VIVE LA LIBERTÉ

tattooed in blue and green on his big hairy chest. A fine bear. A bear

whom no twitchings at his muzzle nor any starvation nor yet any beating

could ever teach to dance … but then, I am partial to bears. Of course

none of this bear’s letters ever got posted—Le Directeur was not that

sort of person; nor did this bear ever expect that they would go

elsewhere than into the official waste-basket of La Ferté, which means

that he wrote because he liked to; which again means that he was

essentially an artist—for which reason I liked him more than a little.

He lumbered off one day—I hope to his brier-patch, and to his children,

and to his _confrères_, and to all things excellent and livable and

highly desirable to a bruin.

The Young Russian and The Barber escaped while I was enjoying my little

visit at Orne. The former was an immensely tall and very strong boy of

nineteen or under; who had come to our society by way of solitary

confinement, bread and water for months, and other reminders that to

err is human, etc. Unlike Harree, whom, if anything, he exceeded in

strength, he was very quiet. Everyone let him alone. I “caught water”

in the town with him several times and found him an excellent

companion. He taught me the Russian numerals up to ten, and was very

kind to my struggles over 10 and 9. He picked up the cannon-ball one

day and threw it so hard that the wall separating the men’s _cour_ from

the _cour des femmes_ shook, and a piece of stone fell off. At which

the cannon-ball was taken away from us (to the grief of its daily

wielders, Harree and Fritz) by four perspiring _plantons_, who almost

died in the performance of their highly patriotic duty. His friend, The

Barber, had a little shelf in The Enormous Room, all tricked out with

an astonishing array of bottles, atomizers, tonics, powders, scissors,

razors and other deadly implements. It has always been a _mystère_ to

me that our captors permitted this array of obviously dangerous weapons

when we were searched almost weekly for knives. Had I not been in the

habit of using B.’s safety razor I should probably have become better

acquainted with The Barber. It was not his price, nor yet his

technique, but the fear of contamination which made me avoid these

instruments of hygiene. Not that I shaved to excess. On the contrary,

the Surveillant often, nay bi-weekly (so soon as I began drawing

certain francs from Norton Harjes) reasoned with me upon the subject of

appearance; saying that I was come of a good family, and I had enjoyed

(unlike my companions) an education, and that I should keep myself neat

and clean and be a shining example to the filthy and ignorant—adding

slyly that the “hospital” would be an awfully nice place for me and my

friend to live, and that there we could be by ourselves like gentlemen

and have our meals served in the room, avoiding the _salle a manger_;

moreover, the food would be what we liked, delicious food, especially

cooked … all (quoth the Surveillant with the itching palm of a Grand

Central Porter awaiting his tip) for a mere trifle or so, which if I

liked I could pay him on the spot—whereat I scornfully smiled, being

inhibited by a somewhat selfish regard for my own welfare from kicking

him through the window. To The Barber’s credit be it said: he never

once solicited my trade, although the Surveillant’s “_Soi-même_”

(oneself) lectures (as B. and I referred to them) were the delight of

our numerous friends and must, through them, have reached his alert

ears. He was a good-looking quiet man of perhaps thirty, with

razor-keen eyes—and that’s about all I know of him except that one day

The Young Russian and The Barber, instead of passing from the _cour_

directly to the building, made use of a little door in an angle between

the stone wall and the kitchen; and that to such good effect that we

never saw them again. Nor were the ever-watchful guardians of our

safety, the lion-hearted _plantons_, aware of what had occurred until

several hours after; despite the fact that a ten-foot wall had been

scaled, some lesser obstructions vanquished, and a run in the open made

almost (one unpatriotically minded might be tempted to say) before

their very eyes. But then—who knows? May not the French Government

deliberately have allowed them to escape, after—through its

incomparable spy system—learning that The Barber and his young friend

were about to attempt the life of the Surveillant with an atomizer

brim-full of T.N.T.? Nothing could after all be more highly probable.

As a matter of fact a couple of extra-fine razors (presented by the

_Soi-même_-minded Surveillant to the wily coiffeur in the interests of

public health) as well as a knife which belonged to the kitchen and had

been lent to The Barber for the purpose of peeling potatoes—he having

complained that the extraordinary safety-device with which, on

alternate days, we were ordinarily furnished for that purpose, was an

insult to himself and his profession—vanished into the rather thick air

of Orne along with The Barber _lui-même_. I remember him perfectly in

The Enormous Room, cutting apples deliberately with his knife and

sharing them with the Young Russian. The night of the escape—in order

to keep up our morale—we were helpfully told that both refugees had

been snitched e’er they had got well without the limits of the town,

and been remanded to a punishment consisting among other things, in

_travaux forcés à perpetuité—verbum sapientibus_, he that hath ears,

etc. Also a nightly inspection was instituted; consisting of our being

counted thrice by a _planton_, who then divided the total by three and

vanished.

_Soi-même_ reminds me of a pleasant spirit who graced our little

company with a good deal of wit and elegance. He was called by B. and

myself, after a somewhat exciting incident which I must not describe,

but rather outline, by the agreeable title of Même le Balayeur. Only a

few days after my arrival the incident in question happened. It seems

(I was in _la cour_ promenading for the afternoon) that certain more

virile inhabitants of The Enormous Room, among them Harree and Pom Pom

_bien entendu_, declined to _se promener_ and kept their habitat. Now

this was in fulfilment of a little understanding with three or more

girls—such as Celina, Lily and Renée—who, having also declined the

promenade, managed in the course of the afternoon to escape from their

quarters on the second floor, rush down the hall and upstairs, and gain

that landing on which was the only and well-locked door to The Enormous

Room. The next act of this little comedy (or tragedy, as it proved for

the participants, who got _cabinot_ and _pain sec_—male and female

alike—for numerous days thereafter) might well be entitled “Love will

find a way.” Just how the door was opened, the lock picked, etc., from

the inside is (of course) a considerable mystery to anyone possessing a

limited acquaintance with the art of burglary. Anyway it was

accomplished, and that in several fifths of a second. Now let the

curtain fall, and the reader be satisfied with the significant word

“Asbestos,” which is part of all first-rate performances.

The Surveillant, I fear, distrusted his _balayeur_. _Balayeurs_ were

always being changed because _balayeurs_ were (in shameful contrast to

the _plantons_) invariably human beings. For this deplorable reason

they inevitably carried notes to and fro between _les hommes_ and _les

femmes_. Upon which ground the _balayeur_ in this case—a well-knit

keen-eyed agile man, with a sense of humour and sharp perception of

men, women and things in particular and in general—was called before

the bar of an impromptu court, held by M. le Surveillant in The

Enormous Room after the promenade. I shall not enter in detail into the

nature of the charges pressed in certain cases, but confine myself to

quoting the close of a peroration which would have done Demosthenes

credit:

“_Même le balayeur a tiré un coup!_”

The individual in question mildly deprecated M. le Surveillant’s

opinion, while the audience roared and rocked with laughter of a

somewhat ferocious sort. I have rarely seen the Surveillant so pleased

with himself as after producing this _bon mot_. Only fear of his

superior, the ogre-like Directeur, kept him from letting off entirely

all concerned in what after all (from the European point of view) was

an essentially human proceeding. As nobody could prove anything about

Même, he was not locked up in a dungeon; but he lost his job of

sweeper—which was quite as bad, I am sure, from his point of view—and

from that day became a common inhabitant of The Enormous Room like any

of the rest of us.

His successor, Garibaldi, was a corker.

How the Almighty French Government in its Almighty Wisdom ever found

Garibaldi a place among us is more than I understand or ever will. He

was a little tot in a faded blue-grey French uniform; and when he

perspired he pushed a _kepi_ up and back from his worried forehead

which a lock of heavy hair threateningly overhung. As I recollect

Garibaldi’s terribly difficult, not to say complicated, lineage, his

English mother had presented him to his Italian father in the country

of France. However this trilogy may be, he had served at various times

in the Italian, French and English armies. As there was (unless we call

Garibaldi Italian, which he obviously was not) nary a subject of King

Ponzi or Carruso or whatever be his name residing at La Ferté Macé,

Garibaldi was in the habit of expressing himself—chiefly at the card

table, be it said—in a curious language which might have been mistaken

for French. To B. and me he spoke an equally curious language, but a

perfectly recognizable one, i.e., Cockney Whitechapel English. He

showed us a perfectly authentic mission-card which certified that his

family had received a pittance from some charitable organisation

situated in the Whitechapel neighbourhood, and that, moreover, they

were in the habit of receiving this pittance; and that, finally, their

claim to such pittance was amply justified by the poverty of their

circumstances. Beyond this valuable certificate, Garibaldi (which

everyone called him) attained great incoherence. He had been wronged.

He was always being misunderstood. His life had been a series of

mysterious tribulations. I for one have the merest idea that Garibaldi

was arrested for the theft of some peculiarly worthless trifle, and

sent to the Limbo of La Ferté as a penance. This merest idea is

suggested by something which happened when The Clever Man instituted a

search for his missing knife—but I must introduce The Clever Man to my

reader before describing that rather beguiling incident.

Conceive a tall, well-dressed, rather athletic, carefully kept, clean

and neat, intelligent, not for a moment despondent, altogether superior

man, fairly young (perhaps twenty-nine) and quite bald. He wins enough

every night at _banque_ to enable him to pay the less fortunate to

perform his _corvée d’eau_ for him. As a consequence he takes his vile

coffee in bed every morning, then smokes a cigarette or two lazily,

then drops off for a nap, and gets up about the middle of the morning

promenade. Upon arising he strops a razor of his own (nobody knows how

he gets away with a regular razor), carefully lathers his face and

neck—while gazing into a rather classy mirror which hangs night and day

over his head, above a little shelf on which he displays at such times

a complete toilet outfit—and proceeds to annihilate the inconsiderable

growth of beard which his mirror reveals to him. Having completed the

annihilation, he performs the most extensive ablutions per one of the

three or four pails which The Enormous Room boasts, which pail is by

common consent dedicated to his personal and exclusive use. All this

time he has been singing loudly and musically the following sumptuously

imaginative ditty:

“mEEt me tonIght in DREAmland,

UNder the SIL-v’ry mOOn,

meet me in DREAmland,

sweet dreamy DREAmland—

there all my DRE-ams come trUE.”

His English accent is excellent. He pronounces his native language,

which is the language of the Hollanders, crisply and firmly. He is not

given to Gottverdummering. In addition to Dutch and English he speaks

French clearly and Belgian distinctly. I daresay he knows half a dozen

languages in all. He gives me the impression of a man who would never

be at a loss, in whatever circumstances he might find himself. A man

capable of extricating himself from the most difficult situation; and

that with the greatest ease. A man who bides his time; and improves the

present by separating, one after one, his monied fellow-prisoners from

their banknotes. He is, by all odds, the coolest player that I ever

watched. Nothing worries him. If he loses two hundred francs tonight, I

am sure he will win it and fifty in addition tomorrow. He accepts

opponents without distinction—the stupid, the wily, the vain, the

cautious, the desperate, the hopeless. He has not the slightest pity,

not the least fear. In one of my numerous notebooks I have this

perfectly direct paragraph:

Card table: 4 stares play banque with 2 cigarettes (1 dead) & A pipe

the clashing faces yanked by a leanness of one candle bottle-stuck

(Birth of X) where sits The Clever Man who pyramids, sings (mornings)

“Meet Me…”

which specimen of telegraphic technique, being interpreted, means:

Judas, Garibaldi, and The Holland Skipper (whom the reader will meet

_de suite_)—Garibaldi’s cigarette having gone out, so greatly is he

absorbed—play _banque_ with four intent and highly focussed individuals

who may or may not be The Schoolmaster, Monsieur Auguste, The Barber,

and Même; with The Clever Man (as nearly always) acting as banker. The

candle by whose somewhat uncorpulent illumination the various

physiognomies are yanked into a ferocious unity is stuck into the mouth

of a bottle. The lighting of the whole, the rhythmic disposition of the

figures, construct a sensuous integration suggestive of The Birth of

Christ by one of the Old Masters. The Clever Man, having had his usual

morning warble, is extremely quiet. He will win, he pyramids—and he

pyramids because he has the cash and can afford to make every play a

big one. All he needs is the rake of a _croupier_ to complete his

disinterested and wholly nerveless poise. He is a born gambler, is The

Clever Man—and I dare say that to play cards in time of war constituted

a heinous crime and I am certain that he played cards before he arrived

at La Ferté; moreover, I suppose that to win at cards in time of war is

an unutterable crime, and I know that he has won at cards before in his

life—so now we have a perfectly good and valid explanation of the

presence of The Clever Man in our midst. The Clever Man’s chief

opponent was Judas. It was a real pleasure to us whenever of an evening

Judas sweated and mopped and sweated and lost more and more and was

finally cleaned out.

But The Skipper, I learned from certain prisoners who escorted the

baggage of The Clever Man from The Enormous Room when he left us one

day (as he did for some reason, to enjoy the benefits of freedom), paid

the mastermind of the card table 150 francs at the gate—poor Skipper!

upon whose vacant bed lay down luxuriously the Lobster, immediately to

be wheeled fiercely all around The Enormous Room by the Guard Champêtre

and Judas, to the boisterous plaudits of _tout le monde_—but I started

to tell about the afternoon when the master-mind lost his knife; and

tell it I will forthwith. B. and I were lying prone upon our respective

beds when—presto, a storm arose at the further end of The Enormous

Room. We looked, and beheld The Clever Man, thoroughly and efficiently

angry, addressing, threatening and frightening generally a constantly

increasing group of fellow-prisoners. After dismissing with a few sharp

linguistic cracks of the whip certain theories which seemed to be

advanced by the bolder auditors with a view to palliating, persuading

and tranquilizing his just wrath, he made for the nearest _paillasse_,

turned it topsy-turvy, slit it neatly and suddenly from stem to stem

with a jack-knife, banged the hay about, and then went with careful

haste through the pitifully minute baggage of the _paillasse’s_ owner.

Silence fell. No one, least of all the owner, said anything. From this

bed The Clever Man turned to the next, treated it in the same fashion,

searched it thoroughly, and made for the third. His motions were those

of a perfectly oiled machine. He proceeded up the length of the room,

varying his procedure only by sparing an occasional mattress, throwing

_paillasses_ about, tumbling _sacs_ and boxes inside out; his face

somewhat paler than usual but otherwise immaculate and expressionless.

B. and I waited with some interest to see what would happen to our

belongings. Arriving at our beds he paused, seemed to consider a

moment, then, not touching our _paillasses_ proper, proceeded to open

our duffle bags and hunt half-heartedly, remarking that “somebody might

have put it in;” and so passed on. “What in hell is the matter with

that guy?” I asked of Fritz, who stood near us with a careless air,

some scorn and considerable amusement in his eyes. “The bloody fool’s

lost his knife,” was Fritz’s answer. After completing his rounds The

Clever Man searched almost everyone except ourselves and Fritz, and

absolutely subsided on his own _paillasse_ muttering occasionally “if

he found it” what he’d do. I think he never did find it. It was a

“beautiful” knife, John the Baigneur said. “What did it look like?” I

demanded with some curiosity. “It had a naked woman on the handle”

Fritz said, his eyes sharp with amusement.

And everyone agreed that it was a great pity that The Clever Man had

lost it, and everyone began timidly to restore order and put his

personal belongings back in place and say nothing at all.

But what amused me was to see the little tot in a bluish-grey French

uniform, Garibaldi, who—about when the search approached his

_paillasse_—suddenly hurried over to B. (his perspiring forehead more

perspiring than usual, his _kepi_ set at an angle of insanity) and

hurriedly presented B. with a long-lost German silver folding

camp-knife, purchased by B. from a fellow-member of Vingt-et-Un who was

known to us as “Lord Algie”—a lanky, effeminate, brittle, spotless

creature who was en route to becoming an officer and to whose finicky

tastes the fat-jowled A. tirelessly pandered, for, doubtless, financial

considerations—which knife according to the trembling and altogether

miserable Garibaldi had “been found” by him that day in the _cour_;

which was eminently and above all things curious, as the treasure had

been lost weeks before.

Which again brings us to the Skipper, whose elaborate couch has already

been mentioned—he was a Hollander and one of the strongest, most gentle

and altogether most pleasant of men, who used to sit on the water-wagon

under the shed in the _cour_ and smoke his pipe quietly of an

afternoon. His stocky even tightly-knit person, in its heavy-trousers

and jersey sweater, culminated in a bronzed face which was at once as

kind and firm a piece of supernatural work as I think I ever knew. His

voice was agreeably modulated. He was utterly without affectation. He

had three sons. One evening a number of _gendarmes_ came to his house

and told him that he was arrested, “so my three sons and I threw them

all out of the window into the canal.”

I can still see the opening smile, squared kindness of cheeks, eyes

like cool keys—his heart always with the Sea.

The little Machine-Fixer (_le petit bonhomme avec le bras cassé_ as he

styled himself, referring to his little paralysed left arm) was so

perfectly different that I must let you see him next. He was slightly

taller than Garibaldi, about of a size with Monsieur Auguste. He and

Monsieur Auguste together were a fine sight, a sight which made me feel

that I came of a race of giants. I am afraid it was more or less as

giants that B. and I pitied the Machine-Fixer—still this was not really

our fault, since the Machine-Fixer came to us with his troubles much as

a very minute and helpless child comes to a very large and omnipotent

one. And God knows we did not only pity him, we liked him—and if we

could in some often ridiculous manner assist the Machine-Fixer I think

we nearly always did. The assistance to which I refer was wholly

spiritual; since the minute Machine-Fixer’s colossal self-pride

eliminated any possibility of material assistance. What we did, about

every other night, was to entertain him (as we entertained our other

friends) _chez nous_; that is to say, he would come up late every

evening or every other evening, after his day’s toil—for he worked as

co-sweeper with Garibaldi and he was a tremendous worker; never have I

seen a man who took his work so seriously and made so much of it—to

sit, with great care and very respectfully, upon one or the other of

our beds at the upper end of The Enormous Room, and smoke a black small

pipe, talking excitedly and strenuously and fiercely about _La Misère_

and himself and ourselves, often crying a little but very bitterly, and

from time to time striking matches with a short angry gesture on the

sole of his big, almost square boot. His little, abrupt, conscientious,

relentless, difficult self lived always in a single dimension—the

somewhat beautiful dimension of Sorrow. He was a Belgian, and one of

two Belgians in whom I have ever felt the least or slightest interest;

for the Machine-Fixer might have been a Polak or an Idol or an Esquimo

so far as his nationality affected his soul. By and large, that was the

trouble—the Machine-Fixer had a soul. Put the bracelets on an ordinary

man, tell him he’s a bad egg, treat him rough, shove him into the jug

or its equivalent (you see I have regard always for M. le Surveillant’s

delicate but no doubt necessary distinction between La Ferté and

Prison), and he will become one of three animals—a rabbit, that is to

say timid; a mole, that is to say stupid; or a hyena, that is to say

Harree the Hollander. But if, by some fatal, some incomparably fatal

accident, this man has a soul—ah, then we have and truly have most

horribly what is called in La Ferté Macé by those who have known it:

_La Misère_. Monsieur Auguste’s valiant attempts at cheerfulness and

the natural buoyancy of his gentle disposition in a slight degree

protected him from _La Misère_. The Machine-Fixer was lost. By nature

he was tremendously sensible, he was the very apotheosis of _l’ame

sensible_ in fact. His _sensibilité_ made him shoulder not only the

inexcusable injustice which he had suffered but the incomparable and

overwhelming total injustice which everyone had suffered and was

suffering en masse day and night in The Enormous Room. His woes, had

they not sprung from perfectly real causes, might have suggested a

persecution complex. As it happened there was no possible method of

relieving them—they could be relieved in only one way: by Liberty. Not

simply by his personal liberty, but by the liberation of every single

fellow-captive as well. His extraordinarily personal anguish could not

be selfishly appeased by a merely partial righting, in his own case, of

the Wrong—the ineffable and terrific and to be perfectly avenged

Wrong—done to those who ate and slept and wept and played cards within

that abominable and unyielding Symbol which enclosed the immutable

vileness of our common life. It was necessary, for its appeasement,

that a shaft of bright lightning suddenly and entirely should wither

the human and material structures which stood always between our filthy

and pitiful selves and the unspeakable cleanness of Liberty.

B. recalls that the little Machine-Fixer said or hinted that he had

been either a socialist or an anarchist when he was young. So that is

doubtless why we had the privilege of his society. After all, it is

highly improbable that this poor socialist suffered more at the hands

of the great and good French government than did many a Conscientious

Objector at the hands of the great and good American government;

or—since all great governments are _per se_ good and vice versa—than

did many a man in general who was cursed with a talent for thinking

during the warlike moments recently passed; during, that is to say, an

epoch when the g. and g. nations demanded of their respective peoples

the exact antithesis to thinking; said antitheses being vulgarly called

Belief. Lest which statement prejudice some members of the American

Legion in disfavour of the Machine-Fixer or rather of myself—awful

thought—I hasten to assure everyone that the Machine-Fixer was a highly

moral person. His morality was at times almost gruesome; as when he got

started on the inhabitants of the women’s quarters. Be it understood

that the Machine-Fixer was human, that he would take a letter—provided

he liked the sender—and deliver it to the sender’s _adorée_ without a

murmur. That was simply a good deed done for a friend; it did not imply

that he approved of the friend’s choice, which for strictly moral

reasons he invariably and to the friend’s very face violently

deprecated. To this little man of perhaps forty-five, with a devoted

wife waiting for him in Belgium (a wife whom he worshipped and loved

more than he worshipped and loved anything in the world, a wife whose

fidelity to her husband and whose trust and confidence in him echoed in

the letters which—when we three were alone—the little Machine-Fixer

tried always to read to us, never getting beyond the first sentence or

two before he broke down and sobbed from his feet to his eyes), to such

a little person his reaction to _les femmes_ was more than natural. It

was in fact inevitable.

Women, to him at least, were of two kinds and two kinds only. There

were _les femmes honnêtes_ and there were _les putains_. In La Ferté,

he informed us—and as _balayeur_ he ought to have known whereof he

spoke—there were as many as three ladies of the former variety. One of

them he talked with often. She told him her story. She was a Russian,

of a very fine education, living peacefully in Paris up to the time

that she wrote to her relatives a letter containing the following

treasonable sentiment:

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

The letter had been read by the French censor, as had B.’s letter; and

her arrest and transference from her home in Paris to La Ferté Macé

promptly followed. She was as intelligent as she was virtuous and had

nothing to do with her frailer sisters, so the Machine-Fixer informed

us with a quickly passing flash of joy. Which sisters (his little

forehead knotted itself and his big bushy eyebrows plunged together

wrathfully) were wicked and indecent and utterly despicable disgraces

to their sex—and this relentless Joseph fiercely and jerkily related

how only the day before he had repulsed the painfully obvious

solicitations of a Madame Potiphar by turning his back, like a good

Christian, upon temptation and marching out of the room, broom tightly

clutched in virtuous hand.

“_M’sieu Jean_” (meaning myself) “_savez-vous_”—with a terrific gesture

which consisted in snapping his thumbnail between his teeth—“_ÇA PUE!_”

Then he added: “And what would my wife say to me if I came home to her

and presented her with that which this creature had presented to me?

They are animals,” cried the little Machine-Fixer; “all they want is a

man. They don’t care who he is; they want a man. But they won’t get

me!” And he warned us to beware.

Especially interesting, not to say valuable, was the Machine-Fixer’s

testimony concerning the more or less regular “inspections” (which were

held by the very same doctor who had “examined” me in the course of my

first day at La Ferté) for _les femmes_; presumably in the interest of

public safety. _Les femmes_, quoth the Machine-Fixer, who had been many

times an eye-witness of this proceeding, lined up talking and laughing

and—crime of crimes—smoking cigarettes, outside the bureau of M. le

Médecin Major. “_Une femme entre. Elle se lève les jupes jusqu’au

menton et se met sur le banc. Le médecin major la regarde. Il dit de

suite ‘Bon. C’est tout.’ Elle sort. Une autre entre. La même chose.

‘Bon. C’est fini’…. M’sieu’ Jean: prenez garde!_”

And he struck a match fiercely on the black, almost square boot which

lived on the end of his little worn trouser-leg, bending his small body

forward as he did so, and bringing the flame upward in a violent curve.

The flame settled on his little black pipe, his cheeks sucked until

they must have met, and a slow unwilling noise arose, and with the

return of his cheeks a small colorless wisp of possibly smoke came upon

the air.—“That’s not tobacco. Do you know what it is? It’s wood! And I

sit here smoking wood in my pipe when my wife is sick with worrying….

_M’sieu! Jean_”—leaning forward with jaw protruding and a oneness of

bristly eyebrows, “_Ces grands messieurs qui ne foutent pas mal si l’on

CREVE de faim, savez-vous ils croient chacun qu’il est Le Bon Dieu

LUI-Même. Et M’sieu’ Jean, savez-vous, ils sont tous_”—leaning right in

my face, the withered hand making a pitiful fist of itself—“_ils. Sont.

Des. CRAPULES!_”

And his ghastly and toylike wizened and minute arm would try to make a

pass at their lofty lives. O _gouvernement français_, I think it was

not very clever of you to put this terrible doll in La Ferté; I should

have left him in Belgium with his little doll-wife if I had been You;

for when governments are found dead there is always a little doll on

top of them, pulling and tweaking with his little hands to get back the

microscopic knife which sticks firmly in the quiet meat of their

hearts.

One day only did I see him happy or nearly happy—when a Belgian

baroness for some reason arrived, and was bowed and fed and wined by

the delightfully respectful and perfectly behaved Official Captors—“and

I know of her in Belgium, she is a great lady, she is very powerful and

she is generous; I fell on my knees before her, and implored her in the

name of my wife and _Le Bon Dieu_ to intercede in my behalf; and she

has made a note of it, and she told me she would write the Belgian King

and I will be free in a few weeks, FREE!”

The little Machine-Fixer, I happen to know, did finally leave La

Ferté—for Précigne.

… In the kitchen worked a very remarkable person. Who wore _sabots_.

And sang continuously in a very subdued way to himself as he stirred

the huge black kettles. We, that is to say, B. and I, became acquainted

with Afrique very gradually. You did not know Afrique suddenly. You

became cognisant of Afrique gradually. You were in the _cour_, staring

at ooze and dead trees, when a figure came striding from the kitchen

lifting its big wooden feet after it rhythmically, unwinding a

particoloured scarf from its waist as it came, and singing to itself in

a subdued manner a jocular, and I fear, unprintable ditty concerning

Paradise. The figure entered the little gate to the _cour_ in a

business-like way, unwinding continuously, and made stridingly for the

cabinet situated up against the stone wall which separated the

promenading sexes—dragging behind it on the ground a tail of

ever-increasing dimensions. The cabinet reached, tail and figure parted

company; the former fell inert to the limitless mud, the latter

disappeared into the contrivance with a Jack-in-the-box rapidity. From

which contrivance the continuing ditty

“_le paradis est une maison…._”

—Or again, it’s a lithe pausing poise, intensely intelligent, certainly

sensitive, delivering dryingly a series of sure and rapid hints that

penetrate the fabric of stupidity accurately and whisperingly; dealing

one after another brief and poignant instupidities, distinct and

uncompromising, crisp and altogether arrowlike. The poise has a

cigarette in its hand, which cigarette it has just pausingly rolled

from material furnished by a number of carefully saved butts (whereof

Afrique’s pockets are invariably full). Its neither old nor young, but

rather keen face hoards a pair of greyish-blue witty eyes, which face

and eyes are directed upon us through the open door of a little room.

Which little room is in the rear of the _cuisine_; a little room filled

with the inexpressibly clean and soft odour of newly cut wood. Which

wood we are pretending to split and pile for kindling. As a matter of

fact we are enjoying Afrique’s conversation, escaping from the bleak

and profoundly muddy _cour_, and (under the watchful auspices of the

Cook, who plays sentinel) drinking something approximating coffee with

something approximating sugar therein. All this because the Cook thinks

we’re boches and being the Cook and a boche _lui-même_ is consequently

peculiarly concerned for our welfare.

Afrique is talking about _les journaux_, and to what prodigious pains

they go to not tell the truth; or he is telling how a native stole up

on him in the night armed with a spear two metres long, once on a time

in a certain part of the world; or he is predicting that the Germans

will march upon the French by way of Switzerland; or he is teaching us

to count and swear in Arabic; or he is having a very good time in the

Midi as a tinker, sleeping under a tree outside of a little town….

Afrique’s is an alert kind of mind, which has been and seen and

observed and penetrated and known—a bit there, somewhat here, chiefly

everywhere. Its specialty being politics, in which case Afrique has had

the inestimable advantage of observing without being observed—until La

Ferté; whereupon Afrique goes on uninterruptedly observing, recognising

that a significant angle of observation has been presented to him

gratis. _Les journaux_ and politics in general are topics upon which

Afrique can say more, without the slightest fatigue, than a book as big

as my two thumbs.

“Why yes, they got water, and then I gave them coffee,” Monsieur, or

more properly Mynheer _le chef_, is expostulating; the _planton_ is

stupidly protesting that we are supposed to be upstairs; Afrique is

busily stirring a huge black pot, winking gravely at us and singing

softly

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

VI.

APOLLYON

The inhabitants of The Enormous Room whose portraits I have attempted

in the preceding chapter, were, with one or two exceptions, inhabiting

at the time of my arrival. Now the thing which above all things made

death worth living and life worth dying at La Ferté Macé was the

kinetic aspect of that institution; the arrivals, singly or in groups,

of _nouveaux_ of sundry nationalities whereby our otherwise more or

less simple existence was happily complicated, our putrescent placidity

shaken by a fortunate violence. Before, however, undertaking this

aspect I shall attempt to represent for my own benefit as well as the

reader’s certain more obvious elements of that stasis which greeted the

candidates for disintegration upon their admittance to our select, not

to say distinguished, circle. Or: I shall describe, briefly, Apollyon

and the instruments of his power, which instruments are three in

number: Fear, Women and Sunday.

By Apollyon I mean a very definite fiend. A fiend who, secluded in the

sumptuous and luxurious privacy of his own personal _bureau_ (which as

a rule no one of lesser rank than the Surveillant was allowed, so far

as I might observe—and I observed—to enter) compelled to the

unimaginable meanness of his will by means of the three potent

instruments in question all within the sweating walls of La Ferté—that

was once upon a time human. I mean a very complete Apollyon, a Satan

whose word is dreadful not because it is painstakingly unjust, but

because it is incomprehensibly omnipotent. I mean, in short, Monsieur

le Directeur.

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

weapon.

Fear was instilled by three means into the erstwhile human entities

whose presence at La Ferté gave Apollyon his job. The three means were:

through his subordinates, who being one and all fearful of his power

directed their energies to but one end—the production in ourselves of a

similar emotion; through two forms of punishment, which supplied said

subordinates with a weapon over any of us who refused to find room for

this desolating emotion in his heart of hearts; and, finally, through

direct contact with his unutterable personality.

Beneath the Demon was the Surveillant. I have already described the

Surveillant. I wish to say, however, that in my opinion the Surveillant

was the most decent official at La Ferté. I pay him this tribute gladly

and honestly. To me, at least, he was kind: to the majority he was

inclined to be lenient. I honestly and gladly believe that the

Surveillant was incapable of that quality whose innateness, in the case

of his superior, rendered that gentleman a (to my mind) perfect

representative of the Almighty French Government: I believe that the

Surveillant did not enjoy being cruel, that he was not absolutely

without pity or understanding. As a personality I therefore pay him my

respects. I am myself incapable of caring whether, as a tool of the

Devil, he will find the bright firelight of Hell too warm for him or

no.

Beneath the Surveillant were the Secrétaire, Monsieur Richard, the

Cook, and the _plantons_. The first I have described sufficiently,

since he was an obedient and negative—albeit peculiarly responsible—cog

in the machine of decomposition. Of Monsieur Richard, whose portrait is

included in the account of my first day at La Ferté, I wish to say that

he had a very comfortable room of his own filled with primitive and

otherwise imposing medicines; the walls of this comfortable room being

beauteously adorned by some fifty magazine covers representing the

female form in every imaginable state of undress, said magazine-covers

being taken chiefly from such amorous periodicals as _Le Sourire_ and

that old stand-by of indecency, _La Vie Parisienne_. Also Monsieur

Richard kept a pot of geraniums upon his window-ledge, which haggard

and aged-looking symbol of joy he doubtless (in his spare moments)

peculiarly enjoyed watering. The Cook is by this time familiar to my

reader. I beg to say that I highly approve of The Cook; exclusive of

the fact that the coffee, which went up to The Enormous Room _tous les

matins_, was made every day with the same grounds plus a goodly

injection of checkerberry—for the simple reason that the Cook had to

supply our captors and especially Apollyon with real coffee, whereas

what he supplied to _les hommes_ made no difference. The same is true

of sugar: our morning coffee, in addition to being a water-thin, black,

muddy, stinking liquid, contained not the smallest suggestion of

sweetness, whereas the coffee which went to the officials—and the

coffee which B. and I drank in recompense for “catching water”—had all

the sugar you could possibly wish for. The poor Cook was fined one day

as a result of his economies, subsequent to a united action on the part

of the fellow-sufferers. It was a day when a gent immaculately dressed

appeared—after duly warning the Fiend that he was about to inspect the

Fiend’s ménage—an, I think, public official of Orne. Judas (at the time

_chef de chambre_) supported by the sole and unique indignation of all

his fellow-prisoners save two or three out of whom Fear had made

rabbits or moles, early carried the pail (which by common agreement not

one of us had touched that day) downstairs, along the hall, and up one

flight—where he encountered the Directeur, Surveillant and Handsome

Stranger all amicably and pleasantly conversing. Judas set the pail

down; bowed; and begged, as spokesman for the united male gender of La

Ferté Macé, that the quality of the coffee be examined. “We won’t any

of us drink it, begging your pardon, Messieurs,” he claims that he

said. What happened then is highly amusing. The _petit balayeur_, an

eye-witness of the proceeding, described it to me as follows:

“The Directeur roared ‘_COMMENT?_’ He was horribly angry. ‘_Oui,

Monsieur_,’ said the _maitre de chambre_ humbly—‘_Pourquoi?_’ thundered

the Directeur.—‘Because it’s undrinkable,’ the _maitre de chambre_ said

quietly.—‘Undrinkable? Nonsense!’ cried the Directeur furiously.—‘Be so

good as to taste it, Monsieur le Directeur.’—‘_I_ taste it? Why should

I taste it? The coffee is perfectly good, plenty good for you men. This

is ridiculous—’—‘Why don’t we all taste it?’ suggested the Surveillant

ingratiatingly.—‘Why, yes,’ said the Visitor mildly.—‘Taste it? Of

course not. This is ridiculous and I shall punish—’—‘I should like, if

you don’t mind, to try a little,’ the Visitor said.—‘Oh, well, of

course, if you like,’ the Directeur mildly agreed. ‘Give me a cup of

that coffee, you!’—‘With pleasure, sir,’ said the _maitre de chambre._

The Directeur—M’sieu’ Jean, you would have burst laughing—seized the

cup, lifted it to his lips, swallowed with a frightful expression (his

eyes almost popping out of his head) and cried fiercely, ‘DELICIOUS!’

The Surveillant took a cupful; sipped; tossed the coffee away, looking

as if he had been hit in the eyes, and remarked, ‘Ah.’ The _maitre de

chambre_—M’sieu’ Jean he is clever—scooped the third cupful from the

bottom of the pail, and very politely, with a big bow, handed it to the

Visitor; who took it, touched it to his lips, turned perfectly green,

and cried out ‘Impossible!’ M’sieu’ Jean, we all thought—the Directeur

and the Surveillant and the _maitre de chambre_ and myself—that he was

going to vomit. He leaned against the wall a moment, quite green; then

recovering said faintly—‘The Kitchen.’ The Directeur looked very

nervous and shouted, trembling all over, ‘Yes, indeed! We’ll see the

cook about this perfectly impossible coffee. I had no idea that my men

were getting such coffee. It’s abominable! That’s what it is, an

outrage!’—And they all tottered downstairs to The Cook; and M’sieu

Jean, they searched the kitchen; and what do you think? They found ten

pounds of coffee and twelve pounds of sugar all neatly hidden away,

that The Cook had been saving for himself out of our allowance. He’s a

beast, the Cook!”

I must say that, although the morning coffee improved enormously for as

much as a week, it descended afterwards to its original level of

excellence.

The Cook, I may add, officiated three times a week at a little table to

the left as you entered the dining-room. Here he stood, and threw at

everyone (as everyone entered) a hunk of the most extraordinary meat

which I have ever had the privilege of trying to masticate—it could not

be tasted. It was pale and leathery. B. and myself often gave ours away

in our hungriest moments; which statement sounds as if we were generous

to others, whereas the reason for these donations was that we couldn’t

eat, let alone stand the sight of this staple of diet. We had to do our

donating on the sly, since the _chef_ always gave us choice pieces and

we were anxious not to hurt the _chef’s_ feelings. There was a good

deal of spasmodic protestation _apropos la viande_, but the Cook always

bullied it down—nor was the meat his fault; since, from the miserable

carcases which I have often seen carried into the kitchen from without,

the Cook had to select something which would suit the meticulous

stomach of the Lord of Hell, as also the less meticulous digestive

organs of his minions; and it was only after every _planton_ had got a

piece of viande to his plantonic taste that the captives, female and

male, came in for consideration.

On the whole, I think I never envied the Cook his strange and

difficult, not to say gruesome, job. With the men en masse he was bound

to be unpopular. To the good-will of those above he was necessarily

more or less a slave. And on the whole, I liked the Cook very much, as

did B.—for the very good and sufficient reason that he liked us both.

About the _plantons_ I have something to say, something which it gives

me huge pleasure to say. I have to say, about the _plantons_, that as a

bunch they struck me at the time and will always impress me as the next

to the lowest species of human organism; the lowest, in my experienced

estimation, being the _gendarme_ proper. The _plantons_ were, with one

exception—he of the black holster with whom I collided on the first

day—changed from time to time. Again with this one exception, they were

(as I have noted) apparently disabled men who were enjoying a vacation

from the trenches in the lovely environs of Orne. Nearly all of them

were witless. Every one of them had something the matter with him

physically as well. For instance, one _planton_ had a large wooden

hand. Another was possessed of a long unmanageable left leg made, as

nearly as I could discover, of tin. A third had a huge glass eye.

These peculiarities of physique, however, did not inhibit the

_plantons_ from certain essential and normal desires. On the contrary.

The _plantons_ probably realised that, in competition with the male

world at large, their glass legs and tin hands and wooden eyes would

not stand a Chinaman’s chance of winning the affection and admiration

of the fair sex. At any rate they were always on the alert for

opportunities to triumph over the admiration and affection of _les

femmes_ at La Ferté, where their success was not endangered by

competition. They had the bulge on everybody; and they used what bulge

they had to such good advantage that one of them, during my stay, was

pursued with a revolver by their sergeant, captured, locked up and

shipped off for court-martial on the charge of disobedience and

threatening the life of a superior officer. He had been caught with the

goods—that is to say, in the girl’s _cabinot_—by said superior: an

incapable, strutting, undersized, bepimpled person in a bright uniform

who spent his time assuming the poses of a general for the benefit of

the ladies; of his admiration for whom and his intentions toward whom

he made no secret. By all means one of the most disagreeable petty

bullies whom I ever beheld. This arrest of a _planton_ was, so long as

I inhabited La Ferté, the only case in which abuse of the weaker sex

was punished. That attempts at abuse were frequent I know from

allusions and direct statements made in the letters which passed by way

of the sweeper from the girls to their captive admirers. I might say

that the senders of these letters, whom I shall attempt to portray

presently, have my unmitigated and unqualified admiration. By all odds

they possessed the most terrible vitality and bravery of any human

beings, women or men, whom it has ever been my extraordinary luck to

encounter, or ever will be (I am absolutely sure) in this world.

The duties of the _plantons_ were those simple and obvious duties which

only very stupid persons can perfectly fulfill, namely: to take turns

guarding the building and its inhabitants; not to accept bribes,

whether in the form of matches, cigarettes or conversation, from their

prisoners; to accompany anyone who went anywhere outside the walls (as

did occasionally the _balayeurs_, to transport baggage; the men who did

_corvée_; and the catchers of water for the cook, who proceeded as far

as the hydrant situated on the outskirts of the town—a momentous

distance of perhaps five hundred feet); and finally to obey any and all

orders from all and any superiors without thinking. _Plantons_ were

supposed—but only supposed—to report any schemes for escaping which

they might overhear during their watch upon _les femmes et les hommes

en promenade_. Of course they never overheard any, since the least

intelligent of the watched was a paragon of wisdom by comparison with

the watchers. B. and I had a little ditty about _plantons_, of which I

can quote (unfortunately) only the first line and refrain:

“A _planton_ loved a lady once

(Cabbages and cauliflowers!)”

It was a very fine song. In concluding my remarks upon _plantons_ I

must, in justice to my subject, mention the three prime plantonic

virtues—they were (1) beauty, as regards face and person and bearing,

(2) chivalry, as regards women, (3) heroism, as regards males.

The somewhat unique and amusing appearance of the _plantons_ rather

militated against than served to inculcate Fear—it was therefore not

wonderful that they and the desired emotion were supported by two

strictly enforced punishments, punishments which were meted out with

equal and unflinching severity to both sexes alike. The less

undesirable punishment was known as _pain sec_—which Fritz, shortly

after my arrival, got for smashing a window-pane by accident; and which

Harree and Pom Pom, the incorrigibles, were getting most of the time.

This punishment consisted in denying to the culprit all nutriment save

two stone-hard morsels of dry bread per diem. The culprit’s intimate

friends, of course, made a point of eating only a portion of their own

morsels of soft, heavy, sour bread (we got two a day, with each

_soupe_) and presenting the culprit with the rest. The common method of

getting _pain sec_ was also a simple one—it was for a man to wave,

shout or make other signs audible or visual to an inhabitant of the

women’s quarters; and, for a girl, to be seen at her window by the

Directeur at any time during the morning and afternoon promenades of

the men. The punishment for sending a letter to a girl might possibly

be _pain sec_, but was more often—I pronounce the word even now with a

sinking of the heart, though curiously enough I escaped that for which

it stands— _cabinot_.

There were (as already mentioned) a number of _cabinots_, sometimes

referred to as _cachots_ by persons of linguistic propensities. To

repeat myself a little: at least three were situated on the ground

floor; and these were used whenever possible in preference to the one

or ones upstairs, for the reason that they were naturally more damp and

chill and dark and altogether more dismal and unhealthy. Dampness and

cold were considerably increased by the substitution, for a floor, of

two or three planks resting here and there in mud. I am now describing

what my eyes saw, not what was shown to the inspectors on their rare

visits to the Directeur’s little shop for making criminals. I know what

these occasional visitors beheld, because it, too, I have seen with my

own eyes: seen the two _balayeurs_ staggering downstairs with a bed

(consisting of a high iron frame, a huge mattress of delicious

thickness, spotless sheets, warm blankets, and a sort of quilt neatly

folded over all); seen this bed placed by the panting sweepers in the

thoroughly cleaned and otherwise immaculate _cabinot_ at the foot of

the stairs and opposite the kitchen, the well-scrubbed door being left

wide open. I saw this done as I was going to dinner. While the men were

upstairs recovering from _la soupe_, the gentleman-inspectors were

invited downstairs to look at a specimen of the Directeur’s kindness—a

kindness which he could not restrain even in the case of those who were

guilty of some terrible wrong. (The little Belgian with the Broken Arm,

alias the Machine-Fixer, missed not a word nor a gesture of all this;

and described the scene to me with an indignation which threatened his

sanity.) Then, while _les hommes_ were in the _cour_ for the afternoon,

the sweepers were rushed to The Enormous Room, which they cleaned to

beat the band with the fear of Hell in them; after which, the Directeur

led his amiable guests leisurely upstairs and showed them the way the

men kept their quarters; kept them without dictation on the part of the

officials, so fond were they of what was to them one and all more than

a delightful temporary residence—was in fact a home. From The Enormous

Room the procession wended a gentle way to the women’s quarters

(scrubbed and swept in anticipation of their arrival) and so departed;

conscious—no doubt—that in the Directeur France had found a rare

specimen of whole-hearted and efficient generosity.

Upon being sentenced to _cabinot_, whether for writing an intercepted

letter, fighting, threatening a _planton_, or committing some minor

offense for the _n_th time, a man took one blanket from his bed,

carried it downstairs to the _cachot_, and disappeared therein for a

night or many days and nights as the case might be. Before entering he

was thoroughly searched and temporarily deprived of the contents of his

pockets, whatever they might include. It was made certain that he had

no cigarettes nor tobacco in any other form upon his person, and no

matches. The door was locked behind him and double and triple locked—to

judge by the sound—by a _planton_, usually the Black Holster, who on

such occasions produced a ring of enormous keys suggestive of a

burlesque jailer. Within the stone walls of his dungeon (into which a

beam of light no bigger than a ten-cent piece, and in some cases no

light at all, penetrated) the culprit could shout and scream his or her

heart out if he or she liked, without serious annoyance to His Majesty

King Satan. I wonder how many times, en route to _la soupe_ or The

Enormous Room or promenade, I have heard the unearthly smouldering

laughter of girls or of men entombed within the drooling greenish walls

of La Ferté Macé. A dozen times, I suppose, I have seen a friend of the

entombed stoop adroitly and shove a cigarette or a piece of chocolate

under the door, to the girls or the men or the girl or man screaming,

shouting, and pommeling faintly behind that very door—but, you would

say by the sound, a good part of a mile away…. Ah well, more of this

later, when we come to _les femmes_ on their own account.

The third method employed to throw Fear into the minds of his captives

lay, as I have said, in the sight of the Captor Himself. And this was

by far the most efficient method.

He loved to suddenly dash upon the girls when they were carrying their

slops along the hall and downstairs, as (in common with the men) they

had to do at least twice every morning and twice every afternoon. The

_corvée_ of girls and men were of course arranged so as not to

coincide; yet somehow or other they managed to coincide on the average

about once a week, or if not coincide, at any rate approach

coincidence. On such occasions, as often as not under the _planton’s_

very stupid nose, a kiss or an embrace would be stolen—provocative of

much fierce laughter and some scurrying. Or else, while the moneyed

captives (including B. and Cummings) were waiting their turn to enter

the bureau de M. le Gestionnaire, or even were ascending the stairs

with a _planton_ behind them, en route to Mecca, along the hall would

come five or six women staggering and carrying huge pails full to the

brim of everyone knew what; five or six heads lowered, ill-dressed

bodies tense with effort, free arms rigidly extended from the shoulder

downward and outward in a plane at right angles to their difficult

progress and thereby helping to balance the disconcerting load—all

embarrassed, some humiliated, others desperately at ease—along they

would come under the steady sensual gaze of the men, under a gaze which

seemed to eat them alive … and then one of them would laugh with the

laughter which is neither pitiful nor terrible, but horrible….

And BANG! would a door fly open, and ROAR! a well-dressed animal about

five feet six inches in height, with prominent cuffs and a sportive

tie, the altogether decently and neatly clothed thick-built figure

squirming from top to toe with anger, the large head trembling and

white-faced beneath a flourishing mane of coarse blackish bristly

perhaps hair, the arm crooked at the elbow and shaking a huge fist of

pinkish well-manicured flesh, the distinct, cruel, brightish eyes

sprouting from their sockets under bushily enormous black eyebrows, the

big, weak, coarse mouth extended almost from ear to ear, and spouting

invective, the soggily brutal lips clinched upward and backward,

showing the huge horse-like teeth to the froth-shot gums—

And I saw once a little girl eleven years old scream in terror and drop

her pail of slops, spilling most of it on her feet; and seize it in a

clutch of frail child’s fingers, and stagger, sobbing and shaking, past

the Fiend—one hand held over her contorted face to shield her from the

Awful Thing of Things—to the head of the stairs, where she collapsed,

and was half-carried, half-dragged by one of the older ones to the

floor below while another older one picked up her pail and lugged this

and her own hurriedly downward.

And after the last head had disappeared, Monsieur le Directeur

continued to rave and shake and tremble for as much as ten seconds, his

shoebrush mane crinkling with black anger—then, turning suddenly upon

_les hommes_ (who cowered up against the wall as men cower up against a

material thing in the presence of the supernatural) he roared and shook

his pinkish fist at us till the gold stud in his immaculate cuff walked

out upon the wad of clenching flesh:

“AND YOU—TAKE CARE—IF I CATCH YOU WITH THE WOMEN AGAIN I’LL STICK YOU

IN CABINOT FOR TWO WEEKS, ALL—ALL OF YOU—”

for as much as half a minute; then turning his round-shouldered big

back suddenly he adjusted his cuffs, muttering PROSTITUTES and WHORES

and DIRTY FILTH OF WOMEN, crammed his big fists into his trousers,

pulled in his chin till his fattish jowl rippled along the square jaws,

panted, grunted, very completely satisfied, very contented, rather

proud of himself, took a strutting stride or two in his expensive shiny

boots, and shot all at once through the open door which he SLAMMED

after him.

Apropos the particular incident described for purposes of illustration,

I wish to state that I believe in miracles: the miracle being that I

did not knock the spit-covered mouthful of teeth and jabbering brutish

outthrust jowl (which certainly were not farther than eighteen inches

from me) through the bullneck bulging in its spotless collar. For there

are times when one almost decides not to merely observe … besides

which, never in my life before had I wanted to kill, to thoroughly

extinguish and to entirely murder. Perhaps … some day…. Unto God I hope

so.

Amen.

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

Macé.

The little Machine-Fixer as I said in the preceding chapter, divided

them into Good and Bad. He said there were as much as three Good ones,

of which three he had talked to one and knew her story. Another of the

three Good Women obviously was Margherite—a big, strong female who did

washing, and who was a permanent resident because she had been careless

enough to be born of German parents. I think I spoke with number three

on the day I waited to be examined by the Commission—a Belgian girl,

whom I shall mention later along with that incident. Whereat, by

process of elimination, we arrive at _les putains_, whereof God may

know how many there were at La Ferté, but I certainly do not. To _les

putains_ in general I have already made my deep and sincere bow. I

should like to speak here of four individuals. They are Celina, Lena,

Lily, Renée.

Celina Tek was an extraordinarily beautiful animal. Her firm girl’s

body emanated a supreme vitality. It was neither tall nor short, its

movements nor graceful nor awkward. It came and went with a certain

sexual velocity, a velocity whose health and vigour made everyone in La

Ferté seem puny and old. Her deep sensual voice had a coarse richness.

Her face, dark and young, annihilated easily the ancient and greyish

walls. Her wonderful hair was shockingly black. Her perfect teeth, when

she smiled, reminded you of an animal. The cult of Isis never

worshipped a more deep luxurious smile. This face, framed in the night

of its hair, seemed (as it moved at the window overlooking the _cour

des femmes_) inexorably and colossally young. The body was absolutely

and fearlessly alive. In the impeccable and altogether admirable

desolation of La Ferté and the Normandy Autumn Celina, easily and

fiercely moving, was a kinesis.

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

incorrigible.

Lena, also a Belgian, always and fortunately just missed being a type

which in the American language (sometimes called “Slang”) has a

definite nomenclature. Lena had the makings of an ordinary broad, and

yet, thanks to _La Misère_, a certain indubitable personality became

gradually rescued. A tall hard face about which was loosely pitched

some hay-coloured hair. Strenuous and mutilated hands. A loose, raucous

way of laughing, which contrasted well with Celina’s definite gurgling

titter. Energy rather than vitality. A certain power and roughness

about her laughter. She never smiled. She laughed loudly and obscenely

and always. A woman.

Lily was a German girl, who looked unbelievably old, wore white, or

once white dresses, had a sort of drawling scream in her throat besides

a thick deadly cough, and floundered leanly under the eyes of men. Upon

the skinny neck of Lily a face had been set for all the world to look

upon and be afraid. The face itself was made of flesh green and almost

putrescent. In each cheek a bloody spot. Which was not rouge, but the

flower which consumption plants in the cheek of its favourite. A face

vulgar and vast and heavy-featured, about which a smile was always

flopping uselessly. Occasionally Lily grinned, showing several

monstrously decayed and perfectly yellow teeth, which teeth usually

were smoking a cigarette. Her bluish hands were very interestingly

dead; the fingers were nervous, they lived in cringing bags of freckled

skin, they might almost be alive.

She was perhaps eighteen years old.

Renée, the fourth member of the circle, was always well-dressed and

somehow _chic_. Her silhouette had character, from the waved coiffure

to the enormously high heels. Had Renée been able to restrain a

perfectly toothless smile she might possibly have passed for a _jeune

gonzesse_. She was not. The smile was ample and black. You saw through

it into the back of her neck. You felt as if her life was in danger

when she smiled, as it probably was. Her skin was not particularly

tired. But Renée was old, older than Lena by several years; perhaps

twenty-five. Also about Renée there was a certain dangerous fragility,

the fragility of unhealth. And yet Renée was hard, immeasurably hard.

And accurate. Her exact movements were the movements of a mechanism.

Including her voice, which had a purely mechanical timbre. She could do

two things with this voice and two only—screech and boom. At times she

tried to chuckle and almost fell apart. Renée was in fact dead. In

looking at her for the first time, I realised that there may be

something stylish about death.

This first time was interesting in the extreme. It was Lily’s birthday.

We looked out of the windows which composed one side of the otherwise

windowless Enormous Room; looked down, and saw—just outside the wall of

the building—Celina, Lena, Lily and a new girl who was Renée. They were

all individually intoxicated, Celina was joyously tight. Renée was

stiffly bunnied. Lena was raucously pickled. Lily, floundering and

staggering and tumbling and whirling was utterly soused. She was all

tricked out in an erstwhile dainty dress, white, and with ribbons.

Celina (as always) wore black. Lena had on a rather heavy striped

sweater and skirt. Renée was immaculate in tight-fitting satin or

something of the sort; she seemed to have somehow escaped from a doll’s

house overnight. About the group were a number of _plantons_, roaring

with laughter, teasing, insulting, encouraging, from time to time

attempting to embrace the ladies. Celina gave one of them a terrific

box on the ear. The mirth of the others was redoubled. Lily spun about

and fell down, moaning and coughing, and screaming about her fiancée in

Belgium: what a handsome young fellow he was, how he had promised to

marry her… shouts of enjoyment from the _plantons_. Lena had to sit

down or else fall down, so she sat down with a good deal of dignity,

her back against the wall, and in that position attempted to execute a

kind of dance. _Les plantons_ rocked and applauded. Celina smiled

beautifully at the men who were staring from every window of The

Enormous Room and, with a supreme effort, went over and dragged Renée

(who had neatly and accurately folded up with machine-like rapidity in

the mud) through the doorway and into the house. Eventually Lena

followed her example, capturing Lily en route. The scene must have

consumed all of twenty minutes. The _plantons_ were so mirth-stricken

that they had to sit down and rest under the washing-shed. Of all the

inhabitants of The Enormous Room, Fritz and Harree and Pom Pom and

Bathhouse John enjoyed it most. I should include Jan, whose chin nearly

rested on the window-sill with the little body belonging to it

fluttering in an ugly interested way all the time. That Bathhouse

John’s interest was largely cynical is evidenced by the remarks which

he threw out between spittings—“_Une section mesdames!_” “_A la gare!_”

“_Aux armes tout le monde!_” etc. With the exception of these

enthusiastic watchers, the other captives evidenced vague

amusement—excepting Count Bragard who said with lofty disgust that it

was “no better than a bloody knocking ’ouse, Mr. Cummings” and Monsieur

Pet-airs whose annoyance amounted to agony. Of course these twain were,

comparatively speaking, old men….

The four female incorrigibles encountered less difficulty in attaining

_cabinot_ than any four specimens of incorrigibility among _les

hommes_. Not only were they placed in dungeon vile with a frequency

which amounted to continuity; their sentences were far more severe than

those handed out to the men. Up to the time of my little visit to La

Ferté I had innocently supposed that in referring to women as “the

weaker sex” a man was strictly within his rights. La Ferté, if it did

nothing else for my intelligence, rid it of this overpowering error. I

recall, for example, a period of sixteen days and nights spent (during

my stay) by the woman Lena in the _cabinot_. It was either toward the

latter part of October or the early part of November that this

occurred, I will not be sure which. The dampness of the Autumn was as

terrible, under normal conditions—that is to say in The Enormous

Room—as any climatic eccentricity which I have ever experienced. We had

a wood-burning stove in the middle of the room, which antiquated

apparatus was kept going all day to the vast discomfort of eyes and

noses not to mention throats and lungs—the pungent smoke filling the

room with an atmosphere next to unbreathable, but tolerated for the

simple reason that it stood between ourselves and death. For even with

the stove going full blast the wall never ceased to sweat and even

trickle, so overpowering was the dampness. By night the chill was to

myself—fortunately bedded at least eighteen inches from the floor and

sleeping in my clothes; bed-roll, blankets, and all, under and over me

and around me—not merely perceptible but desolating. Once my bed broke,

and I spent the night perforce on the floor with only my mattress under

me; to awake finally in the whitish dawn perfectly helpless with

rheumatism. Yet with the exception of my bed and B.’s bed and a wooden

bunk which belonged to Bathhouse John, every _paillasse_ lay directly

on the floor; moreover the men who slept thus were three-quarters of

them miserably clad, nor had they anything beyond their light-weight

blankets—whereas I had a complete outfit including a big fur coat,

which I had taken with me (as previously described) from the _Section

Sanitaire_. The morning after my night spent on the floor I pondered,

having nothing to do and being unable to move, upon the subject of my

physical endurance—wondering just how the men about me, many of them

beyond middle age, some extremely delicate, in all not more than five

or six as rugged constitutionally as myself, lived through the nights

in The Enormous Room. Also I recollected glancing through an open door

into the women’s quarters, at the risk of being noticed by the

_planton_ in whose charge I was at the time (who, fortunately, was

stupid even for a _planton_, else I should have been well punished for

my curiosity) and beholding _paillasses_ identical in all respects with

ours reposing on the floor; and I thought, if it is marvellous that old

men and sick men can stand this and not die, it is certainly miraculous

that girls of eleven and fifteen, and the baby which I saw once being

caressed out in the women’s _cour_ with unspeakable gentleness by a

little _putain_ whose name I do not know, and the dozen or so oldish

females whom I have often seen on promenade—can stand this and not die.

These things I mention not to excite the reader’s pity nor yet his

indignation; I mention them because I do not know of any other way to

indicate—it is no more than indicating—the significance of the torture

perpetrated under the Directeur’s direction in the case of the girl

Lena. If incidentally it throws light on the personality of the

torturer I shall be gratified.

Lena’s confinement in the _cabinot_—which dungeon I have already

attempted to describe but to whose filth and slime no words can begin

to do justice—was in this case solitary. Once a day, of an afternoon

and always at the time when all the men were upstairs after the second

promenade (which gave the writer of this history an exquisite chance to

see an atrocity at first-hand), Lena was taken out of the _cabinot_ by

three _plantons_ and permitted a half-hour promenade just outside the

door of the building, or in the same locality—delimited by barbed wire

on one side and the washing-shed on another—made famous by the scene of

inebriety above described. Punctually at the expiration of thirty

minutes she was shoved back into the _cabinot_ by the _plantons_. Every

day for sixteen days I saw her; noted the indestructible bravado of her

gait and carriage, the unchanging timbre of her terrible laughter in

response to the salutation of an inhabitant of The Enormous Room (for

there were at least six men who spoke to her daily, and took their

_pain sec_ and their _cabinot_ in punishment therefor with the pride of

a soldier who takes the _medaille militaire_ in recompense for his

valour); noted the increasing pallor of her flesh, watched the skin

gradually assume a distinct greenish tint (a greenishness which I

cannot describe save that it suggested putrefaction); heard the

coughing to which she had always been subject grow thicker and deeper

till it doubled her up every few minutes, creasing her body as you

crease a piece of paper with your thumb-nail, preparatory to tearing it

in two—and I realised fully and irrevocably and for perhaps the first

time the meaning of civilization. And I realised that it was true—as I

had previously only suspected it to be true—that in finding us unworthy

of helping to carry forward the banner of progress, alias the

tricolour, the inimitable and excellent French government was

conferring upon B. and myself—albeit with other intent—the ultimate

compliment.

And the Machine-Fixer, whose opinion of this blond _putain_ grew and

increased and soared with every day of her martyrdom till the

Machine-Fixer’s former classification of _les femmes_ exploded and

disappeared entirely—the Machine-Fixer who would have fallen on his

little knees to Lena had she given him a chance, and kissed the hem of

her striped skirt in an ecstasy of adoration—told me that Lena on being

finally released, walked upstairs herself, holding hard to the banister

without a look for anyone, “having eyes as big as tea-cups.” He added,

with tears in his own eyes:

“M’sieu’ Jean, a woman.”

I recall perfectly being in the kitchen one day, hiding from the

eagle-eye of the Black Holster and enjoying a talk on the economic

consequences of war, said talk being delivered by Afrique. As a matter

of fact, I was not in the _cuisine_ proper but in the little room which

I have mentioned previously. The door into the kitchen was shut. The

sweetly soft odour of newly cut wood was around me. And all the time

that Afrique was talking I heard clearly, through the shut door and

through the kitchen wall and through the locked door of the _cabinot_

situated directly across the hall from _la cuisine_, the insane gasping

voice of a girl singing and yelling and screeching and laughing.

Finally I interrupted my speaker to ask what on earth was the matter in

the _cabinot?_—“_C’est la femme allemande qui s’appelle Lily_,” Afrique

briefly answered. A little later BANG went the _cabinot_ door, and ROAR

went the familiar coarse voice of the Directeur. “It disturbs him, the

noise,” Afrique said. The _cabinot_ door slammed. There was silence.

Heavily steps ascended. Then the song began again, a little more insane

than before; the laughter a little wilder…. “You can’t stop her,”

Afrique said admiringly. “A great voice Mademoiselle has, eh? So, as I

was saying, the national debt being conditioned—”

But the experience _à propos les femmes_, which meant and will always

mean more to me than any other, the scene which is a little more

unbelievable than perhaps any scene that it has ever been my privilege

to witness, the incident which (possibly more than any other) revealed

to me those unspeakable foundations upon which are builded with

infinite care such at once ornate and comfortable structures as _La

Gloire and Le Patriotisme_—occurred in this wise.

The men, myself among them, were leaving _le cour_ for The Enormous

Room under the watchful eye (as always) of a _planton_. As we defiled

through the little gate in the barbed-wire fence we heard, apparently

just outside the building whither we were proceeding on our way to The

Great Upstairs, a tremendous sound of mingled screams, curses and

crashings. The _planton_ of the day was not only stupid—he was a little

deaf; to his ears this hideous racket had not, as nearly as one could

see, penetrated. At all events he marched us along toward the door with

utmost plantonic satisfaction and composure. I managed to insert myself

in the fore of the procession, being eager to witness the scene within;

and reached the door almost simultaneously with Fritz, Harree and two

or three others. I forget which of us opened it. I will never forget

what I saw as I crossed the threshold.

The hall was filled with stifling smoke; the smoke which straw makes

when it is set on fire, a peculiarly nauseous choking, whitish-blue

smoke. This smoke was so dense that only after some moments could I

make out, with bleeding eyes and wounded lungs, anything whatever. What

I saw was this: five or six _plantons_ were engaged in carrying out of

the nearest _cabinot_ two girls, who looked perfectly dead. Their

bodies were absolutely limp. Their hands dragged foolishly along the

floor as they were carried. Their upward white faces dangled loosely

upon their necks. Their crumpled fingers sagged in the _planton’s_

arms. I recognised Lily and Renée. Lena I made out at a little distance

tottering against the door of the kitchen opposite the _cabinot_, her

hay-coloured head drooping and swaying slowly upon the open breast of

her shirt-waist, her legs far apart and propping with difficulty her

hinging body, her hands spasmodically searching for the knob of the

door. The smoke proceeded from the open _cabinot_ in great ponderous

murdering clouds. In one of these clouds, erect and tense and beautiful

as an angel—her wildly shouting face framed in its huge night of

dishevelled hair, her deep sexual voice, hoarsely strident above the

din and smoke, shouting fiercely through the darkness—stood,

triumphantly and colossally young, Celina. Facing her, its clenched,

pinkish fists raised high above its savagely bristling head in a big,

brutal gesture of impotence and rage and anguish—the Fiend Himself

paused quivering. Through the smoke, the great bright voice of Celina

rose at him, hoarse and rich and sudden and intensely luxurious, quick,

throaty, accurate, slaying deepness:

_CHIEZ, SI VOUS VOULEZ, CHIEZ,_

and over and beneath and around the voice I saw frightened faces of

women hanging in the smoke, some screaming with their lips apart and

their eyes closed, some staring with wide eyes; and among the women’s

faces I discovered the large, placid, interested expression of the

Gestionnaire and the nervous clicking eyes of the Surveillant. And

there was a shout—it was the Black Holster shouting at us as we stood

transfixed—

“Who the devil brought the men in here? Get up with you where you

belong, you….”

—And he made a rush at us, and we dodged in the smoke and passed slowly

up the hall, looking behind us, speechless to a man with the admiration

of Terror till we reached the further flight of stairs; and mounted

slowly, with the din falling below us, ringing in our ears, beating

upon our brains—mounted slowly with quickened blood and pale faces—to

the peace of The Enormous Room.

I spoke with both _balayeurs_ that night. They told me, independently,

the same story: the four incorrigibles had been locked in the _cabinot

ensemble_. They made so much noise, particularly Lily, that the

_plantons_ were afraid the Directeur would be disturbed. Accordingly

the _plantons_ got together and stuffed the contents of a _paillasse_

in the cracks around the door, and particularly in the crack under the

door wherein cigarettes were commonly inserted by friends of the

entombed. This process made the _cabinot_ air-tight. But the _plantons_

were not taking any chances on disturbing Monsieur le Directeur. They

carefully lighted the _paillasse_ at a number of points and stood back

to see the results of their efforts. So soon as the smoke found its way

inward the singing was supplanted by coughing; then the coughing

stopped. Then nothing was heard. Then Celina began crying out

within—“Open the door, Lily and Renée are dead”—and the _plantons_ were

frightened. After some debate they decided to open the door—out poured

the smoke, and in it Celina, whose voice in a fraction of a second

roused everyone in the building. The Black Holster wrestled with her

and tried to knock her down by a blow on the mouth; but she escaped,

bleeding a little, to the foot of the stairs—simultaneously with the

advent of the Directeur who for once had found someone beyond the power

of his weapon, Fear, someone in contact with whose indescribable Youth

the puny threats of death withered between his lips, someone finally

completely and unutterably Alive whom the Lie upon his slavering tongue

could not kill.

I do not need to say that, as soon as the girls who had fainted could

be brought to, they joined Lena in _pain sec_ for many days to come;

and that Celina was overpowered by six _plantons_—at the order of

Monsieur le Directeur—and reincarcerated in the _cabinot_ adjoining

that from which she had made her velocitous exit—reincarcerated without

food for twenty-four hours. “_Mais, M’sieu’ Jean_,” the Machine-Fixer

said trembling, “_Vous savez elle est forte._ She gave the six of them

a fight, I tell you. And three of them went to the doctor as a result

of their efforts, including _le vieux_ (The Black Holster). But of

course they succeeded in beating her up, six men upon one woman. She

was beaten badly, I tell you, before she gave in. _M’sieu’ Jean, ils

sont tous—les plantons et le Directeur Lui-Même et le Surveillant et le

Gestionnaire et tous—ils sont des—_” and he said very nicely what they

were, and lit his little black pipe with a crisp curving upward

gesture, and shook like a blade of grass.

With which specimen of purely mediaeval torture I leave the subject of

Women, and embark upon the quieter if no less enlightening subject of

Sunday.

Sunday, it will be recalled, was Monsieur le Directeur’s third weapon.

That is to say: lest the ordinarily tantalising proximity of _les

femmes_ should not inspire _les hommes_ to deeds which placed the doers

automatically in the clutches of himself, his subordinates, and _la

punition_, it was arranged that once a week the tantalising proximity

aforesaid should be supplanted by a positively maddening approach to

coincidence. Or in other words, the men and the women for an hour or

less might enjoy the same exceedingly small room; for purposes of

course of devotion—it being obvious to Monsieur le Directeur that the

representatives of both sexes at La Ferté Macé were inherently of a

strongly devotional nature. And lest the temptation to err in such

moments be deprived, through a certain aspect of compulsion, of its

complete force, the attendance of such strictly devotional services was

made optional.

The uplifting services to which I refer took place in that very room

which (the night of my arrival) had yielded me my _paillasse_ under the

Surveillant’s direction. It may have been thirty feet long and twenty

wide. At one end was an altar at the top of several wooden stairs, with

a large candle on each side. To the right as you entered a number of

benches were placed to accommodate _les femmes_. _Les hommes_ upon

entering took off their caps and stood over against the left wall so as

to leave between them and the women an alley perhaps five feet wide. In

this alley stood the Black Holster with his _kepi_ firmly resting upon

his head, his arms folded, his eyes spying to left and right in order

to intercept any signals exchanged between the sheep and goats. Those

who elected to enjoy spiritual things left the _cour_ and their morning

promenade after about an hour of promenading, while the materially

minded remained to finish the promenade; or if one declined the

promenade entirely (as frequently occurred owing to the fact that

weather conditions on Sunday were invariably more indescribable than

usual) a _planton_ mounted to The Enormous Room and shouted, “_La

Messe!_” several times; whereat the devotees lined up and were

carefully conducted to the scene of spiritual operations.

The priest was changed every week. His assistant (whom I had the

indescribable pleasure of seeing only upon Sundays) was always the

same. It was his function to pick the priest up when he fell down after

tripping upon his robe, to hand him things before he wanted them, to

ring a huge bell, to interrupt the peculiarly divine portions of the

service with a squeaking of his shoes, to gaze about from time to time

upon the worshippers for purposes of intimidation, and finally—most

important of all—to blow out the two big candles at the very earliest

opportunity, in the interests (doubtless) of economy. As he was a

short, fattish, ancient, strangely soggy creature and as his longish

black suit was somewhat too big for him, he executed a series of

profound efforts in extinguishing the candles. In fact he had to climb

part way up the candles before he could get at the flame; at which

moment he looked very much like a weakly and fat boy (for he was

obviously in his second or fourth childhood) climbing a flag-pole. At

moments of leisure he abased his fatty whitish jowl and contemplated

with watery eyes the floor in front of his highly polished boots,

having first placed his ugly clubby hands together behind his most

ample back.

Sunday: green murmurs in coldness. Surplice fiercely fearful, praying

on his bony both knees, crossing himself…. The Fake French Soldier,

alias Garibaldi, beside him, a little face filled with terror … the

Bell cranks the sharp-nosed priest on his knees … titter from bench of

whores—

And that reminds me of a Sunday afternoon on our backs spent with the

wholeness of a hill in Chevancourt, discovering a great apple pie, B.

and Jean Stahl and Maurice le Menusier and myself; and the sun falling

roundly before us.

—And then one _Dimanche_ a new high old man with a sharp violet face

and green hair—“You are free, my children, to achieve immortality—

_Songes, songez, donc—L’Eternité est une existence sans durée——Toujours

le Paradis, toujours L’Enfer_” (to the silently roaring whores) “Heaven

is made for you”—and the Belgian ten-foot farmer spat three times and

wiped them with his foot, his nose dripping; and the nigger shot a

white oyster into a far-off scarlet handkerchief—and the priest’s

strings came untied and he sidled crablike down the steps—the two

candles wiggle a strenuous softness….

In another chapter I will tell you about the nigger.

And another Sunday I saw three tiny old females stumble forward, three

very formerly and even once bonnets perched upon three wizened skulls,

and flop clumsily before the priest, and take the wafer hungrily into

their leathery faces.

VII.

AN APPROACH TO THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS

“Sunday (says Mr. Pound with infinite penetration) is a dreadful day,

Monday is much pleasanter.

Then let us muse a little space

Upon fond Nature’s morbid grace.”

It is a great and distinct pleasure to have penetrated and arrived upon

the outside of _La Dimanche_. We may now—Nature’s morbid grace being a

topic whereof the reader has already heard much and will necessarily

hear more—turn to the “much pleasanter,” the in fact “Monday,” aspect

of La Ferté; by which I mean _les nouveaux_ whose arrivals and

reactions constituted the actual kinetic aspect of our otherwise merely

real Nonexistence. So let us tighten our belts, (everyone used to

tighten his belt at least twice a day at La Ferté, but for another

reason—to follow and keep track of his surely shrinking anatomy) seize

our staffs into our hands, and continue the ascent begun with the first

pages of the story.

One day I found myself expecting _La Soupe_ Number 1 with something

like avidity. My appetite faded, however, upon perceiving a vision en

route to the empty place at my left. It slightly resembled a tall youth

not more than sixteen or seventeen years old, having flaxen hair, a

face whose whiteness I have never seen equalled, and an expression of

intense starvation which might have been well enough in a human being

but was somewhat unnecessarily uncanny in a ghost. The ghost, floating

and slenderly, made for the place beside me, seated himself suddenly

and gently like a morsel of white wind, and regarded the wall before

him. _La soupe_ arrived. He obtained a plate (after some protest on the

part of certain members of our table to whom the advent of a newcomer

meant only that everyone would get less for lunch), and after gazing at

his portion for a second in apparent wonderment at its size caused it

gently and suddenly to disappear. I was no sluggard as a rule, but

found myself outclassed by minutes—which, said I to myself, is not to

be worried over since ’tis sheer vanity to compete with the

supernatural. But (even as I lugged the last spoonful of luke-warm

greasy water to my lips) this ghost turned to me for all the world as

if I too were a ghost, and remarked softly:

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

One has no business crossing a spirit, I thought; and produced the sum

cheerfully—which sum disappeared, the ghost arose slenderly and

soundlessly, and I was left with emptiness beside me.

Later I discovered that this ghost was called Pete.

Pete was a Hollander, and therefore found firm and staunch friends in

Harree, John o’ the Bathhouse and the other Hollanders. In three days

Pete discarded the immateriality which had constituted the exquisite

definiteness of his advent, and donned the garb of flesh-and-blood.

This change was due equally to _La Soupe_ and the canteen, and to the

finding of friends. For Pete had been in solitary confinement for three

months and had had nothing to eat but bread and water during that time,

having been told by the jailors (as he informed us, without a trace of

bitterness) that they would shorten his sentence provided he did not

partake of _La Soupe_ during his incarceration—that is to say, _le

gouvernement français_ had a little joke at Pete’s expense. Also he had

known nobody during that time but the five fingers which deposited said

bread and water with conscientious regularity on the ground beside him.

Being a Hollander neither of these things killed him—on the contrary,

he merely turned into a ghost, thereby fooling the excellent French

Government within an inch of its foolable life. He was a very excellent

friend of ours—I refer as usual to B. and myself—and from the day of

his arrival until the day of his departure to Précigne along with B.

and three others I never ceased to like and to admire him. He was

naturally sensitive, extremely the antithesis of coarse (which

“refined” somehow does not imply) had not in the least suffered from a

“good,” as we say, education, and possessed an at once frank and

unobstreperous personality. Very little that had happened to Pete’s

physique had escaped Pete’s mind. This mind of his quietly and firmly

had expanded in proportion as its owner’s trousers had become too big

around the waist—altogether not so extraordinary as was the fact that,

after being physically transformed as I have never seen a human being

transformed by food and friends, Pete thought and acted with exactly

the same quietness and firmness as before. He was a rare spirit, and I

salute him wherever he is.

Mexique was a good friend of Pete’s, as he was of ours. He had been

introduced to us by a man we called One Eyed David, who was married and

had a wife downstairs, with which wife he was allowed to live all

day—being conducted to and from her society by a _planton_. He spoke

Spanish well and French passably; had black hair, bright Jewish eyes, a

dead-fish expression, and a both amiable and courteous disposition. One

Eyed Dah-veed (as it was pronounced of course) had been in prison at

Noyon during the German occupation, which he described fully and

without hyperbole—stating that no one could have been more considerate

or just than the commander of the invading troops. Dah-veed had seen

with his own eyes a French girl extend an apple to one of the common

soldiers as the German army entered the outskirts of the city: “‘Take

it,’ she said, ‘you are tired.’—‘Madame,’ answered the German soldier

in French, ‘thank you’—and he looked in his pocket and found ten cents.

‘No, no,’ the young girl said. ‘I don’t want any money. I give it to

you with good will.’—‘Pardon, madame,’ said the soldier, ‘you must know

that a German soldier is forbidden to take anything without paying for

it.’”—And before that, One Eyed Dah-veed had talked at Noyon with a

barber whose brother was an aviator with the French Army: “‘My

brother,’ the barber said to me, ‘told me a beautiful story the other

day. He was flying over the lines, and he was amazed, one day, to see

that the French guns were not firing on the boches but on the French

themselves. He landed precipitously, sprang from his machine and ran to

the office of the general. He saluted, and cried in great excitement:

“General, you are firing on the French!” The general regarded him

without interest, without budging; then, he said, very simply: “They

have begun, they must finish.” “Which is why perhaps,” said One Eyed

Dah-veed, looking two ways at once with his uncorrelated eyes, “the

Germans entered Noyon….” But to return to Mexique.

One night we had a _soirée_, as Dah-veed called it, _à propos_ a pot of

hot tea which Dah-veed’s wife had given him to take upstairs, it being

damnably damp and cold (as usual) in The Enormous Room. Dah-veed,

cautiously and in a low voice, invited us to his mattress to enjoy this

extraordinary pleasure; and we accepted, B. and I, with huge joy; and

sitting on Dah-veed’s _paillasse_ we found somebody who turned out to

be Mexique—to whom, by his right name, our host introduced us with all

the poise and courtesy vulgarly associated with a French salon.

For Mexique I cherish and always will cherish unmitigated affection. He

was perhaps nineteen years old, very chubby, extremely good-natured;

and possessed of an unruffled disposition which extended to the most

violent and obvious discomforts a subtle and placid illumination. He

spoke beautiful Spanish, had been born in Mexico, and was really called

Philippe Burgos. He had been in New York. He criticised someone for

saying “Yes” to us, one day, stating that no American said “Yes” but

“Yuh”; which—whatever the reader may think—is to my mind a very

profound observation. In New York he had worked nights as a fireman in

some big building or other and slept days, and this method of seeing

America he had enjoyed extremely. Mexique had one day taken ship (being

curious to see the world) and worked as chauffeur—that is to say in the

stoke-hole. He had landed in, I think, Havre; had missed his ship; had

inquired something of a _gendarme_ in French (which he spoke not at

all, with the exception of a phrase or two like “_quelle heure qu’il

est?_”); had been kindly treated and told that he would be taken to a

ship _de suite_—had boarded a train in the company of two or three kind

_gendarmes_, ridden a prodigious distance, got off the train finally

with high hopes, walked a little distance, come in sight of the grey

perspiring wall of La Ferté, and—“So, I ask one of them: ‘Where is the

Ship?’ He point to here and tell me, ‘There is the ship.’ I say: ‘This

is a God Dam Funny Ship’”—quoth Mexique, laughing.

Mexique played dominoes with us (B. having devised a set from

card-board), strolled The Enormous Room with us, telling of his father

and brother in Mexico, of the people, of the customs; and—when we were

in the _cour_—wrote the entire conjugation of _tengo_ in the deep mud

with a little stick, squatting and chuckling and explaining. He and his

brother had both participated in the revolution which made Carranza

president. His description of which affair was utterly delightful.

“Every-body run a-round with guns” Mexique said. “And bye-and-bye no

see to shoot everybody, so everybody go home.” We asked if he had shot

anybody himself. “Sure. I shoot everybody I do’no” Mexique answered

laughing. “I t’ink every-body no hit me” he added, regarding his stocky

person with great and quiet amusement. When we asked him once what he

thought about the war, he replied, “I t’ink lotta bull—,” which, upon

copious reflection, I decided absolutely expressed my own point of

view.

Mexique was generous, incapable of either stupidity or despondency, and

mannered as a gentleman is supposed to be. Upon his arrival he wrote

almost immediately to the Mexican (or is it Spanish?) consul—“He know

my fader in Mexico”—stating in perfect and unambiguous Spanish the

facts leading to his arrest; and when I said good-bye to _La Misère_

Mexique was expecting a favorable reply at any moment, as indeed he had

been cheerfully expecting for some time. If he reads this history I

hope he will not be too angry with me for whatever injustice it does to

one of the altogether pleasantest companions I have ever had. My

notebooks, one in particular, are covered with conjugations which bear

witness to Mexique’s ineffable good-nature. I also have a somewhat

superficial portrait of his back sitting on a bench by the stove. I

wish I had another of Mexique out in _le jardin_ with a man who worked

there who was a Spaniard, and whom the Surveillant had considerately

allowed Mexique to assist; with the perfectly correct idea that it

would be pleasant for Mexique to talk to someone who could speak

Spanish—if not as well as he, Mexique, could, at least passably well.

As it is, I must be content to see my very good friend sitting with his

hands in his pockets by the stove with Bill the Hollander beside him.

And I hope it was not many days after my departure that Mexique went

free. Somehow I feel that he went free … and if I am right, I will only

say about Mexique’s freedom what I have heard him slowly and placidly

say many times concerning not only the troubles which were common

property to us all but his own peculiar troubles as well.

“That’s fine.”

Here let me introduce the Guard Champêtre, whose name I have already

taken more or less in vain. A little, sharp, hungry-looking person who,

subsequent to being a member of a rural police force (of which

membership he seemed rather proud), had served his _patrie_—otherwise

known as _La Belgique_—in the capacity of motorcyclist. As he carried

dispatches from one end of the line to the other his disagreeably big

eyes had absorbed certain peculiarly inspiring details of civilised

warfare. He had, at one time, seen a bridge hastily constructed by _les

alliés_ over the Yser River, the cadavers of the faithful and the enemy

alike being thrown in helter-skelter to make a much needed foundation

for the timbers. This little procedure had considerably outraged the

Guard Champêtre’s sense of decency. The Yser, said he, flowed perfectly

red for a long time. “We were all together: Belgians, French, English …

we Belgians did not see any good reason for continuing the battle. But

we continued. O indeed we continued. Do you know why?”