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 Meme; 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 Ferte; 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 Champetre 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 casse_ 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 Misere_ 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 Ferte 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 Ferte Mace by those who have known it: _La Misere_. Monsieur Auguste’s valiant attempts at cheerfulness and the natural buoyancy of his gentle disposition in a slight degree protected him from _La Misere_. The Machine-Fixer was lost. By nature he was tremendously sensible, he was the very apotheosis of _l’ame sensible_ in fact. His sensibilite 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 _adoree_ 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 honnetes_ and there were _les putains_. In La Ferte, 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 mennuie 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 Ferte Mace 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 Ferte) 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 Medecin Major. “_Une femme entre. Elle se leve les jupes jusqu’au menton et se met sur le banc. Le medecin major la regarde. Il dit de suite ‘Bon. C’est tout.’ Elle sort. Une autre entre. La meme 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 grande messieurs qui ne foutent ‘pas mal si l’on CREVE de faim, savez-vous ils croient chacun qu’il est Le Bon Dieu LUI-Meme. 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 francais_, I think it was not very clever of you to put this terrible doll in La Ferte; 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 Ferte–for Precigne.
… 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-meme_ 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 Ferte; 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, Soul 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 Ferte Mace 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 Ferte–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 Ferte 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 Ferte. 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 Secretaire, 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 Ferte, 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 menage–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 Ferte Mace, 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 Ferte, 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 Ferte, 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 _corvee_; 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 Ferte Mace. 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 _corvee_ 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 Ferte Mace.
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 Ferte, 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, Renee.
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 Ferte 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 Ferte 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 Misere_, 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.
Renee, 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 Renee 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 Renee was old, older than Lena by several years; perhaps twenty-five. Also about Renee there was a certain dangerous fragility, the fragility of unhealth. And yet Renee 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. Renee 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 Renee. They were all individually intoxicated, Celina was joyously tight. Renee 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. Renee 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 fiancee 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 Renee (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 Ferte I had innocently supposed that in referring to women as “the weaker sex” a man was strictly within his rights. La Ferte, 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 _a 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 Renee. 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:
_SHIEZ, SI VOUS VOULEZ, SHIEZ,_
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 Renee 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-Meme 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 Ferte Mace 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’Eternite est une existence sans duree—-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 Ferte; 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 Ferte, 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 francais_ 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 Precigne 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 _soiree_, as Dah-veed called it, _a 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 Ferte, 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 Misere_ 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 Champetre, 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 allies_ 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 Champetre’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 Champetre 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 Ferte the Guard Champetre 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 Champetre 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 Ferte 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 melee; 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 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-_arrive_ 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 Ferte. “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 francais_ 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 _corvee_ for him. “Dat fat feller” bought enough at the canteen twice every day to stock a transatlantic liner for seven voyages, and never ace with the prisoners. I will mention him again apropos 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 Sante; both accompanied B. to Precigne. During the weeks which The Fighting Sheeney spent at La Ferte Mace, 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 “_Lumieres eteintes_,” 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 “_lumieres eteintes_” 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 Uebermench; 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 Ferte) 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 etes chef de chambre_,” he said fiercely to Judas–“why don’t you make the men stop this? _C’est enmerdant._” “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 la_” 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 _confreres_ 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 Ferte upon his arrival, received no slightest censure nor any hint of punishment for his deliberate breaking 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’hopital_”; 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 francais_ 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 americains_, not bent upon making France discover America but rather upon discovering France and _les francais_ 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 Ferte: 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 etes 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 mome. 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 franc, deux cent franc, trois cent franc, 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 a 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 Cezanne.”–“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 Cezanne?” 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_, Cezanne, 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 _a bon marche_. 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.