The Enormous Room Page 14

  Machine-Fixer

  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 C.O. 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 antithesis being vulgarly called Belief. Lest which statement prejudice some members of the American Legion in the disfavor 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 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 la 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 thumb-nail 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 interests 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. II 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. And the flame settled on his little black pipe. And his cheeks sucked until they must have met,and a slow unwilling noise arose,and with the return of his cheeks a small colourless wisp of possible 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 se 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 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 Précigné.

  ...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 cognizant of Afrique gradually. You were in the cour,staring at ooze and dead trees,when a figure came striding from the cuisine lifting its big wooden feet after it rhythmically,unwinding a parti-coloured 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 businesslike 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 s
plit 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 prodigous 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...

  And le Chef is grunting,without lifting his old eyes from the dissection of an obstreperous cabbage,

  “Dépêches-toi,voici le planton”

  and we are something like happy. For it is singularly and pleasantly warm in the cuisine. And 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,recognizing 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—

  “Mais oui,ils ont cherché de l’eau et puis je leur donne du café” Monsieur or more properly Mynheer le Chef is expostulating;the planton 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...”

  Now that I have mentioned the pleasures of the kitchen,it is perhaps à propos that I say a word upon the displeasures of Brown Bread. He was a Belgian,and therefore chewed and spat juice night and day from the unutterably stolid face of an overgrown farmer. The only words in English which he was able to articulate were “Me too”—when cigarettes were handed round by somebody who had got some money from somewhere. I hasten to say that the name which we gave him is a contraction of an occult sound,or rather rumbling shout,uttered by the Surveillant when he leaned from a little window which faced the cour and announced the names of those fortunate for whom letters( duly opened,read,and their contents approved by the Secrétaire,alias the weak-eyed biped )had somehow emanated from the mystère of the outer world. The Surveillant,his glasses having tremulously inspected a letter or a carte postale—while all les hommes breathlessly attended,in the mud,upon his slightest murmur—successfully would( to the great disappointment of everyone else )pronounce

  “boo-r-OWNbread”

  whereat this ten-foot personage would awkwardly advance in his squeaky black puttees,shifting his quid with a violent effort in order to reply simperingly

  “Oui,Monsieur le Surveillant.”

  For the rest,he was perfectly stupid,inclined to be morose,and had friends very much like himself who shared his nationality and whose moroseness and stupidity I do not particularly care to remember. He was a Belgian,and that’s all. By which I mean that I am uncharitable enough to not care what happened to him or for what stupid and morose crime he was doing penance at La Ferté under the benignant auspices of the French government.

  Just as well perhaps,since my search for causes in this connection has proved futile;a fact which by this time the reader realizes. Better to have let a sleeping mystère lie,I suppose—or no I don’t,for The Man Who Played Too Late did that very thing and thereby shrouded the inexplicable in a nimbus of inaccuracy. Perhaps because he felt,in his blond hungrily cadaverous way,that to have been arrested for functioning( as a member of an orchestra )after closing time in Paris was a humiliation too obvious to require analysis. Be that as it may,I conclude this particular group of portraits with his own remark,which frames them after all rather nicely:

  “Everyone is here for something.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  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 : 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;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,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 believed 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 fire-light 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 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: