsed,
and was half-carried, half-dragged by one of the older ones to the
floor below while another older one picked up her pail and lugged this
and her own hurriedly downward.

And after the last head had disappeared, Monsieur le Directeur
continued to rave and shake and tremble for as much as ten seconds, his
shoebrush mane crinkling with black anger—then, turning suddenly upon
_les hommes_ (who cowered up against the wall as men cower up against a
material thing in the presence of the supernatural) he roared and shook
his pinkish fist at us till the gold stud in his immaculate cuff walked
out upon the wad of clenching flesh:

“AND YOU—TAKE CARE—IF I CATCH YOU WITH THE WOMEN AGAIN I’LL STICK YOU
IN CABINOT FOR TWO WEEKS, ALL—ALL OF YOU—”

for as much as half a minute; then turning his round-shouldered big
back suddenly he adjusted his cuffs, muttering PROSTITUTES and WHORES
and DIRTY FILTH OF WOMEN, crammed his big fists into his trousers,
pulled in his chin till his fattish jowl rippled along the square jaws,
panted, grunted, very completely satisfied, very contented, rather
proud of himself, took a strutting stride or two in his expensive shiny
boots, and shot all at once through the open door which he SLAMMED
after him.

Apropos the particular incident described for purposes of illustration,
I wish to state that I believe in miracles: the miracle being that I
did not knock the spit-covered mouthful of teeth and jabbering brutish
outthrust jowl (which certainly were not farther than eighteen inches
from me) through the bullneck bulging in its spotless collar. For there
are times when one almost decides not to merely observe … besides
which, never in my life before had I wanted to kill, to thoroughly
extinguish and to entirely murder. Perhaps … some day…. Unto God I hope
so.

Amen.

Now I will try to give the reader a glimpse of the Women of La Ferté
Macé.

The little Machine-Fixer as I said in the preceding chapter, divided
them into Good and Bad. He said there were as much as three Good ones,
of which three he had talked to one and knew her story. Another of the
three Good Women obviously was Margherite—a big, strong female who did
washing, and who was a permanent resident because she had been careless
enough to be born of German parents. I think I spoke with number three
on the day I waited to be examined by the Commission—a Belgian girl,
whom I shall mention later along with that incident. Whereat, by
process of elimination, we arrive at _les putains_, whereof God may
know how many there were at La Ferté, but I certainly do not. To _les
putains_ in general I have already made my deep and sincere bow. I
should like to speak here of four individuals. They are Celina, Lena,
Lily, Renée.

Celina Tek was an extraordinarily beautiful animal. Her firm girl’s
body emanated a supreme vitality. It was neither tall nor short, its
movements nor graceful nor awkward. It came and went with a certain
sexual velocity, a velocity whose health and vigour made everyone in La
Ferté seem puny and old. Her deep sensual voice had a coarse richness.
Her face, dark and young, annihilated easily the ancient and greyish
walls. Her wonderful hair was shockingly black. Her perfect teeth, when
she smiled, reminded you of an animal. The cult of Isis never
worshipped a more deep luxurious smile. This face, framed in the night
of its hair, seemed (as it moved at the window overlooking the _cour
des femmes_) inexorably and colossally young. The body was absolutely
and fearlessly alive. In the impeccable and altogether admirable
desolation of La Ferté and the Normandy Autumn Celina, easily and
fiercely moving, was a kinesis.

The French Government must have already recognized this; it called her
incorrigible.

Lena, also a Belgian, always and fortunately just missed being a type
which in the American language (sometimes called “Slang”) has a
definite nomenclature. Lena had the makings of an ordinary broad, and
yet, thanks to _La Misère_, a certain indubitable personality became
gradually rescued. A tall hard face about which was loosely pitched
some hay-coloured hair. Strenuous and mutilated hands. A loose, raucous
way of laughing, which contrasted well with Celina’s definite gurgling
titter. Energy rather than vitality. A certain power and roughness
about her laughter. She never smiled. She laughed loudly and obscenely
and always. A woman.

Lily was a German girl, who looked unbelievably old, wore white, or
once white dresses, had a sort of drawling scream in her throat besides
a thick deadly cough, and floundered leanly under the eyes of men. Upon
the skinny neck of Lily a face had been set for all the world to look
upon and be afraid. The face itself was made of flesh green and almost
putrescent. In each cheek a bloody spot. Which was not rouge, but the
flower which consumption plants in the cheek of its favourite. A face
vulgar and vast and heavy-featured, about which a smile was always
flopping uselessly. Occasionally Lily grinned, showing several
monstrously decayed and perfectly yellow teeth, which teeth usually
were smoking a cigarette. Her bluish hands were very interestingly
dead; the fingers were nervous, they lived in cringing bags of freckled
skin, they might almost be alive.

She was perhaps eighteen years old.

Renée, the fourth member of the circle, was always well-dressed and
somehow _chic_. Her silhouette had character, from the waved coiffure
to the enormously high heels. Had Renée been able to restrain a
perfectly toothless smile she might possibly have passed for a _jeune
gonzesse_. She was not. The smile was ample and black. You saw through
it into the back of her neck. You felt as if her life was in danger
when she smiled, as it probably was. Her skin was not particularly
tired. But Renée was old, older than Lena by several years; perhaps
twenty-five. Also about Renée there was a certain dangerous fragility,
the fragility of unhealth. And yet Renée was hard, immeasurably hard.
And accurate. Her exact movements were the movements of a mechanism.
Including her voice, which had a purely mechanical timbre. She could do
two things with this voice and two only—screech and boom. At times she
tried to chuckle and almost fell apart. Renée was in fact dead. In
looking at her for the first time, I realised that there may be
something stylish about death.

This first time was interesting in the extreme. It was Lily’s birthday.
We looked out of the windows which composed one side of the otherwise
windowless Enormous Room; looked down, and saw—just outside the wall of
the building—Celina, Lena, Lily and a new girl who was Renée. They were
all individually intoxicated, Celina was joyously tight. Renée was
stiffly bunnied. Lena was raucously pickled. Lily, floundering and
staggering and tumbling and whirling was utterly soused. She was all
tricked out in an erstwhile dainty dress, white, and with ribbons.
Celina (as always) wore black. Lena had on a rather heavy striped
sweater and skirt. Renée was immaculate in tight-fitting satin or
something of the sort; she seemed to have somehow escaped from a doll’s
house overnight. About the group were a number of _plantons_, roaring
with laughter, teasing, insulting, encouraging, from time to time
attempting to embrace the ladies. Celina gave one of them a terrific
box on the ear. The mirth of the others was redoubled. Lily spun about
and fell down, moaning and coughing, and screaming about her fiancée in
Belgium: what a handsome young fellow he was, how he had promised to
marry her… shouts of enjoyment from the _plantons_. Lena had to sit
down or else fall down, so she sat down with a good deal of dignity,
her back against the wall, and in that position attempted to execute a
kind of dance. _Les Plantons_ rocked and applauded. Celina smiled
beautifully at the men who were staring from every window of The
Enormous Room and, with a supreme effort, went over and dragged Renée
(who had neatly and accurately folded up with machine-like rapidity in
the mud) through the doorway and into the house. Eventually Lena
followed her example, capturing Lily en route. The scene must have
consumed all of twenty minutes. The _plantons_ were so mirth-stricken
that they had to sit down and rest under the washing-shed. Of all the
inhabitants of The Enormous Room, Fritz and Harree and Pom Pom and
Bathhouse John enjoyed it most. I should include Jan, whose chin nearly
rested on the window-sill with the little body belonging to it
fluttering in an ugly interested way all the time. That Bathhouse
John’s interest was largely cynical is evidenced by the remarks which
he threw out between spittings—“_Une section mesdames!_” “_A la gare!_”
“_Aux armes tout le monde!_” etc. With the exception of these
enthusiastic watchers, the other captives evidenced vague
amusement—excepting Count Bragard who said with lofty disgust that it
was “no better than a bloody knocking ’ouse, Mr. Cummings” and Monsieur
Pet-airs whose annoyance amounted to agony. Of course these twain were,
comparatively speaking, old men….

The four female incorrigibles encountered less difficulty in attaining
_cabinot_ than any four specimens of incorrigibility among _les
hommes_. Not only were they placed in dungeon vile with a frequency
which amounted to continuity; their sentences were far more severe than
those handed out to the men. Up to the time of my little visit to La
Ferté I had innocently supposed that in referring to women as “the
weaker sex” a man was strictly within his rights. La Ferté, if it did
nothing else for my intelligence, rid it of this overpowering error. I
recall, for example, a period of sixteen days and nights spent (during
my stay) by the woman Lena in the _cabinot_. It was either toward the
latter part of October or the early part of November that this
occurred, I will not be sure which. The dampness of the Autumn was as
terrible, under normal conditions—that is to say in The Enormous
Room—as any climatic eccentricity which I have ever experienced. We had
a wood-burning stove in the middle of the room, which antiquated
apparatus was kept going all day to the vast discomfort of eyes and
noses not to mention throats and lungs—the pungent smoke filling the
room with an atmosphere next to unbreathable, but tolerated for the
simple reason that it stood between ourselves and death. For even with
the stove going full blast the wall never ceased to sweat and even
trickle, so overpowering was the dampness. By night the chill was to
myself—fortunately bedded at least eighteen inches from the floor and
sleeping in my clothes; bed-roll, blankets, and all, under and over me
and around me—not merely perceptible but desolating. Once my bed broke,
and I spent the night perforce on the floor with only my mattress under
me; to awake finally in the whitish dawn perfectly helpless with
rheumatism. Yet with the exception of my bed and B.’s bed and a wooden
bunk which belonged to Bathhouse John, every _paillasse_ lay directly
on the floor; moreover the men who slept thus were three-quarters of
them miserably clad, nor had they anything beyond their light-weight
blankets—whereas I had a complete outfit including a big fur coat,
which I had taken with me (as previously described) from the _Section
Sanitaire_. The morning after my night spent on the floor I pondered,
having nothing to do and being unable to move, upon the subject of my
physical endurance—wondering just how the men about me, many of them
beyond middle age, some extremely delicate, in all not more than five
or six as rugged constitutionally as myself, lived through the nights
in The Enormous Room. Also I recollected glancing through an open door
into the women’s quarters, at the risk of being noticed by the
_planton_ in whose charge I was at the time (who, fortunately, was
stupid even for a _planton_, else I should have been well punished for
my curiosity) and beholding _paillasses_ identical in all respects with
ours reposing on the floor; and I thought, if it is marvellous that old
men and sick men can stand this and not die, it is certainly miraculous
that girls of eleven and fifteen, and the baby which I saw once being
caressed out in the women’s _cour_ with unspeakable gentleness by a
little _putain_ whose name I do not know, and the dozen or so oldish
females whom I have often seen on promenade—can stand this and not die.
These things I mention not to excite the reader’s pity nor yet his
indignation; I mention them because I do not know of any other way to
indicate—it is no more than indicating—the significance of the torture
perpetrated under the Directeur’s direction in the case of the girl
Lena. If incidentally it throws light on the personality of the
torturer I shall be gratified.

Lena’s confinement in the _cabinot_—which dungeon I have already
attempted to describe but to whose filth and slime no words can begin
to do justice—was in this case solitary. Once a day, of an afternoon
and always at the time when all the men were upstairs after the second
promenade (which gave the writer of this history an exquisite chance to
see an atrocity at first-hand), Lena was taken out of the _cabinot_ by
three _plantons_ and permitted a half-hour promenade just outside the
door of the building, or in the same locality—delimited by barbed wire
on one side and the washing-shed on another—made famous by the scene of
inebriety above described. Punctually at the expiration of thirty
minutes she was shoved back into the _cabinot_ by the _plantons_. Every
day for sixteen days I saw her; noted the indestructible bravado of her
gait and carriage, the unchanging timbre of her terrible laughter in
response to the salutation of an inhabitant of The Enormous Room (for
there were at least six men who spoke to her daily, and took their
_pain sec_ and their _cabinot_ in punishment therefor with the pride of
a soldier who takes the _medaille militaire_ in recompense for his
valour); noted the increasing pallor of her flesh, watched the skin
gradually assume a distinct greenish tint (a greenishness which I
cannot describe save that it suggested putrefaction); heard the
coughing to which she had always been subject grow thicker and deeper
till it doubled her up every few minutes, creasing her body as you
crease a piece of paper with your thumb-nail, preparatory to tearing it
in two—and I realised fully and irrevocably and for perhaps the first
time the meaning of civilization. And I realised that it was true—as I
had previously only suspected it to be true—that in finding us unworthy
of helping to carry forward the banner of progress, alias the
tricolour, the inimitable and excellent French government was
conferring upon B. and myself—albeit with other intent—the ultimate
compliment.

And the Machine-Fixer, whose opinion of this blond _putain_ grew and
increased and soared with every day of her martyrdom till the
Machine-Fixer’s former classification of _les femmes_ exploded and
disappeared entirely—the Machine-Fixer who would have fallen on his
little knees to Lena had she given him a chance, and kissed the hem of
her striped skirt in an ecstasy of adoration—told me that Lena on being
finally released, walked upstairs herself, holding hard to the banister
without a look for anyone, “having eyes as big as tea-cups.” He added,
with tears in his own eyes:

“M’sieu’ Jean, a woman.”

I recall perfectly being in the kitchen one day, hiding from the
eagle-eye of the Black Holster and enjoying a talk on the economic
consequences of war, said talk being delivered by Afrique. As a matter
of fact, I was not in the _cuisine_ proper but in the little room which
I have mentioned previously. The door into the kitchen was shut. The
sweetly soft odour of newly cut wood was around me. And all the time
that Afrique was talking I heard clearly, through the shut door and
through the kitchen wall and through the locked door of the _cabinot_
situated directly across the hall from _la cuisine_, the insane gasping
voice of a girl singing and yelling and screeching and laughing.
Finally I interrupted my speaker to ask what on earth was the matter in
the _cabinot?_—“_C’est la femme allemande qui s’appelle Lily_,” Afrique
briefly answered. A little later BANG went the _cabinot_ door, and ROAR
went the familiar coarse voice of the Directeur. “It disturbs him, the
noise,” Afrique said. The _cabinot_ door slammed. There was silence.
Heavily steps ascended. Then the song began again, a little more insane
than before; the laughter a little wilder…. “You can’t stop her,”
Afrique said admiringly. “A great voice Mademoiselle has, eh? So, as I
was saying, the national debt being conditioned—”

But the experience _à propos les femmes_, which meant and will always
mean more to me than any other, the scene which is a little more
unbelievable than perhaps any scene that it has ever been my privilege
to witness, the incident which (possibly more than any other) revealed
to me those unspeakable foundations upon which are builded with
infinite care such at once ornate and comfortable structures as _La
Gloire and Le Patriotisme_—occurred in this wise.

The men, myself among them, were leaving _le cour_ for The Enormous
Room under the watchful eye (as always) of a _planton_. As we defiled
through the little gate in the barbed-wire fence we heard, apparently
just outside the building whither we were proceeding on our way to The
Great Upstairs, a tremendous sound of mingled screams, curses and
crashings. The _planton_ of the day was not only stupid—he was a little
deaf; to his ears this hideous racket had not, as nearly as one could
see, penetrated. At all events he marched us along toward the door with
utmost plantonic satisfaction and composure. I managed to insert myself
in the fore of the procession, being eager to witness the scene within;
and reached the door almost simultaneously with Fritz, Harree and two
or three others. I forget which of us opened it. I will never forget
what I saw as I crossed the threshold.

The hall was filled with stifling smoke; the smoke which straw makes
when it is set on fire, a peculiarly nauseous choking, whitish-blue
smoke. This smoke was so dense that only after some moments could I
make out, with bleeding eyes and wounded lungs, anything whatever. What
I saw was this: five or six _plantons_ were engaged in carrying out of
the nearest _cabinot_ two girls, who looked perfectly dead. Their
bodies were absolutely limp. Their hands dragged foolishly along the
floor as they were carried. Their upward white faces dangled loosely
upon their necks. Their crumpled fingers sagged in the _planton’s_
arms. I recognised Lily and Renée. Lena I made out at a little distance
tottering against the door of the kitchen opposite the _cabinot_, her
hay-coloured head drooping and swaying slowly upon the open breast of
her shirt-waist, her legs far apart and propping with difficulty her
hinging body, her hands spasmodically searching for the knob of the
door. The smoke proceeded from the open _cabinot_ in great ponderous
murdering clouds. In one of these clouds, erect and tense and beautiful
as an angel—her wildly shouting face framed in its huge night of
dishevelled hair, her deep sexual voice, hoarsely strident above the
din and smoke, shouting fiercely through the darkness—stood,
triumphantly and colossally young, Celina. Facing her, its clenched,
pinkish fists raised high above its savagely bristling head in a big,
brutal gesture of impotence and rage and anguish—the Fiend Himself
paused quivering. Through the smoke, the great bright voice of Celina
rose at him, hoarse and rich and sudden and intensely luxurious, quick,
throaty, accurate, slaying deepness:

_CHIEZ, SI VOUS VOULEZ, CHIEZ,_

and over and beneath and around the voice I saw frightened faces of
women hanging in the smoke, some screaming with their lips apart and
their eyes closed, some staring with wide eyes; and among the women’s
faces I discovered the large, placid, interested expression of the
Gestionnaire and the nervous clicking eyes of the Surveillant. And
there was a shout—it was the Black Holster shouting at us as we stood
transfixed—

“Who the devil brought the men in here? Get up with you where you
belong, you….”

—And he made a rush at us, and we dodged in the smoke and passed slowly
up the hall, looking behind us, speechless to a man with the admiration
of Terror till we reached the further flight of stairs; and mounted
slowly, with the din falling below us, ringing in our ears, beating
upon our brains—mounted slowly with quickened blood and pale faces—to
the peace of The Enormous Room.

I spoke with both _balayeurs_ that night. They told me, independently,
the same story: the four incorrigibles had been locked in the _cabinot
ensemble_. They made so much noise, particularly Lily, that the
_plantons_ were afraid the Directeur would be disturbed. Accordingly
the _plantons_ got together and stuffed the contents of a _paillasse_
in the cracks around the door, and particularly in the crack under the
door wherein cigarettes were commonly inserted by friends of the
entombed. This process made the _cabinot_ air-tight. But the _plantons_
were not taking any chances on disturbing Monsieur le Directeur. They
carefully lighted the _paillasse_ at a number of points and stood back
to see the results of their efforts. So soon as the smoke found its way
inward the singing was supplanted by coughing; then the coughing
stopped. Then nothing was heard. Then Celina began crying out
within—“Open the door, Lily and Renée are dead”—and the _plantons_ were
frightened. After some debate they decided to open the door—out poured
the smoke, and in it Celina, whose voice in a fraction of a second
roused everyone in the building. The Black Holster wrestled with her
and tried to knock her down by a blow on the mouth; but she escaped,
bleeding a little, to the foot of the stairs—simultaneously with the
advent of the Directeur who for once had found someone beyond the power
of his weapon, Fear, someone in contact with whose indescribable Youth
the puny threats of death withered between his lips, someone finally
completely and unutterably Alive whom the Lie upon his slavering tongue
could not kill.

I do not need to say that, as soon as the girls who had fainted could
be brought to, they joined Lena in _pain sec_ for many days to come;
and that Celina was overpowered by six _plantons_—at the order of
Monsieur le Directeur—and reincarcerated in the _cabinot_ adjoining
that from which she had made her velocitous exit—reincarcerated without
food for twenty-four hours. “_Mais, M’sieu’ Jean_,” the Machine-Fixer
said trembling, “_Vous savez elle est forte._ She gave the six of them
a fight, I tell you. And three of them went to the doctor as a result
of their efforts, including _le vieux_ (The Black Holster). But of
course they succeeded in beating her up, six men upon one woman. She
was beaten badly, I tell you, before she gave in. _M’sieu’ Jean, ils
sont tous—les plantons et le Directeur Lui-Même et le Surveillant et le
Gestionnaire et tous—ils sont des—_” and he said very nicely what they
were, and lit his little black pipe with a crisp curving upward
gesture, and shook like a blade of grass.

With which specimen of purely mediaeval torture I leave the subject of
Women, and embark upon the quieter if no less enlightening subject of
Sunday.

Sunday, it will be recalled, was Monsieur le Directeur’s third weapon.
That is to say: lest the ordinarily tantalising proximity of _les
femmes_ should not inspire _les hommes_ to deeds which placed the doers
automatically in the clutches of himself, his subordinates, and _la
punition_, it was arranged that once a week the tantalising proximity
aforesaid should be supplanted by a positively maddening approach to
coincidence. Or in other words, the men and the women for an hour or
less might enjoy the same exceedingly small room; for purposes of
course of devotion—it being obvious to Monsieur le Directeur that the
representatives of both sexes at La Ferté Macé were inherently of a
strongly devotional nature. And lest the temptation to err in such
moments be deprived, through a certain aspect of compulsion, of its
complete force, the attendance of such strictly devotional services was
made optional.

The uplifting services to which I refer took place in that very room
which (the night of my arrival) had yielded me my _paillasse_ under the
Surveillant’s direction. It may have been thirty feet long and twenty
wide. At one end was an altar at the top of several wooden stairs, with
a large candle on each side. To the right as you entered a number of
benches were placed to accommodate _les femmes_. _Les hommes_ upon
entering took off their caps and stood over against the left wall so as
to leave between them and the women an alley perhaps five feet wide. In
this alley stood the Black Holster with his _kepi_ firmly resting upon
his head, his arms folded, his eyes spying to left and right in order
to intercept any signals exchanged between the sheep and goats. Those
who elected to enjoy spiritual things left the _cour_ and their morning
promenade after about an hour of promenading, while the materially
minded remained to finish the promenade; or if one declined the
promenade entirely (as frequently occurred owing to the fact that
weather conditions on Sunday were invariably more indescribable than
usual) a _planton_ mounted to The Enormous Room and shouted, “_La
Messe!_” several times; whereat the devotees lined up and were
carefully conducted to the scene of spiritual operations.

The priest was changed every week. His assistant (whom I had the
indescribable pleasure of seeing only upon Sundays) was always the
same. It was his function to pick the priest up when he fell down after
tripping upon his robe, to hand him things before he wanted them, to
ring a huge bell, to interrupt the peculiarly divine portions of the
service with a squeaking of his shoes, to gaze about from time to time
upon the worshippers for purposes of intimidation, and finally—most
important of all—to blow out the two big candles at the very earliest
opportunity, in the interests (doubtless) of economy. As he was a
short, fattish, ancient, strangely soggy creature and as his longish
black suit was somewhat too big for him, he executed a series of
profound efforts in extinguishing the candles. In fact he had to climb
part way up the candles before he could get at the flame; at which
moment he looked very much like a weakly and fat boy (for he was
obviously in his second or fourth childhood) climbing a flag-pole. At
moments of leisure he abased his fatty whitish jowl and contemplated
with watery eyes the floor in front of his highly polished boots,
having first placed his ugly clubby hands together behind his most
ample back.

Sunday: green murmurs in coldness. Surplice fiercely fearful, praying
on his bony both knees, crossing himself…. The Fake French Soldier,
alias Garibaldi, beside him, a little face filled with terror … the
Bell cranks the sharp-nosed priest on his knees … titter from bench of
whores—

And that reminds me of a Sunday afternoon on our backs spent with the
wholeness of a hill in Chevancourt, discovering a great apple pie, B.
and Jean Stahl and Maurice le Menusier and myself; and the sun falling
roundly before us.

—And then one _Dimanche_ a new high old man with a sharp violet face
and green hair—“You are free, my children, to achieve immortality—
_Songes, songez, donc—L’Eternité est une existence sans durée——Toujours
le Paradis, toujours L’Enfer_” (to the silently roaring whores) “Heaven
is made for you”—and the Belgian ten-foot farmer spat three times and
wiped them with his foot, his nose dripping; and the nigger shot a
white oyster into a far-off scarlet handkerchief—and the priest’s
strings came untied and he sidled crablike down the steps—the two
candles wiggle a strenuous softness….

In another chapter I will tell you about the nigger.

And another Sunday I saw three tiny old females stumble forward, three
very formerly and even once bonnets perched upon three wizened skulls,
and flop clumsily before the priest, and take the wafer hungrily into
their leathery faces.



VII.
AN APPROACH TO THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS


“Sunday (says Mr. Pound with infinite penetration) is a dreadful day,
Monday is much pleasanter.
Then let us muse a little space
Upon fond Nature’s morbid grace.”


It is a great and distinct pleasure to have penetrated and arrived upon
the outside of _La Dimanche_. We may now—Nature’s morbid grace being a
topic whereof the reader has already heard much and will necessarily
hear more—turn to the “much pleasanter,” the in fact “Monday,” aspect
of La Ferté; by which I mean _les nouveaux_ whose arrivals and
reactions constituted the actual kinetic aspect of our otherwise merely
real Nonexistence. So let us tighten our belts, (everyone used to
tighten his belt at least twice a day at La Ferté, but for another
reason—to follow and keep track of his surely shrinking anatomy) seize
our staffs into our hands, and continue the ascent begun with the first
pages of the story.

One day I found myself expecting _La Soupe_ Number 1 with something
like avidity. My appetite faded, however, upon perceiving a vision en
route to the empty place at my left. It slightly resembled a tall youth
not more than sixteen or seventeen years old, having flaxen hair, a
face whose whiteness I have never seen equalled, and an expression of
intense starvation which might have been well enough in a human being
but was somewhat unnecessarily uncanny in a ghost. The ghost, floating
and slenderly, made for the place beside me, seated himself suddenly
and gently like a morsel of white wind, and regarded the wall before
him. _La soupe_ arrived. He obtained a plate (after some protest on the
part of certain members of our table to whom the advent of a newcomer
meant only that everyone would get less for lunch), and after gazing at
his portion for a second in apparent wonderment at its size caused it
gently and suddenly to disappear. I was no sluggard as a rule, but
found myself outclassed by minutes—which, said I to myself, is not to
be worried over since ’tis sheer vanity to compete with the
supernatural. But (even as I lugged the last spoonful of luke-warm
greasy water to my lips) this ghost turned to me for all the world as
if I too were a ghost, and remarked softly:

“Will you lend me ten cents? I am going to buy tobacco at the canteen.”

One has no business crossing a spirit, I thought; and produced the sum
cheerfully—which sum disappeared, the ghost arose slenderly and
soundlessly, and I was left with emptiness beside me.

Later I discovered that this ghost was called Pete.

Pete was a Hollander, and therefore found firm and staunch friends in
Harree, John o’ the Bathhouse and the other Hollanders. In three days
Pete discarded the immateriality which had constituted the exquisite
definiteness of his advent, and donned the garb of flesh-and-blood.
This change was due equally to _La Soupe_ and the canteen, and to the
finding of friends. For Pete had been in solitary confinement for three
months and had had nothing to eat but bread and water during that time,
having been told by the jailors (as he informed us, without a trace of
bitterness) that they would shorten his sentence provided he did not
partake of _La Soupe_ during his incarceration—that is to say, _le
gouvernement français_ had a little joke at Pete’s expense. Also he had
known nobody during that time but the five fingers which deposited said
bread and water with conscientious regularity on the ground beside him.
Being a Hollander neither of these things killed him—on the contrary,
he merely turned into a ghost, thereby fooling the excellent French
Government within an inch of its foolable life. He was a very excellent
friend of ours—I refer as usual to B. and myself—and from the day of
his arrival until the day of his departure to Précigne along with B.
and three others I never ceased to like and to admire him. He was
naturally sensitive, extremely the antithesis of coarse (which
“refined” somehow does not imply) had not in the least suffered from a
“good,” as we say, education, and possessed an at once frank and
unobstreperous personality. Very little that had happened to Pete’s
physique had escaped Pete’s mind. This mind of his quietly and firmly
had expanded in proportion as its owner’s trousers had become too big
around the waist—altogether not so extraordinary as was the fact that,
after being physically transformed as I have never seen a human being
transformed by food and friends, Pete thought and acted with exactly
the same quietness and firmness as before. He was a rare spirit, and I
salute him wherever he is.

Mexique was a good friend of Pete’s, as he was of ours. He had been
introduced to us by a man we called One Eyed David, who was married and
had a wife downstairs, with which wife he was allowed to live all
day—being conducted to and from her society by a _planton_. He spoke
Spanish well and French passably; had black hair, bright Jewish eyes, a
dead-fish expression, and a both amiable and courteous disposition. One
Eyed Dah-veed (as it was pronounced of course) had been in prison at
Noyon during the German occupation, which he described fully and
without hyperbole—stating that no one could have been more considerate
or just than the commander of the invading troops. Dah-veed had seen
with his own eyes a French girl extend an apple to one of the common
soldiers as the German army entered the outskirts of the city: “‘Take
it,’ she said, ‘you are tired.’—‘Madame,’ answered the German soldier
in French, ‘thank you’—and he looked in his pocket and found ten cents.
‘No, no,’ the young girl said. ‘I don’t want any money. I give it to
you with good will.’—‘Pardon, madame,’ said the soldier, ‘you must know
that a German soldier is forbidden to take anything without paying for
it.’”—And before that, One Eyed Dah-veed had talked at Noyon with a
barber whose brother was an aviator with the French Army: “‘My
brother,’ the barber said to me, ‘told me a beautiful story the other
day. He was flying over the lines, and he was amazed, one day, to see
that the French guns were not firing on the boches but on the French
themselves. He landed precipitously, sprang from his machine and ran to
the office of the general. He saluted, and cried in great excitement:
“General, you are firing on the French!” The general regarded him
without interest, without budging; then, he said, very simply: “They
have begun, they must finish.” “Which is why perhaps,” said One Eyed
Dah-veed, looking two ways at once with his uncorrelated eyes, “the
Germans entered Noyon….” But to return to Mexique.

One night we had a _soirée_, as Dah-veed called it, _à propos_ a pot of
hot tea which Dah-veed’s wife had given him to take upstairs, it being
damnably damp and cold (as usual) in The Enormous Room. Dah-veed,
cautiously and in a low voice, invited us to his mattress to enjoy this
extraordinary pleasure; and we accepted, B. and I, with huge joy; and
sitting on Dah-veed’s _paillasse_ we found somebody who turned out to
be Mexique—to whom, by his right name, our host introduced us with all
the poise and courtesy vulgarly associated with a French salon.

For Mexique I cherish and always will cherish unmitigated affection. He
was perhaps nineteen years old, very chubby, extremely good-natured;
and possessed of an unruffled disposition which extended to the most
violent and obvious discomforts a subtle and placid illumination. He
spoke beautiful Spanish, had been born in Mexico, and was really called
Philippe Burgos. He had been in New York. He criticised someone for
saying “Yes” to us, one day, stating that no American said “Yes” but
“Yuh”; which—whatever the reader may think—is to my mind a very
profound observation. In New York he had worked nights as a fireman in
some big building or other and slept days, and this method of seeing
America he had enjoyed extremely. Mexique had one day taken ship (being
curious to see the world) and worked as chauffeur—that is to say in the
stoke-hole. He had landed in, I think, Havre; had missed his ship; had
inquired something of a _gendarme_ in French (which he spoke not at
all, with the exception of a phrase or two like “_quelle heure qu’il
est?_”); had been kindly treated and told that he would be taken to a
ship _de suite_—had boarded a train in the company of two or three kind
_gendarmes_, ridden a prodigious distance, got off the train finally
with high hopes, walked a little distance, come in sight of the grey
perspiring wall of La Ferté, and—“So, I ask one of them: ‘Where is the
Ship?’ He point to here and tell me, ‘There is the ship.’ I say: ‘This
is a God Dam Funny Ship’”—quoth Mexique, laughing.

Mexique played dominoes with us (B. having devised a set from
card-board), strolled The Enormous Room with us, telling of his father
and brother in Mexico, of the people, of the customs; and—when we were
in the _cour_—wrote the entire conjugation of _tengo_ in the deep mud
with a little stick, squatting and chuckling and explaining. He and his
brother had both participated in the revolution which made Carranza
president. His description of which affair was utterly delightful.

“Every-body run a-round with guns” Mexique said. “And bye-and-bye no
see to shoot everybody, so everybody go home.” We asked if he had shot
anybody himself. “Sure. I shoot everybody I do’no” Mexique answered
laughing. “I t’ink every-body no hit me” he added, regarding his stocky
person with great and quiet amusement. When we asked him once what he
thought about the war, he replied, “I t’ink lotta bull—,” which, upon
copious reflection, I decided absolutely expressed my own point of
view.

Mexique was generous, incapable of either stupidity or despondency, and
mannered as a gentleman is supposed to be. Upon his arrival he wrote
almost immediately to the Mexican (or is it Spanish?) consul—“He know
my fader in Mexico”—stating in perfect and unambiguous Spanish the
facts leading to his arrest; and when I said good-bye to _La Misère_
Mexique was expecting a favorable reply at any moment, as indeed he had
been cheerfully expecting for some time. If he reads this history I
hope he will not be too angry with me for whatever injustice it does to
one of the altogether pleasantest companions I have ever had. My
notebooks, one in particular, are covered with conjugations which bear
witness to Mexique’s ineffable good-nature. I also have a somewhat
superficial portrait of his back sitting on a bench by the stove. I
wish I had another of Mexique out in _le jardin_ with a man who worked
there who was a Spaniard, and whom the Surveillant had considerately
allowed Mexique to assist; with the perfectly correct idea that it
would be pleasant for Mexique to talk to someone who could speak
Spanish—if not as well as he, Mexique, could, at least passably well.
As it is, I must be content to see my very good friend sitting with his
hands in his pockets by the stove with Bill the Hollander beside him.
And I hope it was not many days after my departure that Mexique went
free. Somehow I feel that he went free … and if I am right, I will only
say about Mexique’s freedom what I have heard him slowly and placidly
say many times concerning not only the troubles which were common
property to us all but his own peculiar troubles as well.

“That’s fine.”

Here let me introduce the Guard Champêtre, whose name I have already
taken more or less in vain. A little, sharp, hungry-looking person who,
subsequent to being a member of a rural police force (of which
membership he seemed rather proud), had served his _patrie_—otherwise
known as _La Belgique_—in the capacity of motorcyclist. As he carried
dispatches from one end of the line to the other his disagreeably big
eyes had absorbed certain peculiarly inspiring details of civilised
warfare. He had, at one time, seen a bridge hastily constructed by _les
alliés_ over the Yser River, the cadavers of the faithful and the enemy
alike being thrown in helter-skelter to make a much needed foundation
for the timbers. This little procedure had considerably outraged the
Guard Champêtre’s sense of decency. The Yser, said he, flowed perfectly
red for a long time. “We were all together: Belgians, French, English …
we Belgians did not see any good reason for continuing the battle. But
we continued. O indeed we continued. Do you know why?”

I said that I was afraid I didn’t.

“Because in front of us we had the German shells, behind, the French
machine guns, always the French machine guns, _mon vieux_.”

“_Je ne comprends pas bien_” I said in confusion, recalling all the
highfalutin rigmarole which Americans believed—(little martyred Belgium
protected by the allies from the inroads of the aggressor, etc.)—“why
should the French put machine guns behind you?”

The Guard Champêtre lifted his big empty eyes nervously. The vast
hollows in which they lived darkened. His little rather hard face
trembled within itself. I thought for a second he was going to throw a
fit at my feet—instead of doing which he replied pettishly, in a sunken
bright whisper:

“To keep us going forward. At times a company would drop its guns and
turn to run. Pupupupupupupupup …” his short unlovely arms described
gently the swinging of a _mitrailleuse_… “finish. The Belgian soldiers
to left and right of them took the hint. If they did
not—pupupupupupup…. O we went forward. Yes. _Vive le patriotisme._”

And he rose with a gesture which seemed to brush away these painful
trifles from his memory, crossed the end of the room with short rapid
steps, and began talking to his best friend Judas, who was at that
moment engaged in training his wobbly mustachios…. Toward the close of
my visit to La Ferté the Guard Champêtre was really happy for a period
of two days—during which time he moved in the society of a rich,
intelligent, mistakenly arrested and completely disagreeable youth in
bone spectacles, copious hair and spiral putees, whom B. and I
partially contented ourselves by naming Jo Jo The Lion Faced Boy. Had
the charges against Jo Jo been stronger my tale would have been
longer—fortunately for _tout le monde_ they had no basis; and back went
Jo Jo to his native Paris, leaving the Guard Champêtre with Judas and
attacks of only occasionally interesting despair.

The reader may suppose that it is about time another Delectable
Mountain appeared upon his horizon. Let him keep his eyes wide open,
for here one comes….

Whenever our circle was about to be increased, a bell from somewhere
afar (as a matter of fact the gate which had admitted my weary self to
La Ferté upon a memorable night, as already has been faithfully
recounted) tanged audibly—whereat up jumped the more strenuous
inhabitants of The Enormous Room and made pell-mell for the common
peephole, situated at the door end or nearer end of our habitat and
commanding a somewhat fragmentary view of the gate together with the
arrivals, male and female, whom the bell announced. In one particular
case the watchers appeared almost unduly excited, shouting “four!”—“big
box”—“five _gendarmes_!” and other incoherences with a loudness which
predicted great things. As nearly always, I had declined to participate
in the mêlée; and was still lying comfortably horizontal on my bed
(thanking God that it had been well and thoroughly mended by a fellow
prisoner whom we called The Frog and Le Coiffeur—a tremendously
keen-eyed man with a large drooping moustache, whose boon companion,
chiefly on account of his shape and gait, we knew as The Lobster) when
the usual noises attendant upon the unlocking of the door began with
exceptional violence. I sat up. The door shot open, there was a
moment’s pause, a series of grunting remarks uttered by two rather
terrible voices; then in came four _nouveaux_ of a decidedly
interesting appearance. They entered in two ranks of two each. The
front rank was made up of an immensely broad shouldered hipless and
consequently triangular man in blue trousers belted with a piece of
ordinary rope, plus a thick-set ruffianly personage the most prominent
part of whose accoutrements were a pair of hideous whiskers. I leaped
to my feet and made for the door, thrilled in spite of myself. By the,
in this case, shifty blue eyes, the pallid hair, the well-knit form of
the rope’s owner I knew instantly a Hollander. By the coarse brutal
features half-hidden in the piratical whiskers, as well as by the heavy
mean wandering eyes, I recognised with equal speed a Belgian. Upon his
shoulders the front rank bore a large box, blackish, well-made,
obviously very weighty, which box it set down with a grunt of relief
hard by the cabinet. The rear rank marched behind in a somewhat
asymmetrical manner: a young, stupid-looking, clear-complexioned fellow
(obviously a farmer, and having expensive black puttees and a handsome
cap with a shiny black leather visor) slightly preceded a tall,
gliding, thinnish, unjudgeable personage who peeped at everyone quietly
and solemnly from beneath the visor of a somewhat large slovenly cloth
cap showing portions of a lean, long, incognisable face upon which sat,
or rather drooped, a pair of mustachios identical in character with
those which are sometimes pictorially attributed to a Chinese
dignitary—in other words, the mustachios were exquisitely narrow,
homogeneously downward, and made of something like black corn-silk.
Behind _les nouveaux_ staggered four _paillasses_ motivated
mysteriously by two pair of small legs belonging (as it proved) to
Garibaldi and the little Machine-Fixer; who, coincident with the
tumbling of the mattresses to the floor, perspiringly emerged to sight.

The first thing the shifty-eyed Hollander did was to exclaim
_Gottverdummer_. The first thing the whiskery Belgian did was to grab
his _paillasse_ and stand guard over it. The first thing the youth in
the leggings did was to stare helplessly about him, murmuring something
whimperingly in Polish. The first thing the fourth _nouveau_ did was
pay no attention to anybody; lighting a cigarette in an unhurried
manner as he did so, and puffing silently and slowly as if in all the
universe nothing whatever save the taste of tobacco existed.

A bevy of Hollanders were by this time about the triangle, asking him
all at once Was he from so and so, What was in his box. How long had he
been in coming, etc. Half a dozen stooped over the box itself, and at
least three pairs of hands were on the point of trying the lock—when
suddenly with incredible agility the unperturbed smoker shot a yard
forward, landing quietly beside them; and exclaimed rapidly and briefly
through his nose.

“_Mang._”

He said it almost petulantly, or as a child says “Tag! You’re it.”

The onlookers recoiled, completely surprised. Whereat the frightened
youth in black puttees sidled over and explained with a pathetic, at
once ingratiating and patronising, accent:

“He is not nasty. He’s a good fellow. He’s my friend. He wants to say
that it’s his, that box. He doesn’t speak French.”

“It’s the _Gottverdummer_ Polak’s box,” said the Triangular Man
exploding in Dutch. “They’re a pair of Polakers; and this man” (with a
twist of his pale-blue eyes in the direction of the Bewhiskered One)
“and I had to carry it all the _Gottverdummer_ way to this
_Gottverdummer_ place.”

All this time the incognizable _nouveau_ was smoking slowly and calmly,
and looking at nothing at all with his black buttonlike eyes. Upon his
face no faintest suggestion of expression could be discovered by the
hungry minds which focussed unanimously upon its almost stern contours.
The deep furrows in the cardboardlike cheeks (furrows which resembled
slightly the gills of some extraordinary fish, some unbreathing fish)
moved not an atom. The moustache drooped in something like mechanical
tranquillity. The lips closed occasionally with a gesture at once
abstracted and sensitive upon the lightly and carefully held cigarette;
whose curling smoke accentuated the poise of the head, at once alert
and uninterested.

Monsieur Auguste broke in, speaking, as I thought, Russian—and in an
instant he and the youth in puttees and the Unknowable’s cigarette and
the box and the Unknowable had disappeared through the crowd in the
direction of Monsieur Auguste’s _paillasse_, which was also the
direction of the _paillasse_ belonging to the Cordonnier as he was
sometimes called—a diminutive man with immense mustachios of his own
who promenaded with Monsieur Auguste, speaking sometimes French but, as
a general rule, Russian or Polish.

Which was my first glimpse, and is the reader’s, of the Zulu; he being
one of the Delectable Mountains. For which reason I shall have more to
say of him later, when I ascend the Delectable Mountains in a separate
chapter or chapters; till when the reader must be content with the
above, however unsatisfactory description….

One of the most utterly repulsive personages whom I have met in my
life—perhaps (and on second thought I think certainly) the most utterly
repulsive—was shortly after this presented to our midst by the
considerate French government. I refer to The Fighting Sheeney. Whether
or no he arrived after the Spanish Whoremaster I cannot say. I remember
that Bill the Hollander—which was the name of the triangular
rope-belted man with shifty blue eyes (co- _arrivé_ with the whiskey
Belgian; which Belgian, by the way, from his not to be exaggerated
brutal look, B. and myself called The Baby-snatcher)—upon his arrival
told great tales of a Spanish millionaire with whom he had been in
prison just previous to his discovery of La Ferté. “He’ll be here too
in a couple o’ days,” added Bill the Hollander, who had been fourteen
years in These United States, spoke the language to a T, talked about
“The America Lakes,” and was otherwise amazingly well acquainted with
The Land of The Free. And sure enough, in less than a week one of the
fattest men whom I have ever laid eyes on, over-dressed, much beringed
and otherwise wealthy-looking, arrived—and was immediately played up to
by Judas (who could smell cash almost as far as _le gouvernement
français_ could smell sedition) and, to my somewhat surprise, by the
utterly respectable Count Bragard. But most emphatically NOT by
Mexique, who spent a half-hour talking to the _nouveau_ in his own
tongue, then drifted placidly over to our beds and informed us:

“You see dat feller over dere, dat fat feller? I speak Spanish to him.
He no good. Tell me he make fifty thousand franc last year runnin’
whorehouse in” (I think it was) “Brest. Son of bitch!”

“Dat fat feller” lived in a perfectly huge bed which he contrived to
have brought up for him immediately upon his arrival. The bed arrived
in a knock-down state and with it a mechanician from _la ville_, who
set about putting it together, meanwhile indulging in many glances
expressive not merely of interest but of amazement and even fear. I
suppose the bed had to be of a special size in order to accommodate the
circular millionaire and being an extraordinary bed required the
services of a skilled artisan—at all events, “dat fat feller’s” couch
put the Skipper’s altogether in the shade. As I watched the process of
construction it occurred to me that after all here was the last word in
luxury—to call forth from the metropolis not only a special divan but
with it a special slave, the Slave of the Bed…. “Dat fat feller” had
one of the prisoners perform his _corvée_ for him. “Dat fat feller”
bought enough at the canteen twice every day to stock a transatlantic
liner for seven voyages, and never ate with the prisoners. I will
mention him again à propos the Mecca of respectability, the Great White
Throne of purity, Three rings Three—alias Count Bragard, to whom I have
long since introduced my reader.

So we come, willy-nilly, to The Fighting Sheeney.

The Fighting Sheeney arrived carrying the expensive suitcase of a
livid, strangely unpleasant-looking Roumanian gent, who wore a knit
sweater of a strangely ugly red hue, impeccable clothes, and an
immaculate velour hat which must have been worth easily fifty francs.
We called this gent Rockyfeller. His personality might be faintly
indicated by the adjective Disagreeable. The porter was a creature whom
Ugly does not even slightly describe. There are some specimens of
humanity in whose presence one instantly and instinctively feels a
profound revulsion, a revulsion which—perhaps because it is
profound—cannot be analysed. The Fighting Sheeney was one of these
specimens. His face (or to use the good American idiom, his mug) was
exceedingly coarse-featured and had an indefatigable expression of
sheer brutality—yet the impression which it gave could not be traced to
any particular plane or line. I can and will say, however, that this
face was most hideous—perhaps that is the word—when it grinned. When
The Fighting Sheeney grinned you felt that he desired to eat you, and
was prevented from eating you only by a superior desire to eat
everybody at once. He and Rockyfeller came to us from, I think it was,
the Santé; both accompanied B. to Précigne. During the weeks which The
Fighting Sheeney spent at La Ferté Macé, the non-existence of the
inhabitants of The Enormous Room was rendered something more than
miserable. It was rendered well-nigh unbearable.

The night Rockyfeller and his slave arrived was a night to be
remembered by everyone. It was one of the wildest and strangest and
most perfectly interesting nights I, for one, ever spent. Rockyfeller
had been corralled by Judas, and was enjoying a special bed to our
right at the upper end of The Enormous Room. At the canteen he had
purchased a large number of candles in addition to a great assortment
of dainties which he and Judas were busily enjoying—when the _planton_
came up, counted us twice, divided by three, gave the order “_Lumières
éteintes_,” and descended, locking the door behind him. Everyone
composed himself for miserable sleep. Everyone except Judas, who went
on talking to Rockyfeller, and Rockyfeller, who proceeded to light one
of his candles and begin a pleasant and conversational evening. The
Fighting Sheeney lay stark-naked on a _paillasse_ between me and his
lord. The Fighting Sheeney told everyone that to sleep stark-naked was
to avoid bugs (whereof everybody, including myself, had a goodly
portion). The Fighting Sheeney was, however, quieted by the _planton’s_
order; whereas Rockyfeller continued to talk and munch to his heart’s
content. This began to get on everybody’s nerves. Protests in a number
of languages arose from all parts of The Enormous Room. Rockyfeller
gave a contemptuous look around him and proceeded with his
conversation. A curse emanated from the darkness. Up sprang The
Fighting Sheeney, stark naked; strode over to the bed of the curser,
and demanded ferociously:

“_Boxe? Vous!_”

The curser was apparently fast asleep, and even snoring. The Fighting
Sheeney turned away disappointed, and had just reached his _paillasse_
when he was greeted by a number of uproariously discourteous remarks
uttered in all sorts of tongues. Over he rushed, threatened, received
no response, and turned back to his place. Once more ten or twelve
voices insulted him from the darkness. Once more The Fighting Sheeney
made for them, only to find sleeping innocents. Again he tried to go to
bed. Again the shouts arose, this time with redoubled violence and in
greatly increased number. The Fighting Sheeney was at his wits’ end. He
strode about challenging everyone to fight, receiving not the slightest
recognition, cursing, reviling, threatening, bullying. The darkness
always waited for him to resume his mattress, then burst out in all
sorts of maledictions upon his head and the sacred head of his lord and
master. The latter was told to put out his candle, go to sleep and give
the rest a chance to enjoy what pleasure they might in forgetfulness of
their woes. Whereupon he appealed to The Sheeney to stop this. The
Sheeney (almost weeping) said he had done his best, that everyone was a
pig, that nobody would fight, that it was disgusting. Roars of
applause. Protests from the less strenuous members of our circle
against the noise in general: Let him have his _foutue_ candle, Shut
up, Go to sleep yourself, etc. Rockyfeller kept on talking (albeit
visibly annoyed by the ill-breeding of his fellow-captives) to the
smooth and oily Judas. The noise, or rather noises, increased. I was
for some reason angry at Rockyfeller—I think I had a curious notion
that if I couldn’t have a light after “_lumières éteintes_” and if my
very good friends were none of them allowed to have one, then, by God!
neither should Rockyfeller. At any rate, I passed a few remarks
calculated to wither the by this time a little nervous Übermensch; got
up, put on some enormous _sabots_ (which I had purchased from a horrid
little boy whom the French Government had arrested with his parent, for
some cause unknown—which horrid little boy told me that he had “found”
the _sabots_”in a train” on the way to La Ferté) shook myself into my
fur coat, and banged as noisemakingly as I knew how over to One Eyed
Dah-veed’s _paillasse_, where Mexique joined us. “It is useless to
sleep,” said One Eyed Dah-veed in French and Spanish. “True,” I agreed;
“therefore, let’s make all the noise we can.”

Steadily the racket bulged in the darkness. Human cries, quips and
profanity had now given place to wholly inspired imitations of various,
not to say sundry, animals. Afrique exclaimed—with great pleasure I
recognised his voice through the impenetrable gloom:

“Agahagahagahagahagah!”

—“perhaps,” said I, “he means a machine gun; it sounds like either that
or a monkey.” The Wanderer crowed beautifully. Monsieur Auguste’s bosom
friend, _le Cordonnier_, uttered an astonishing:

“Meeee-ooooooOW!”

which provoked a tornado of laughter and some applause. Mooings,
chirpings, cacklings—there was a superb hen—neighings, he-hawing,
roarings, bleatings, growlings, quackings, peepings, screamings,
bellowings, and—something else, of course—set The Enormous Room
suddenly and entirely alive. Never have I imagined such a menagerie as
had magically instated itself within the erstwhile soggy and dismal
four walls of our chamber. Even such staid characters as Count Bragard
set up a little bawling. Monsieur Pet-airs uttered a tiny aged crowing
to my immense astonishment and delight. The dying, the sick, the
ancient, the mutilated, made their contributions to the common
pandemonium. And then, from the lower left darkness, sprouted one of
the very finest noises which ever fell on human ears—the noise of a
little dog with floppy ears who was tearing after something on very
short legs and carrying his very fuzzy tail straight up in the air as
he tore; a little dog who was busier than he was wise, louder than he
was big; a red-tongued, foolish breathless, intent little dog with
black eyes and a great smile and woolly paws—which noise, conceived and
executed by The Lobster, sent The Enormous Room into an absolute and
incurable hysteria.

The Fighting Sheeney was at a standstill. He knew not how to turn. At
last he decided to join with the insurgents, and wailed brutally and
dismally. That was the last straw: Rockyfeller, who could no longer
(even by shouting to Judas) make himself heard, gave up conversation
and gazed angrily about him; angrily yet fearfully, as if he expected
some of these numerous bears, lions, tigers and baboons to leap upon
him from the darkness. His livid super-disagreeable face trembled with
the flickering cadence of the candle. His lean lips clenched with
mortification and wrath. “_Vous êtes chef de chambre_,” he said
fiercely to Judas—“why don’t you make the men stop this? _C’est
emmerdant._” “Ah,” replied Judas smoothly and insinuatingly—“They are
only men, and boors at that; you can’t expect them to have any
manners.” A tremendous group of Something Elses greeted this remark
together with cries, insults, groans and linguistic trumpetings. I got
up and walked the length of the room to the cabinet (situated as always
by this time of night in a pool which was in certain places six inches
deep, from which pool my _sabots_ somewhat protected me) and returned,
making as loud a clattering as I was able. Suddenly the voice of
Monsieur Auguste leaped through the din in an

“_Alors! c’est as-sez._”

The next thing we knew he had reached the window just below the cabinet
(the only window, by the way, not nailed up with good long wire nails
for the sake of warmth) and was shouting in a wild, high, gentle, angry
voice to the sentinel below:

“_Plan-ton!_ It is impos-si-ble to sleep!”

A great cry: “Yes! I am coming!” floated up—every single noise
dropped—Rockyfeller shot out his hand for the candle, seized it in
terror, blew it out as if blowing it out were the last thing he would
do in this life—and The Enormous Room hung silent; enormously dark,
enormously expectant….

BANG! Open the door. “_Alors, qui, m’appelle? Qu’est-ce qu’on a foutu
ici._” And the Black Holster, revolver in hand, flashed his torch into
the inky stillness of the chamber. Behind him stood two _plantons_
white with fear; their trembling hands clutching revolvers, the barrels
of which shook ludicrously.

“_C’est moi, plan-ton!_” Monsieur Auguste explained that no one could
sleep because of the noise, and that the noise was because “_ce
monsieur là_” would not extinguish his candle when everyone wanted to
sleep. The Black Holster turned to the room at large and roared: “You
children of _Merde_ don’t let this happen again or I’ll fix you every
one of you.”—Then he asked if anyone wanted to dispute this assertion
(he brandishing his revolver the while) and was answered by peaceful
snorings. Then he said by X Y and Z he’d fix the noisemakers in the
morning and fix them good—and looked for approbation to his trembling
assistants. Then he swore twenty or thirty times for luck, turned, and
thundered out on the heels of his fleeing _confrères_ who almost
tripped over each other in their haste to escape from The Enormous
Room. Never have I seen a greater exhibition of bravery than was
afforded by The Black Holster, revolver in hand, holding at bay the
snoring and weaponless inhabitants of The Enormous Room. _Vive les
plantons._ He should have been a _gendarme_.

Of course Rockyfeller, having copiously tipped the officials of La
Ferté upon his arrival, received no slightest censure nor any hint of
punishment for his deliberate breaking of an established rule—a rule
for the breaking of which anyone of the common scum (e.g., thank God,
myself) would have got _cabinot de suite_. No indeed. Several of _les
hommes_, however, got _pain sec_—not because they had been caught in an
act of vociferous protestation by the Black Holster, which they had
not—but just on principle, as a warning to the rest of us and to teach
us a wholesome respect for (one must assume) law and order. One and
all, they heartily agreed that it was worth it. Everyone knew, of
course, that the Spy had peached. For, by Jove, even in The Enormous
Room there was a man who earned certain privileges and acquired a
complete immunity from punishment by squealing on his fellow-sufferers
at each and every opportunity. A really ugly person, with a hard
knuckling face and treacherous hands, whose daughter lived downstairs
in a separate room apart from _les putains_ (against which “dirty,”
“filthy,” “whores” he could not say enough—“Hi’d rather die than ’ave
my daughter with them stinkin’ ’ores,” remarked once to me this
strictly moral man, in Cockney English) and whose daughter (aged
thirteen) was generally supposed to serve in a pleasurable capacity.
One did not need to be warned against the Spy (as both B. and I were
warned, upon our arrival)—a single look at that phiz was enough for
anyone partially either intelligent or sensitive. This phiz or mug had,
then, squealed. Which everyone took as a matter of course and admitted
among themselves that hanging was too good for him.

But the vast and unutterable success achieved by the _Menagerie_ was
this—Rockyfeller, shortly after, left our ill-bred society for
“_l’hôpital_”; the very same “hospital” whose comforts and seclusion
Monsieur le Surveillant had so dextrously recommended to B. and myself.
Rockyfeller kept The Fighting Sheeney in his way, in order to defend
him when he went on promenade; otherwise our connection with him was
definitely severed, his new companions being Muskowitz the Cock-eyed
Millionaire, and The Belgian Song Writer—who told everyone to whom he
spoke that he was a government official (“_de la blague_” cried the
little Machine-Fixer, “_c’est un menteur!_” Adding that he knew of this
person in Belgium and that this person was a man who wrote popular
ditties). Would to Heaven we had got rid of the slave as well as the
master—but unfortunately The Fighting Sheeney couldn’t afford to follow
his lord’s example. So he went on making a nuisance of himself, trying
hard to curry favour with B. and me, getting into fights and bullying
everyone generally.

Also this lion-hearted personage spent one whole night shrieking and
moaning on his _paillasse_ after an injection by Monsieur Richard—for
syphilis. Two or three men were, in the course of a few days,
discovered to have had syphilis for some time. They had it in their
mouths. I don’t remember them particularly, except that at least one
was a Belgian. Of course they and The Fighting Sheeney had been using
the common dipper and drink pail. _Le gouvernement français_ couldn’t
be expected to look out for a little thing like venereal disease among
prisoners: didn’t it have enough to do curing those soldiers who spent
their time on permission trying their best to infect themselves with
both gonorrhea and syphilis? Let not the reader suppose I am
day-dreaming: let him rather recall that I had had the honour of being
a member of Section Sanitaire Vingt-et-Un, which helped evacuate the
venereal hospital at Ham, with whose inhabitants (in odd moments) I
talked and walked and learned several things about _la guerre_. Let the
reader—if he does not realise it already—realise that This Great War
for Humanity, etc., did not agree with some people’s ideas, and that
some people’s ideas made them prefer to the glories of the front line
the torments (I have heard my friends at Ham screaming a score of
times) attendant upon venereal diseases. Or as one of my aforesaid
friends told me—after discovering that I was, in contrast to _les
américains_, not bent upon making France discover America but rather
upon discovering France and _les français_ myself:

“_Mon vieux_, it’s quite simple. I go on leave. I ask to go to Paris,
because there are prostitutes there who are totally diseased. I catch
syphilis, and, when possible gonorrhea also. I come back. I leave for
the front line. I am sick. The hospital. The doctor tells me: you must
not smoke or drink, then you will be cured quickly. ‘Thanks, doctor!’ I
drink all the time and I smoke all the time and I do not get well. I
stay five, six, seven weeks. Perhaps a few months. At last, I am well.
I rejoin my regiment. And now it is my turn to go on leave. I go. Again
the same thing. It’s very pretty, you know.”

But about the syphilitics at La Ferté: they were, somewhat tardily to
be sure, segregated in a very small and dirty room—for a matter of,
perhaps, two weeks. And the Surveillant actually saw to it that during
this period they ate _la soupe_ out of individual china bowls.

I scarcely know whether The Fighting Sheeney made more of a nuisance of
himself during his decumbiture or during the period which followed
it—which period houses an astonishing number of fights, rows,
bullyings, etc. He must have had a light case for he was cured in no
time, and on everyone’s back as usual. Well, I will leave him for the
nonce; in fact, I will leave him until I come to The Young Pole, who
wore black puttees and spoke of The Zulu as “_mon ami_”—the Young Pole
whose troubles I will recount in connection with the second Delectable
Mountain Itself. I will leave the Sheeney with the observation that he
was almost as vain as he was vicious; for with what ostentation, one
day when we were in the kitchen, did he show me a post-card received
that afternoon from Paris, whereon I read “Comme vous êtes beau” and
promises to send more money as fast as she earned it and, hoping that
he had enjoyed her last present, the signature (in a big, adoring hand)

“_Ta môme. Alice._”

and when I had read it—sticking his map up into my face, The Fighting
Sheeney said with emphasis:

“_No travailler moi. Femme travaille, fait la noce, tout le temps.
Toujours avec officiers anglais. Gagne beaucoup, cent francs, deux cent
francs, trois cent francs, toutes les nuits. Anglais riches. Femme me
donne tout. Moi no travailler. Bon, eh?_”

Grateful for this little piece of information, and with his leer an
inch from my chin, I answered slowly and calmly that it certainly was.
I might add that he spoke Spanish by preference (according to Mexique
very bad Spanish); for The Fighting Sheeney had made his home for a
number of years in Rio, and his opinion thereof may be loosely
translated by the expressive phrase, “it’s a swell town.”

A charming fellow, The Fighting Sheeney.

Now I must tell you what happened to the poor Spanish Whoremaster. I
have already noted the fact that Count Bragard conceived an immediate
fondness for this rolypoly individual, whose belly—as he lay upon his
back of a morning in bed—rose up with the sheets, blankets and quilts
as much as two feet above the level of his small, stupid head studded
with chins. I have said that this admiration on the part of the
admirable Count and R. A. for a personage of the Spanish Whoremaster’s
profession somewhat interested me. The fact is, a change had recently
come in our own relations with Vanderbilt’s friend. His cordiality
toward B. and myself had considerably withered. From the time of our
arrivals the good nobleman had showered us with favours and advice. To
me, I may say, he was even extraordinarily kind. We talked painting,
for example: Count Bragard folded a piece of paper, tore it in the
centre of the folded edge, unfolded it carefully, exhibiting a good
round hole, and remarking: “Do you know this trick? It’s an English
trick, Mr. Cummings,” held the paper before him and gazed profoundly
through the circular aperture at an exceptionally disappointing section
of the altogether gloomy landscape, visible thanks to one of the
ecclesiastical windows of The Enormous Room. “Just look at that, Mr.
Cummings,” he said with quiet dignity. I looked. I tried my best to
find something to the left. “No, no, straight through,” Count Bragard
corrected me. “There’s a lovely bit of landscape,” he said sadly. “If I
only had my paints here. I thought, you know, of asking my housekeeper
to send them on from Paris—but how can you paint in a bloody place like
this with all these bloody pigs around you? It’s ridiculous to think of
it. And it’s tragic, too,” he added grimly, with something like tears
in his grey, tired eyes.

Or we were promenading The Enormous Room after supper—the evening
promenade in the _cour_ having been officially eliminated owing to the
darkness and the cold of the autumn twilight—and through the windows
the dull bloating colours of sunset pouring faintly; and the Count
stops dead in his tracks and regards the sunset without speaking for a
number of seconds. Then—“it’s glorious, isn’t it?” he asks quietly. I
say “Glorious indeed.” He resumes his walk with a sigh, and I accompany
him. “_Ce n’est pas difficile à peindre, un coucher du soleil_, it’s
not hard,” he remarks gently. “No?” I say with deference. “Not hard a
bit,” the Count says, beginning to use his hands. “You only need three
colours, you know. Very simple.” “Which colours are they?” I inquire
ignorantly. “Why, you know of course,” he says surprised. “Burnt
sienna, cadmium yellow, and—er—there! I can’t think of it. I know it as
well as I know my own face. So do you. Well, that’s stupid of me.”

Or, his worn eyes dwelling benignantly upon my duffle-bag, he warns me
(in a low voice) of Prussian Blue.

“Did you notice the portrait hanging in the bureau of the Surveillant?”
Count Bragard inquired one day. “That’s a pretty piece of work, Mr.
Cummings. Notice it when you get a chance. The green moustache,
particularly fine. School of Cézanne.”—“Really?” I said in
surprise.—“Yes, indeed,” Count Bragard said, extracting his
tired-looking hands from his tired-looking trousers with a cultured
gesture. “Fine young fellow painted that. I knew him. Disciple of the
master. Very creditable piece of work.”—“Did you ever see Cézanne?” I
ventured.—“Bless you, yes, scores of times,” he answered almost
pityingly.—“What did he look like?” I asked, with great
curiosity.—“Look like? His appearance, you mean?” Count Bragard seemed
at a loss. “Why he was not extraordinary looking. I don’t know how you
could describe him. Very difficult in English. But you know a phrase we
have in French, ‘_l’air pesant_’; I don’t think there’s anything in
English for it; _il avait l’air pesant_, Cézanne, if you know what I
mean.

“I should work, I should not waste my time,” the Count would say almost
weepingly. “But it’s no use, my things aren’t here. And I’m getting old
too; couldn’t concentrate in this stinking hole of a place, you know.”

I did some hasty drawings of Monsieur Pet-airs washing and rubbing his
bald head with a great towel in the dawn. The R.A. caught me in the act
and came over shortly after, saying, “Let me see them.” In some
perturbation (the subject being a particular friend of his) I showed
one drawing. “Very good, in fact, excellent,” the R.A. smiled
whimsically. “You have a real talent for caricature, Mr. Cummings, and
you should exercise it. You really got Peters. Poor Peters, he’s a fine
fellow, you know; but this business of living in the muck and filth,
_c’est malheureux_. Besides, Peters is an old man. It’s a dirty bloody
shame, that’s what it is. A bloody shame that all of us here should be
forced to live like pigs with this scum!

“I tell you what, Mr. Cummings,” he said, with something like
fierceness, his weary eyes flashing, “I’m getting out of here shortly,
and when I do get out (I’m just waiting for my papers to be sent on by
the French consul) I’ll not forget my friends. We’ve lived together and
suffered together and I’m not a man to forget it. This hideous mistake
is nearly cleared up, and when I go free I’ll do anything for you and
your chum. Anything I can do for you I’d be only too glad to do it. If
you want me to buy you paints when I’m in Paris, nothing would give me
more pleasure. I know French as well as I know my own language” (he
most certainly did) “and whereas you might be cheated, I’ll get you
everything you need _à bon marché_. Because you see they know me there,
and I know just where to go. Just give me the money for what you need
and I’ll get you the best there is in Paris for it. You needn’t
worry”—I was protesting that it would be too much trouble—“my dear
fellow, it’s no trouble to do a favour for a friend.”

And to B. and myself _ensemble_ he declared, with tears in his eyes, “I
have some marmalade at my house in Paris, real marmalade, not the sort
of stuff you buy these days. We know how to make it. You can’t get an
idea how delicious it is. In big crocks”—the Count said simply—“well,
that’s for you boys.” We protested that he was too kind. “Nothing of
the sort,” he said, with a delicate smile. “I have a son in the English
Army,” and his face clouded with worry, “and we send him some now and
then, he’s crazy about it. I know what it means to him. And you shall
share in it too. I’ll send you six crocks.” Then, suddenly looking at
us with a pleasant expression, “By Jove!” the Count said, “do you like
whiskey? Real Bourbon whiskey? I see by your look that you know what it
is. But you never tasted anything like this. Do you know London?” I
said no, as I had said once before. “Well, that’s a pity,” he said,
“for if you did you’d know this bar. I know the barkeeper well, known
him for thirty years. There’s a picture of mine hanging in his place.
Look at it when you’re in London, drop in to —— Street, you’ll find the
place, anyone will tell you where it is. This fellow would do anything
for me. And now I’ll tell you what I’ll do: you fellows give me
whatever you want to spend and I’ll get you the best whiskey you ever
tasted. It’s his own private stock, you understand. I’ll send it on to
you—God knows you need it in this place. I wouldn’t do this for anyone
else, you understand,” and he smiled kindly; “but we’ve been prisoners
together, and we understand each other, and that’s enough for
gentlemen. I won’t forget you.” He drew himself up. “I shall write,” he
said slowly and distinctly, “to Vanderbilt about you. I shall tell him
it’s a dirty bloody shame that you two young Americans, gentlemen born,
should be in this foul place. He’s a man who’s quick to act. He’ll not
tolerate a thing like this—an outrage, a bloody outrage, upon two of
his own countrymen. We shall see what happens then.”

It was during this period that Count Bragard lent us for our personal
use his greatest treasure, a water glass. “I don’t need it,” he said
simply and pathetically.

Now, as I have said, a change in our relations came.

It came at the close of one soggy, damp, raining afternoon. For this
entire hopeless grey afternoon Count Bragard and B. promenaded The
Enormous Room. Bragard wanted the money—for the whiskey and the paints.
The marmalade and the letter to Vanderbilt were, of course, gratis.
Bragard was leaving us. Now was the time to give him money for what we
wanted him to buy in Paris and London. I spent my time rushing about,
falling over things, upsetting people, making curious and secret signs
to B., which signs, being interpreted, meant be careful! But there was
no need of telling him this particular thing. When the _planton_
announced _la soupe_, a fiercely weary face strode by me en route to
his mattress and his spoon. I knew that B. had been careful. A minute
later he joined me, and told me as much….

On the way downstairs we ran into the Surveillant. Bragard stepped from
the ranks and poured upon the Surveillant a torrent of French, of which
the substance was: you told them not to give me anything. The
Surveillant smiled and bowed and wound and unwound his hands behind his
back and denied anything of the sort.

It seems that B. had heard that the kindly nobleman wasn’t going to
Paris at all.

Moreover, Monsieur Pet-airs had said to B. something about Count
Bragard being a suspicious personage—Monsieur Pet-airs, the R.A.’s best
friend.

Moreover, as I have said, Count Bragard had been playing up to the poor
Spanish Whoremaster to beat the band. Every day had he sat on a little
stool beside the rolypoly millionaire, and written from dictation
letter after letter in French—with which language the rolypoly was
sadly unfamiliar…. And when next day Count Bragard took back his
treasure of treasures, his personal water glass, remarking briefly that
he needed it once again, I was not surprised. And when, a week or so
later, he left—I was not surprised to have Mexique come up to us and
placidly remark:

“I give dat feller five francs. Tell me he send me overcoat, very good
overcoat. But say: Please no tell anybody come from me. Please tell
everybody your family send it.” And with a smile, “I t’ink dat feller
fake.”

Nor was I surprised to see, some weeks later, the poor Spanish
Whoremaster rending his scarce hair as he lay in bed of a morning. And
Mexique said with a smile:

“Dat feller give dat English feller one hundred francs. Now he sorry.”

All of which meant merely that Count Bragard should have spelt his
name, not Bra-, but with an l.

And I wonder to this day that the only letter of mine which ever
reached America and my doting family should have been posted by this
highly entertaining personage en ville, whither he went as a trusted
inhabitant of La Ferté to do a few necessary errands for himself;
whither he returned with a good deal of colour in his cheeks and a good
deal of _vin rouge_ in his guts; going and returning with Tommy, the
_planton_ who brought him The Daily Mail every day until Bragard
couldn’t afford it, after which either B. and I or Jean le Nègre took
it off Tommy’s hands—Tommy, for whom we had a delightful name which I
sincerely regret being unable to tell, Tommy, who was an Englishman for
all his French _planton’s_ uniform and worshipped the ground on which
the Count stood; Tommy, who looked like a boiled lobster and had tears
in his eyes when he escorted his idol back to captivity…. _Mirabile
dictu_, so it was.

Well, such was the departure of a great man from among us.

And now, just to restore the reader’s faith in human nature, let me
mention an entertaining incident which occurred during the latter part
of my stay at La Ferté Macé. Our society had been gladdened—or at any
rate galvanized—by the biggest single contribution in its history; the
arrival simultaneously of six purely extraordinary persons, whose names
alone should be of more than general interest: The Magnifying Glass,
The Trick Raincoat, The Messenger Boy, The Hat, The Alsatian, The
Whitebearded Raper and His Son. In order to give the reader an idea of
the situation created by these _arrivés_, which situation gives the
entrance of the Washing Machine Man—the entertaining incident, in other
words—its full and unique flavour, I must perforce sketch briefly each
member of a truly imposing group. Let me say at once that, so terrible
an impression did the members make, each inhabitant of The Enormous
Room rushed at break-neck speed to his _paillasse_; where he stood at
bay, assuming as frightening an attitude as possible. The Enormous Room
was full enough already, in all conscience. Between sixty and seventy
mattresses, with their inhabitants and, in nearly every case, baggage,
occupied it so completely as scarcely to leave room for _le poêle_ at
the further end and the card table in the centre. No wonder we were
struck with terror upon seeing the six _nouveaux_. Judas immediately
protested to the _planton_ who brought them up that there were no
places, getting a roar in response and the door slammed in his face to
boot. But the reader is not to imagine that it was the number alone of
the arrivals which inspired fear and distrust—their appearance was
enough to shake anyone’s sanity. I do protest that never have I
experienced a feeling of more profound distrust than upon this
occasion; distrust of humanity in general and in particular of the
following individuals:

An old man shabbily dressed in a shiny frock coat, upon whose peering
and otherwise very aged face a pair of dirty spectacles rested. The
first thing he did, upon securing a place, was to sit upon his mattress
in a professorial manner, tremulously extract a journal from his left
coat pocket, tremblingly produce a large magnifying glass from his
upper right vest pocket, and forget everything. Subsequently, I
discovered him promenading the room with an enormous expenditure of
feeble energy, taking tiny steps flat-footedly and leaning in when he
rounded a corner as if he were travelling at terrific speed. He
suffered horribly from rheumatism, could scarcely move after a night on
the floor, and must have been at least sixty-seven years old.

Second, a palish, foppish, undersized, prominent-nosed creature who
affected a deep musical voice and the cut of whose belted raincoat gave
away his profession—he was a pimp, and proud of it, and immediately
upon his arrival boasted thereof, and manifested altogether as
disagreeable a species of bullying vanity as I ever (save in the case
of The Fighting Sheeney) encountered. He got his from Jean le Nègre, as
the reader will learn later.

Third, a super-Western-Union-Messenger type of ancient-youth,
extraordinarily unhandsome if not positively ugly. He had a weak pimply
grey face, was clad in a brownish uniform, puttees (on pipestem
calves), and a regular Messenger Boy cap. Upon securing a place he
instantly went to the card-table, seated himself hurriedly, pulled out
a batch of blanks, and wrote a telegram to (I suppose) himself. Then he
returned to his _paillasse_, lay down with apparently supreme
contentment, and fell asleep.

Fourth, a tiny old man who looked like a caricature of an East Side
second-hand clothes dealer—having a long beard, a long, worn and dirty
coat reaching just to his ankles, and a small derby hat on his head.
The very first night his immediate neighbour complained that “Le
Chapeau” (as he was christened by The Zulu) was guilty of fleas. A
great tempest ensued immediately. A _planton_ was hastily summoned. He
arrived, heard the case, inspected The Hat (who lay on his _paillasse_
with his derby on, his hand far down the neck of his shirt, scratching
busily and protesting occasionally his entire innocence), uttered
(being the Black Holster) an oath of disgust, and ordered The Frog to
“_couper les cheveux de suite et la barbe aussi; après il va au bain,
le vieux_.” The Frog approached and gently requested The Hat to seat
himself upon a chair—the better of two chairs boasted by The Enormous
Room. The Frog, successor to The Barber, brandished his scissors. The
Hat lay and scratched. “_Allez, Nom de Dieu_” the _planton_ roared. The
poor Hat arose trembling, assumed a praying attitude; and began to talk
in a thick and sudden manner. “_Asseyez-vous là, tête de cochon_.” The
pitiful Hat obeyed, clutching his derby to his head in both withered
hands. “Take off your hat, you son of a bitch,” the _planton_ yelled.
“I don’t want to,” the tragic Hat whimpered. BANG! the derby hit the
floor, bounded upward and lay still. “Proceed,” the orderly thundered
to The Frog, who regarded him with a perfectly inscrutable expression
on his extremely keen face, then turned to his subject, snickered with
the scissors, and fell to. Locks ear-long fell in crisp succession.
Pete the Shadow, standing beside the barber, nudged me; and I looked;
and I beheld upon the floor the shorn locks rising and curling with a
movement of their own…. “Now for the beard,” said the Black
Holster.—“No, no, _Monsieur, s’il vous plait, pas ma barbe,
monsieur_”—The Hat wept, trying to kneel.—“_Ta gueule_ or I’ll cut your
throat,” the _planton_ replied amiably; and The Frog, after another
look, obeyed. And lo, the beard squirmed gently upon the floor, alive
with a rhythm of its own; squirmed and curled crisply as it lay…. When
The Hat was utterly shorn, he was bathed and became comparatively
unremarkable, save for the worn long coat which he clutched about him,
shivering. And he borrowed five francs from me twice, and paid me
punctually each time when his own money arrived, and presented me with
chocolate into the bargain, tipping his hat quickly and bowing (as he
always did whenever he addressed anyone). Poor Old Hat, B. and I and
the Zulu were the only men at La Ferté who liked you.

Fifth, a fat, jolly, decently dressed man.—He had been to a camp where
everyone danced, because an entire ship’s crew was interned there, and
the crew were enormously musical, and the captain (having sold his
ship) was rich and tipped the Director regularly; so everyone danced
night and day, and the crew played, for the crew had brought their
music with them.—He had a way of borrowing the paper (_Le Matin_) which
we bought from one of the lesser _plantons_ who went to the town and
got _Le Matin_ there; borrowing it before we had read it—by the sunset.
And his favourite observations were:

“It’s a rotten country. Dirty weather.”

Fifth and sixth, a vacillating, staggering, decrepit creature with
wildish white beard and eyes, who had been arrested—incredibly
enough—for “rape.” With him his son, a pleasant youth quiet of
demeanour, inquisitive of nature, with whom we sometimes conversed on
the subject of the English Army.

Such were the individuals whose concerted arrival taxed to its utmost
the capacity of The Enormous Room. And now for my incident:

In the doorway, one day shortly after the arrival of the gentlemen
mentioned, quietly stood a well-dressed handsomely middle-aged man,
with a sensitive face culminating in a groomed Van Dyck beard. I
thought for a moment that the Mayor of Orne, or whatever his title is,
had dropped in for an informal inspection of The Enormous Room. Thank
God, I said to myself, it has never looked so chaotically filthy since
I have had the joy of inhabiting it. And _sans blague_, The Enormous
Room _was_ in a state of really supreme disorder; shirts were thrown
everywhere, a few twine clothes lines supported various pants,
handkerchiefs and stockings, the stove was surrounded by a
gesticulating group of nearly undressed prisoners, the stink was
actually sublime.

As the door closed behind him, the handsome man moved slowly and
vigorously up The Enormous Room. His eyes were as big as turnips. His
neat felt hat rose with the rising of his hair. His mouth opened in a
gesture of unutterable astonishment. His knees trembled with surprise
and terror, the creases of his trousers quivering. His hands lifted
themselves slowly outward and upward till they reached the level of his
head; moved inward till they grasped his head: and were motionless. In
a deep awe-struck resonant voice he exclaimed simply and sincerely:

“_Nom de nom de nom de nom de nom de DIEU!_”

Which introduces the reader to The Washing Machine Man, a Hollander,
owner of a store at Brest where he sold the highly _utiles_
contrivances which gave him his name. He, as I remember, had been
charged with aiding and abetting in the case of escaping deserters—but
I know a better reason for his arrest: undoubtedly _le gouvernement
français_ caught him one day in the act of inventing a super-washing
machine, in fact, a Whitewashing machine, for the private use of the
Kaiser and His Family….

Which brings us, if you please, to the first Delectable Mountain.



VIII.
THE WANDERER


One day somebody and I were “catching water” for Monsieur the Chef.

“Catching water” was ordinarily a mixed pleasure. It consisted, as I
have mentioned, in the combined pushing and pulling of a curiously
primitive two-wheeled cart over a distance of perhaps three hundred
yards to a kind of hydrant situated in a species of square upon which
the mediaeval structure known as Porte (or Camp) de Triage faced
stupidly and threateningly. A _planton_ always escorted the catchers
through a big door, between the stone wall, which backed the men’s
_cour_ and the end of the building itself, or, in other words, the
canteen. The ten-foot stone wall was, like every other stone wall,
connected with La Ferté, topped with three feet of barbed wire. The
door by which we exited with the water-wagon to the street outside was
at least eight feet high, adorned with several large locks. One pushing
behind, one pulling in the shafts, we rushed the wagon over a sort of
threshold or sill and into the street; and were immediately yelled at
by the _planton_, who commanded us to stop until he had locked the
door. We waited until told to proceed; then yanked and shoved the
reeling vehicle up the street to our right, that is to say, along the
wall of the building, but on the outside. All this was pleasant and
astonishing. To feel oneself, however temporarily, outside the eternal
walls in a street connected with a rather selfish and placid looking
little town (whereof not more than a dozen houses were visible) gave
the prisoner an at once silly and uncanny sensation, much like the
sensation one must get when he starts to skate for the first time in a
dozen years or so. The street met two others in a moment, and here was
a very nourishing sumach bush (as I guess) whose berries shocked the
stunned eye with a savage splash of vermilion. Under this colour one
discovered the Mecca of water-catchers in the form of an iron
contrivance operating by means of a stubby lever which, when pressed
down, yielded grudgingly a spout of whiteness. The contrivance was
placed in sufficiently close proximity to a low wall so that one of the
catchers might conveniently sit on the wall and keep the water spouting
with a continuous pressure of his foot, while the other catcher
manipulated a tin pail with telling effect. Having filled the barrel
which rode on the two wagon wheels, we turned it with some difficulty
and started it down the street with the tin pail on top; the man in the
shafts leaning back with all his might to offset a certain velocity
promoted by the down grade, while the man behind tugged helpingly at
the barrel itself. On reaching the door we skewed the machine
skillfully to the left, thereby bringing it to a complete standstill,
and waited for the _planton_ to unlock the locks; which done, we rushed
it violently over the threshold, turned left, still running, and came
to a final stop in front of the kitchen. Here stood three enormous
wooden tubs. We backed the wagon around; then one man opened a spigot
in the rear of the barrel, and at the same time the other elevated the
shafts in a clever manner, inducting the _jet d’eau_ to hit one of the
tubs. One tub filled, we switched the stream wittily to the next. To
fill the three tubs (they were not always all of them empty) required
as many as six or eight delightful trips. After which one entered the
_cuisine_ and got his well-earned reward—coffee with sugar.

I have remarked that catching water was a mixed pleasure. The mixedness
of the pleasure came from certain highly respectable citizens, and more
often citizenesses, of _la ville_ de La Ferté Macé; who had a habit of
endowing the poor water-catchers with looks which I should not like to
remember too well, at the same moment clutching whatever infants they
carried or wore or had on leash spasmodically to them. I never ceased
to be surprised by the scorn, contempt, disgust and frequently sheer
ferocity manifested in the male and particularly in the female faces.
All the ladies wore, of course, black; they were wholly unbeautiful of
face or form, some of them actually repellant; not one should I, even
under more favourable circumstances, have enjoyed meeting. The first
time I caught water everybody in the town was returning from church,
and a terrific sight it was. _Vive la bourgeoisie_, I said to myself,
ducking the shafts of censure by the simple means of hiding my face
behind the moving water barrel.

But one day—as I started to inform the reader—somebody and I were
catching water, and, in fact, had caught our last load, and were
returning with it down the street; when I, who was striding rapidly
behind trying to lessen with both hands the impetus of the machine,
suddenly tripped and almost fell with surprise—

On the curb of the little unbeautiful street a figure was sitting, a
female figure dressed in utterly barbaric pinks and vermilions, having
a dark shawl thrown about her shoulders; a positively Arabian face
delimited by a bright coif of some tenuous stuff, slender golden hands
holding with extraordinary delicacy what appeared to be a baby of not
more than three months old; and beside her a black-haired child of
perhaps three years and beside this child a girl of fourteen, dressed
like the woman in crashing hues, with the most exquisite face I had
ever known.

_Nom de Dieu_, I thought vaguely. Am I or am I not completely asleep?
And the man in the shafts craned his neck in stupid amazement, and the
_planton_ twirled his moustache and assumed that intrepid look which
only a _planton_ (or a _gendarme_) perfectly knows how to assume in the
presence of female beauty.

That night The Wanderer was absent from _la soupe_, having been called
by Apollyon to the latter’s office upon a matter of superior import.
Everyone was abuzz with the news. The gypsy’s wife and three children,
one a baby at the breast, were outside demanding to be made prisoners.
Would the Directeur allow it? They had been told a number of times by
_plantons_ to go away, as they sat patiently waiting to be admitted to
captivity. No threats, pleas nor arguments had availed. The wife said
she was tired of living without her husband—roars of laughter from all
the Belgians and most of the Hollanders, I regret to say Pete
included—and wanted merely and simply to share his confinement.
Moreover, she said, without him she was unable to support his children!
and it was better that they should grow up with their father as
prisoners than starve to death without him. She would not be moved. The
Black Holster told her he would use force—she answered nothing. Finally
she had been admitted pending judgment. _Also sprach_, highly excited,
the _balayeur_.

“Looks like a—hoor,” was the Belgian-Dutch verdict, a verdict which was
obviously due to the costume of the lady in question almost as much as
to the untemperamental natures sojourning at La Ferté. B. and I agreed
that she and her children were the most beautiful people we had ever
seen, or would ever be likely to see. So _la soupe_ ended, and
everybody belched and gasped and trumpeted up to The Enormous Room as
usual.

That evening, about six o’clock, I heard a man crying as if his heart
were broken. I crossed The Enormous Room. Half-lying on his
_paillasse_, his great beard pouring upon his breast, his face lowered,
his entire body shuddering with sobs, lay The Wanderer. Several of the
men were about him, standing in attitudes ranging from semi-amusement
to stupid sympathy, listening to the anguish which—as from time to time
he lifted his majestic head—poured slowly and brokenly from his lips. I
sat down beside him. And he told me: “I bought him for six hundred
francs, and I sold him for four hundred and fifty … it was not a horse
of this race, but of the race” (I could not catch the word) “as long as
from here to that post. I cried for a quarter of an hour just as if my
child were dead … and it is seldom I weep over horses—I say: you are
going, Jewel, _au r’oir et bon jour._” …

The vain little dancer interrupted about “broken-down horses” …
“_Excuses donc_—this was no disabled horse, such as goes to the
front—these are some horses—pardon, whom you give eat, this, it is
colique, that, the other, it’s colique—this never—he could go forty
kilometres a day….”

One of the strongest men I have seen in my life is crying because he
has had to sell his favourite horse. No wonder _les hommes_ in general
are not interested. Someone said: “Be of good cheer, Demestre, your
wife and kids are well enough.”

“Yes—they are not cold; they have a bed like that” (a high gesture
toward the quilt of many colours on which we were sitting, such a quilt
as I have not seen since; a feathery deepness soft to the touch as air
in Spring), “which is worth three times this of mine—but _tu
comprends_, it’s not hot these mornings”—then he dropped his head, and
lifted it again, crying, crying.

“_Et mes outils_, I had many—and my garments—where are they put,
_où—où? Kis!_ And I had _chemises_… this is poor” (looking at himself
as a prince might look at his disguise)—“and like this, that—where?”

“_Si_ the wagon is not sold … I never will stay here for _la durée de
la guerre_. No—bahsht! To resume, that is why I need….”

(more than upright in the priceless bed—the twice streaming darkness of
his beard, his hoarse sweetness of voice—his immense perfect face and
deeply softnesses eyes—pouring voice)

“my wife sat over there, she spoke to No one and bothered Nobody—why
was my wife taken here and shut up? Had she done anything? There is a
wife who _fait la putain_ and turns, to everyone and another, whom I
bring another tomorrow … but a woman who loves only her husband, who
waits for no one but her husband—”

(the tone bulged, and the eyes together)

“— _Ces cigarettes ne fument pas!_” I added an apology, having
presented him with the package. “Why do you shell out these? They cost
fifteen sous, you may spend for them if you like, you understand what
I’m saying? But some time when you have nothing” (extraordinary gently)
“what then? Better to save for that day … better to buy _du tabac_ and
_faire_ yourself; these are made of tobacco dust.”

And there was someone to the right who was saying: “To-morrow is
Sunday” … wearily. The King, lying upon his huge quilt, sobbing now
only a little, heard:

“So—ah—he was born on a Sunday—my wife is nursing him, she gives him
the breast” (the gesture charmed) “she said to them she would not eat
if they gave her that—that’s not worth anything—meat is necessary every
day …” he mused. I tried to go.

“Sit there” (graciousness of complete gesture. The sheer kingliness of
poverty. He creased the indescribably soft _couverture_ for me and I
sat and looked into his forehead bounded by the cube of square sliced
hair. Blacker than Africa. Than imagination).

After this evening I felt that possibly I knew a little of The
Wanderer, or he of me.

The Wanderer’s wife and his two daughters and his baby lived in the
women’s quarters. I have not described and cannot describe these four.
The little son of whom he was tremendously proud slept with his father
in the great quilts in The Enormous Room. Of The Wanderer’s little son
I may say that he had lolling buttons of eyes sewed on gold flesh, that
he had a habit of turning cart-wheels in one-third of his father’s
trousers, that we called him The Imp. He ran, he teased, he turned
handsprings, he got in the way, and he even climbed the largest of the
scraggly trees in the _cour_ one day. “You will fall,” Monsieur Peters
(whose old eyes had a fondness for this irrepressible creature)
remarked with conviction.—“Let him climb,” his father said quietly. “I
have climbed trees. I have fallen out of trees. I am alive.” The Imp
shinnied like a monkey, shouting and crowing, up a lean gnarled limb—to
the amazement of the very _planton_ who later tried to rape Celina and
was caught. This _planton_ put his gun in readiness and assumed an
eager attitude of immutable heroism. “Will you shoot?” the father
inquired politely. “Indeed it would be a big thing of which you might
boast all your life: I, a _planton_, shot and killed a six-year-old
child in a tree.”—“_C’est emmerdant_,” the _planton_ countered, in some
confusion—“he may be trying to escape. How do I know?”—“Indeed, how do
you know anything?” the father murmured quietly. “It’s a _mystère_.”
The Imp, all at once, fell. He hit the muddy ground with a disagreeable
thud. The breath was utterly knocked out of him. The Wanderer picked
him up kindly. His son began, with the catching of his breath, to howl
uproariously. “Serves him right, the —— jackanapes,” a Belgian
growled.—“I told you so, didn’t I?” Monsieur Petairs worringly cried:
“I said he would fall out of that tree!”—“Pardon, you were right, I
think,” the father smiled pleasantly. “Don’t be sad, my little son,
everybody falls out of trees, they’re made for that by God,” and he
patted The Imp, squatting in the mud and smiling. In five minutes The
Imp was trying to scale the shed. “Come down or I fire,” the _planton_
cried nervously … and so it was with The Wanderer’s son from morning
till night. “Never,” said Monsieur Pet-airs with solemn desperation,
“have I seen such an incorrigible child, a perfectly incorrigible
child,” and he shook his head and immediately dodged a missile which
had suddenly appeared from nowhere.

Night after night The Imp would play around our beds, where we held
court with our chocolate and our candles; teasing us, cajoling us,
flattering us, pretending tears, feigning insult, getting lectures from
Monsieur Peters on the evil of cigarette smoking, keeping us in a state
of perpetual inquietude. When he couldn’t think of anything else to do
he sang at the top of his clear bright voice:

“_C’est la guerre
faut pas t’en faire_”


and turned a handspring or two for emphasis…. Mexique once cuffed him
for doing something peculiarly mischievous, and he set up a great
crying—instantly The Wanderer was standing over Mexique, his hands
clenched, his eyes sparkling—it took a good deal of persuasion to
convince the parent that his son was in error, meanwhile Mexique
placidly awaited his end … and neither B. nor I, despite the Imp’s
tormentings, could keep from laughing when he all at once with a sort
of crowing cry rushed for the nearest post, jumped upon his hands,
arched his back, and poised head-downward; his feet just touching the
pillar. Bare-footed, in a bright chemise and one-third of his father’s
trousers….

Being now in a class with “_les hommes mariés_” The Wanderer spent most
of the day downstairs, coming up with his little son every night to
sleep in The Enormous Room. But we saw him occasionally in the _cour_;
and every other day when the dreadful cry was raised

“_Allez, tout-le-monde, ‘plicher les pommes!_” and we descended, in
fair weather, to the lane between the building and the _cour_, and in
foul (very foul I should say) the dynosaur-coloured sweating walls of
the dining-room—The Wanderer would quietly and slowly appear, along
with the other _hommes mariés_, and take up the peeling of the
amazingly cold potatoes which formed the _pièce de résistance_ (in
guise of _Soupe_) for both women and men at La Ferté. And if the wedded
males did not all of them show up for this unagreeable task, a dreadful
hullabaloo was instantly raised—

“_LES HOMMES MARIÉS!_”

and forth would more or less sheepishly issue the delinquents.

And I think The Wanderer, with his wife and children whom he loved as
never have I seen a man love anything in this world, was partly happy;
walking in the sun when there was any, sleeping with his little boy in
a great gulp of softness. And I remember him pulling his fine beard
into two darknesses—huge-sleeved, pink-checked chemise—walking kindly
like a bear—corduroy bigness of trousers, waistline always amorous of
knees—finger-ends just catching tops of enormous pockets. When he
feels, as I think, partly happy, he corrects our pronunciation of the
ineffable Word—saying

“_O, May-err-DE!_”

and smiles. And once Jean Le Nègre said to him as he squatted in the
_cour_ with his little son beside him, his broad strong back as nearly
always against one of the gruesome and minute _pommiers_—

“_Barbu! j’vais couper ta barbe, barbu!_” Whereat the father answered
slowly and seriously.

“When you cut my beard you will have to cut off my head” regarding Jean
le Nègre with unspeakably sensitive, tremendously deep, peculiarly soft
eyes. “My beard is finer than that; you have made it too coarse,” he
gently remarked one day, looking attentively at a piece of
_photographie_ which I had been caught in the act of perpetrating:
whereat I bowed my head in silent shame.

“Demestre, Josef (_femme, née_ Feliska)” I read another day in the
Gestionnaire’s book of judgment. O Monsieur le Gestionnaire, I should
not have liked to have seen those names in my book of sinners, in my
album of filth and blood and incontinence, had I been you…. O little,
very little, _gouvernement français_, and you, the great and
comfortable _messieurs_ of the world, tell me why you have put a gypsy
who dresses like To-morrow among the squabbling pimps and thieves of
yesterday….

He had been in New York one day.

One child died at sea.

“_Les landes_” he cried, towering over The Enormous Room suddenly one
night in Autumn, “_je les connais commes ma poche_—Bordeaux? _Je sais
où que c’est._ Madrid? _Je sais où que c’est._ Tolède? Seville? Naples?
_Je sais où que c’est. Je les connais comme ma poche._”

He could not read. “Tell me what it tells,” he said briefly and without
annoyance, when once I offered him the journal. And I took pleasure in
trying to do so.

One fine day, perhaps the finest day, I looked from a window of The
Enormous Room and saw (in the same spot that Lena had enjoyed her
half-hour promenade during confinement in the _cabinet_, as related)
the wife of The Wanderer, “_née_ Feliska,” giving his baby a bath in a
pail, while The Wanderer sat in the sun smoking. About the pail an
absorbed group of _putains_ stood. Several _plantons_ (abandoning for
one instant their plantonic demeanour) leaned upon their guns and
watched. Some even smiled a little. And the mother, holding the
brownish, naked, crowing child tenderly, was swimming it quietly to and
fro, to the delight of Celina in particular. To Celina it waved its
arms greetingly. She stooped and spoke to it. The mother smiled. The
Wanderer, looking from time to time at his wife, smoked and pondered by
himself in the sunlight.

This baby was the delight of the _putains_ at all times. They used to
take turns carrying it when on promenade. The Wanderer’s wife, at such
moments, regarded them with a gentle and jealous weariness.

There were two girls, as I said. One, the littlest girl I ever saw walk
and act by herself, looked exactly like a gollywog. This was because of
the huge mop of black hair. She was very pretty. She used to sit with
her mother and move her toes quietly for her own private amusement. The
older sister was as divine a creature as God in His skillful and
infinite wisdom ever created. Her intensely sexual face greeted us
nearly always as we descended _pour la soupe_. She would come up to B.
and me slenderly and ask, with the brightest and darkest eyes in the
world,

“_Chocolat, M’sieu’?_”

and we would present her with a big or small, as the case might be,
_morceau de chocolat_. We even called her _Chocolat_. Her skin was
nearly sheer gold; her fingers and feet delicately formed: her teeth
wonderfully white; her hair incomparably black and abundant. Her lips
would have seduced, I think, _le gouvernement français_ itself. Or any
saint.

Well….

_Le gouvernement français_ decided in its infinite but unskillful
wisdom that The Wanderer, being an inexpressibly bad man (guilty of who
knows what gentleness, strength and beauty) should suffer as much as he
was capable of suffering. In other words, it decided (through its Three
Wise Men, who formed the visiting Commission whereof I speak anon) that
the wife, her baby, her two girls, and her little son should be
separated from the husband by miles and by stone walls and by barbed
wire and by Law. Or perhaps (there was a rumour to this effect) The
Three Wise Men discovered that the father of these incredibly exquisite
children was not her lawful husband. And of course, this being the
case, the utterly and incomparably moral French Government saw its duty
plainly; which duty was to inflict the ultimate anguish of separation
upon the sinners concerned. I know The Wanderer came from _la
commission_ with tears of anger in his great eyes. I know that some
days later he, along with that deadly and poisonous criminal Monsieur
Auguste and that aged archtraitor Monsieur Pet-airs, and that
incomparably wicked person Surplice, and a ragged gentle being who one
day presented us with a broken spoon which he had found somewhere—the
gift being a purely spontaneous mark of approval and affection—who for
this reason was known as The Spoonman, had the vast and immeasurable
honour of departing for Précigne _pour la durée de la guerre_. If ever
I can create by some occult process of imagining a deed so perfectly
cruel as the deed perpetrated in the case of Joseph Demestre, I shall
consider myself a genius. Then let us admit that the Three Wise Men
were geniuses. And let us, also and softly, admit that it takes a good
and great government perfectly to negate mercy. And let us, bowing our
minds smoothly and darkly, repeat with Monsieur le Curé—“_toujours
l’enfer…._”

The Wanderer was almost insane when he heard the judgment of _la
commission_. And hereupon I must pay my respects to Monsieur Pet-airs;
whom I had ever liked, but whose spirit I had not, up to the night
preceding The Wanderer’s departure, fully appreciated. Monsieur
Pet-airs sat for hours at the card-table, his glasses continually
fogging, censuring The Wanderer in tones of apparent annoyance for his
frightful weeping (and now and then himself sniffing faintly with his
big red nose); sat for hours pretending to take dictation from Joseph
Demestre, in reality composing a great letter or series of great
letters to the civil and I guess military authorities of Orne on the
subject of the injustice done to the father of four children, one a
baby at the breast, now about to be separated from all he held dear and
good in this world. “I appeal” (Monsieur Pet-airs wrote in his
boisterously careful, not to say elegant, script) “to your sense of
mercy and of fair play and of honour. It is not merely an unjust thing
which is being done, not merely an unreasonable thing, it is an
unnatural thing….” As he wrote I found it hard to believe that this was
the aged and decrepit and fussing biped whom I had known, whom I had
caricatured, with whom I had talked upon ponderous subjects (a
comparison between the Belgian and French cities with respect to their
location as favouring progress and prosperity, for example); who had
with a certain comic shyness revealed to me a secret scheme for
reclaiming inundated territories by means of an extraordinary pump “of
my invention.” Yet this was he, this was Monsieur Pet-airs Lui-Même;
and I enjoyed peculiarly making his complete acquaintance for the first
and only time.

May the Heavens prosper him!

The next day The Wanderer appeared in the _cour_ walking proudly in a
shirt of solid vermilion.

He kissed his wife—excuse me, Monsieur Malvy, I should say the mother
of his children—crying very bitterly and suddenly.

The _plantons_ yelled for him to line up with the rest, who were
waiting outside the gate, bag and baggage. He covered his great king’s
eyes with his long golden hands and went.

With him disappeared unspeakable sunlight, and the dark keen bright
strength of the earth.



IX.
ZOO-LOO


This is the name of the second Delectable Mountain.

Zulu is he called, partly because he looks like what I have never seen,
partly because the sounds somehow relate to his personality and partly
because they seemed to please him.

He is, of all the indescribables I have known, definitely the most
completely or entirely indescribable. Then (quoth my reader) you will
not attempt to describe him, I trust.—Alas, in the medium which I am
now using a certain amount or at least quality of description is
disgustingly necessary. Were I free with a canvas and some colours …
but I am not free. And so I will buck the impossible to the best of my
ability. Which, after all, is one way of wasting your time.

He did not come and he did not go. He drifted.

His angular anatomy expended and collected itself with an effortless
spontaneity which is the prerogative of fairies perhaps, or at any rate
of those things in which we no longer believe. But he was more. There
are certain things in which one is unable to believe for the simple
reason that he never ceases to feel them. Things of this sort—things
which are always inside of us and, in fact, are us and which
consequently will not be pushed off or away where we can begin thinking
about them—are no longer things; they, and the us which they are,
equals A Verb; an IS. The Zulu, then, I must perforce call an IS.

In this chapter I shall pretend briefly to describe certain aspects and
attributes of an IS. Which IS we have called The Zulu, who Himself
intrinsically and indubitably escapes analysis. _Allons!_

Let me first describe a Sunday morning when we lifted our heads to the
fight of the stove-pipes.

I was awakened by a roar, a human roar, a roar such as only a Hollander
can make when a Hollander is honestly angry. As I rose from the domain
of the subconscious, the idea that the roar belonged to Bill The
Hollander became conviction. Bill The Hollander, alias America Lakes,
slept next to The Young Pole (by whom I refer to that young
stupid-looking farmer with that peaches-and-cream complexion and those
black puttees who had formed the rear rank, with the aid of The Zulu
Himself, upon the arrival of Babysnatcher, Bill, Box, Zulu, and Young
Pole aforesaid). Now this same Young Pole was a case. Insufferably vain
and self-confident was he. Monsieur Auguste palliated most of his
conceited offensiveness on the ground that he was _un garçon_; we on
the ground that he was obviously and unmistakably The Zulu’s friend.
This Young Pole, I remember, had me design upon the wall over his
_paillasse_ (shortly after his arrival) a virile _soldat_ clutching a
somewhat dubious flag—I made the latter from descriptions furnished by
Monsieur Auguste and The Young Pole himself—intended, I may add, to be
the flag of Poland. Underneath which beautiful picture I was instructed
to perpetrate the flourishing inscription

“_Vive la Pologne_”

which I did to the best of my limited ability and for Monsieur
Auguste’s sake. No sooner was the _photographie_ complete than The
Young Pole, patriotically elated, set out to demonstrate the
superiority of his race and nation by making himself obnoxious. I will
give him this credit: he was _pas méchant_, he was, in fact, a stupid
boy. The Fighting Sheeney temporarily took him down a peg by flooring
him in the nightly “_Boxe_” which The Fighting Sheeney instituted
immediately upon the arrival of The Trick Raincoat—a previous
acquaintance of The Sheeney’s at La Santé; the similarity of
occupations (or non-occupation; I refer to the profession of pimp)
having cemented a friendship between these two. But, for all that The
Young Pole’s Sunday-best clothes were covered with filth, and for all
that his polished puttees were soiled and scratched by the splintery
floor of The Enormous Room (he having rolled well off the blanket upon
which the wrestling was supposed to occur), his spirit was dashed but
for the moment. He set about cleaning and polishing himself, combing
his hair, smoothing his cap—and was as cocky as ever next morning. In
fact I think he was cockier; for he took to guying Bill The Hollander
in French, with which tongue Bill was only faintly familiar and of
which, consequently, he was doubly suspicious. As The Young Pole lay in
bed of an evening after _lumières éteintes_, he would guy his somewhat
massive neighbour in a childish almost girlish voice, shouting with
laughter when The Triangle rose on one arm and volleyed Dutch at him,
pausing whenever The Triangle’s good-nature threatened to approach the
breaking point, resuming after a minute or two when The Triangle
appeared to be on the point of falling into the arms of Morpheus. This
sort of _blague_ had gone on for several nights without dangerous
results. It was, however, inevitable that sooner or later something
would happen—and as we lifted our heads on this particular Sunday morn
we were not surprised to see The Hollander himself standing over The
Young Pole, with clenched paws, wringing shoulders, and an apocalyptic
face whiter than Death’s horse.

The Young Pole seemed incapable of realising that the climax had come.
He lay on his back, cringing a little and laughing foolishly. The Zulu
(who slept next to him on our side) had, apparently, just lighted a
cigarette which projected upward from a slender holder. The Zulu’s face
was as always absolutely expressionless. His chin, with a goodly growth
of beard, protruded tranquilly from the blanket which concealed the
rest of him with the exception of his feet—feet which were ensconced in
large, somewhat clumsy, leather boots. As The Zulu wore no socks, the
Xs of the rawhide lacings on his bare flesh (blue, of course, with
cold) presented a rather fascinating design. The Zulu was, to all
intents and purposes, gazing at the ceiling….

Bill The Hollander, clad only in his shirt, his long lean muscled legs
planted far apart, shook one fist after another at the recumbent Young
Pole, thundering (curiously enough in English):

“Come on you _Gottverdummer_ son-of-a-bitch of a Polak bastard and
fight! Get up out o’ there you Polak hoor and I’ll kill you, you
_Gottverdummer_ bastard you! I stood enough o’ your _Gottverdummer_
nonsense you _Gottverdummer_” etc.

As Bill The Hollander’s thunder crescendoed steadily, cramming the
utmost corners of The Enormous Room with _Gottverdummers_ which
echoingly telescoped one another, producing a dim huge shaggy mass of
vocal anger, The Young Pole began to laugh less and less; began to
plead and excuse and palliate and demonstrate—and all the while the
triangular tower in its naked legs and its palpitating chemise
brandished its vast fists nearer and nearer, its ghastly yellow lips
hurling cumulative volumes of rhythmic profanity, its blue eyes
snapping like fire-crackers, its enormous hairy chest heaving and
tumbling like a monstrous hunk of sea-weed, its flat soiled feet
curling and uncurling their ten sour mutilated toes.

The Zulu puffed gently as he lay.

Bill The Hollander’s jaw, sticking into the direction of The Young
Pole’s helpless gestures, looked (with the pitiless scorching face
behind it) like some square house carried in the fore of a white
cyclone. The Zulu depressed his chin; his eyes (poking slowly from
beneath the visor of the cap which he always wore, in bed or out of it)
regarded the vomiting tower with an abstracted interest. He allowed one
hand delicately to escape from the blanket and quietly to remove from
his lips the gently burning cigarette.

“You won’t eh? You bloody Polak coward!”

and with a speed in comparison to which lightning is snail-like the
tower reached twice for the peaches-and-cream cheeks of the prone
victim; who set up a tragic bellowing of his own, writhed upon his
somewhat dislocated _paillasse_, raised his elbows shieldingly, and
started to get to his feet by way of his trembling knees—to be promptly
knocked flat. Such a howling as The Young Pole set up I have rarely
heard: he crawled sideways; he got on one knee; he made a dart
forward—and was caught cleanly by an uppercut, lifted through the air a
yard, and spread-eagled against the stove which collapsed with an
unearthly crash yielding an inky shower of soot upon the combatants and
almost crowning The Hollander simultaneously with three four-feet
sections of pipe. The Young Pole hit the floor, shouting, on his head,
at the apogee of a neatly executed back-somersault, collapsed; rose
yelling, and with flashing eyes picked up a length of the ruined
_tuyau_ which he lifted high in the air—at which The Hollander seized
in both fists a similar piece, brought it instantly forward and
sideways with incognisable velocity and delivered such an immense
wallop as smoothed The Young Pole horizontally to a distance of six
feet; where he suddenly landed, stove-pipe and all in a crash of entire
collapse, having passed clear over The Zulu’s head. The Zulu, remarking

“_Muh_”

floated hingingly to a sitting position and was saluted by

“Lie down you _Gottverdummer_ Polaker, I’ll get you next.”

In spite of which he gathered himself to rise upward, catching as he
did so a swish of The Hollander’s pipe-length which made his cigarette
leap neatly, holder and all, upward and outward. The Young Pole had by
this time recovered sufficiently to get upon his hands and knees behind
the Zulu; who was hurriedly but calmly propelling himself in the
direction of the cherished cigarette-holder, which had rolled under the
remains of the stove. Bill The Hollander made for his enemy, raising
perpendicularly ten feet in air the unrecognisably dented summit of the
pipe which his colossal fists easily encompassed, the muscles in his
treelike arms rolling beneath the chemise like balloons. The Young Pole
with a shriek of fear climbed the Zulu—receiving just as he had
compassed this human hurdle a crack on the seat of his black pants that
stood him directly upon his head. Pivoting slightly for an instant he
fell loosely at full length on his own _paillasse_, and lay sobbing and
roaring, one elbow protectingly raised, interspersing the
inarticulations of woe with a number of sincerely uttered “_Assez!’s_”.
Meanwhile The Zulu had discovered the whereabouts of his treasure, had
driftingly resumed his original position; and was quietly inserting the
also-captured cigarette which appeared somewhat confused by its violent
aerial journey. Over The Young Pole stood toweringly Bill The
Hollander, his shirt almost in ribbons about his thick bulging neck,
thundering as only Hollanders thunder

“Have you got enough you _Gottverdummer_ Polak?”

and The Young Pole, alternating nursing the mutilated pulp where his
face had been and guarding it with futile and helpless and almost
infantile gestures of his quivering hands, was sobbing

“_Oui, Oui, Oui, Assez!_”

And Bill The Hollander hugely turned to The Zulu, stepping accurately
to the _paillasse_ of that individual, and demanded

“And you, you _Gottverdummer_ Polaker, do you want t’ fight?”

at which The Zulu gently waved in recognition of the compliment and
delicately and hastily replied, between slow puffs

“_Mog._”

Whereat Bill The Hollander registered a disgusted kick in The Young
Pole’s direction and swearingly resumed his _paillasse_.

All this, the reader understands, having taken place in the terribly
cold darkness of the half-dawn.

That very day, after a great deal of examination (on the part of the
Surveillant) of the participants in this Homeric struggle—said
examination failing to reveal the particular guilt or the particular
innocence of either—Judas, immaculately attired in a white coat,
arrived from downstairs with a step ladder and proceeded with
everyone’s assistance to reconstruct the original pipe. And a pretty
picture Judas made. And a pretty bum job he made. But anyway the
stove-pipe drew; and everyone thanked God and fought for places about
_le poêle_. And Monsieur Pet-airs hoped there would be no more fights
for a while.

One might think that The Young Pole had learned a lesson. But no. He
had learned (it is true) to leave his immediate neighbour, America
Lakes, to himself; but that is all he had learned. In a few days he was
up and about, as full of _la blague_ as ever. The Zulu seemed at times
almost worried about him. They spoke together in Polish frequently
and—on The Zulu’s part—earnestly. As subsequent events proved, whatever
counsel The Zulu imparted was wasted upon his youthful friend. But let
us turn for a moment to The Zulu himself.

He could not, of course, write any language whatever. Two words of
French he knew: they were _fromage_ and _chapeau_. The former he
pronounced “grumidge.” In English his vocabulary was even more simple,
consisting of the single word “po-lees-man.” Neither B. nor myself
understood a syllable of Polish (tho’ we subsequently learned
_Jin-dobri_, _nima-Zatz_, _zampni-pisk_ and _shimay pisk_, and used to
delight The Zulu hugely by giving him

“_Jin-dobri, pan_”

every morning, also by asking him if he had a “_papierosa_”);
consequently in that direction the path of communication was to all
intents shut. And withal—I say this not to astonish my reader but
merely in the interests of truth—I have never in my life so perfectly
understood (even to the most exquisite nuances) whatever idea another
human being desired at any moment to communicate to me, as I have in
the case of The Zulu. And if I had one-third the command over the
written word that he had over the unwritten and the unspoken—not merely
that; over the unspeakable and the unwritable—God knows this history
would rank with the deepest art of all time.

It may be supposed that he was master of an intricate and delicate
system whereby ideas were conveyed through signs of various sorts. On
the contrary. He employed signs more or less, but they were in every
case extraordinarily simple. The secret of his means of complete and
unutterable communication lay in that very essence which I have only
defined as an IS; ended and began with an innate and unlearnable
control over all which one can only describe as the homogeneously
tactile. The Zulu, for example communicated the following facts in a
very few minutes, with unspeakable ease, one day shortly after his
arrival:

He had been formerly a Polish farmer, with a wife and four children. He
had left Poland to come to France, where one earned more money. His
friend (The Young Pole) accompanied him. They were enjoying life
placidly in, it may have been, Brest—I forget—when one night the
_gendarmes_ suddenly broke into their room, raided it, turned it
bottomside up, handcuffed the two arch-criminals wrist to wrist, and
said “Come with us.” Neither The Zulu nor The Young Pole had the ghost
of an idea what all this meant or where they were going. They had no
choice but to obey, and obey they did. Everyone boarded a train.
Everyone got out. Bill The Hollander and The Babysnatcher appeared
under escort, handcuffed to each other. They were immediately
re-handcuffed to the Polish delegation. The four culprits were hustled,
by rapid stages, through several small prisons to La Ferté Macé. During
this journey (which consumed several nights and days) the handcuffs
were not once removed. The prisoners slept sitting up or falling over
one another. They urinated and defecated with the handcuffs on, all of
them hitched together. At various times they complained to their
captors that the agony caused by the swelling of their wrists was
unbearable—this agony, being the result of over-tightness of the
handcuffs, might easily have been relieved by one of the _plantons_
without loss of time or prestige. Their complaints were greeted by
commands to keep their mouths shut or they’d get it worse than they had
it. Finally they hove in sight of La Ferté and the handcuffs were
removed in order to enable two of the prisoners to escort The Zulu’s
box upon their shoulders, which they were only too happy to do under
the circumstances. This box, containing not only The Zulu’s personal
effects but also a great array of cartridges, knives and heaven knows
what extraordinary souvenirs which he had gathered from God knows
where, was a strong point in the disfavour of The Zulu from the
beginning; and was consequently brought along as evidence. Upon
arriving, all had been searched, the box included, and sent to The
Enormous Room. The Zulu (at the conclusion of this dumb and eloquent
recital) slipped his sleeve gently above his wrist and exhibited a
bluish ring, at whose persistence upon the flesh he evinced great
surprise and pleasure, winking happily to us. Several days later I got
the same story from The Young Pole in French; but after some little
difficulty due to linguistic misunderstandings, and only after a
half-hour’s intensive conversation. So far as directness, accuracy and
speed are concerned, between the method of language and the method of
The Zulu, there was not the slightest comparison.

Not long after The Zulu arrived I witnessed a mystery: it was toward
the second _soupe_, and B. and I were proceeding (our spoons in our
hands) in the direction of the door, when beside us suddenly appeared
The Zulu—who took us by the shoulders gently and (after carefully
looking about him) produced from, as nearly as one could see, his right
ear a twenty franc note; asking us in a few well-chosen silences to
purchase with it _confiture_, _fromage_, and _chocolat_ at the canteen.
He silently apologized for encumbering us with these errands, averring
that he had been found when he arrived to have no money upon him and
consequently wished to keep intact this little tradition. We were only
too delighted to assist so remarkable a prestidigitator—we scarcely
knew him at that time—and _après la soupe_ we bought as requested,
conveying the treasures to our bunks and keeping guard over them. About
fifteen minutes after the _planton_ had locked everyone in, The Zulu
driftingly arrived before us; whereupon we attempted to give him his
purchases—but he winked and told us wordlessly that we should (if we
would be so kind) keep them for him, immediately following this
suggestion by a request that we open the marmalade or jam or whatever
it might be called—preserve is perhaps the best word. We complied with
alacrity. Now (he said soundlessly), you may if you like offer me a
little. We did. Now have some yourselves, The Zulu commanded. So we
attacked the _confiture_ with a will, spreading it on pieces or,
rather, chunks of the brownish bread whose faintly rotten odour is one
element of the life at La Ferté which I, for one, find it easier to
remember than to forget. And next, in similar fashion, we opened the
cheese and offered some to our visitor; and finally the chocolate.
Whereupon The Zulu rose up, thanked us tremendously for our gifts,
and—winking solemnly—floated off.

Next day he told us that he wanted us to eat all of the delicacies we
had purchased, whether or not he happened to be in the vicinity. He
also informed us that when they were gone we should buy more until the
twenty francs gave out. And, so generous were our appetites, it was not
more than two or three weeks later that The Zulu having discovered that
our supplies were exhausted produced from his back hair a neatly folded
twenty franc note; wherewith we invaded the canteen with renewed
violence. About this time The Spy got busy and The Zulu, with The Young
Pole for interpreter, was summoned to Monsieur le Directeur, who
stripped The Zulu and searched every wrinkle and crevice of his
tranquil anatomy for money (so The Zulu vividly informed us)—finding
not a sou. The Zulu, who vastly enjoyed the discomfiture of Monsieur,
cautiously extracted (shortly after this) a twenty franc note from the
back of his neck, and presented it to us with extreme care. I may say
that most of his money went for cheese, of which The Zulu was almost
abnormally fond. Nothing more suddenly delightful has happened to me
than happened, one day, when I was leaning from the next to the last
window—the last being the property of users of the cabinet—of The
Enormous Room, contemplating the muddy expanse below, and wondering how
the Hollanders had ever allowed the last two windows to be opened.
Margherite passed from the door of the building proper to the little
washing shed. As the sentinel’s back was turned I saluted her, and she
looked up and smiled pleasantly. And then—a hand leapt quietly forward
from the wall, just to my right; the fingers clenched gently upon
one-half a newly broken cheese; the hand moved silently in my
direction, cheese and all, pausing when perhaps six inches from my
nose. I took the cheese from the hand, which departed as if by magic;
and a little later had the pleasure of being joined at my window by The
Zulu, who was brushing cheese crumbs from his long slender Mandarin
mustaches, and who expressed profound astonishment and equally profound
satisfaction upon noting that I too had been enjoying the pleasures of
cheese. Not once, but several times, this Excalibur appearance startled
B. and me: in fact the extreme modesty and incomparable shyness of The
Zulu found only in this procedure a satisfactory method of bestowing
presents upon his two friends … I would I could see that long hand once
more, the sensitive fingers poised upon a half-camembert; the bodiless
arm swinging gently and surely with a derrick-like grace and certainty
in my direction….

Not very long after The Zulu’s arrival occurred an incident which I
give with pleasure because it shows the dauntless and indomitable, not
to say intrepid, stuff of which _plantons_ are made. The single _seau_
which supplied the (at this time) sixty-odd inhabitants of The Enormous
Room with drinking water had done its duty, shortly after our arrival
from the first _soupe_ with such thoroughness as to leave a number of
unfortunate (among whom I was one) waterless. The interval between
_soupe_ and promenade loomed darkly and thirstily before us
unfortunates. As the minutes passed, it loomed with greater and greater
distinctness. At the end of twenty minutes our thirst—stimulated by an
especially salty dose of lukewarm water for lunch—attained truly
desperate proportions. Several of the bolder thirsters leaned from the
various windows of the room and cried

“_De l’eau, planton; de l’eau, s’il vous plaît_”

upon which the guardian of the law looked up suspiciously; pausing a
moment as if to identify the scoundrels whose temerity had so far got
the better of their understanding as to lead them to address him, a
_planton_, in familiar terms—and then grimly resumed his walk, gun on
shoulder, revolver on hip, the picture of simple and unaffected
majesty. Whereat, seeing that entreaties were of no avail, we put our
seditious and dangerous heads together and formulated a very great
scheme; to wit, the lowering of an empty tin-pail about eight inches
high, which tin-pail had formerly contained confiture, which confiture
had long since passed into the guts of Monsieur Auguste, The Zulu, B.,
myself, and—as The Zulu’s friend—The Young Pole. Now this fiendish
imitation of The Old Oaken Bucket That Hung In The Well was to be
lowered to the good-natured Marguerite (who went to and fro from the
door of the building to the washing shed); who was to fill it for us at
the pump situated directly under us in a cavernous chilly cave on the
ground-floor, then rehitch it to the rope, and guide its upward
beginning. The rest was in the hands of Fate.

Bold might the _planton_ be; we were no _fainéants_. We made a little
speech to everyone in general desiring them to lend us their belts. The
Zulu, the immensity of whose pleasure in this venture cannot be even
indicated, stripped off his belt with unearthly agility—Monsieur
Auguste gave his, which we tongue-holed to The Zulu’s—somebody else
contributed a necktie—another a shoe-string—The Young Pole his scarf,
of which he was impossibly proud—etc. The extraordinary rope so
constructed was now tried out in The Enormous Room, and found to be
about thirty-eight feet long; or in other words of ample length,
considering that the window itself was only three stories above terra
firma. Margherite was put on her guard by signs, executed when the
_planton’s_ back was turned (which it was exactly half the time, as his
patrol stretched at right angles to the wing of the building whose
third story we occupied). Having attached the minute bucket to one end
(the stronger looking end, the end which had more belts and less
neckties and handkerchiefs) of our improvised rope, B., Harree, myself
and The Zulu bided our time at the window—then seizing a favourable
opportunity, in enormous haste began paying out the infernal
contrivance. Down went the sinful tin-pail, safely past the
window-ledge just below us, straight and true to the waiting hands of
the faithful Margherite—who had just received it and was on the point
of undoing the bucket from the first belt when, lo! who should come in
sight around the corner but the pimply-faced brilliantly-uniformed
glitteringly-putteed _sergeant de plantons lui-même_. Such amazement as
dominated his puny features I have rarely seen equalled. He stopped
dead in his tracks; for one second stupidly contemplated the window,
ourselves, the wall, seven neckties, five belts, three handkerchiefs, a
scarf, two shoe-strings, the jam pail, and Margherite—then, wheeling,
noticed the _planton_ (who peacefully and with dignity was pursuing a
course which carried him further and further from the zone of
operations) and finally, spinning around again, cried shrilly

“_Qu’est-ce que vous avez foutu avec cette machine-là?_”

At which cry the _planton_ staggered, rotated, brought his gun clumsily
off his shoulder, and stared, trembling all over with emotion, at his
superior.

“_Là-bas!_” screamed the pimply _sergeant de plantons_, pointing
fiercely in our direction.

Margherite, at his first command, had let go the jam-pail and sought
shelter in the building. Simultaneously with her flight we all began
pulling on the rope for dear life, making the bucket bound against the
wall.

Upon hearing the dreadful exclamation “_Là-bas!_” the _planton_ almost
fell down. The sight which greeted his eyes caused him to excrete a
single mouthful of vivid profanity, made him grip his gun like a hero,
set every nerve in his noble and faithful body tingling. Apparently
however he had forgotten completely his gun, which lay faithfully and
expectingly in his two noble hands.

“Attention!” screamed the sergeant.

The _planton_ did something to his gun very aimlessly and rapidly.

“FIRE!” shrieked the sergeant, scarlet with rage and mortification.

The _planton_, cool as steel, raised his gun.

“_NOM DE DIEU TIREZ!_”

The bucket, in big merry sounding jumps, was approaching the window
below us.

The _planton_ took aim, falling fearlessly on one knee, and closing
both eyes. I confess that my blood stood on tip-toe; but what was death
to the loss of that jam-bucket, let alone everyone’s apparel which
everyone had so generously loaned? We kept on hauling silently. Out of
the corner of my eye I beheld the _planton_—now on both knees, musket
held to his shoulder by his left arm and pointing unflinchingly at us
one and all—hunting with his right arm and hand in his belt for
cartridges! A few seconds after this fleeting glimpse of heroic
devotion had penetrated my considerably heightened sensitivity—UP
suddenly came the bucket and over backwards we all went together on the
floor of The Enormous Room. And as we fell I heard a cry like the cry
of a boiler announcing noon—

“Too late!”

I recollect that I lay on the floor for some minutes, half on top of
The Zulu and three-quarters smothered by Monsieur Auguste, shaking with
laughter….

Then we all took to our hands and knees, and made for our bunks.

I believe no one (curiously enough) got punished for this atrocious
misdemeanour—except the _planton_; who was punished for not shooting
us, although God knows he had done his very best.

And now I must chronicle the famous duel which took place between The
Zulu’s compatriot, The Young Pole, and that herebefore introduced pimp,
The Fighting Sheeney; a duel which came as a climax to a vast deal of
teasing on the part of The Young Pole—who, as previously remarked, had
not learned his lesson from Bill The Hollander with the thoroughness
which one might have expected of him.

In addition to a bit of French and considerable Spanish, Rockyfeller’s
valet spoke Russian very (I did not have to be told) badly. The Young
Pole, perhaps sore at being rolled on the floor of The Enormous Room by
the worthy Sheeney, set about nagging him just as he had done in the
case of neighbour Bill. His favourite epithet for the conqueror was
“_moshki_” or “_moski_” I never was sure which. Whatever it meant (The
Young Pole and Monsieur Auguste informed me that it meant “Jew” in a
highly derogatory sense) its effect upon the noble Sheeney was
definitely unpleasant. But when coupled with the word “_moskosi_,”
accent on the second syllable or long o, its effect was more than
unpleasant—it was really disagreeable. At intervals throughout the day,
on promenade, of an evening, the ugly phrase

“_MOS-ki mosKOsi_”

resounded through The Enormous Room. The Fighting Sheeney, then rapidly
convalescing from syphilis, bided his time. The Young Pole moreover had
a way of jesting upon the subject of The Sheeney’s infirmity. He would,
particularly during the afternoon promenade, shout various none too
subtle allusions to Moshki’s physical condition for the benefit of _les
femmes_. And in response would come peals of laughter from the girls’
windows, shrill peals and deep guttural peals intersecting and breaking
joints like overlapping shingles on the roof of Craziness. So hearty
did these responses become one afternoon that, in answer to loud pleas
from the injured Moshki, the pimply _sergeant de plantons_ himself came
to the gate in the barbed wire fence and delivered a lecture upon the
seriousness of venereal ailments (heart-felt, I should judge by the
looks of him), as follows:

“_Il ne faut pas rigoler de ça. Savez-vous? C’est une maladie, ça,_”

which little sermon contrasted agreeably with his usual remarks
concerning, and in the presence of, _les femmes_, whereof the essence
lay in a single phrase of prepositional significance—

“_bon pour coucher avec_”

he would say shrilly, his puny eyes assuming an expression of amorous
wisdom which was most becoming….

One day we were all upon afternoon promenade, (it being _beau temps_
for that part of the world), under the auspices of by all odds one of
the littlest and mildest and most delicate specimens of mankind that
ever donned the high and dangerous duties of a _planton_. As B. says:
“He always looked like a June bride.” This mannikin could not have been
five feet high, was perfectly proportioned (unless we except the musket
upon his shoulder and the bayonet at his belt), and minced to and fro
with a feminine grace which suggested—at least to _les deux citoyens_
of These United States—the extremely authentic epithet “fairy.” He had
such a pretty face! and so cute a moustache! and such darling legs! and
such a wonderful smile! For plantonic purposes the smile—which brought
two little dimples into his pink cheeks—was for the most part
suppressed. However it was impossible for this little thing to look
stern: the best he could do was to look poignantly sad. Which he did
with great success, standing like a tragic last piece of uneaten candy
in his big box at the end of the _cour_, and eyeing the sinful _hommes_
with sad pretty eyes. Won’t anyone eat me?—he seemed to ask.—I’m really
delicious, you know, perfectly delicious, really I am.

To resume: everyone being in the _cour_, it was well filled, not only
from the point of view of space but of sound. A barnyard crammed with
pigs, cows, horses, ducks, geese, hens, cats and dogs could not
possibly have produced one-fifth of the racket that emanated,
spontaneously and inevitably, from the _cour_. Above which racket I
heard _tout à coup_ a roar of pain and surprise; and looking up with
some interest and also in some alarm, beheld The Young Pole backing and
filling and slipping in the deep ooze under the strenuous jolts, jabs
and even haymakers of The Fighting Sheeney, who, with his coat off and
his cap off and his shirt open at the neck, was swatting luxuriously
and for all he was worth that round helpless face and that
peaches-and-cream complexion. From where I stood, at a distance of six
or eight yards, the impact of the Sheeney’s fist on The Young Pole’s
jaw and cheeks was disconcertingly audible. The latter made not the
slightest attempt to defend himself, let alone retaliate; he merely
skidded about, roaring and clutching desperately out of harm’s way his
long white scarf, of which (as I have mentioned) he was extremely
proud. But for the sheer brutality of the scene it would have been
highly ludicrous. The Sheeney was swinging like a windmill and
hammering like a blacksmith. His ugly head lowered, the chin
protruding, lips drawn back in a snarl, teeth sticking forth like a
gorilla’s, he banged and smote that moon-shaped physiognomy as if his
life depended upon utterly annihilating it. And annihilate it he
doubtless would have, but for the prompt (not to say punctual) heroism
of The June Bride—who, lowering his huge gun, made a rush for the
fight; stopped at a safe distance; and began squeaking at the very top
and even summit of his faint girlish voice:

“_Aux armes! Aux armes!_”

which plaintive and intrepid utterance by virtue of its very fragility
penetrated the building and released The Black Holster, who bounded
through the gate, roaring a salutation as he bounded, and in a jiffy
had cuffed the participants apart. “All right, whose fault is this?” he
roared. And a number of highly reputable spectators, such as Judas and
The Fighting Sheeney himself, said it was The Young Pole’s fault.
“_Allez! Au cabinot! De suite!_” And off trickled the sobbing Young
Pole, winding his great scarf comfortingly about him, to the dungeon.

Some few minutes later we encountered The Zulu speaking with Monsieur
Auguste. Monsieur Auguste was very sorry. He admitted that The Young
Pole had brought his punishment upon himself. But he was only a boy.
The Zulu’s reaction to the affair was absolutely profound: he indicated
_les femmes_ with one eye, his trousers with another, and converted his
utterly plastic personality into an amorous machine for several
seconds, thereby vividly indicating the root of the difficulty. That
the stupidity of his friend, The Young Pole, hurt The Zulu deeply I
discovered by looking at him as he lay in bed the next morning, limply
and sorrowfully prone; beside him the empty _paillasse_, which meant
_cabinot_… his perfectly extraordinary face (a face perfectly at once
fluent and angular, expressionless and sensitive) told me many things
whereof even The Zulu might not speak, things which in order entirely
to suffer he kept carefully and thoroughly ensconced behind his rigid
and mobile eyes.

From the day that The Young Pole emerged from _cabinot_ he was our
friend. The _blague_ had been at last knocked out of him, thanks to Un
Mangeur de Blanc, as the little Machine-Fixer expressively called The
Fighting Sheeney. Which _mangeur_, by the way (having been exonerated
from all blame by the more enlightened spectators of the unequal
battle) strode immediately and ferociously over to B. and me, a hideous
grin crackling upon the coarse surface of his mug, and demanded—hiking
at the front of his trousers—

“_Bon, eh? Bien fait, eh?_”

and a few days later asked us for money, even hinting that he would be
pleased to become our special protector. I think, as a matter of fact,
we “lent” him one-eighth of what he wanted (perhaps we lent him five
cents) in order to avoid trouble and get rid of him. At any rate, he
didn’t bother us particularly afterwards; and if a nickel could
accomplish that a nickel should be proud of itself.

And always, through the falling greyness of the desolate Autumn, The
Zulu was beside us, or wrapped around a tree in the _cour_, or melting
in a post after tapping Mexique in a game of hide-and-seek, or
suffering from toothache—God, I wish I could see him expressing for us
the wickedness of toothache—or losing his shoes and finding them under
Garibaldi’s bed (with a huge perpendicular wink which told tomes about
Garibaldi’s fatal propensities for ownership), or marvelling silently
at the power of _les femmes à propos_ his young friend—who,
occasionally resuming his former bravado, would stand in the black evil
rain with his white farm scarf twined about him, singing as of old:

“_Je suis content pour mettre dedans suis pas pressé pour tirer
ah-la-la-la …_”

… And the Zulu came out of _la commission_ with identically the
expressionless expression which he had carried into it; and God knows
what The Three Wise Men found out about him, but (whatever it was) they
never found and never will find that Something whose discovery was
worth to me more than all the round and powerless money of the
world—limbs’ tin grace, wooden wink, shoulderless, unhurried body,
velocity of a grasshopper, soul up under his arm-pits, mysteriously
falling over the ownness of two feet, floating fish of his slimness
half a bird….

Gentlemen, I am inexorably grateful for the gift of these ignorant and
indivisible things.



X.
SURPLICE


Let us ascend the third Delectable Mountain, which is called Surplice.

I will admit, in the beginning, that I never knew Surplice. This for
the simple reason that I am unwilling to know except as a last
resource. And it is by contrast with Harree The Hollander, whom I knew,
and Judas, whom I knew, that I shall be able to give you (perhaps) a
little of Surplice, whom I did not know. For that matter, I think
Monsieur Auguste was the only person who might possibly have known him;
and I doubt whether Monsieur Auguste was capable of descending to such
depths in the case of so fine a person as Surplice.

Take a sheer animal of a man. Take the incredible Hollander with
cobalt-blue breeches, shock of orange hair pasted over forehead, pink
long face, twenty-six years old, had been in all the countries of all
the world: “Australia girl fine girl—Japanese girl cleanest girl of the
world—Spanish girl all right—English girl no good, no face—everywhere
these things: Norway sailors German girls Sweedisher matches Holland
candles” … had been to Philadelphia; worked on a yacht for a
millionaire; knew and had worked in the Krupp factories; was on two
boats torpedoed and one which struck a mine when in sight of shore
through the “looking-glass”: “Holland almost no soldier—India” (the
Dutch Indies) “nice place, always warm there, I was in cavalry; if you
kill a man or steal one hundred franc or anything, in prison
twenty-four hours; every week black girl sleep with you because
government want white children, black girl fine girl, always doing
something, your fingernails or clean your ears or make wind because
it’s hot…. No one can beat German people; if Kaiser tell man to kill
his father and mother he do it quick!”—the tall, strong, coarse, vital
youth who remarked:

“I sleep with black girl who smoke a pipe in the night.”

Take this animal. You hear him, you are afraid of him, you smell and
you see him and you know him—but you do not touch him.

Or a man who makes us thank God for animals, Judas, as we called him:
who keeps his moustaches in press during the night (by means of a kind
of transparent frame which is held in place by a band over his head);
who grows the nails of his two little fingers with infinite care; has
two girls with both of whom he flirts carefully and wisely, without
ever once getting into trouble; talks in French; converses in Belgian;
can speak eight languages and is therefore always useful to Monsieur le
Surveillant—Judas with his shining horrible forehead, pecked with
little indentures; with his Reynard full-face—Judas with his pale
almost putrescent fatty body in the _douche_—Judas with whom I talked
one night about Russia, he wearing my _pelisse_—the frightful and
impeccable Judas: take this man. You see him, you smell the hot stale
odour of Judas’ body; you are not afraid of him, in fact, you hate him;
you hear him and you know him. But you do not touch him.

And now take Surplice, whom I see and hear and smell and touch and even
taste, and whom I do not know.

Take him in dawn’s soft squareness, gently stooping to pick chewed
cigarette ends from the spitty floor … hear him, all night: retchings
which light into the dark … see him all day and all days, collecting
his soaked ends and stuffing them gently into his round pipe (when he
can find none he smokes tranquilly little splinters of wood) … watch
him scratching his back (exactly like a bear) on the wall … or in the
_cour_, speaking to no one, sunning his soul….

He is, we think, Polish. Monsieur Auguste is very kind to him, Monsieur
Auguste can understand a few words of his language and thinks they mean
to be Polish. That they are trying hard to be and never can be Polish.

Everyone else roars at him, Judas refers to him before his face as a
dirty pig, Monsieur Peters cries angrily: “_Il ne faut pas cracher par
terre_” eliciting a humble not to stay abject apology; the Belgians
spit on him; the Hollanders chaff him and bulldoze him now and then,
crying “Syph’lis”—at which he corrects them with offended majesty

“_pas syph’lis, Surplice_”

causing shouts of laughter from everyone—of nobody can he say My
Friend, of no one has he ever or will he ever say My Enemy.

When there is labour to do he works like a dog … the day we had
_nettoyage de chambre_, for instance, and Surplice and The Hat did most
of the work; and B. and I were caught by the _planton_ trying to stroll
out into the _cour_… every morning he takes the pail of solid excrement
down, without anyone’s suggesting that he take it; takes it as if it
were his, empties it in the sewer just beyond the _cour des femmes_ or
pours a little (just a little) very delicately on the garden where
Monsieur le Directeur is growing a flower for his daughter—he has, in
fact, an unobstreperous affinity for excrement; he lives in it; he is
shaggy and spotted and blotched with it; he sleeps in it; he puts it in
his pipe and says it is delicious….

And he is intensely religious, religious with a terrible and
exceedingly beautiful and absurd intensity … every Friday he will be
found sitting on a little kind of stool by his _paillasse_ reading his
prayer-book upside down; turning with enormous delicacy the thin
difficult leaves, smiling to himself as he sees and does not read.
Surplice is actually religious, and so are Garibaldi and I think The
Woodchuck (a little dark sad man who spits blood with regularity); by
which I mean they go to _la messe_ for _la messe_, whereas everyone
else goes _pour voir les femmes_. And I don’t know for certain why The
Woodchuck goes, but I think it’s because he feels entirely sure he will
die. And Garibaldi is afraid, immensely afraid. And Surplice goes in
order to be surprised, surprised by the amazing gentleness and delicacy
of God—Who put him, Surplice, upon his knees in La Ferté Macé, knowing
that Surplice would appreciate His so doing.

He is utterly ignorant. He thinks America is out of a particular window
on your left as you enter The Enormous Room. He cannot understand the
submarine. He does now know that there is a war. On being informed upon
these subjects he is unutterably surprised, he is inexpressibly
astonished. He derives huge pleasure from this astonishment. His filthy
rather proudly noble face radiates the pleasure he receives upon being
informed that people are killing people for nobody knows what reason,
that boats go under water and fire six-foot long bullets at ships, that
America is not really outside this window close to which we are
talking, that America is, in fact, over the sea. The sea: is that
water?—“_c’est de l’eau, monsieur?_” Ah: a great quantity of water;
enormous amounts of water, water and then water; water and water and
water and water and water. “Ah! You cannot see the other side of this
water, monsieur? Wonderful, monsieur!”—He meditates it, smiling
quietly; its wonder, how wonderful it is, no other side, and yet—the
sea. In which fish swim. Wonderful.

He is utterly curious. He is utterly hungry. We have bought cheese with
The Zulu’s money. Surplice comes up, bows timidly and ingratiatingly
with the demeanour of a million-times whipped but somewhat proud dog.
He smiles. He says nothing, being terribly embarrassed. To help his
embarrassment, we pretend we do not see him. That makes things better:

“_Fromage, monsieur?_”

“_Oui, c’est du fromage._”

“_Ah-h-h-h-h-h-h…._”

his astonishment is supreme. _C’est du fromage._ He ponders this. After
a little

“_Monsieur, c’est bon, monsieur?_”

asking the question as if his very life depended on the answer: “Yes,
it is good,” we tell him reassuringly.

“_Ah-h-h. Ah-h._”

He is once more superlatively happy. It is good, _le fromage_. Could
anything be more superbly amazing? After perhaps a minute

“_monsieur—monsieur—c’est chèr le fromage?_”

“Very,” we tell him truthfully. He smiles, blissfully astonished. Then,
with extreme delicacy and the utmost timidity conceivable

“_monsieur, combien ça coute, monsieur?_”

We tell him. He totters with astonishment and happiness. Only now, as
if we had just conceived the idea, we say carelessly

“_en voulez-vous?_”

He straightens, thrilled from the top of his rather beautiful filthy
head to the soleless slippers with which he promenades in rain and
frost:

“_Merci, Monsieur!_”

We cut him a piece. He takes it quiveringly, holds it a second as a
king might hold and contemplate the best and biggest jewel of his
realm, turns with profuse thanks to us—and disappears….

He is perhaps most curious of this pleasantly sounding thing which
everyone around him, everyone who curses and spits upon and bullies
him, desires with a terrible desire— _Liberté_. Whenever anyone departs
Surplice is in an ecstasy of quiet excitement. The lucky man may be
Fritz; for whom Bathhouse John is taking up a collection as if he,
Fritz, were a Hollander and not a Dane—for whom Bathhouse John is
striding hither and thither, shaking a hat into which we drop coins for
Fritz; Bathhouse John, chipmunk-cheeked, who talks Belgian, French,
English and Dutch in his dreams, who has been two years in La Ferté
(and they say he declined to leave, once, when given the chance), who
cries “_baigneur de femmes moi_” and every night hoists himself into
his wooden bunk crying “goo-d ni-te”; whose favourite joke is “_une
section pour les femmes_,” which he shouts occasionally in the _cour_
as he lifts his paper-soled slippers and stamps in the freezing mud,
chuckling and blowing his nose on the Union Jack … and now Fritz,
beaming with joy, shakes hands and thanks us all and says to me
“Good-bye, Johnny,” and waves and is gone forever—and behind me I hear
a timid voice

“_monsieur, Liberté?_”

and I say Yes, feeling that Yes in my belly and in my head at the same
instant; and Surplice stands beside me, quietly marvelling, extremely
happy, uncaring that _le parti_ did not think to say good-bye to him.
Or it may be Harree and Pompom who are running to and fro shaking hands
with everybody in the wildest state of excitement, and I hear a voice
behind me:

“_Liberté, monsieur? Liberté?_”

and I say, No. Précigne, feeling weirdly depressed, and Surplice is
standing to my left, contemplating the departure of the incorrigibles
with interested disappointment—Surplice of whom no man takes any notice
when that man leaves, be it for Hell or Paradise….

And once a week the _maître de chambre_ throws soap on the mattresses,
and I hear a voice

“_monsieur, voulez pas?_”

and Surplice is asking that we give him our soap to wash with.

Sometimes, when he has made _quelques sous_ by washing for others, he
stalks quietly to the Butcher’s chair (everyone else who wants a shave
having been served) and receives with shut eyes and a patient
expression the blade of The Butcher’s dullest razor—for The Butcher is
not a man to waste a good razor on Surplice; he, The Butcher, as we
call him, the successor of The Frog (who one day somehow managed to
disappear like his predecessor The Barber), being a thug and a burglar
fond of telling us pleasantly about German towns and prisons, prisons
where men are not allowed to smoke, clean prisons where there is a
daily medical inspection, where anyone who thinks he has a grievance of
any sort has the right of immediate and direct appeal; he, The Butcher,
being perhaps happiest when he can spend an evening showing us little
parlour tricks fit for children of four and three years old; quite at
his best when he remarks:

“Sickness doesn’t exist in France,”

meaning that one is either well or dead; or

“If they (the French) get an inventor they put him in prison.”

—So The Butcher is stooping heavily upon Surplice and slicing and
gashing busily and carelessly, his thick lips stuck a little pursewise,
his buried pig’s eyes glistening—and in a moment he cries “_Fini!_” and
poor Surplice rises unsteadily, horribly slashed, bleeding from at
least three two-inch cuts and a dozen large scratches; totters over to
his couch holding on to his face as if he were afraid it would fall off
any moment; and lies down gently at full length, sighing with
pleasurable surprise, cogitating the inestimable delights of
cleanness….

It struck me at the time as intensely interesting that, in the case of
a certain type of human being, the more cruel are the miseries
inflicted upon him the more cruel does he become toward anyone who is
so unfortunate as to be weaker or more miserable than himself. Or
perhaps I should say that nearly every human being, given sufficiently
miserable circumstances, will from time to time react to those very
circumstances (whereby his own personality is mutilated) through a
deliberate mutilation on his own part of a weaker or already more
mutilated personality. I daresay that this is perfectly obvious. I do
not pretend to have made a discovery. On the contrary, I merely state
what interested me peculiarly in the course of my sojourn at La Ferté:
I mention that I was extremely moved to find that, however busy sixty
men may be kept suffering in common, there is always one man or two or
three men who can always find time to make certain that their comrades
enjoy a little extra suffering. In the case of Surplice, to be the butt
of everyone’s ridicule could not be called precisely suffering;
inasmuch as Surplice, being unspeakably lonely, enjoyed any and all
insults for the simple reason that they constituted or at least implied
a recognition of his existence. To be made a fool of was, to this
otherwise completely neglected individual, a mark of distinction;
something to take pleasure in; to be proud of. The inhabitants of The
Enormous Room had given to Surplice a small but essential part in the
drama of La Misère: he would play that part to the utmost of his
ability; the cap-and-bells should not grace a head unworthy of their
high significance. He would be a great fool, since that was his
function; a supreme entertainer, since his duty was to amuse. After
all, men in La Misère as well as anywhere else rightly demand a certain
amount of amusement; amusement is, indeed, peculiarly essential to
suffering; in proportion as we are able to be amused we are able to
suffer; I, Surplice, am a very necessary creature after all.

I recall one day when Surplice beautifully demonstrated his ability to
play the fool. Someone had crept up behind him as he was stalking to
and fro, head in air proudly, hands in pockets, pipe in teeth, and had
(after several heart-breaking failures) succeeded in attaching to the
back of his jacket by means of a pin a huge placard carefully prepared
beforehand, bearing the numerical inscription

606


in vast writing. The attacher, having accomplished his difficult feat,
crept away. So soon as he reached his _paillasse_ a volley of shouts
went up from all directions, shouts in which all nationalities joined,
shouts or rather jeers which made the pillars tremble and the windows
rattle—

“_SIX CENT SIX! SYPH’LIS!_”

Surplice started from his reverie, removed his pipe from his lips, drew
himself up proudly, and—facing one after another the sides of The
Enormous Room—blustered in his bad and rapid French accent:

“_Pas syph’lis! Pas syph’lis!_”

at which, rocking with mirth, everyone responded at the top of his
voice:

“_SIX CENT SIX!_”

Whereat, enraged, Surplice made a dash at Pete The Shadow and was
greeted by

“Get away, you bloody Polak, or I’ll give you something you’ll be sorry
for”—this from the lips of America Lakes. Cowed, but as majestic as
ever, Surplice attempted to resume his promenade and his composure
together. The din bulged:

“_Six cent six! Syph’lis! Six cent Six!_”

—increasing in volume with every instant. Surplice, beside himself with
rage, rushed another of his fellow-captives (a little old man, who fled
under the table) and elicited threats of:

“Come on now, you Polak hoor, and quit that business or I’ll kill you,”
upon which he dug his hands into the pockets of his almost transparent
pantaloons and marched away in a fury, literally frothing at the
mouth.—

“_Six Cent Six!_”

everyone cried. Surplice stamped with wrath and mortification. “_C’est
dommage_” Monsieur Auguste said gently beside me. “_C’est un bon-homme,
le pauvre, il ne faut pas l’em-merd-er._”

“Look behind you!”

somebody yelled. Surplice wheeled, exactly like a kitten trying to
catch its own tail, and provoked thunders of laughter. Nor could
anything at once more pitiful and ridiculous, more ludicrous and
horrible, be imagined.

“On your coat! Look on your jacket!”

Surplice bent backward, staring over his left, then his right,
shoulder, pulled at his jacket first one way then the other—thereby
making his improvised tail to wag, which sent The Enormous Room into
spasms of merriment—finally caught sight of the incriminating
appendage, pulled his coat to the left, seized the paper, tore it off,
threw it fiercely down, and stamped madly on the crumpled 606;
spluttering and blustering and waving his arms; slavering like a mad
dog. Then he faced the most prominently vociferous corner and muttered
thickly and crazily:

“_Wuhwuhwuhwuhwuh…._”

Then he strode rapidly to his _paillasse_ and lay down; in which
position I caught him, a few minutes later, smiling and even chuckling
… very happy … as only an actor is happy whose efforts have been
greeted with universal applause….

In addition to being called “Syph’lis” he was popularly known as
“Chaude Pisse, the Pole.” If there is anything particularly terrifying
about prisons, or at least imitations of prisons such as La Ferté, it
is possibly the utter obviousness with which (quite unknown to
themselves) the prisoners demonstrate willy-nilly certain fundamental
psychological laws. The case of Surplice is a very exquisite example:
everyone, of course, is afraid of _les maladies
vénériennes_—accordingly all pick an individual (of whose inner life
they know and desire to know nothing, whose external appearance
satisfies the requirements of the mind _à propos_ what is foul and
disgusting) and, having tacitly agreed upon this individual as a Symbol
of all that is evil, proceed to heap insults upon him and enjoy his
very natural discomfiture … but I shall remember Surplice on his both
knees sweeping sacredly together the spilled sawdust from a
spittoon-box knocked over by the heel of the omnipotent _planton_; and
smiling as he smiled at _la messe_ when Monsieur le Curé told him that
there was always Hell….

He told us one day a great and huge story of an important incident in
his life, as follows:

“_Monsieur_, disabled me—yes, _monsieur_—disabled—I work, many people,
house, very high, third floor, everybody, planks up there—planks no
good—all shake…” (here he began to stagger and rotate before us)
“begins to fall … falls, falls, all, all twenty-seven men—bricks—
planks—wheelbarrows—all—ten metres … _zuhzuhzuhzuhzuhPOOM_!… everybody
hurt, everybody killed, not me, injured … _oui monsieur_”—and he
smiled, rubbing his head foolishly. Twenty-seven men, bricks, planks
and wheelbarrows. Ten metres. Bricks and planks. Men and wheelbarrows….

Also he told us, one night, in his gentle, crazy, shrugging voice, that
once upon a time he played the fiddle with a big woman in
Alsace-Lorraine for fifty francs a night; “_c’est la misère_”—adding
quietly, “I can play well, I can play anything, I can play _n’importe
quoi_.”

Which I suppose and guess I scarcely believed—until one afternoon a man
brought up a harmonica which he had purchased _en ville_; and the man
tried it; and everyone tried it; and it was perhaps the cheapest
instrument and the poorest that money can buy, even in the fair country
of France; and everyone was disgusted—but, about six o’clock in the
evening, a voice came from behind the last experimenter; a timid hasty
voice:

“_monsieur, monsieur, permettez?_”

the last experimenter turned and to his amazement saw Chaude Pisse the
Pole, whom everyone had (of course) forgotten.

The man tossed the harmonica on the table with a scornful look (a
menacingly scornful look) at the object of universal execration; and
turned his back. Surplice, trembling from the summit of his filthy and
beautiful head to the naked soles of his filthy and beautiful feet,
covered the harmonica delicately and surely with one shaking paw;
seated himself with a surprisingly deliberate and graceful gesture;
closed his eyes, upon whose lashes there were big filthy tears … and
played….

… and suddenly:

He put the harmonica softly upon the table. He rose. He went quickly to
his _paillasse_. He neither moved nor spoke nor responded to the calls
for more music, to the cries of “_Bis!_”—“_Bien
joué!_”—“_Allez!_”—“_Va-z-y!_” He was crying, quietly and carefully, to
himself … quietly and carefully crying, not wishing to annoy anyone …
hoping that people could not see that Their Fool had temporarily failed
in his part.

The following day he was up as usual before anyone else, hunting for
chewed cigarette ends on the spitty slippery floor of The Enormous
Room; ready for insult, ready for ridicule, for buffets, for curses.

_Alors_—

One evening, some days after everyone who was fit for _la commission_
had enjoyed the privilege of examination by that inexorable and
delightful body—one evening very late, in fact, just before _lumières
éteintes_, a strange _planton_ arrived in The Enormous Room and
hurriedly read a list of five names, adding:

“_partir demain de bonne heure_”

and shut the door behind him. Surplice was, as usual, very interested,
enormously interested. So were we: for the names respectively belonged
to Monsieur Auguste, Monsieur Pet-airs, The Wanderer, Surplice and The
Spoonman. These men had been judged. These men were going to Précigne.
These men would be _prisonniers pour la durée de la guerre_.

I have already told how Monsieur Pet-airs sat with the frantically
weeping Wanderer writing letters, and sniffing with his big red nose,
and saying from time to time: “Be a man, Demestre, don’t cry, crying
does no good.”—Monsieur Auguste was broken-hearted. We did our best to
cheer him; we gave him a sort of Last Supper at our bedside, we heated
some red wine in the tin cup and he drank with us. We presented him
with certain tokens of our love and friendship, including—I remember—a
huge cheese … and then, before us, trembling with excitement, stood
Surplice—

We asked him to sit down. The onlookers (there were always onlookers at
every function, however personal, which involved Food or Drink) scowled
and laughed. _Le con_, Surplice, _chaude pisse_—how could he sit with
men and gentlemen? Surplice sat down gracefully and lightly on one of
our beds, taking extreme care not to strain the somewhat capricious
mechanism thereof; sat very proudly; erect; modest but unfearful. We
offered him a cup of wine. A kind of huge convulsion gripped, for an
instant, fiercely his entire face: then he said in a whisper of sheer
and unspeakable wonderment, leaning a little toward us without in any
way suggesting that the question might have an affirmative answer,

“_pour moi, monsieur?_”

We smiled at him and said “_Prenez, monsieur._” His eyes opened. I have
never seen eyes since. He remarked quietly, extending one hand with
majestic delicacy:

“_Merci, monsieur._”

… Before he left, B. gave him some socks and I presented him with a
flannel shirt, which he took softly and slowly and simply and otherwise
not as an American would take a million dollars.

“I will not forget you,” he said to us, as if in his own country he
were a more than very great king … and I think I know where that
country is, I think I know this; I, who never knew Surplice, know.

*       *       *       *       *

For he has the territory of harmonicas, the acres of flutes, the
meadows of clarinets, the domain of violins. And God says: Why did they
put you in prison? What did you do to the people? “I made them dance
and they put me in prison. The soot-people hopped; and to twinkle like
sparks on a chimney-back and I made eighty francs every _dimanche_, and
beer and wine, and to eat well. _Maintenant … c’est fini … Et tout de
suite_ (gesture of cutting himself in two) _la tête_.” And He says: “O
you who put the jerk into joys, come up hither. There’s a man up here
called Christ who likes the violin.”



XI.
JEAN LE NÈGRE


On a certain day the ringing of the bell and accompanying rush of men
to the window facing the entrance gate was supplemented by an
unparalleled volley of enthusiastic exclamations in all the languages
of La Fertè Macé—provoking in me a certainty that the queen of fair
women had arrived. This certainty thrillingly withered when I heard the
cry: “_II y a un noir!_” Fritz was at the best peep-hole, resisting
successfully the onslaught of a dozen fellow prisoners, and of him I
demanded in English, “Who’s come?”—“Oh, a lot of girls,” he yelled,
“and there’s a NIGGER too”—hereupon writhing with laughter.

I attempted to get a look, but in vain; for by this at least two dozen
men were at the peep-hole, fighting and gesticulating and slapping each
other’s back with joy. However, my curiosity was not long in being
answered. I heard on the stairs the sound of mounting feet, and knew
that a couple of _plantons_ would before many minutes arrive at the
door with their new prey. So did everyone else—and from the farthest
beds uncouth figures sprang and rushed to the door, eager for the first
glimpse of the _nouveau_; which was very significant, as the ordinary
procedure on arrival of prisoners was for everybody to rush to his own
bed and stand guard over it.

Even as the _plantons_ fumbled with the locks I heard the inimitable,
unmistakable divine laugh of a negro. The door opened at last. Entered
a beautiful pillar of black strutting muscle topped with a tremendous
display of the whitest teeth on earth. The muscle bowed politely in our
direction, the grin remarked musically: “_Bo’jour, tou’l’monde_”; then
came a cascade of laughter. Its effect on the spectators was
instantaneous: they roared and danced with joy. “_Comment vous
appelez-vous?_” was fired from the hubbub.—“_J’m’appelle Jean, moi_,”
the muscle rapidly answered with sudden solemnity, proudly gazing to
left and right as if expecting a challenge to this statement: but when
none appeared, it relapsed as suddenly into laughter—as if hugely
amused at itself and everyone else including a little and tough boy,
whom I had not previously noted, although his entrance had coincided
with the muscle’s.

Thus into the _misère_ of La Ferté Macé stepped lightly and proudly
Jean le Nègre.

Of all the fine people in La Ferté, Monsieur Jean (“_le noir_” as he
was entitled by his enemies) swaggers in my memory as the finest.

Jean’s first act was to complete the distribution (begun, he announced,
among the _plantons_ who had escorted him upstairs) of two pockets full
of Cubebs. Right and left he gave them up to the last, remarking
carelessly, “_J’ne veux, moi._”

_Après la soupe_ (which occurred a few minutes after _le noir’s_ entry)
B. and I and the greater number of prisoners descended to the _cour_
for our afternoon promenade. The cook spotted us immediately and
desired us to “catch water”; which we did, three cartfuls of it,
earning our usual _café sucré_. On quitting the kitchen after this
delicious repast (which as usual mitigated somewhat the effects of the
swill that was our official nutriment) we entered the _cour_. And we
noticed at once a well-made figure standing conspicuously by itself,
and poring with extraordinary intentness over the pages of a London
Daily Mail which it was holding upside-down. The reader was culling
choice bits of news of a highly sensational nature, and exclaiming from
time to time: “You don’t say! Look, the King of England is sick. Some
news!… What? The queen too? Good God! What’s this?—My father is dead!
Oh, well. The war is over. Good.”—It was Jean le Nègre, playing a
little game with himself to beguile the time.

When we had mounted _à la chambre_, two or three tried to talk with
this extraordinary personage in French; at which he became very
superior and announced: “_J’suis anglais, moi. Parlez anglais.
Comprends pas français, moi._” At this a crowd escorted him over to B.
and me—anticipating great deeds in the English language. Jean looked at
us critically and said: “_Vous parlez anglais? Moi parlez
anglais._”—“We are Americans, and speak English,” I answered.—“_Moi
anglais_,” Jean said. “_Mon père, capitaine de gendarmes, Londres.
Comprends pas français, moi._ SPEE-Kingliss”—he laughed all over
himself.

At this display of English on Jean’s part the English-speaking
Hollanders began laughing. “The son of a bitch is crazy,” one said.

And from that moment B. and I got on famously with Jean.

His mind was a child’s. His use of language was sometimes exalted
fibbing, sometimes the purely picturesque. He courted above all the
sound of words, more or less disdaining their meaning. He told us
immediately (in pidgeon French) that he was born without a mother
because his mother died when he was born, that his father was (first)
sixteen (then) sixty years old, that his father _gagnait cinq cent
franc par jour_ (later, par _année_), that he was born in London and
not in England, that he was in the French army and had never been in
any army.

He did not, however, contradict himself in one statement: “_Les
français sont des cochons_”—to which we heartily agreed, and which won
him the approval of the Hollanders.

The next day I had my hands full acting as interpreter for “_le noir
qui comprends pas français_.” I was summoned from the _cour_ to
elucidate a great grief which Jean had been unable to explain to the
Gestionnaire. I mounted with a _planton_ to find Jean in hysterics,
speechless, his eyes starting out of his head. As nearly as I could
make out, Jean had had sixty francs when he arrived, which money he had
given to a _planton_ upon his arrival, the _planton_ having told Jean
that he would deposit the money with the Gestionnaire in Jean’s name
(Jean could not write). The _planton_ in question who looked
particularly innocent denied this charge upon my explaining Jean’s
version; while the Gestionnaire puffed and grumbled, disclaiming any
connection with the alleged theft and protesting sonorously that he was
hearing about Jean’s sixty francs for the first time. The Gestionnaire
shook his thick piggish finger at the book wherein all financial
transactions were to be found—from the year one to the present year,
month, day, hour and minute (or words to that effect). “_Mais c’est pas
là_” he kept repeating stupidly. The Surveillant was uh-ahing at a
great rate and attempting to pacify Jean in French. I myself was
somewhat fearful for Jean’s sanity and highly indignant at the
_planton_. The matter ended with the _planton’s_ being sent about his
business; simultaneously with Jean’s dismissal to the _cour_, whither I
accompanied him. My best efforts to comfort Jean in this matter were
quite futile. Like a child who has been unjustly punished he was
inconsolable. Great tears welled in his eyes. He kept repeating
“_sees-tee franc—planton voleur_,” and—absolutely like a child who in
anguish calls itself by the name which has been given itself by
grown-ups—“steel Jean munee.” To no avail I called the _planton_ a
_menteur_, a _voleur_, a _fils d’un chien_, and various other names.
Jean felt the wrong itself too keenly to be interested in my
denunciation of the mere agent through whom injustice had (as it
happened) been consummated.

But—again like an inconsolable child who weeps his heart out when no
human comfort avails and wakes the next day without an apparent trace
of the recent grief—Jean le Nègre, in the course of the next
twenty-four hours, had completely recovered his normal buoyancy of
spirit. The _sees-tee franc_ were gone. A wrong had been done. But that
was yesterday. To-day—

And he wandered up and down, joking, laughing, singing:

“_après la guerre fini_.” …

In the _cour_ Jean was the target of all female eyes. Handkerchiefs
were waved to him; phrases of the most amorous nature greeted his every
appearance. To all these demonstrations he by no means turned a deaf
ear; on the contrary. Jean was irrevocably vain. He boasted of having
been enormously popular with the girls wherever he went and of having
never disdained their admiration. In Paris one day—(and thus it
happened that we discovered why _le gouvernement français_ had arrested
Jean)—

One afternoon, having _rien à faire_, and being flush (owing to his
success as a thief, of which vocation he made a great deal, adding as
many ciphers to the amounts as fancy dictated) Jean happened to cast
his eyes in a store window where were displayed all possible
appurtenances for the _militaire_. Vanity was rooted deeply in Jean’s
soul. The uniform of an English captain met his eyes. Without a
moment’s hesitation he entered the store, bought the entire uniform,
including leather puttees and belt (of the latter purchase he was
especially proud), and departed. The next store contained a display of
medals of all descriptions. It struck Jean at once that a uniform would
be incomplete without medals. He entered this store, bought one of
every decoration—not forgetting the Colonial, nor yet the Belgian Cross
(which on account of its size and colour particularly appealed to
him)—and went to his room. There he adjusted the decorations on the
chest of his blouse, donned the uniform, and sallied importantly forth
to capture Paris.

Everywhere he met with success. He was frantically pursued by women of
all stations from _les putains_ to _les princesses._ The police
salaamed to him. His arm was wearied with the returning of innumerable
salutes. So far did his medals carry him that, although on one occasion
a _gendarme_ dared to arrest him for beating-in the head of a fellow
English officer (who being a mere lieutenant, should not have objected
to Captain Jean’s stealing the affections of his lady), the sergeant of
police before whom Jean was arraigned on a charge of attempting to kill
refused to even hear the evidence, and dismissed the case with profuse
apologies to the heroic Captain. “_‘Le gouvernement français,
Monsieur_, extends to you, through me, its profound apology for the
insult which your honour has received.’_Ils sont des cochons, les
français_,” said Jean, and laughed throughout his entire body.

Having had the most blue-blooded ladies of the capital cooing upon his
heroic chest, having completely beaten up, with the full support of the
law, whosoever of lesser rank attempted to cross his path or refused
him the salute—having had “great fun” saluting generals on _les grands
boulevards_ and being in turn saluted (“_tous les générals, tous_,
salute me, Jean have more medals”), and this state of affairs having
lasted for about three months—Jean began to be very bored (me _très
ennuyé_). A fit of temper (“me _très faché_”) arising from this _ennui_
led to a _rixe_ with the police, in consequence of which (Jean, though
outnumbered three to one, having almost killed one of his assailants),
our hero was a second time arrested. This time the authorities went so
far as to ask the heroic captain to what branch of the English army he
was at present attached; to which Jean first replied “_parle pas
français, moi_,” and immediately after announced that he was a Lord of
the Admiralty, that he had committed robberies in Paris to the tune of
_sees meel-i-own franc_, that he was a son of the Lord Mayor of London
by the Queen, that he had lost a leg in Algeria, and that the French
were _cochons_. All of which assertions being duly disproved, Jean was
remanded to La Ferté for psychopathic observation and safe keeping on
the technical charge of wearing an English officer’s uniform.

Jean’s particular girl at La Ferté was “LOO-Loo.” With Lulu it was the
same as with _les princesses_ in Paris—“me no _travaille, jam-MAIS. Les
femmes travaillent_, geev Jean mun-ee, _sees, sees-tee, see-cent
francs. Jamais travaille, moi._” Lulu smuggled Jean money; and not for
some time did the woman who slept next Lulu miss it. Lulu also sent
Jean a lace embroidered handkerchief, which Jean would squeeze and
press to his lips with a beatific smile of perfect contentment. The
affair with Lulu kept Mexique and Pete The Hollander busy writing
letters; which Jean dictated, rolling his eyes and scratching his head
for words.

At this time Jean was immensely happy. He was continually playing
practical jokes on one of the Hollanders, or Mexique, or the Wanderer,
or, in fact, anyone of whom he was particularly fond. At intervals
between these demonstrations of irrepressibility (which kept everyone
in a state of laughter) he would stride up and down the filth-sprinkled
floor with his hands in the pockets of his stylish jacket, singing at
the top of his lungs his own version of the famous song of songs:

_après la guerre finit,
soldat anglais parti,
mademoiselle que je laissais en France
avec des pickaninee._ PLENTY!


and laughing till he shook and had to lean against a wall.

B. and Mexique made some dominoes. Jean had not the least idea of how
to play, but when we three had gathered for a game he was always to be
found leaning over our shoulders, completely absorbed, once in a while
offered us sage advice, laughing utterly when someone made a _cinque_
or a multiple thereof.

One afternoon, in the interval between _la soupe_ and _promenade_, Jean
was in especially high spirits. I was lying down on my collapsible bed
when he came up to my end of the room and began showing off exactly
like a child. This time it was the game of _l’armée française_ which
Jean was playing.—“_Jamais soldat, moi. Connais tous l’armée
française._” John The Bathman, stretched comfortably in his bunk near
me, grunted. “_Tous_,” Jean repeated.—And he stood in front of us;
stiff as a stick in imitation of a French lieutenant with an imaginary
company in front of him. First he would be the lieutenant giving
commands, then he would be the Army executing them. He began with the
manual of arms. “_Com-pag-nie …_” then, as he went through the manual,
holding his imaginary gun—“_htt, htt, htt_.”—Then as the officer
commending his troops: “_Bon. Très bon. Très bien fait_”—laughing with
head thrown back and teeth aglitter at his own success. John le
Baigneur was so tremendously amused that he gave up sleeping to watch.
_L’armée_ drew a crowd of admirers from every side. For at least
three-quarters of an hour this game went on….

Another day Jean, being angry at the weather and having eaten a huge
amount of _soupe_, began yelling at the top of his voice: “_MERDE à la
France_” and laughing heartily. No one paying especial attention to
him, he continued (happy in this new game with himself) for about
fifteen minutes. Then The Trick Raincoat (that undersized specimen,
clad in feminine-fitting raiment with flashy shoes, who was by trade a
pimp, being about half Jean’s height and a tenth of his physique,)
strolled up to Jean—who had by this time got as far as my bed—and,
sticking his sallow face as near Jean’s as the neck could reach, said
in a solemn voice: “_II ne faut pas dire ça._” Jean astounded, gazed at
the intruder for a moment; then demanded: “_Qui dit ça? Moi? Jean?
Jamais, ja-MAIS. MERDE à la France!_” nor would he yield a point,
backed up as he was by the moral support of everyone present except the
Raincoat—who found discretion the better part of valour and retired
with a few dark threats; leaving Jean master of the situation and
yelling for the Raincoat’s particular delectation: “_MAY-RRR-DE à la
France!_” more loudly than ever.

A little after the epic battle with stovepipes between The Young Pole
and Bill The Hollander, the wrecked _poêle_ (which was patiently
waiting to be repaired) furnished Jean with perhaps his most brilliant
inspiration. The final section of pipe (which conducted the smoke
through a hole in the wall to the outer air) remained in place all by
itself, projecting about six feet into the room at a height of seven or
eight feet from the floor. Jean noticed this; got a chair; mounted on
it, and by applying alternately his ear and his mouth to the end of the
pipe created for himself a telephone, with the aid of which he carried
on a conversation with The Wanderer (at that moment visiting his family
on the floor below) to this effect:

—Jean, grasping the pipe and speaking angrily into it, being evidently
nettled at the poor connection—“Heh-loh, hello, hello, hello”—surveying
the pipe in consternation—“_Merde. Ça marche pas_”—trying again with a
deep frown—“heh-LOH!”—tremendously agitated—“HEHLOH!”—a beautiful smile
supplanting the frown—“hello Barbu. Are you there? _Oui?
Bon!_”—evincing tremendous pleasure at having succeeded in establishing
the connection satisfactorily—“Barbu? Are you listening to me? _Oui?_
What’s the matter Barbu? _Comment? Moi? Oui, MOI? JEAN jaMAIS! jamais,
jaMAIS_, Barbu. I have never said you have fleas. _C’était pas moi, tu
sais. JaMAIS, c’était un autre. Peut-être c’était Mexique_”—turning his
head in Mexique’s direction and roaring with laughter—“Hello, HEH-LOH.
Barbu? _Tu sais_, Barbu, _j’ai jamais dit ça. Au contraire_, Barbu.
_J’ai dit que vous avez des totos_”—another roar of laughter—“What? It
isn’t true? Good. Then. What have you got, Barbu? Barbu? Lice—OHHHH. I
understand. It’s better”—shaking with laughter, then suddenly
tremendously serious—“hellohellohellohello HEHLOH!”—addressing the
stove-pipe—“_C’est une mauvaise machine, ça_”—speaking into it with the
greatest distinctness—“HEL-L-LOH. Barbu? _Liberté_, Barbu. _Oui.
Comment? C’est ça. Liberté pour tou’l’monde. Quand? Après la soupe.
Oui. Liberté pour tou’l’monde après la soupe!_”—to which jest
astonishingly reacted a certain old man known as the West Indian Negro
(a stocky credulous creature with whom Jean would have nothing to do,
and whose tales of Brooklyn were indeed outclassed by Jean’s _histoires
d’amour_) who leaped rheumatically from his _paillasse_ at the word
“_Liberté_” and rushed limpingly hither and thither inquiring Was it
true? to the enormous and excruciating amusement of The Enormous Room
in general.

After which Jean, exhausted with laughter, descended from the chair and
lay down on his bed to read a letter from Lulu (not knowing a syllable
of it). A little later he came rushing up to my bed in the most
terrific state of excitement, the whites of his eyes gleaming, his
teeth bared, his kinky hair fairly standing on end, and cried:

“You—me, me—you? _Pas bon._ You—you, me—me: _bon_. Me—me, you—you!” and
went away capering and shouting with laughter, dancing with great grace
and as great agility and with an imaginary partner the entire length of
the room.

There was another game—a pure child’s game—which Jean played. It was
the name game. He amused himself for hours together by lying on his
_paillasse_ tilting his head back, rolling up his eyes, and crying in a
high quavering voice—“JAW-neeeeee.” After a repetition or two of his
own name in English, he would demand sharply “Who is calling me?
Mexique? _Es-ce que tu m’appelle_, Mexique?” and if Mexique happened to
be asleep, Jean would rush over and cry in his ear, shaking him
thoroughly—“_Es-ce tu m’appelle, toi?_” Or it might be Barbu, or Pete
The Hollander, or B. or myself, of whom he sternly asked the
question—which was always followed by quantities of laughter on Jean’s
part. He was never perfectly happy unless exercising his inexhaustible
imagination….

Of all Jean’s extraordinary selves, the moral one was at once the most
rare and most unreasonable. In the matter of _les femmes_ he could
hardly have been accused by his bitterest enemy of being a Puritan. Yet
the Puritan streak came out one day, in a discussion which lasted for
several hours. Jean as in the case of France, spoke in dogma. His
contention was very simple: “The woman who smokes is not a woman.” He
defended it hotly against the attacks of all the nations represented;
in vain did Belgian and Hollander, Russian and Pole, Spaniard and
Alsatian, charge and counter-charge—Jean remained unshaken. A woman
could do anything but smoke—if she smoked she ceased automatically to
be a woman and became something unspeakable. As Jean was at this time
sitting alternately on B.’s bed and mine, and as the alternations
became increasingly frequent as the discussion waxed hotter, we were
not sorry when the _planton’s_ shout “_A la promenade les hommes!_”
scattered the opposing warriors. Then up leaped Jean (who had almost
come to blows innumerable times) and rushed laughing to the door,
having already forgotten the whole thing.

Now we come to the story of Jean’s undoing, and may the gods which made
Jean le Nègre give me grace to tell it as it was.

The trouble started with Lulu. One afternoon, shortly after the
telephoning, Jean was sick at heart and couldn’t be induced either to
leave his couch or to utter a word. Everyone guessed the reason—Lulu
had left for another camp that morning. The _planton_ told Jean to come
down with the rest and get _soupe_. No answer. Was Jean sick? “_Oui_,
me seek.” And steadfastly he refused to eat, till the disgusted
_planton_ gave it up and locked Jean in alone. When we ascended after
_la soupe_ we found Jean as we had left him, stretched on his couch,
big tears on his cheeks. I asked him if I could do anything for him; he
shook his head. We offered him cigarettes—no, he did not wish to smoke.
As B. and I went away we heard him moaning to himself “Jawnee no see
LooLoo no more.” With the exception of ourselves, the inhabitants of La
Ferté Macé took Jean’s desolation as a great joke. Shouts of Lulu! rent
the welkin on all sides. Jean stood it for an hour; then he leaped up,
furious; and demanded (confronting the man from whose lips the cry had
last issued)—“Feeneesh LooLoo?” The latter coolly referred him to the
man next to him; he in turn to someone else; and round and round the
room Jean stalked, seeking the offender, followed by louder and louder
shouts of Lulu! and Jawnee! the authors of which (so soon as he
challenged them) denied with innocent faces their guilt and recommended
that Jean look closer next time. At last Jean took to his couch in
utter misery and disgust. The rest of _les hommes_ descended as usual
for the promenade—not so Jean. He ate nothing for supper. That evening
not a sound issued from his bed.

Next morning he awoke with a broad grin, and to the salutations of
Lulu! replied, laughing heartily at himself “FEENEESH Loo Loo.” Upon
which the tormentors (finding in him no longer a victim) desisted; and
things resumed their normal course. If an occasional Lulu! upraised
itself, Jean merely laughed, and repeated (with a wave of his arm)
“FEENEESH.” Finished Lulu seemed to be.

But _un jour_ I had remained upstairs during the promenade, both
because I wanted to write and because the weather was worse than usual.
Ordinarily, no matter how deep the mud in the _cour_, Jean and I would
trot back and forth, resting from time to time under the little shelter
out of the drizzle, talking of all things under the sun. I remember on
one occasion we were the only ones to brave the rain and slough—Jean in
paper-thin soled slippers (which he had recently succeeded in drawing
from the Gestionnaire) and I in my huge _sabots_—hurrying back and
forth with the rain pouring on us, and he very proud. On this day,
however, I refused the challenge of the mud.

The promenaders had been singularly noisy, I thought. Now they were
mounting to the room making a truly tremendous racket. No sooner were
the doors opened than in rushed half a dozen frenzied friends, who
began telling me all at once about a terrific thing which my friend the
_noir_ had just done. It seems that The Trick Raincoat had pulled at
Jean’s handkerchief (Lulu’s gift in other days) which Jean wore always
conspicuously in his outside breast pocket; that Jean had taken the
Raincoat’s head in his two hands, held it steady, abased his own head,
and rammed the helpless T.R. as a bull would do—the impact of Jean’s
head upon the other’s nose causing that well-known feature to occupy a
new position in the neighbourhood of the right ear. B. corroborated
this description, adding the Raincoat’s nose was broken and that
everyone was down on Jean for fighting in an unsportsmanlike way. I
found Jean still very angry, and moreover very hurt because everyone
was now shunning him. I told him that I personally was glad of what
he’d done; but nothing would cheer him up. The T.R. now entered, very
terrible to see, having been patched up by Monsieur Richard with
copious plasters. His nose was not broken, he said thickly, but only
bent. He hinted darkly of trouble in store for _le noir_; and received
the commiserations of everyone present except Mexique, The Zulu, B. and
me.

The Zulu, I remember, pointed to his own nose (which was not
unimportant), then to Jean, and made a _moue_ of excruciating anguish,
and winked audibly.

Jean’s spirit was broken. The well-nigh unanimous verdict against him
had convinced his minutely sensitive soul that it had done wrong. He
lay quietly, and would say nothing to anyone.

Some time after the soup, about eight o’clock, the Fighting Sheeney and
The Trick Raincoat suddenly set upon Jean le Nègre à propos of nothing;
and began pommelling him cruelly. The conscience-stricken pillar of
beautiful muscle—who could have easily killed both his assailants at
one blow—not only offered no reciprocatory violence but refused even to
defend himself. Unresistingly, wincing with pain, his arms mechanically
raised and his head bent, he was battered frightfully to the window by
his bed, thence into the corner (upsetting the stool in the _pissoir_),
thence along the wall to the door. As the punishment increased he cried
out like a child: “_Laissez-moi tranquille!_”—again and again; and in
his voice the insane element gained rapidly. Finally, shrieking in
agony, he rushed to the nearest window; and while the Sheeneys together
pommelled him yelled for help to the _planton_ beneath.—

The unparalleled consternation and applause produced by this one-sided
battle had long since alarmed the authorities. I was still trying to
break through the five-deep ring of spectators (among whom was The
Messenger Boy, who advised me to desist and got a piece of advice in
return)—when with a tremendous crash open burst the door; and in
stepped four _plantons_ with drawn revolvers, looking frightened to
death, followed by the Surveillant who carried a sort of baton and was
crying faintly: “_Qu’est-ce que c’est!_”

At the first sound of the door the two Sheeneys had fled, and were now
playing the part of innocent spectators. Jean alone occupied the stage.
His lips were parted. His eyes were enormous. He was panting as if his
heart would break. He still kept his arms raised as if seeing
everywhere before him fresh enemies. Blood spotted here and there the
wonderful chocolate carpet of his skin, and his whole body glistened
with sweat. His shirt was in ribbons over his beautiful muscles.

Seven or eight persons at once began explaining the fight to the
Surveillant, who could make nothing out of their accounts and therefore
called aside a trusted older man in order to get his version. The two
retired from the room. The _plantons_, finding the expected wolf a
lamb, flourished their revolvers about Jean and threatened him in the
insignificant and vile language which _plantons_ use to anyone whom
they can bully. Jean kept repeating dully “_laissez-moi tranquille. Ils
voulaient me tuer._” His chest shook terribly with vast sobs.

Now the Surveillant returned and made a speech, to the effect that he
had received independently of each other the stories of four men, that
by all counts _le nègre_ was absolutely to blame, that _le nègre_ had
caused an inexcusable trouble to the authorities and to his
fellow-prisoners by this wholly unjustified conflict, and that as a
punishment the _nègre_ would now suffer the consequences of his guilt
in the _cabinot_.—Jean had dropped his arms to his sides. His face was
twisted with anguish. He made a child’s gesture, a pitiful hopeless
movement with his slender hands. Sobbing he protested: “It isn’t my
fault, _monsieur le Surveillant!_ They attacked me! I didn’t do a
thing! They wanted to kill me! Ask him”—he pointed to me desperately.
Before I could utter a syllable the Surveillant raised his hand for
silence: _le nègre_ had done wrong. He should be placed in the
_cabinot_.

—Like a flash, with a horrible tearing sob, Jean leaped from the
surrounding _plantons_ and rushed for the coat which lay on his bed
screaming—“_AHHHHH—mon couteau!_”—“Look out or he’ll get his knife and
kill himself!” someone yelled; and the four _plantons_ seized Jean by
both arms just as he made a grab for his jacket. Thwarted in his hope
and burning with the ignominy of his situation, Jean cast his enormous
eyes up at the nearest pillar, crying hysterically: “Everybody is
putting me in _cabinot_ because I am black.”—In a second, by a single
movement of his arms, he sent the four _plantons_ reeling to a distance
of ten feet: leaped at the pillar: seized it in both hands like a
Samson, and (gazing for another second with a smile of absolute
beatitude at its length) dashed his head against it. Once, twice,
thrice he smote himself, before the _plantons_ seized him—and suddenly
his whole strength wilted; he allowed himself to be overpowered by them
and stood with bowed head, tears streaming from his eyes—while the
smallest pointed a revolver at his heart.

This was a little more than the Surveillant had counted on. Now that
Jean’s might was no more, the bearer of the croix de guerre stepped
forward and in a mild placating voice endeavoured to soothe the victim
of his injustice. It was also slightly more than I could stand, and
slamming aside the spectators I shoved myself under his honour’s nose.
“Do you know,” I asked, “whom you are dealing with in this man? A
child. There are a lot of Jeans where I come from. You heard what he
said? He is black, is he not, and gets no justice from you. You heard
that. I saw the whole affair. He was attacked, he put up no resistance
whatever, he was beaten by two cowards. He is no more to blame than I
am.”—The Surveillant was waving his wand and cooing “_Je comprends, je
comprends, c’est malheureux._”—“You’re god damn right its _malheureux_”
I said, forgetting my French. “_Quand même_, he has resisted authority”
The Surveillant gently continued: “Now Jean, be quiet, you will be
taken to the _cabinot_. You may as well go quietly and behave yourself
like a good boy.”

At this I am sure my eyes started out of my head. All I could think of
to say was: “_Attends, un petit moment._” To reach my own bed took but
a second. In another second I was back, bearing my great and sacred
_pelisse_. I marched up to Jean. “Jean” I remarked with a smile, “you
are going to the _cabinot_ but you’re coming back right away. I know
that you are perfectly right. Put that on”—and I pushed him gently into
my coat. “Here are my cigarettes, Jean; you can smoke just as much as
you like”—I pulled out all I had, one full _paquet_ of Maryland, and a
half dozen loose ones, and deposited them carefully in the right hand
pocket of the _pelisse_. Then I patted him on the shoulder and gave him
the immortal salutation—“_Bonne chance, mon ami!_”

He straightened proudly. He stalked like a king through the doorway.
The astounded _plantons_ and the embarrassed Surveillant followed, the
latter closing the doors behind him. I was left with a cloud of angry
witnesses.

An hour later the doors opened, Jean entered quietly, and the doors
shut. As I lay on my bed I could see him perfectly. He was almost
naked. He laid my _pelisse_ on his mattress, then walked calmly up to a
neighbouring bed and skillfully and unerringly extracted a brush from
under it. Back to his own bed he tiptoed, sat down on it, and began
brushing my coat. He brushed it for a half hour, speaking to no one,
spoken to by no one. Finally he put the brush back, disposed the
_pelisse_ carefully on his arm, came to my bed, and as carefully laid
it down. Then he took from the right hand outside pocket a full _paquet
jaune_ and six loose cigarettes, showed them for my approval, and
returned them to their place. “_Merci_” was his sole remark. B. got
Jean to sit down beside him on his bed and we talked for a few minutes,
avoiding the subject of the recent struggle. Then Jean went back to his
own bed and lay down.

It was not till later that we learned the climax—not till _le petit
belge avec le bras cassé, le petit balayeur_, came hurrying to our end
of the room and sat down with us. He was bursting with excitement; his
well arm jerked and his sick one stumped about and he seemed incapable
of speech. At length words came.

“_Monsieur Jean_” (now that I think of it, I believe someone had told
him that all male children in America are named Jean at their birth) “I
saw SOME SIGHT! _le nègre, vous savez?_—he is STRONG: _Monsieur Jean_,
he’s _a_GIANT, _croyez moi! C’est pas un homme, tu sais? Je l’ai vu,
moi_”—and he indicated his eyes.

We pricked up our ears.

The _balayeur_, stuffing a pipe nervously with his tiny thumb said:
“You saw the fight here? So did I. The whole of it. _Le noir avait
raison._ Well, when they took him downstairs, I slipped out too— _Je
suis le balayeur, savez vous?_ and the _balayeur_ can go where other
people can’t.”

I gave him a match, and he thanked me. He struck it on his trousers
with a quick pompous gesture, drew heavily on his squeaky pipe, and at
last shot a minute puff of smoke into the air: then another, and
another. Satisfied, he went on; his good hand grasping the pipe between
its index and second fingers and resting on one little knee, his legs
crossed, his small body hunched forward, wee unshaven face close to
mine—went on in the confidential tone of one who relates an
unbelievable miracle to a couple of intimate friends:

“Monsieur Jean, I followed. They got him to the _cabinot_. The door
stood open. At this moment _les femmes descendaient_, it was their
_corvée d’eau, vous savez._ He saw them, _le noir_. One of them cried
from the stairs, Is a Frenchman stronger than you, Jean? The _plantons_
were standing around him, the Surveillant was behind. He took the
nearest _planton_, and tossed him down the corridor so that he struck
against the door at the end of it. He picked up two more, one in each
arm, and threw them away. They fell on top of the first. The last tried
to take hold of Jean, and so Jean took him by the neck”—(the _balayeur_
strangled himself for our benefit)—“and that _planton_ knocked down the
other three, who had got on their feet by this time. You should have
seen the Surveillant. He had run away and was saying, ‘Capture him,
capture him.’ The _plantons_ rushed Jean, all four of them. He caught
them as they came and threw them about. One knocked down the
Surveillant. The women cried ‘_Vive Jean_,’ and clapped their hands.
The Surveillant called to the _plantons_ to take Jean, but they
wouldn’t go near Jean, they said he was a black devil. The women kidded
them. They were so sore. And they could do nothing. Jean was laughing.
His shirt was almost off him. He asked the planton to come and take
him, please. He asked the Surveillant, too. The women had set down
their pails and were dancing up and down and yelling. The Directeur
came down and sent them flying. The Surveillant and his _plantons_ were
as helpless as if they had been children. Monsieur Jean— _quelque
chose_.”

I gave him another match. “_Merci, Monsieur Jean._” He struck it, drew
on his pipe, lowered it, and went on:

“They were helpless, and men. I am little. I have only one arm, _tu
sais_. I walked up to Jean and said, Jean, you know me, I am your
friend. He said, Yes. I said to the _plantons_, Give me that rope. They
gave me the rope that they would have bound him with. He put out his
wrists for me. I tied his hands behind his back. He was like a lamb.
The _plantons_ rushed up and tied his feet together. Then they tied his
hands and feet together. They took the lacings out of his shoes for
fear he would use them to strangle himself. They stood him up in an
angle between two walls in the _cabinot_. They left him there for an
hour. He was supposed to have been in there all night; but the
Surveillant knew that he would have died, for he was almost naked, and
_vous savez_, Monsieur Jean, it was cold in there. And damp. A fully
clothed man would have been dead in the morning. And he was naked….
_Monsieur Jean—un géant!_”

—This same _petit belge_ had frequently protested to me that _Il est
fou, le noir_. He is always playing when sensible men try to sleep. The
last few hours (which had made of the _fou_ a _géant_) made of the
scoffer a worshipper. Nor did “_le bras cassé_” ever from that time
forth desert his divinity. If as _balayeur_ he could lay hands on a
_morceau de pain_ or _de viande_, he bore it as before to our beds; but
Jean was always called over to partake of the forbidden pleasure.

As for Jean, one would hardly have recognised him. It was as if the
child had fled into the deeps of his soul, never to reappear. Day after
day went by, and Jean (instead of courting excitement as before)
cloistered himself in solitude; or at most sought the company of B. and
me and Le Petit Belge for a quiet chat or a cigarette. The morning
after the three fights he did not appear in the _cour_ for early
promenade along with the rest of us (including The Sheeneys). In vain
did _les femmes_ strain their necks and eyes to find the black man who
was stronger than six Frenchmen. And B. and I noticed our bed-clothing
airing upon the window-sills. When we mounted, Jean was patting and
straightening our blankets, and looking for the first time in his life
guilty of some enormous crime. Nothing however had disappeared. Jean
said, “Me feeks _lits tous les jours.”_ And every morning he aired and
made our beds for us, and we mounted to find him smoothing
affectionately some final ruffle, obliterating with enormous solemnity
some microscopic crease. We gave him cigarettes when he asked for them
(which was almost never) and offered them when we knew he had none or
when we saw him borrowing from someone else whom his spirit held in
less esteem. Of us he asked no favours. He liked us too well.

When B. went away, Jean was almost as desolate as I.

About a fortnight later, when the grey dirty snow-slush hid the black
filthy world which we saw from our windows, and when people lived in
their ill-smelling beds, it came to pass that my particular _amis_—The
Zulu, Jean, Mexique—and I and all the remaining _miserables_ of La
Ferté descended at the decree of Caesar Augustus to endure our
bi-weekly bath. I remember gazing stupidly at Jean’s chocolate-coloured
nakedness as it strode to the tub, a rippling texture of muscular
miracle. _Tout le monde_ had _baigné_ (including The Zulu, who tried to
escape at the last minute and was nabbed by the _planton_ whose
business it was to count heads and see that none escaped the ordeal)
and now _tout le monde_ was shivering all together in the anteroom,
begging to be allowed to go upstairs and get into bed—when Le Baigneur,
Monsieur Richard’s strenuous successor that is, set up a hue and cry
that one towel was lacking. The Fencer was sent for. He entered; heard
the case; and made a speech. If the guilty party would immediately
return the stolen towel, he, The Fencer, would guarantee that party
pardon; if not, everyone present should be searched, and the man on
whose person the serviette was found _va attraper quinze jours de
cabinot_. This eloquence yielding no results, The Fencer exorted the
culprit to act like a man and render to Caesar what is Caesar’s.
Nothing happened. Everyone was told to get in single file and make
ready to pass out the door, one after one we were searched; but so
general was the curiosity that as fast as they were inspected the
erstwhile bed-enthusiasts, myself included, gathered on the side-lines
to watch their fellows instead of availing themselves of the
opportunity to go upstairs. One after one we came opposite The Fencer,
held up our arms, had our pockets run through and our clothing felt
over from head to heel, and were exonerated. When Caesar came to Jean
Caesar’s eyes lighted, and Caesar’s hitherto perfunctory proddings and
pokings became inspired and methodical. Twice he went over Jean’s
entire body, while Jean, his arms raised in a bored gesture, his face
completely expressionless, suffered loftily the examination of his
person. A third time the desperate Fencer tried; his hands, starting at
Jean’s neck, reached the calf of his leg—and stopped. The hands rolled
up Jean’s right trouser-leg to the knee. They rolled up the underwear
on his leg—and there, placed perfectly flat to the skin, appeared the
missing serviette. As The Fencer seized it, Jean laughed—the utter
laughter of old days—and the onlookers cackled uproariously, while,
with a broad smile, the Fencer proclaimed: “I thought I knew where I
should find it.” And he added, more pleased with himself than anyone
had ever seen him: “_Maintenant, vous pouvez tous monter à la
chambre._” We mounted, happy to get back to bed; but none so happy as
Jean le Nègre. It was not that the _cabinot_ threat had failed to
materialize—at any minute a _planton_ might call Jean to his
punishment: indeed this was what everyone expected. It was that the
incident had absolutely removed that inhibition which (from the day
when Jean _le noir_ became Jean _le géant_) had held the child, which
was Jean’s soul and destiny, prisoner. From that instant till the day I
left him he was the old Jean—joking, fibbing, laughing, and always
playing—Jean L’Enfant.

And I think of Jean le Nègre … you are something to dream over, Jean;
summer and winter (birds and darkness) you go walking into my head; you
are a sudden and chocolate-coloured thing, in your hands you have a
habit of holding six or eight _plantons_ (which you are about to throw
away) and the flesh of your body is like the flesh of a very deep
cigar. Which I am still and always quietly smoking: always and still I
am inhaling its very fragrant and remarkable muscles. But I doubt if
ever I am quite through with you, if ever I will toss you out of my
heart into the sawdust of forgetfulness. Kid, Boy, I’d like to tell
you: _la guerre est finie_.

O yes, Jean: I do not forget, I remember Plenty; the snow’s coming, the
snow will throw again a very big and gentle shadow into The Enormous
Room and into the eyes of you and me walking always and wonderfully up
and down….

—Boy, Kid, Nigger, with the strutting muscles—take me up into your mind
once or twice before I die (you know why: just because the eyes of me
and you will be full of dirt some day). Quickly take me up into the
bright child of your mind, before we both go suddenly all loose and
silly (you know how it will feel). Take me up (carefully, as if I were
a toy) and play carefully with me, once or twice, before I and you go
suddenly all limp and foolish. Once or twice before you go into great
Jack roses and ivory—(once or twice, Boy, before we together go
wonderfully down into the Big Dirt laughing, bumped with the last
darkness).



XII.
THREE WISE MEN


It must have been late in November when _la commission_ arrived. _La
commission_, as I have said, visited La Ferté every three months. That
is to say, B. and I (by arriving when we did) had just escaped its
clutches. I consider this one of the luckiest things in my life.

_La commission_ arrived one morning, and began work immediately.

A list was made of _les hommes_ who were to pass _la commission_,
another of _les femmes_. These lists were given to the _planton_ with
the Wooden Hand. In order to avert any delay, those of the men whose
names fell in the first half of the list were not allowed to enjoy the
usual stimulating activities afforded by La Ferté’s supreme
environment: they were, in fact, confined to The Enormous Room, subject
to instant call—moreover they were not called one by one, or as their
respective turns came, but in groups of three or four; the idea being
that _la commission_ should suffer no smallest annoyance which might be
occasioned by loss of time. There were always, in other words, eight or
ten men waiting in the upper corridor opposite a disagreeably crisp
door, which door belonged to that mysterious room wherein _la
commission_ transacted its inestimable affairs. Not more than a couple
of yards away ten or eight women waited their turns. Conversation
between the men and the women had been forbidden in the fiercest terms
by Monsieur le Directeur: nevertheless conversation spasmodically
occurred, thanks to the indulgent nature of the Wooden Hand. The Wooden
Hand must have been cuckoo—he looked it. If he wasn’t I am totally at a
loss to account for his indulgence.

B. and I spent a morning in The Enormous Room without results, an
astonishing acquisition of nervousness excepted. _Après la soupe_
(noon) we were conducted _en haut_, told to leave our spoons and bread
(which we did) and—in company with several others whose names were
within a furlong of the last man called—were descended to the corridor.
All that afternoon we waited. Also we waited all next morning. We spent
our time talking quietly with a buxom pink-cheeked Belgian girl who was
in attendance as translator for one of _les femmes_. This Belgian told
us that she was a permanent inhabitant of La Ferté, that she and
another _femme honnête_ occupied a room by themselves, that her
brothers were at the front in Belgium, that her ability to speak
fluently several languages (including English and German) made her
invaluable to _Messieurs la commission_, that she had committed no
crime, that she was held as a _suspecte_, that she was not entirely
unhappy. She struck me immediately as being not only intelligent but
alive. She questioned us in excellent English as to our offenses, and
seemed much pleased to discover that we were—to all
appearances—innocent of wrong-doing.

From time to time our subdued conversation was interrupted by
admonitions from the amiable Wooden Hand. Twice the door SLAMMED open,
and Monsieur le Directeur bounced out, frothing at the mouth and
threatening everyone with infinite _cabinot_, on the ground that
everyone’s deportment or lack of it was menacing the aplomb of the
commissioners. Each time, the Black Holster appeared in the background
and carried on his master’s bullying until everyone was completely
terrified—after which we were left to ourselves and the Wooden Hand
once again.

B. and I were allowed by the latter individual—he was that day, at
least, an individual not merely a _planton_—to peek over his shoulder
at the men’s list. The Wooden Hand even went so far as to escort our
seditious minds to the nearness of their examination by the simple yet
efficient method of placing one of his human fingers opposite the name
of him who was (even at that moment) within, submitting to the
inexorable justice of _le gouvernement français_. I cannot honestly say
that the discovery of this proximity of ourselves to our respective
fates wholly pleased us; yet we were so weary of waiting that it
certainly did not wholly terrify us. All in all, I think I have never
been so utterly un-at-ease as while waiting for the axe to fall,
metaphorically speaking, upon our squawking heads.

We were still conversing with the Belgian girl when a man came out of
the door unsteadily, looking as if he had submitted to several
strenuous fittings of a wooden leg upon a stump not quite healed. The
Wooden Hand, nodding at B., remarked hurriedly in a low voice:

“_Allez!_”

And B. (smiling at La Belge and at me) entered. He was followed by The
Wooden Hand, as I suppose for greater security.

The next twenty minutes, or whatever it was, were by far the most
nerve-racking which I had as yet experienced. La Belge said to me:

“_Il est gentil, votre ami,_”

and I agreed. And my blood was bombarding the roots of my toes and the
summits of my hair.

After (I need not say) two or three million aeons, B. emerged. I had
not time to exchange a look with him—let alone a word—for the Wooden
Hand said from the doorway:

“_Allez, l’autre américain,_”

and I entered in more confusion than can easily be imagined; entered
the torture chamber, entered the inquisition, entered the tentacles of
that sly and beaming polyp, _le gouvernement français_….

As I entered I said, half aloud: The thing is this, to look ’em in the
eyes and keep cool whatever happens, not for the fraction of a moment
forgetting that they are made of _merde_, that they are all of them
composed entirely of _merde_—I don’t know how many inquisitors I
expected to see; but I guess I was ready for at least fifteen, among
them President Poincaré Lui-même. I hummed noiselessly:

“_si vous passez par ma vil-le
n’oubliez pas ma maison;
on y mang-e de bonne sou-pe Ton Ton Tay-ne;
faite de merde et les onions, Ton Ton Tayne Ton Ton Ton,_”


remembering the fine _forgeron_ of Chevancourt who used to sing this,
or something very like it, upon a table—entirely for the benefit of
_les deux américains_, who would subsequently render “Eats uh lonje wae
to Tee-pear-raer-ee,” wholly for the gratification of a roomful of what
Mr. Anderson liked to call “them bastards,” alias “dirty” Frenchmen,
alias _les poilus, les poilus divins_….

A little room. The Directeur’s office? Or The Surveillant’s? Comfort. O
yes, very, very comfortable. On my right a table. At the table three
persons. Reminds me of Noyon a bit, not unpleasantly of course. Three
persons: reading from left to right as I face them—a soggy, sleepy,
slumpy lump in a _gendarme’s_ cape and cap, quite old, captain of
_gendarmes_, not at all interested, wrinkled coarse face, only semi-
_méchant_, large hard clumsy hands, floppingly disposed on table; wily
tidy man in civilian clothes, pen in hand, obviously lawyer, _avocat_
type, little bald on top, sneaky civility, smells of bad perfume or, at
any rate, sweetish soap; tiny red-headed person, also civilian, creased
worrying excited face, amusing little body and hands, brief and jumpy,
must be a Dickens character, ought to spend his time sailing kites of
his own construction over other people’s houses in gusty weather.
Behind the Three, all tied up with deference and inferiority, mild and
spineless, Apollyon.

Would the reader like to know what I was asked?

Ah, would I could say! Only dimly do I remember those moments—only
dimly do I remember looking through the lawyer at Apollyon’s clean
collar—only dimly do I remember the gradual collapse of the captain of
_gendarmes_, his slow but sure assumption of sleepfulness, the drooping
of his soggy _tête de cochon_ lower and lower till it encountered one
hand whose elbow, braced firmly upon the table, sustained its insensate
limpness—only dimly do I remember the enthusiastic antics of the little
red-head when I spoke with patriotic fervour of the wrongs which La
France was doing _mon ami et moi_—only dimly do I remember, to my
right, the immobility of The Wooden Hand, reminding one of a clothing
dummy, or a life-size doll which might be made to move only by him who
knew the proper combination…. At the outset I was asked: Did I want a
translator? I looked and saw the _secrétaire_, weak-eyed and
lemon-pale, and I said “_Non._” I was questioned mostly by the
_avocat_, somewhat by the Dickens, never by either the captain (who was
asleep) or the Directeur (who was timid in the presence of these great
and good delegates of hope, faith and charity per the French
Government). I recall that, for some reason, I was perfectly cool. I
put over six or eight hot shots without losing in the least this
composure, which surprised myself and pleased myself and altogether
increased myself. As the questions came for me I met them half-way,
spouting my best or worst French in a manner which positively
astonished the tiny red-headed demigod. I challenged with my eyes and
with my voice and with my manner Apollyon Himself, and Apollyon Himself
merely cuddled together, depressing his hairy body between its limbs as
a spider sometimes does in the presence of danger. I expressed immense
gratitude to my captors and to _le gouvernement français_ for allowing
me to see and hear and taste and smell and touch the things which
inhabited La Ferté Macé, Orne, France. I do not think that _la
commission_ enjoyed me much. It told me, through its sweetish-soap
leader, that my friend was a criminal—this immediately upon my
entering—and I told it with a great deal of well-chosen politeness that
I disagreed. In telling how and why I disagreed I think I managed to
shove my shovel-shaped imagination under the refuse of their
intellects. At least once or twice.

Rather fatiguing—to stand up and be told: Your friend is no good; have
you anything to say for yourself?—And to say a great deal for yourself
and for your friend and for _les hommes_—or try your best to—and be
contradicted, and be told “Never mind that, what we wish to know is,”
and instructed to keep to the subject, et cetera, ad infinitum. At last
they asked each other if each other wanted to ask the man before each
other anything more, and each other not wanting to do so, they said:

“_C’est fini_.”

As at Noyon, I had made an indisputably favourable impression upon
exactly one of my three examiners. I refer, in the present case, to the
red-headed little gentleman who was rather decent to me. I do not
exactly salute him in recognition of this decency; I bow to him, as I
might bow to somebody who said he was sorry he couldn’t give me a
match, but there was a cigar store just around the corner, you know.

At “_C’est fini_” the Directeur leaped into the limelight with a savage
admonition to the Wooden Hand—who saluted, opened the door suddenly,
and looked at me with (dare I say it?) admiration. Instead of availing
myself of this means of escape I turned to the little kite-flying
gentleman and said:

“If you please, sir, will you be so good as to tell me what will become
of my friend?”

The little kite-flying gentleman did not have time to reply, for the
perfumed presence stated dryly and distinctly:

“We cannot say anything to you upon that point.”

I gave him a pleasant smile, which said, If I could see your intestines
very slowly embracing a large wooden drum rotated by means of a small
iron crank turned gently and softly by myself, I should be
extraordinarily happy—and I bowed softly and gently to Monsieur le
Directeur, and I went through the door using all the perpendicular
inches which God had given me.

Once outside I began to tremble like a _peuplier_ in _l’automne_….
“_L’automne humide et monotone._”

—“_Allez en bas, pour la soupe_” the Wooden Hand said not unkindly. I
looked about me. “There will be no more men before the commission until
to-morrow,” the Wooden Hand said. “Go get your dinner in the kitchen.”

I descended.

Afrique was all curiosity—what did they say? what did I say?—as he
placed before me a huge, a perfectly huge, an inexcusably huge plate of
something more than lukewarm grease…. B. and I ate at a very little
table in _la cuisine_, excitedly comparing notes as we swallowed the
red-hot stuff…. “_Du pain; prenez, mes amis_,” Afrique said. “_Mangez
comme vous voulez_” the Cook quoth benignantly, with a glance at us
over his placid shoulder…. Eat we most surely did. We could have eaten
the French Government.

The morning of the following day we went on promenade once more. It was
neither pleasant nor unpleasant to promenade in the _cour_ while
somebody else was suffering in the Room of Sorrow. It was, in fact,
rather thrilling.

The afternoon of this day we were all up in The Enormous Room when _la
commission_ suddenly entered with Apollyon strutting and lisping behind
it, explaining, and poo-poohing, and graciously waving his thick wicked
arms.

Everyone in The Enormous Room leaped to his feet, removing as he did so
his hat—with the exception of _les deux américains_, who kept theirs
on, and The Zulu, who couldn’t find his hat and had been trying for
some time to stalk it to its lair. _La commission_ reacted
interestingly to the Enormous Room: the captain of _gendarmes_ looked
soggily around and saw nothing with a good deal of contempt; the
scented soap squinted up his face and said, “Faugh!” or whatever a
French bourgeois _avocat_ says in the presence of a bad smell (_la
commission_ was standing by the door and consequently close to the
_cabinet_); but the little red-head kite-flying gentleman looked
actually horrified.

“Is there in the room anyone of Austrian nationality?”

The Silent Man stepped forward quietly.

“Why are you here?”

“I don’t know,” The Silent Man said, with tears in his eyes.

“NONSENSE! You’re here for a very good reason and you know what it is
and you could tell it if you wished, you imbecile, you incorrigible,
you criminal,” Apollyon shouted; then, turning to the _avocat_ and the
red-headed little gentleman, “He is a dangerous alien, he admits it, he
has admitted it—DON’T YOU ADMIT IT, EH? EH?” he roared at The Silent
Man, who fingered his black cap without raising his eyes or changing in
the least the simple and supreme dignity of his poise. “He is
incorrigible,” said (in a low snarl) The Directeur. “Let us go,
gentlemen, when you have seen enough.” But the red-headed man, as I
recollect, was contemplating the floor by the door, where six pails of
urine solemnly stood, three of them having overflowed slightly from
time to time upon the reeking planks…. And The Directeur was told that
_les hommes_ should have a tin trough to urinate into, for the sake of
sanitation; and that this trough should be immediately installed,
installed without delay—“O yes, indeed, sirs,” Apollyon simpered, “a
very good suggestion; it shall be done immediately: yes, indeed. Do let
me show you the—it’s just outside—” and he bowed them out with no
little skill. And the door SLAMMED behind Apollyon and the Three Wise
Men.

This, as I say, must have occurred toward the last of November.

For a week we waited.

Fritz, having waited months for a letter from the Danish consul in
reply to the letters which he, Fritz, wrote every so often and sent
through _le bureau_—meaning the _sécrétaire_—had managed to get news of
his whereabouts to said consul by unlawful means; and was immediately,
upon reception of this news by the consul, set free and invited to join
a ship at the nearest port. His departure (than which a more joyous I
have never witnessed) has been already mentioned in connection with the
third Delectable Mountain, as has been the departure for Précigne of
Pom Pom and Harree ensemble. Bill the Hollander, Monsieur Pet-airs,
Mexique, The Wanderer, the little Machine-Fixer, Pete, Jean le Nègre,
The Zulu and Monsieur Auguste (second time) were some of our remaining
friends who passed the commission with us. Along with ourselves and
these fine people were judged gentlemen like the Trick Raincoat and the
Fighting Sheeney. One would think, possibly, that Justice—in the guise
of the Three Wise Men—would have decreed different fates, to (say) The
Wanderer and The Fighting Sheeney. _Au contraire_. As I have previously
remarked, the ways of God and of the good and great French Government
are alike inscrutable.

Bill the Hollander, whom we had grown to like, whereas at first we were
inclined to fear him, Bill the Hollander who washed some towels and
handkerchiefs and what-nots for us and turned them a bright pink, Bill
the Hollander who had tried so hard to teach The Young Pole the lesson
which he could only learn from The Fighting Sheeney, left us about a
week after _la commission_. As I understand it, they decided to send
him back to Holland under guard in order that he might be jailed in his
native land as a deserter. It is beautiful to consider the
unselfishness of _le gouvernement français_ in this case. Much as _le
gouvernement français_ would have liked to have punished Bill on its
own account and for its own enjoyment, it gave him up—with a Christian
smile—to the punishing clutches of a sister or brother government:
without a murmur denying itself the incense of his sufferings and the
music of his sorrows. Then too it is really inspiring to note the
perfect collaboration of _la justice française_ and _la justice
hollandaise_ in a critical moment of the world’s history. Bill
certainly should feel that it was a great honour to be allowed to
exemplify this wonderful accord, this exquisite mutual understanding,
between the punitive departments of two nations superficially somewhat
unrelated—that is, as regards customs and language. I fear Bill didn’t
appreciate the intrinsic usefulness of his destiny. I seem to remember
that he left in a rather _Gottverdummerish_ condition. Such is
ignorance.

Poor Monsieur Pet-airs came out of the commission looking
extraordinarily _épaté_. Questioned, he averred that his penchant for
inventing forcepumps had prejudiced _ces messieurs_ in his disfavour;
and shook his poor old head and sniffed hopelessly. Mexique exited in a
placidly cheerful condition, shrugging his shoulders and remarking:

“I no do nut’ing. Dese fellers tell me wait few days, after you go
free,” whereas Pete looked white and determined and said little—except
in Dutch to the Young Skipper and his mate; which pair took _la
commission_ more or less as a healthy bull calf takes nourishment:
there was little doubt that they would refind _la liberté_ in a short
while, judging from the inability of the Three Wise Men to prove them
even suspicious characters. The Zulu uttered a few inscrutable gestures
made entirely of silence and said he would like us to celebrate the
accomplishment of this ordeal by buying ourselves and himself a good
fat cheese apiece—his friend The Young Pole looked as if the ordeal had
scared the life out of him temporarily; he was unable to say whether or
no he and “_mon ami_” would leave us: _la commission_ had adopted, in
the case of these twain, an awe-inspiring taciturnity. Jean Le Nègre,
who was one of the last to pass, had had a tremendously exciting time,
due to the fact that _le gouvernement français’s_ polished tools had
failed to scratch his mystery either in French or English—he came
dancing and singing toward us; then, suddenly suppressing every vestige
of emotion, solemnly extended for our approval a small scrap of paper
on which was written:

CALAIS,


remarking: “_Qu-est-ce que ça veut dire?_”—and when we read the word
for him, “_m’en vais à Calais, moi, travailler à Calais, très
bon!_”—with a jump and a shout of laughter pocketing the scrap and
beginning the Song of Songs:

“_apres la guerre finit…._”

A trio which had been hit and hard hit by the Three Wise Men were, or
was, The Wanderer and the Machine-Fixer and Monsieur Auguste—the former
having been insulted in respect to Chocolat’s mother (who also occupied
the witness-stand) and having retaliated, as nearly as we could
discover, with a few remarks straight from the shoulder à propos
Justice (O Wanderer, did you expect honour among the honourable?); the
Machine-Fixer having been told to shut up in the midst of a passionate
plea for mercy, or at least fair-play, if not in his own case in the
case of the wife who was crazed by his absence; Monsieur Auguste having
been asked (as he had been asked three months before by the honorable
commissioners), Why did you not return to Russia with your wife and
your child at the outbreak of the war?—and having replied, with tears
in his eyes and that gentle ferocity of which he was occasionally
capable:

“Be-cause I didn’t have the means. I am not a mil-lion-aire, Sirs.”

The Baby-Snatcher, the Trick Raincoat, the Messenger Boy, the Fighting
Sheeney and similar gentry passed the commission without the slightest
apparent effect upon their disagreeable personalities.

It was not long after Bill the Hollander’s departure that we lost two
Delectable Mountains in The Wanderer and Surplice. Remained The Zulu
and Jean le Nègre…. B. and I spent most of our time when on promenade
collecting rather beautifully hued leaves in _la cour_. These leaves we
inserted in one of my notebooks, along with all the colours which we
could find on cigarette boxes, chocolate wrappers, labels of various
sorts and even postage stamps. (We got a very brilliant red from a
certain piece of cloth.) Our efforts puzzled everyone (including the
_plantons_) more than considerably; which was natural, considering that
everyone did not know that by this exceedingly simple means we were
effecting a study of colour itself, in relation to what is popularly
called “abstract” and sometimes “non-representative” painting. Despite
their natural puzzlement everyone (_plantons_ excepted) was
extraordinarily kind and brought us often valuable additions to our
chromatic collection. Had I, at this moment and in the city of New
York, the complete confidence of one-twentieth as many human beings I
should not be so inclined to consider The Great American Public as the
most aesthetically incapable organization ever created for the purpose
of perpetuating defunct ideals and ideas. But of course The Great
American Public has a handicap which my friends at La Ferté did not as
a rule have—education. Let no one sound his indignant yawp at this. I
refer to the fact that, for an educated gent or lady, to create is
first of all to destroy—that there is and can be no such thing as
authentic art until the _bons trucs_ (whereby we are taught to see and
imitate on canvas and in stone and by words this so-called world) are
entirely and thoroughly and perfectly annihilated by that vast and
painful process of Unthinking which may result in a minute bit of
purely personal Feeling. Which minute bit is Art.

Ah well, the revolution—I refer of course to the intelligent
revolution—is on the way; is perhaps nearer than some think, is
possibly knocking at the front doors of The Great Mister Harold Bell
Wright and The Great Little Miss Pollyanna. In the course of the next
ten thousand years it may be possible to find Delectable Mountains
without going to prison—captivity, I mean, Monsieur le Surveillant—it
may be possible, I daresay, to encounter Delectable Mountains who are
not in prison….

The Autumn wore on.

Rain did, from time to time, not fall: from time to time a sort of
unhealthy almost-light leaked from the large uncrisp corpse of the sky,
returning for a moment to our view the ruined landscape. From time to
time the eye, travelling carefully with a certain disagreeable suddenly
fear no longer distances of air, coldish and sweet, stopped upon the
incredible clearness of the desolate, without-motion, Autumn. Awkward
and solemn clearness, making louder the unnecessary cries, the hoarse
laughter of the invisible harlots in their muddy yard, pointing a cool
actual finger at the silly and ferocious group of man-shaped beings
huddled in the mud under four or five little trees, came strangely in
my own mind pleasantly to suggest the ludicrous and hideous and
beautiful antics of the insane. Frequently I would discover so perfect
a command over myself as to reduce _la promenade_ easily to a recently
invented mechanism; or to the demonstration of a collection of vivid
and unlovely toys around and around which, guarding them with
impossible heroism, funnily moved purely unreal _plantons_ always
absurdly marching, the maimed and stupid dolls of my imagination. Once
I was sitting alone on the long beam of silent iron and suddenly had
the gradual complete unique experience of death….

It became amazingly cold.

One evening B. and myself and, I think it was the Machine-Fixer, were
partaking of the warmth of a _bougie_ hard by and, in fact, between our
ambulance beds, when the door opened, a _planton_ entered, and a list
of names (none of which we recognized) was hurriedly read off with (as
in the case of the last _partis_, including The Wanderer and Surplice)
the admonition:

“Be ready to leave early to-morrow morning.”

—and the door shut loudly and quickly. Now one of the names which had
been called sounded somewhat like “Broom,” and a strange inquietude
seized us on this account. Could it possibly have been “B.”? We made
inquiries of certain of our friends who had been nearer the _planton_
than ourselves. We were told that Pete and The Trick Raincoat and The
Fighting Sheeney and Rockyfeller were leaving—about “B.” nobody was
able to enlighten us. Not that opinions in this matter were lacking.
There were plenty of opinions—but they contradicted each other to a
painful extent. _Les hommes_ were in fact about equally divided; half
considering that the occult sound had been intended for “B.,” half that
the somewhat asthmatic _planton_ had unwittingly uttered a spontaneous
grunt or sigh, which sigh or grunt we had mistaken for a proper noun.
Our uncertainty was augmented by the confusion emanating from a
particular corner of The Enormous Room, in which corner The Fighting
Sheeney was haranguing a group of spectators on the pregnant topic:
What I won’t do to Précigne when I get there. In deep converse with
Bathhouse John we beheld the very same youth who, some time since, had
drifted to a place beside me at _la soupe_—Pete The Ghost, white and
determined, blond and fragile: Pete the Shadow….

I forget who, but someone—I think it was the little
Machine-Fixer—established the truth that an American was to leave the
next morning. That, moreover, said American’s name was B.

Whereupon B. and I became extraordinarily busy.

The Zulu and Jean le Nègre, upon learning that B. was among the
_partis_, came over to our beds and sat down without uttering a word.
The former, through a certain shy orchestration of silence, conveyed
effortlessly and perfectly his sorrow at the departure; the latter, by
his bowed head and a certain very delicate restraint manifested in the
wholly exquisite poise of his firm alert body, uttered at least a
universe of grief.

The little Machine-Fixer was extremely indignant; not only that his
friend was going to a den of thieves and ruffians, but that his friend
was leaving in such company as that of _cette crapule_ (meaning
Rockyfeller) and _les deux mangeurs de blanc_ (to wit, The Trick
Raincoat and The Fighting Sheeney). “_c’est malheureux_,” he repeated
over and over, wagging his poor little head in rage and despair—“it’s
no place for a young man who has done no wrong, to be shut up with
pimps and cutthroats, _pour la durée de la guerre; le gouvernement
français a bien fait!_” and he brushed a tear out of his eye with a
desperate rapid brittle gesture…. But what angered the Machine-Fixer
most was that B. and I were about to be separated—“_M’sieu’ Jean_”
(touching me gently on the knee) “they have no hearts, _la commission_;
they are not simply unjust, they are cruel, _savez-vous_? Men are not
like these; they are not men, they are Name of God I don’t know what,
they are worse than the animals; and they pretend to Justice”
(shivering from top to toe with an indescribable sneer) “Justice! My
God, Justice!”

All of which, somehow or other, did not exactly cheer us.

And, the packing completed, we drank together for The Last Time. The
Zulu and Jean Le Nègre and the Machine-Fixer and B. and I—and Pete The
Shadow drifted over, whiter than I think I ever saw him, and said
simply to me:

“I’ll take care o’ your friend, Johnny.”

… and then at last it was _lumières éteintes_; and _les deux
américains_ lay in their beds in the cold rotten darkness, talking in
low voices of the past, of Petroushka, of Paris, of that brilliant and
extraordinary and impossible something: Life.

Morning. Whitish. Inevitable. Deathly cold.

There was a great deal of hurry and bustle in The Enormous Room. People
were rushing hither and thither in the heavy half-darkness. People were
saying good-bye to people. Saying good-bye to friends. Saying good-bye
to themselves. We lay and sipped the black evil dull certainly not
coffee; lay on our beds, dressed, shuddering with cold, waiting.
Waiting. Several of _les hommes_ whom we scarcely knew came up to B.
and shook hands with him and said good luck and good-bye. The darkness
was going rapidly out of the dull black evil stinking air. B. suddenly
realized that he had no gift for The Zulu; he asked a fine Norwegian to
whom he had given his leather belt if he, the Norwegian, would mind
giving it back, because there was a very dear friend who had been
forgotten. The Norwegian, with a pleasant smile, took off the belt and
said “Certainly” … he had been arrested at Bordeaux, where he came
ashore from his ship, for stealing three cans of sardines when he was
drunk … a very great and dangerous criminal … he said “Certainly,” and
gave B. a pleasant smile, the pleasantest smile in the world. B. wrote
his own address and name in the inside of the belt, explained in French
to The Young Pole that any time The Zulu wanted to reach him all he had
to do was to consult the belt; The Young Pole translated; The Zulu
nodded; The Norwegian smiled appreciatively; The Zulu received the belt
with a gesture to which words cannot do the faintest justice—

A _planton_ was standing in The Enormous Room, a _planton_ roaring and
cursing and crying, “Hurry, those who are going to go.”—B. shook hands
with Jean and Mexique and the Machine-Fixer and the Young Skipper, and
Bathhouse John (to whom he had given his ambulance tunic, and who was
crazy-proud in consequence) and the Norwegian and the Washing Machine
Man and The Hat and many of _les hommes_ whom we scarcely knew.—The
Black Holster was roaring:

“_Allez, nom de Dieu, l’américain!_”

I went down the room with B. and Pete, and shook hands with both at the
door. The other _partis_, alias The Trick Raincoat and The Fighting
Sheeney, were already on the way downstairs. The Black Holster cursed
us and me in particular and slammed the door angrily in my face—

Through the little peephole I caught a glimpse of them, entering the
street. I went to my bed and lay down quietly in my great _pelisse_.
The clamour and filth of the room brightened and became distant and
faded. I heard the voice of the jolly Alsatian saying:

“_Courage, mon ami_, your comrade is not dead; you will see him later,”
and after that, nothing. In front of and on and within my eyes lived
suddenly a violent and gentle and dark silence.

The Three Wise Men had done their work. But wisdom cannot rest….

Probably at that very moment they were holding their court in another
La Ferté committing to incomparable anguish some few merely perfectly
wretched criminals: little and tall, tremulous and brave—all of them
white and speechless, all of them with tight bluish lips and large
whispering eyes, all of them with fingers weary and mutilated and
extraordinarily old … desperate fingers; closing, to feel the final
luke-warm fragment of life glide neatly and softly into forgetfulness.



XIII.
I SAY GOOD-BYE TO LA MISÈRE


To convince the reader that this history is mere fiction (and rather
vulgarly violent fiction at that) nothing perhaps is needed save that
ancient standby of sob-story writers and thrill-artists alike—the Happy
Ending. As a matter of fact, it makes not the smallest difference to me
whether anyone who has thus far participated in my travels does or does
not believe that they and I are (as that mysterious animal, “the
public” would say) “real.” I do, however, very strenuously object to
the assumption, on the part of anyone, that the heading of this, my
final, chapter stands for anything in the nature of happiness. In the
course of recalling (in God knows a rather clumsy and perfectly
inadequate way) what happened to me between the latter part of August,
1917, and the first of January, 1918, I have proved to my own
satisfaction (if not to anyone else’s) that I was happier in La Ferté
Macé, with The Delectable Mountains about me, than the very keenest
words can pretend to express. I daresay it all comes down to a
definition of happiness. And a definition of happiness I most certainly
do not intend to attempt; but I can and will say this: to leave La
Misère with the knowledge, and worse than that the feeling, that some
of the finest people in the world are doomed to remain prisoners
thereof for no one knows how long—are doomed to continue, possibly for
years and tens of years and all the years which terribly are between
them and their deaths, the grey and indivisible Non-existence which
without apology you are quitting for Reality—cannot by any stretch of
the imagination be conceived as constituting a Happy Ending to a great
and personal adventure. That I write this chapter at all is due, purely
and simply, to the, I daresay, unjustified hope on my part that—by
recording certain events—it may hurl a little additional light into a
very tremendous darkness….

At the outset let me state that what occurred subsequent to the
departure for Précigne of B. and Pete and The Sheeneys and Rockyfeller
is shrouded in a rather ridiculous indistinctness; due, I have to
admit, to the depression which this departure inflicted upon my
altogether too human nature. The judgment of the Three Wise Men had—to
use a peculiarly vigorous (not to say vital) expression of my own day
and time—knocked me for a loop. I spent the days intervening between
the separation from “_votre camarade_” and my somewhat supernatural
departure for freedom in attempting to partially straighten myself.
When finally I made my exit, the part of me popularly referred to as
“mind” was still in a slightly bent if not twisted condition. Not until
some weeks of American diet had revolutionized my exterior did my
interior completely resume the contours of normality. I am particularly
neither ashamed nor proud of this (one might nearly say) mental
catastrophe. No more ashamed or proud, in fact, than of the infection
of three fingers which I carried to America as a little token of La
Ferté’s good-will. In the latter case I certainly have no right to
boast, even should I find myself so inclined; for B. took with him to
Précigne a case of what his father, upon B.’s arrival in The Home of
The Brave, diagnosed as scurvy—which scurvy made my mutilations look
like thirty cents or even less. One of my vividest memories of La Ferté
consists in a succession of crackling noises associated with the
disrobing of my friend. I recall that we appealed to Monsieur Ree-chard
together, B. in behalf of his scurvy and I in behalf of my hand plus a
queer little row of sores, the latter having proceeded to adorn that
part of my face which was trying hard to be graced with a moustache. I
recall that Monsieur Ree-chard decreed a _bain_ for B., which _bain_
meant immersion in a large tin tub partially filled with not quite
luke-warm water. I, on the contrary, obtained a speck of zinc ointment
on a minute piece of cotton, and considered myself peculiarly
fortunate. Which details cannot possibly offend the reader’s aesthetic
sense to a greater degree than have already certain minutiae connected
with the sanitary arrangements of The Directeur’s little home for
homeless boys and girls—therefore I will not trouble to beg the
reader’s pardon; but will proceed with my story proper or improper.

“_Mais qu’est-ce que vous avez_,” Monsieur le Surveillant demanded, in
a tone of profound if kindly astonishment, as I wended my lonely way to
_la soupe_ some days after the disappearance of _les partis_.

I stood and stared at him very stupidly without answering, having
indeed nothing at all to say.

“But why are you so sad?” he asked.

“I suppose I miss my friend,” I ventured.

“_Mais—mais—_” he puffed and panted like a very old and fat person
trying to persuade a bicycle to climb a hill—“_mais—vous avez de la
chance!_”

“I suppose I have,” I said without enthusiasm.

“_Mais—mais—parfaitement—vous avez de la chance—uh-ah—uh-ah—parce
que—comprenez-vous—votre camarade—ah-ah—a attrapé prison!_”

“Uh-ah!” I said wearily.

“Whereas,” continued Monsieur, “you haven’t. You ought to be
extraordinarily thankful and particularly happy!”

“I should rather have gone to prison with my friend,” I stated briefly;
and went into the dining-room, leaving the Surveillant uh-ahing in
nothing short of complete amazement.

I really believe that my condition worried him, incredible as this may
seem. At the time I gave neither an extraordinary nor a particular damn
about Monsieur le Surveillant, nor indeed about “_l’autre américain_”
alias myself. Dimly, through a fog of disinterested inapprehension, I
realized that—with the exception of the _plantons_ and, of course,
Apollyon—everyone was trying very hard to help me; that The Zulu, Jean,
The Machine-Fixer, Mexique, The Young Skipper, even The Washing Machine
Man (with whom I promenaded frequently when no one else felt like
taking the completely unagreeable air) were kind, very kind, kinder
than I can possibly say. As for Afrique and The Cook—there was nothing
too good for me at this time. I asked the latter’s permission to cut
wood, and was not only accepted as a sawyer, but encouraged with
assurances of the best coffee there was, with real sugar _dedans_. In
the little space outside the _cuisine_, between the building and _la
cour_, I sawed away of a morning to my great satisfaction; from time to
time clumping my _saboted_ way into the _chef’s_ domain in answer to a
subdued signal from Afrique. Of an afternoon I sat with Jean or Mexique
or The Zulu on the long beam of silent iron, pondering very carefully
nothing at all, replying to their questions or responding to their
observations in a highly mechanical manner. I felt myself to be, at
last, a doll—taken out occasionally and played with and put back into
its house and told to go to sleep….

One afternoon I was lying on my couch, thinking of the usual Nothing,
when a sharp cry sung through The Enormous Room:

“_Il tombe de la neige—Noël! Noël!_”

I sat up. The Guard Champêtre was at the nearest window, dancing a
little horribly and crying:

“_Noël! Noël!_”

I went to another window and looked out. Sure enough. Snow was falling,
gradually and wonderfully falling, silently falling through the thick
soundless Autumn…. It seemed to me supremely beautiful, the snow. There
was about it something unspeakably crisp and exquisite, something
perfect and minute and gentle and fatal…. The Guard Champêtre’s cry
began a poem in the back of my head, a poem about the snow, a poem in
French, beginning _Il tombe de la neige, Noël, Noël._ I watched the
snow. After a long time I returned to my bunk and I lay down, closing
my eyes; feeling the snow’s minute and crisp touch falling gently and
exquisitely, falling perfectly and suddenly, through the thick
soundless autumn of my imagination….

“_L’américain! L’américain!_”

Someone is speaking to me.

“_Le petit belge avec le bras cassé est là-bas, à la porte, il veut
parler…._”

I marched the length of the room. The Enormous Room is filled with a
new and beautiful darkness, the darkness of the snow outside, falling
and falling and falling with the silent and actual gesture which has
touched the soundless country of my mind as a child touches a toy it
loves….

Through the locked door I heard a nervous whisper: “_Dis à l’américain
que je veux parler avec lui._”—“_Me voici_” I said.

“Put your ear to the key-hole, _M’sieu’ Jean_,” said the
Machine-Fixer’s voice. The voice of the little Machine-Fixer,
tremendously excited. I obey—“_Alors. Qu’est-ce que c’est, mon ami?_”

“_M’sieu’ Jean! Le Directeur va vous appeler tout de suite!_ You must
get ready instantly! Wash and shave, eh? He’s going to call you right
away. And don’t forget! Oloron! You will ask to go to Oloron Sainte
Marie, where you can paint! Oloron Sainte Marie, Basse Pyrenées!
_N’oubliez pas, M’sieu’ Jean! Et dépêchez-vous!_”

“_Merci bien, mon ami!_”—I remember now. The little Machine-Fixer and I
had talked. It seemed that _la commission_ had decided that I was not a
criminal, but only a suspect. As a suspect I would be sent to some
place in France, any place I wanted to go, provided it was not on or
near the sea coast. That was in order that I should not perhaps try to
escape from France. The Machine-Fixer had advised me to ask to go to
Oloron Sainte Marie. I should say that, as a painter, the Pyrenees
particularly appealed to me. “_Et qu’il fait beau, là-bas!_ The snow on
the mountains! And it’s not cold. And what mountains! You can live
there very cheaply. As a suspect you will merely have to report once a
month to the chief of police of Oloron Sainte Marie; he’s an old friend
of mine! He’s a fine, fat, red-cheeked man, very kindly. He will make
it easy for you, _M’sieu’ Jean_, and will help you out in every way,
when you tell him you are a friend of the little Belgian with the
broken arm. Tell him I sent you. You will have a very fine time, and
you can paint: such scenery to paint! My God—not like what you see from
these windows. I advise you by all means to ask to go to Oloron.”

So thinking I lathered my face, standing before Judas’ mirror.

“You don’t rub enough,” the Alsatian advised, “_il faut frotter bien!_”
A number of fellow-captives were regarding my toilet with surprise and
satisfaction. I discovered in the mirror an astounding beard and a good
layer of dirt. I worked busily, counselled by several voices, censured
by the Alsatian, encouraged by Judas himself. The shave and the wash
completed I felt considerably refreshed.

WHANG!

“_L’américain en bas!_” It was the Black Holster. I carefully adjusted
my tunic and obeyed him.

The Directeur and the Surveillant were in consultation when I entered
the latter’s office. Apollyon, seated at a desk, surveyed me very
fiercely. His subordinate swayed to and fro, clasping and unclasping
his hands behind his back, and regarded me with an expression of almost
benevolence. The Black Holster guarded the doorway.

Turning on me ferociously: “Your friend is wicked, very wicked,
SAVEZ-VOUS?” Le Directeur shouted.

I answered quietly: “Oui? Je ne le savait pas.”

“He is a bad fellow, a criminal, a traitor, an insult to civilization,”
Apollyon roared into my face.

“Yes?” I said again.

“You’d better be careful!” the Directeur shouted. “Do you know what’s
happened to your friend?”

“_Sais pas_,” I said.

“He’s gone to prison where he belongs!” Apollyon roared. “Do you
understand what that means?”

“Perhaps,” I answered, somewhat insolently I fear.

“You’re lucky not to be there with him! Do you understand?” Monsieur Le
Directeur thundered, “and next time pick your friends better, take more
care, I tell you, or you’ll go where he is—TO PRISON FOR THE REST OF
THE WAR!”

“With my friend I should be well content in prison!” I said evenly,
trying to keep looking through him and into the wall behind his black,
big, spidery body.

“In God’s Name, what a fool!” the Directeur bellowed furiously—and the
Surveillant remarked pacifyingly: “He loves his comrade too much,
that’s all.”—“But his comrade is a traitor and a villain!” objected the
Fiend, at the top of his harsh voice—“_Comprenez-vous; votre ami est UN
SALOP!_” he snarled at me.

He seems afraid that I don’t get his idea, I said to myself. “I
understand what you say,” I assured him.

“And you don’t believe it?” he screamed, showing his fangs and
otherwise looking like an exceedingly dangerous maniac.

“_Je ne le crois pas, Monsieur_.”

“O God’s name!” he shouted. “What a fool, _quel idiot_, what a beastly
fool!” And he did something through his froth-covered lips, something
remotely suggesting laughter.

Hereupon the Surveillant again intervened. I was mistaken. It was
lamentable. I could not be made to understand. Very true. But I had
been sent for—“Do you know, you have been decided to be a suspect?”
Monsieur le Surveillant turned to me, “and now you may choose where you
wish to be sent.” Apollyon was blowing and wheezing and muttering …
clenching his huge pinkish hands.

I addressed the Surveillant, ignoring Apollyon. “I should like, if I
may, to go to Oloron Sainte Marie.”

“What do you want to go there for?” the Directeur exploded
threateningly.

I explained that I was by profession an artist, and had always wanted
to view the Pyrenees. “The environment of Oloron would be most
stimulating to an artist—”

“Do you know it’s near Spain?” he snapped, looking straight at me.

I knew it was, and therefore replied with a carefully childish
ignorance: “Spain? Indeed! Very interesting.”

“You want to escape from France, that’s it?” the Directeur snarled.

“Oh, I hardly should say that!” the Surveillant interposed soothingly;
“he is an artist, and Oloron is a very pleasant place for an artist. A
very nice place, I hardly think his choice of Oloron a cause for
suspicion. I should think it a very natural desire on his part.”—His
superior subsided snarling.

After a few more questions I signed some papers which lay on the desk,
and was told by Apollyon to get out.

“When can I expect to leave?” I asked the Surveillant.

“Oh, it’s only a matter of days, of weeks perhaps,” he assured me
benignantly.

“You’ll leave when it’s proper for you to leave!” Apollyon burst out.
“Do you understand?”

“Yes, indeed. Thank you very much,” I replied with a bow, and exited.
On the way to The Enormous Room the Black Holster said to me sharply:

“_Vous allez partir?_”

“_Oui._”

He gave me such a look as would have turned a mahogany piano leg into a
mound of smoking ashes, and slammed the key into the lock.

—Everyone gathered about me. “What news?”

“I have asked to go to Oloron as a suspect,” I answered.

“You should have taken my advice and asked to go to Cannes,” the fat
Alsatian reproached me. He had indeed spent a great while advising me;
but I trusted the little Machine-Fixer.

“_Parti?_” Jean le Nègre said with huge eyes, touching me gently.

“No, no. Later, perhaps; not now,” I assured him. And he patted my
shoulder and smiled, “_Bon!_” And we smoked a cigarette in honour of
the snow, of which Jean—in contrast to the majority of _les
hommes_—highly and unutterably approved. “_C’est jolie!_” he would say,
laughing wonderfully. And next morning he and I went on an exclusive
promenade, I in my _sabots_, Jean in a new pair of slippers which he
had received (after many requests) from the _bureau_. And we strode to
and fro in the muddy _cour_ admiring _la neige_, not speaking.

One day, after the snowfall, I received from Paris a complete set of
Shakespeare in the Everyman edition. I had forgotten completely that B.
and I—after trying and failing to get William Blake—had ordered and
paid for the better-known William; the ordering and communicating in
general being done with the collaboration of Monsieur Pet-airs. It was
a curious and interesting feeling which I experienced upon first
opening to “As You Like It” … the volumes had been carefully inspected,
I learned, by the _sécrétaire_, in order to eliminate the possibility
of their concealing something valuable or dangerous. And in this
connection let me add that the _sécrétaire_ or (if not he) his
superiors, were a good judge of what is valuable—if not what is
dangerous. I know this because, whereas my family several times sent me
socks in every case enclosing cigarettes, I received invariably the
former sans the latter. Perhaps it is not fair to suspect the officials
of La Ferté of this peculiarly mean theft; I should, possibly, doubt
the honesty of that very same French censor whose intercepting of B.’s
correspondence had motivated our removal from the Section Sanitaire.
Heaven knows I wish (like the Three Wise Men) to give justice where
justice is due.

Somehow or other, reading Shakespeare did not appeal to my disordered
mind. I tried Hamlet and Julius Caesar once or twice, and gave it up,
after telling a man who asked “Shah-kay-spare, who is Shah-kay-spare?”
that Mr. S. was the Homer of the English-speaking peoples—which remark,
to my surprise, appeared to convey a very definite idea to the
questioner and sent him away perfectly satisfied. Most of the timeless
time I spent promenading in the rain and sleet with Jean le Nègre, or
talking with Mexique, or exchanging big gifts of silence with The Zulu.
For Oloron—I did not believe in it, and I did not particularly care. If
I went away, good; if I stayed, so long as Jean and The Zulu and
Mexique were with me, good. “_M’en fous pas mal_,” pretty nearly summed
up my philosophy.

At least the Surveillant let me alone on the Soi-Même topic. After my
brief visit to Satan I wallowed in a perfect luxury of dirt. And no one
objected. On the contrary everyone (realizing that the enjoyment of
dirt may be made the basis of a fine art) beheld with something like
admiration my more and more uncouth appearance. Moreover, by being
dirtier than usual I was protesting in a (to me) very satisfactory way
against all that was neat and tidy and bigoted and solemn and founded
upon the anguish of my fine friends. And my fine friends, being my fine
friends, understood. Simultaneously with my arrival at the summit of
dirtiness—by the calendar, as I guess, December the twenty-first—came
the Black Holster into The Enormous Room and with an excited and angry
mien proclaimed loudly:

“_L’américain! Allez chez le Directeur. De suite._”

I protested mildly that I was dirty.

“_N’importe. Allez avec moi_,” and down I went to the amazement of
everyone and the great amazement of myself. “By Jove! wait till he sees
me this time,” I remarked half-audibly….

The Directeur said nothing when I entered.

The Directeur extended a piece of paper, which I read.

The Directeur said, with an attempt at amiability: “_Alors, vous allez
sortir._”

I looked at him in eleven-tenths of amazement. I was standing in the
bureau de Monsieur le Directeur du Camp de Triage de la Ferté Macé,
Orne, France, and holding in my hand a slip of paper which said that if
there was a man named Edward E. Cummings he should report immediately
to the American Embassy, Paris, and I had just heard the words:

“Well, you are going to leave.”

Which words were pronounced in a voice so subdued, so constrained, so
mild, so altogether ingratiating, that I could not imagine to whom it
belonged. Surely not to the Fiend, to Apollyon, to the Prince of Hell,
to Satan, to Monsieur le Directeur du Camp de Triage de la Ferté Macé—

“Get ready. You will leave immediately.”

Then I noticed the Surveillant. Upon his face I saw an almost smile. He
returned my gaze and remarked:

“_Uh-ah, uh-ah, Oui._”

“That’s all,” the Directeur said. “You will call for your money at the
_bureau_ of the Gestionnaire before leaving.”

“Go and get ready,” the Fencer said, and I certainly saw a smile….

“I? Am? Going? To? Paris?” somebody who certainly wasn’t myself
remarked in a kind of whisper.

“_Parfaitement._”—Pettish. Apollyon. But how changed. Who the devil is
myself? Where in Hell am I? What is Paris—a place, a somewhere, a city,
life; (to live: infinitive. Present first singular: I live. Thou
livest). The Directeur. The Surveillant. La Ferté Macé, Orne, France.
“Edward E. Cummings will report immediately.” Edward E. Cummings. The
Surveillant. A piece of yellow paper. The Directeur. A necktie. Paris.
Life. _Liberté_. _La liberté_. “_La Liberté!_” I almost shouted in
agony.

“_Dépêchez-vous. Savez-vous, vous allez partir de suite. Cet
après-midi. Pour Paris._”

I turned, I turned so suddenly as almost to bowl over the Black
Holster, Black Holster and all; I turned toward the door, I turned upon
the Black Holster, I turned into Edward E. Cummings, I turned into what
was dead and is now alive, I turned into a city, I turned into a dream—

I am standing in The Enormous Room for the last time. I am saying
good-bye. No, it is not I who am saying good-bye. It is in fact
somebody else, possibly myself. Perhaps myself has shaken hands with a
little creature with a wizened arm, a little creature in whose eyes
tears for some reason are; with a placid youth (Mexique?) who smiles
and says shakily:

“Good-bye, Johnny; I no for-get you,”

with a crazy old fellow who somehow or other has got inside B.’s tunic
and is gesticulating and crying out and laughing; with a frank-eyed boy
who claps me on the back and says:

“Good-bye and good luck t’you”

(is he The Young Skipper, by any chance?); with a lot of hungry
wretched beautiful people—I have given my bed to The Zulu, by Jove! and
The Zulu is even now standing guard over it, and his friend The Young
Pole has given me the address of “_mon ami_,” and there are tears in
The Young Pole’s eyes, and I seem to be amazingly tall and altogether
tearless—and this is the nice Norwegian, who got drunk at Bordeaux and
stole three (or four was it?) cans of sardines … and now I feel before
me someone who also has tears in his eyes, someone who is in fact
crying, someone whom I feel to be very strong and young as he hugs me
quietly in his firm, alert arms, kissing me on both cheeks and on the
lips….

“Goo-bye, boy!”

—O good-bye, good-bye, I am going away, Jean; have a good time, laugh
wonderfully when _la neige_ comes….

And I am standing somewhere with arms lifted up. “_Si vous avez une
lettre, sais-tu, il faut dire._ For if I find a letter on you it will
go hard with the man that gave it to you to take out.” Black. The Black
Holster even. Does not examine my baggage. Wonder why? “_Allez!_”
Jean’s letter to his gonzesse in Paris still safe in my little pocket
under my belt. Ha, ha, by God, that’s a good one on you, you Black
Holster, you Very Black Holster. That’s a good one. Glad I said
good-bye to the cook. Why didn’t I give Monsieur Auguste’s little
friend, the _cordonnier_, more than six francs for mending my shoes? He
looked so injured. I am a fool, and I am going into the street, and I
am going by myself with no _planton_ into the little street of the
little city of La Ferté Macé which is a little, a very little city in
France, where once upon a time I used to catch water for an old man….

I have already shaken hands with the Cook, and with the _cordonnier_
who has beautifully mended my shoes. I am saying good-bye to _les deux
balayeurs_. I am shaking hands with the little (the very little)
Machine-Fixer again. I have again given him a franc and I have given
Garibaldi a franc. We had a drink a moment ago on me. The tavern is
just opposite the gare, where there will soon be a train. I will get
upon the soonness of the train and ride into the now of Paris. No, I
must change at a station called Briouse did you say, Good-bye, _mes
amis, et bonne chance!_ They disappear, pulling and pushing a cart _les
deux balayeurs … de mes couilles …_ by Jove what a tin noise is coming,
see the wooden engineer, he makes a funny gesture utterly composed
(composed silently and entirely) of _merde_. _Merde!_ _Merde._ A wee
tiny absurd whistle coming from nowhere, from outside of me. Two men
opposite. Jolt. A few houses, a fence, a wall, a bit of _neige_ float
foolishly by and through a window. These gentlemen in my compartment do
not seem to know that La Misère exists. They are talking politics.
Thinking that I don’t understand. By Jesus, that’s a good one. “Pardon
me, gentlemen, but does one change at the next station for Paris?”
Surprised. I thought so. “Yes, Monsieur, the next station.” By Hell I
surprised somebody….

Who are a million, a trillion, a nonillion young men? All are standing.
I am standing. We are wedged in and on and over and under each other.
Sardines. Knew a man once who was arrested for stealing sardines. I,
sardine, look at three sardines, at three million sardines, at a carful
of sardines. How did I get here? Oh yes of course. Briouse. Horrible
name “Briouse.” Made a bluff at riding _deuxième classe_ on a
_troisième classe_ ticket bought for me by _les deux balayeurs_.
Gentleman in the compartment talked French with me till conductor
appeared. “Tickets, gentlemen?” I extended mine dumbly. He gave me a
look. “How? This is third class!” I looked intelligently ignorant. “_Il
ne comprend pas français_” says the gentleman. “Ah!” says the
conductor, “tease ease eye-ee thoorde claz tea-keat. You air een tea
say-coend claz. You weel go ean-too tea thoorde claz weal you yes
pleace at once?” So I got stung after all. Third is more amusing
certainly, though god-damn hot with these sardines, including myself of
course. O yes of course. _Poilus en permission._ Very old some. Others
mere kids. Once saw a _planton_ who never saw a razor. Yet he was
_réformé. C’est la guerre._ Several of us get off and stretch at a
little tank-town-station. Engine thumping up front somewhere in the
darkness. Wait. They get their _bidons_ filled. Wish I had a _bidon_, a
_dis-donc bidon n’est-ce pas. Faut pas t’en faire_, who sang or said
that?

PEE-p….

We’re off.

I am almost asleep. Or myself. What’s the matter here? Sardines
writhing about, cut it out, no room for that sort of thing. Jolt.

“Paris.”

Morning. Morning in Paris. I found my bed full of fleas this morning,
and I couldn’t catch the fleas, though I tried hard because I was
ashamed that anyone should find fleas in my bed which is at the Hotel
des Saints Pères whither I went in a fiacre and the driver didn’t know
where it was. Wonderful. This is the American embassy. I must look
funny in my _pelisse_. Thank God for the breakfast I ate somewhere …
good-looking girl, Parisienne, at the switch-board upstairs. “Go right
in, sir.” A1 English by God. So this is the person to whom Edward E.
Cummings is immediately to report.

“Is this Mr. Cummings?”

“Yes.” Rather a young man, very young in fact. Jove I must look queer.

“Sit down! We’ve been looking all over creation for you.”

“Yes?”

“Have some cigarettes?”

“Yes.”

By God he gives me a sac of Bull. Extravagant they are at the American
Embassy. Can I roll one? I can. I do.

Conversation. Pleased to see me. Thought I was lost for good. Tried
every means to locate me. Just discovered where I was. What was it
like? No, really? You don’t mean it! Well I’ll be damned! Look here;
this man B., what sort of a fellow is he? Well I’m interested to hear
you say that. Look at this correspondence. It seemed to me that a
fellow who could write like that wasn’t dangerous. Must be a little
queer. Tell me, isn’t he a trifle foolish? That’s what I thought. Now
I’d advise you to leave France as soon as you can. They’re picking up
ambulance men left and right, men who’ve got no business to be in
Paris. Do you want to leave by the next boat? I’d advise it. Good. Got
money? If you haven’t we’ll pay your fare. Or half of it. Plenty, eh?
Norton-Harjes, I see. Mind going second class? Good. Not much
difference on this line. Now you can take these papers and go to…. No
time to lose, as she sails to-morrow. That’s it. Grab a taxi, and
hustle. When you’ve got those signatures bring them to me and I’ll fix
you all up. Get your ticket first, here’s a letter to the manager of
the Compagnie Générale. Then go through the police department. You can
do it if you hurry. See you later. Make it quick, eh? Good-bye!

The streets. _Les rues de Paris._ I walked past Notre Dame. I bought
tobacco. Jews are peddling things with American trade-marks on them,
because in a day or two it’s Christmas I suppose. Jesus it is cold.
Dirty snow. Huddling people. _La guerre._ Always _la guerre_. And
chill. Goes through these big mittens. To-morrow I shall be on the
ocean. Pretty neat the way that passport was put through. Rode all day
in a taxi, two cylinders, running on one. Everywhere waiting lines. I
stepped to the head and was attended to by the officials of the great
and good French Government. Gad that’s a good one. A good one on _le
gouvernement français_. Pretty good. _Les rues sont tristes._ Perhaps
there’s no Christmas, perhaps the French Government has forbidden
Christmas. Clerk at Norton-Harjes seemed astonished to see me. O God it
is cold in Paris. Everyone looks hard under lamplight, because it’s
winter I suppose. Everyone hurried. Everyone hard. Everyone cold.
Everyone huddling. Everyone alive; alive: alive.

Shall I give this man five francs for dressing my hand? He said
“anything you like, monsieur.” Ship’s doctor’s probably well-paid.
Probably not. Better hurry before I put my lunch. Awe-inspiring stink,
because it’s in the bow. Little member of the crew immersing his
guess-what in a can of some liquid or other, groaning from time to
time, staggers when the boat tilts. “_Merci bien, Monsieur!_” That was
the proper thing. Now for the—never can reach it—here’s the _première
classe_ one—any port in a storm…. Feel better now. Narrowly missed
American officer but just managed to make it. Was it yesterday or day
before saw the Vaterland, I mean the what deuce is it—the biggest
afloat in the world boat. Damned rough. Snow falling. Almost slid
through the railing that time. Snow. The snow is falling into the sea;
which quietly receives it: into which it utterly and peacefully
disappears. Man with a college degree returning from Spain, not
disagreeable sort, talks Spanish with that fat man who’s an
Argentinian.—Tinian?—Tinish, perhaps. All the same. In other words Tin.
Nobody at the table knows I speak English or am American. Hell, that’s
a good one on nobody. That’s a pretty fat kind of a joke on nobody.
Think I’m French. Talk mostly with those three or four Frenchmen going
on permission to somewhere via New York. One has an accordion. Like
second class. Wait till you see the _gratte-ciel_, I tell ’em. They say
“_Oui?_” and don’t believe. I’ll show them. America. The land of the
flea and the home of the dag’—short for dago of course. My spirits are
constantly improving. Funny Christmas, second day out. Wonder if we’ll
dock New Year’s Day. My God what a list to starboard. They say a waiter
broke his arm when it happened, ballast shifted. Don’t believe it.
Something wrong. I know I nearly fell downstairs….

My God what an ugly island. Hope we don’t stay here long. All the
red-bloods first-class much excited about land. Damned ugly, I think.

Hullo.

The tall, impossibly tall, incomparably tall, city shoulderingly upward
into hard sunlight leaned a little through the octaves of its parallel
edges, leaningly strode upward into firm hard snowy sunlight; the
noises of America nearingly throbbed with smokes and hurrying dots
which are men and which are women and which are things new and curious
and hard and strange and vibrant and immense, lifting with a great
ondulous stride firmly into immortal sunlight….





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