The Enormous Room Read online

  “The Directeur roared ‘COMMENT?’ He was horribly angry. ‘Oui,Monsieur’ said the maître de chambre humbly—‘­Pourquoi?’ thundered the Directeur—‘Because it’s undrinkable’ the maître 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 maître 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 maître de chambre—M’sieu’Jean he is clever—scooped the third cupful from the very 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 maître 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 viande 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 à propos la viande,but the Cook always bullied it down—nor was the meat his fault;since,from the miserable carcasses 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.

  Les Platons

  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 réformés 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 realized 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 balayeur 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;to not accept bribes,whether in the form of matches cigarettes or conversation,from their prisoners;to accompany any one 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 windowpane by accident;and which Harree and Pompom,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 visible 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 slightly : 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 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 overall);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 cuisine,the well-scrubbed door being left wide open. I saw this done as I was going to dinner. While les hommes were upstairs recovering from la soupe,the gentlemen-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 balayeurs 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 nth 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 or 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 jailor. 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 morceau of chocolat under the door,to the girls or the men or the girl or man screaming,shouting,and pommelling 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 whitefaced 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 soggy brutal lips clinched upward and backward showing the huge horse-like teeth to the frothshot 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 shoe-brush 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:

  “ET VOUS—PRENEZ GARDE—SI JE VOUS ATTRAPE AVEC LES FEMMES UNE AUTRE FOIS JE VOUS FOUS AU CABINOT POUR QUINZE,JOURS,TOUS—TOUS—”