An uncontrollable joy gutted me after three months of humiliation, of
being bossed and herded and bullied and insulted. I was myself and my
own master.
In this delirium of relief (hardly noticing what I did) I inspected the
pile of straw, decided against it, set up my bed, disposed the roll on
it, and began to examine my cell.
I have mentioned the length and breadth. The cell was ridiculously
high; perhaps ten feet. The end with the door in it was peculiar. The
door was not placed in the middle of this end, but at one side,
allowing for a huge iron can waist-high which stood in the other
corner. Over the door and across the end, a grating extended. A slit of
sky was always visible.
Whistling joyously to myself, I took three steps which brought me to
the door-end. The door was massively made, all of iron or steel I
should think. It delighted me. The can excited my curiosity. I looked
over the edge of it. At the bottom reposefully lay a new human turd.
I have a sneaking mania for wood-cuts, particularly when used to
illustrate the indispensable psychological crisis of some outworn
romance. There is in my possession at this minute a masterful depiction
of a tall, bearded, horrified man who, clad in an anonymous rig of goat
skins, with a fantastic umbrella clasped weakly in one huge paw, bends
to examine an indication of humanity in the somewhat cubist wilderness
whereof he had fancied himself the owner….
It was then that I noticed the walls. Arm-high they were covered with
designs, mottos, pictures. The drawing had all been done in pencil. I
resolved to ask for a pencil at the first opportunity.
There had been Germans and Frenchmen imprisoned in this cell. On the
right wall, near the door-end, was a long selection from Goethe,
laboriously copied. Near the other end of this wall a satiric landscape
took place. The technique of this landscape frightened me. There were
houses, men, children. And there were trees. I began to wonder what a
tree looks like, and laughed copiously.
The back wall had a large and exquisite portrait of a German officer.
The left wall was adorned with a yacht, flying a number 13. “My beloved
boat” was inscribed in German underneath. Then came a bust of a German
soldier, very idealized, full of unfear. After this, a masterful
crudity—a doughnut-bodied rider, sliding with fearful rapidity down the
acute backbone of a totally transparent sausage-shaped horse, who was
moving simultaneously in five directions. The rider had a bored
expression as he supported the stiff reins in one fist. His further leg
assisted in his flight. He wore a German soldier’s cap and was smoking.
I made up my mind to copy the horse and rider at once, so soon, that
is, as I should have obtained a pencil.
Last, I found a drawing surrounded by a scrolled motto. The drawing was
a potted plant with four blossoms. The four blossoms were elaborately
dead. Their death was drawn with a fearful care. An obscure
deliberation was exposed in the depiction of their drooping petals. The
pot tottered very crookedly on a sort of table, as near as I could see.
All around ran a funereal scroll. I read: “My farewell to my beloved
wife, Gaby.” A fierce hand, totally distinct from the former, wrote in
proud letters above: “Punished for desertion. Six years of
prison—military degradation.”
It must have been five o’clock. Steps. A vast cluttering of the
exterior of the door—by whom? Whang opens the door. Turnkey-creature
extending a piece of chocolate with extreme and surly caution. I say
“_Merci_” and seize chocolate. Klang shuts the door.
I am lying on my back, the twilight does mistily bluish miracles
through the slit over the whang-klang. I can just see leaves, meaning
tree.
Then from the left and way off, faintly, broke a smooth whistle, cool
like a peeled willow-branch, and I found myself listening to an air
from Petroushka, Petroushka, which we saw in Paris at the _Châtelet,
mon ami et moi_….
The voice stopped in the middle—and I finished the air. This code
continued for a half-hour.
It was dark.
I had laid a piece of my piece of chocolate on the window-sill. As I
lay on my back a little silhouette came along the sill and ate that
piece of a piece, taking something like four minutes to do so. He then
looked at me, I then smiled at him, and we parted, each happier than
before.
My _cellule_ was cool, and I fell asleep easily.
(Thinking of Paris.)
… Awakened by a conversation whose vibrations I clearly felt through
the left wall:
Turnkey-creature: “What?”
A moldly moldering molish voice, suggesting putrefying tracts and
orifices, answers with a cob-webbish patience so far beyond despair as
to be indescribable: “_La soupe_.”
“Well, the soup, I just gave it to you, Monsieur Savy.”
“Must have a little something else. My money is _chez le directeur_.
Please take my money which is _chez le directeur_ and give me anything
else.”
“All right, the next time I come to see you to-day I’ll bring you a
salad, a nice salad, Monsieur.”
“Thank you, Monsieur,” the voice moldered.
Klang!!—and says the turnkey-creature to somebody else; while turning
the lock of Monsieur Savy’s door; taking pains to raise his voice so
that Monsieur Savy will not miss a single word through the slit over
Monsieur Savy’s whang-klang:
“That old fool! Always asks for things. When supposest thou will he
realize that he’s never going to get anything?”
Grubbing at my door. Whang!
The faces stood in the doorway, looking me down. The expression of the
faces identically turnkeyish, i.e., stupidly gloating, ponderously and
imperturbably tickled. Look who’s here, who let that in?
The right body collapsed sufficiently to deposit a bowl just inside.