The pigs on my either hand had by this time overcome their respective
inertias and were chomping cheek-murdering chunks. They had quite a
layout, a regular picnic-lunch elaborate enough for kings or even
presidents. The v-f-g in particular annoyed me by uttering alternate
chompings and belchings. All the time he ate he kept his eyes
half-shut; and a mist overspread the sensual meadows of his coarse
face.
His two reddish eyes rolled devouringly toward the blanket in its
waterproof roll. After a huge gulp of wine he said thickly (for his
huge moustache was crusted with saliva-tinted half-moistened shreds of
food), “You will have no use for that _machine là-bas_. They are going
to take everything away from you when you get there, you know. I could
use it nicely. I have wanted such a piece of rubber for a great while,
in order to make me a raincoat. Do you see?” (Gulp. Swallow.)
Here I had an inspiration. I would save the blanket-cover by drawing
these brigands’ attention to myself. At the same time I would satisfy
my inborn taste for the ridiculous. “Have you a pencil?” I said.
“Because I am an artist in my own country, and will do your picture.”
He gave me a pencil. I don’t remember where the paper came from. I
posed him in a pig-like position, and the picture made him chew his
moustache. The apache thought it very droll. I should do his picture,
too, at once. I did my best; though protesting that he was too
beautiful for my pencil, which remark he countered by murmuring (as he
screwed his moustache another notch), “Never mind, you will try.” Oh,
yes, I would try all right, all right. He objected, I recall, to the
nose.
By this time the divine “deserter” was writhing with joy. “If you
please, Monsieur,” he whispered radiantly, “it would be too great an
honor, but if you could—I should be overcome….”
Tears (for some strange reason) came into my eyes.
He handled his picture sacredly, criticised it with precision and care,
finally bestowed it in his inner pocket. Then we drank. It happened
that the train stopped and the _apache_ was persuaded to go out and get
his prisoner’s canteen filled. Then we drank again.
He smiled as he told me he was getting ten years. Three years at
solitary confinement was it, and seven working in a gang on the road?
That would not be so bad. He wished he was not married, had not a
little child. “The bachelors are lucky in this war”—he smiled.
Now the gendarmes began cleaning their beards, brushing their stomachs,
spreading their legs, collecting their baggage. The reddish eyes,
little and cruel, woke from the trance of digestion and settled with
positive ferocity on their prey. “You will have no use….”
Silently the sensitive, gentle hands of the divine prisoner undid the
blanket-cover. Silently the long, tired, well-shaped arms passed it
across to the brigand at my left side. With a grunt of satisfaction the
brigand stuffed it in a large pouch, taking pains that it should not
show. Silently the divine eyes said to mine: “What can we do, we
criminals?” And we smiled at each other for the last time, the eyes and
my eyes.
A station. The _apache_ descends. I follow with my numerous _affaires_.
The divine man follows me—the v-f-g him.
The blanket-roll containing my large fur-coat got more and more
unrolled; finally I could not possibly hold it.
It fell. To pick it up I must take the sack off my back.
Then comes a voice, “allow me if you please, monsieur”—and the sack has
disappeared. Blindly and dumbly I stumble on with the roll; and so at
length we come into the yard of a little prison; and the divine man
bowed under my great sack…. I never thanked him. When I turned, they’d
taken him away, and the sack stood accusingly at my feet.
Through the complete disorder of my numbed mind flicker jabbings of
strange tongues. Some high boy’s voice is appealing to me in Belgian,
Italian, Polish, Spanish and—beautiful English. “Hey, Jack, give me a
cigarette, Jack….”
I lift my eyes. I am standing in a tiny oblong space. A sort of court.
All around, two-story wooden barracks. Little crude staircases lead up
to doors heavily chained and immensely padlocked. More like ladders
than stairs. Curious hewn windows, smaller in proportion than the slits
in a doll’s house. Are these faces behind the slits? The doors bulge
incessantly under the shock of bodies hurled against them from within.
The whole dirty _nouveau_ business about to crumble.
Glance one.
Glance two: directly before me. A wall with many bars fixed across one
minute opening. At the opening a dozen, fifteen, grins. Upon the bars
hands, scraggy and bluishly white. Through the bars stretching of lean
arms, incessant stretchings. The grins leap at the window, hands
belonging to them catch hold, arms belonging to the hands stretch in my
direction … an instant; the new grins leap from behind and knock off
the first grins which go down with a fragile crashing like glass
smashed: hands wither and break, arms streak out of sight, sucked
inward.
In the huge potpourri of misery a central figure clung, shaken but
undislodged. Clung like a monkey to central bars. Clung like an angel
to a harp. Calling pleasantly in a high boyish voice: “O Jack, give me
a cigarette.”
A handsome face, dark, Latin smile, musical fingers strong.
I waded suddenly through a group of gendarmes (they stood around me
watching with a disagreeable curiosity my reaction to this). Strode
fiercely to the window.
Trillions of hands.
Quadrillions of itching fingers.
The angel-monkey received the package of cigarettes politely,
disappearing with it into howling darkness. I heard his high boy’s
voice distributing cigarettes. Then he leaped into sight, poised
gracefully against two central bars, saying “Thank you, Jack, good boy”
… “Thanks, _merci_, _gracias_…” a deafening din of gratitude reeked
from within.
“Put your baggage in here,” quoth an angry voice. “No, you will not
take anything but one blanket in your cell, understand.” In French.
Evidently the head of the house speaking. I obeyed. A corpulent soldier
importantly lead me to my cell. My cell is two doors away from the
monkey-angel, on the same side. The high boy-voice, centralized in a
torrent-like halo of stretchings, followed my back. The head himself
unlocked a lock. I marched coldly in. The fat soldier locked and
chained my door. Four feet went away. I felt in my pocket, finding four
cigarettes. I am sorry I did not give these also to the monkey—to the
angel. Lifted my eyes and saw my own harp.
III.
A PILGRIM’S PROGRESS
Through the bars I looked into that little and dirty lane whereby I had
entered; in which a sentinel, gun on shoulder, and with a huge revolver
strapped at his hip, monotonously moved. On my right was an old wall
overwhelmed with moss. A few growths stemmed from its crevices. Their
leaves were of a refreshing colour. I felt singularly happy, and
carefully throwing myself on the bare planks sang one after another all
the French songs which I had picked up in my stay at the ambulance;
sang La Madelon, sang AVec avEC DU, and Les Galiots Sont Lourds Dans
Sac—concluding with an inspired rendering of La Marseillaise, at which
the guard (who had several times stopped his round in what I choose to
interpret as astonishment) grounded arms and swore appreciatively.
Various officials of the jail passed by me and my lusty songs; I cared
no whit. Two or three conferred, pointing in my direction, and I sang a
little louder for the benefit of their perplexity. Finally out of voice
I stopped.
It was twilight.
As I lay on my back luxuriously, I saw through the bars of my twice
padlocked door a boy and a girl about ten years old. I saw them climb
on the wall and play together, obliviously and exquisitely, in the
darkening air. I watched them for many minutes; till the last moment of
light failed; till they and the wall itself dissolved in a common
mystery, leaving only the bored silhouette of the soldier moving
imperceptibly and wearily against a still more gloomy piece of autumn
sky.
At last I knew that I was very thirsty; and leaping up began to clamor
at my bars. “Something to drink, please.” After a long debate with the
sergeant of guards who said very angrily: “Give it to him,” a guard
took my request and disappeared from view, returning with a more
heavily armed guard and a tin cup full of water. One of these gentry
watched the water and me, while the other wrestled with the padlock.
The door being minutely opened, one guard and the water painfully
entered. The other guard remained at the door, gun in readiness. The
water was set down, and the enterer assumed a perpendicular position
which I thought merited recognition; accordingly I said “_Merci_”
politely, without getting up from the planks. Immediately he began to
deliver a sharp lecture on the probability of my using the tin cup to
saw my way out; and commended haste in no doubtful terms. I smiled,
asked pardon for my inherent stupidity (which speech seemed to anger
him) and guzzled the so-called water without looking at it, having
learned something from Noyon. With a long and dangerous look at their
prisoner, the gentlemen of the guard withdrew, using inconceivable
caution in the relocking of the door.