He replied benevolently, somewhat troubled “uh-ah uh-ah uh-ah—why are
you here, KEW-MANGZ?”
At this question I was for one moment angrier than I had ever before
been in all my life. Then I realized the absurdity of the situation,
and laughed.—“_Sais pas_.”
The questionnaire continued:
“You were in the Red Cross?”—“Surely, in the Norton Harjes Ambulance,
Section Sanitaire Vingt-et-Un.”—“You had a friend
there?”—“Naturally.”—“_Il a écrit, votre ami, des bêtises, n’est ce
pas?_”—“So they told me. _N’en sais rien._”—“What sort of person was
your friend?”—“He was a magnificent person, always _très gentil_ with
me.”—(With a queer pucker the fencer remarked) “Your friend got you
into a lot of trouble, though.”—(To which I replied with a broad grin)
“_N’importe_, we are _camarades_.”
A stream of puzzled uh-ahs followed this reply. The fencer, or rooster
or whatever he might be, finally, picking up the lamp and the lock,
said: “_Alors, viens avec moi, KEW-MANGZ._” I started to pick up the
_sac_, but he told me it would be kept in the office (we being in the
office). I said I had checked a large _sac_ and my fur overcoat at
Briouse, and he assured me they would be sent on by train. He now
dismissed the _gendarmes_, who had been listening curiously to the
examination. As I was conducted from the bureau I asked him
point-blank: “How long am I to stay here?”—to which he answered “_Oh,
peut-être un jour, deux jours, je ne sais pas._”
Two days in a _gendarmerie_ would be enough, I thought. We marched out.
Behind me the bedslippered rooster uhahingly shuffled. In front of me
clumsily gamboled the huge imitation of myself. It descended the
terribly worn stairs. It turned to the right and disappeared….
We were standing in a chapel.
The shrinking light which my guide held had become suddenly minute; it
was beating, senseless and futile, with shrill fists upon a thick
enormous moisture of gloom. To the left and right through lean oblongs
of stained glass burst dirty burglars of moonlight. The clammy stupid
distance uttered dimly an uncanny conflict—the mutterless tumbling of
brutish shadows. A crowding ooze battled with my lungs. My nostrils
fought against the monstrous atmospheric slime which hugged a sweet
unpleasant odour. Staring ahead, I gradually disinterred the pale
carrion of the darkness—an altar, guarded with the ugliness of unlit
candles, on which stood inexorably the efficient implements for eating
God.
I was to be confessed, then, of my guilty conscience, before retiring?
It boded well for the morrow.
… the measured accents of the fencer: “_Prenez votre paillasse._” I
turned. He was bending over a formless mass in one corner of the room.
The mass stretched halfway to the ceiling. It was made of
mattress-shapes. I pulled at one—burlap, stuffed with prickly straw. I
got it on my shoulder. “_Alors._” He lighted me to the door-way by
which we had entered. (I was somewhat pleased to leave the place.)
Back, down a corridor, up more stairs; and we were confronted by a
small scarred pair of doors from which hung two of the largest padlocks
I had ever seen. Being unable to go further, I stopped: he produced a
huge ring of keys. Fumbled with the locks. No sound of life: the keys
rattled in the locks with surprising loudness; the latter, with an evil
grace, yielded—the two little miserable doors swung open.
Into the square blackness I staggered with my _paillasse_. There was no
way of judging the size of the dark room which uttered no sound. In
front of me was a pillar. “Put it down by that post, and sleep there
for tonight, in the morning _nous allons voir_” directed the fencer.
“You won’t need a blanket,” he added; and the doors clanged, the light
and fencer disappeared.
I needed no second invitation to sleep. Fully dressed, I fell on my
_paillasse_ with a weariness which I have never felt before or since.
But I did not close my eyes: for all about me there rose a sea of most
extraordinary sound… the hitherto empty and minute room became suddenly
enormous: weird cries, oaths, laughter, pulling it sideways and
backward, extending it to inconceivable depth and width, telescoping it
to frightful nearness. From all directions, by at least thirty voices
in eleven languages (I counted as I lay Dutch, Belgian, Spanish,
Turkish, Arabian, Polish, Russian, Swedish, German, French—and English)
at distances varying from seventy feet to a few inches, for twenty
minutes I was ferociously bombarded. Nor was my perplexity purely
aural. About five minutes after lying down, I saw (by a hitherto
unnoticed speck of light which burned near the doors which I had
entered) two extraordinary looking figures—one a well-set man with a
big, black beard, the other a consumptive with a bald head and sickly
moustache, both clad only in their knee-length chemises, hairy legs
naked, feet bare—wander down the room and urinate profusely in the
corner nearest me. This act accomplished, the figures wandered back,
greeted with a volley of ejaculatory abuse from the invisible
co-occupants of my new sleeping-apartment; and disappeared in darkness.
I remarked to myself that the _gendarmes_ of this _gendarmerie_ were
peculiarly up in languages, and fell asleep.
IV.
LE NOUVEAU
_“Vous ne voulez pas de café?”_
The threatening question recited in a hoarse voice woke me like a shot.
Sprawled half on and half off my _paillasse_, I looked suddenly up into
a juvenile pimply face with a red tassel bobbing in its eyes. A boy in
a Belgian uniform was stooping over me. In one hand a huge pail a third
full of liquid slime. I said fiercely: “_Au contraire, je veux bien._”
And collapsed on the mattress.
“_Pas de quart, vous?_” the face fired at me.
“_Comprends pas_,” I replied, wondering what on earth the words meant.
“English?”
“American.”
At this moment a tin cup appeared mysteriously out of the gloom and was
rapidly filled from the pail, after which operation the tassel
remarked: “Your friend here” and disappeared.