The Enormous Room Page 18

  The Young Skipper

  The Young( or Holland )Skipper—not to be confused with The Skipper whom I have already tried to describe—was a real contribution to our midst. On his own part he contributed his mate—a terribly tall rather round-shouldered individual,of whom I said to myself immediately : By Jove,here’s a crook a tough guy and a murderer all in one. Of course I was wrong;I say “of course”,since to judge an arrival by the arrival’s exterior was( as I discovered in practically every case )equivalent to judging a motor by its horsepower instead of by what it did when confronted by a hill. As it turned out,the mate was a taciturn and very gentle youth who had committed no greater crime than that of being a member of The Young Skipper’s crew. That this was far from a crime was proved by The Young Skipper himself,than whom I have never met a jollier more open-hearted and otherwise both generous and genuine man in my life. He wore a collarless shirt gayly striped,a vest and trousers calculated to withstand the ravages of time,a jaunty cap,a big signet ring on his fourth finger,and a pair of seaworthy boots which were the envy and admiration of everyone including myself. He used to sit on an extraordinarily small wooden stool by the stove,thereby exaggerating his almost round five-feet exactly of bone and muscle. The Hollanders,especially John,made a great deal of him. He was ready without being rough,had a pair of frank,good-humoured eyes,a tiny happy nose somewhat uppish and freckled,and large strong hard hands which seemed always rather embarrassed to find themselves on land. He told us confidentially that Pete had run away to sea;that Pete came of a very good family in Holland,who were worried to death about Pete’s whereabouts;that Pete was too proud to let them know he had been arrested;and that he,The Young Skipper,if and when he got back to Holland,would make a point of going immediately to Pete’s parents and telling them where Pete was,which would make them move earth and heaven for their son’s liberty. Of a Sunday,The Young or Holland Skipper got himself up to beat the cars and joined the immaculate Holland Delegation at la messe—being,from the instant of his arrival,assoted upon a fair lady who invariably attended all functions of a religious nature. I must add( for the benefit of the highly moral readers of this chronicle )that this admiration served merely to while away the moments of The Young Skipper’s captivity—add that The Young Skipper never seriously deviated from an intense devotion to “my girl” as he called her,whose photograph he always carried over his heart. A large faced and plump person,with apparently a very honest heart of her own—I wish I could say more for her...but then,photographs are always untrustworthy. He told us some very vivid incidents in his voyages,which( the war being on )were accomplished with some danger and a great deal of excitement. I remember how his eyes twinkled when he said his ship passed directly under a huge Zeppelin : “And the fellers waved to us,and we gave ’em a cheer and waved too,and all the fellers in the Zeppelin keeked”—due to which word in particular I conceived a great fondness for The Young Skipper. He told about the multitudinous English deserters in Holland,how “The girls were crazy about ’em,and if a Hollander comes up and asks ’em to go skating with him on the canal they won’t,for the English soldiers don’t know how to skate”—and later,when the haughty misses had been “left” by their flames,“Up we’d come and give ’em the laugh.”...He spoke first-rate English,clear rousing Dutch,some I should say faulty but fluent German,and no French. “This language is too bloody much for me” said The Young Skipper with perfect candor,smiling. “The john-darmz ask me a lotta questions and I say no parlezvous so they take me and my mate”—with a gesture toward the mild and monumental youth by the stove—“and puts us on trains and everywhere and where the Gottverdummer bloody Hell are we all agoing I don’t know till we gets here”—at which he laughed heartily. “Thanks” he said when I offered a Scarferlati Jaune,“I’ll get some myself tonight at the canteen and pay you back”—for in common with Pete he shared a great conscientiousness in respect to receiving favors. “They’re made of bloody dust,these” he said smiling pleasantly after the first inhalation. I asked him what did he carry in way of cargo? “Coal” he replied with great emphasis. And he told me they got it clear from Norway,and that it was a good business bringing it( for the French needed it and would pay anything )—“Provided you can stand the excitement.” His utter and absolute contempt for the john-darmz was,to B and myself in particular,considerably more than delightful. “Them fellers with their swords and little “coats capelike” were not to be spoken of in the same breath with a man. As B says,one of the nicest things anyone ever did in La Ferté( I almost said in prison )was done by The Young Skipper one night : who came up to our beds where we were cooking cocoa or rather chocolate( for we sliced up a cake of imitation Menier purchased at the canteen,added water,and heated the ensemble in a tin cup suspended by a truly extraordinary series of wires( B fecit )directly above a common bougie )and said to us,with a sticking of his thumb behind him—“There’s a poor feller lying sick over there and I wonder will you give me a bit o’hot chocolate for him,he wouldn’t ask for it himself.” Naturally we were peculiarly happy to give it—happier when we saw The Young Skipper stride over to the bed of The Silent Man,to whom he spoke very gently and persuadingly in( as I guess )German—happiest,when we saw The Silent Man half-rise from his paillasse and drink,with The Young Skipper standing over him smiling from ear to ear. Anyone who could with utmost ease conquer the irrevocable diffidence of The Silent Man is insusceptible of portraiture. I hereby apologize to The Young Skipper,and wish him well with his girl in Holland,where I hope with all my heart he is. And maybe some day we’ll all of us go skating on the canals;and maybe we’ll talk about what happens when the dikes break,and about the houses and the flowers and the windmills.

  Here let me introduce the Garde 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 motor-cyclist. As he carried dispatches from one end of the line to the other his disagreeably big eyes had absorbed certain peculiarly inspiring details of civilized 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 Garde 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?”

  I said that I was afraid I didn’t.

  “Because in front of us we had les obus allemands,en arrière les mitrailleuses françaises,toujours les mitrailleuses françaises,mon vieux.”

  “Je ne comprends pas bien” I said in confusion,recalling all the high-falutin rigmarole which Americans believed—( little martyred Belgium protected by the allies from the inroads of the aggressor etc. )—“why should the French put machine-guns behind you?”

  The Garde Champêtre lifted his big empty eyes nervously. The vast hollows in which they lived darkened. His little rather hard face trembled within itself. I thought for a second he was going to throw a fit at my feet—instead of doing which he replied pettishly,in a sunken bright whisper

  “To keep us going forward. At times a company would drop its guns and turn to run. Pupupupupupupupup...” his short unlovely arm described gently the swinging of a mitrailleuse...“finish. The Belgian soldiers to left and right of them took the hint. If they did not—pupupupupupupupup...O we went forward. Yes. Vive le patriotisme.”

  And he rose with a gesture which seemed to brush away these painful trifles from his memory,crossed the end of the room with short rapid steps,and began talking to his best friend Judas,who was at that moment engaged in training his wobbly mustachios...Toward the close
of my visit to La Ferté the Garde Champêtre was really happy for a period of two days—during which time he moved in the society of a rich intelligent mistakenly arrested and completely disagreeable youth in bone spectacles copious hair and spiral puttees,whom B and I named Jo Jo the Lion Faced Boy,thereby partially contenting ourselves. Had the charges against Jo Jo been stronger my tale would have been longer—fortunately for tout le monde they had no basis;and back went Jo Jo to his native Paris,leaving the Garde Champêtre with Judas and attacks of only occasionally interesting despair.

  Jo Jo

  The reader may suppose that it is about time another Delectable Mountain appeared upon his horizon. Let him keep his eyes wide open,for here one comes...

  Whenever our circle was about to be increased,a bell from somewhere afar( as a matter of fact the gate which had admitted my weary self to La Ferté upon a memorable night,as already has been faithfully recounted )tanged audibly—whereat up jumped the more strenuous inhabitants of The Enormous Room and made pell-mell for the common peep-hole,situated at the door end or nearer end of our habitat and commanding a somewhat fragmentary view of the gate together with the arrivals,male and female,whom the bell announced. In one particular case the watchers appeared almost unduly excited,shouting “four!”—“big box”—“five gendarmes!” and other incoherencies with a loudness which predicted great things. As nearly always,I had declined to participate in the mêlée;and was still lying comfortably on my bed( thanking God that it had been well and thoroughly mended by a fellow prisoner whom we called The Frog and Le Coiffeur—a tremendously keen-eyed man with a large drooping black mustache,whose boon companion,chiefly on account of his shape and gait,we knew as The Lobster )when the usual noises attendant upon the unlocking of la porte began with exceptional violence. I sat up. The door shot open,there was a moment’s pause,a series of grunting remarks uttered by two rather terrible voices;then in came four nouveaux of a decidedly interesting appearance. They entered in two ranks of two each. The front rank was made up of an immensely broad shouldered hipless and consequently triangular man in blue trousers belted with a piece of ordinary rope,plus a thick-set ruffianly personage the most prominent part of whose accoutrements were a pair of hideous whiskers. I leaped to my feet and made for the door,thrilled in spite of myself. By the,in this case,shifty blue eyes,the pallid hair,the well-knit form of the rope’s owner I knew instantly a Hollander. By the coarse brutal features half-hidden in the piratical whiskers,as well as by the heavy mean wandering eyes,I recognized with equal speed a Belgian. Upon its shoulders the front rank bore a large box,blackish,well-made,obviously very weighty,which box it set down with a grunt of relief hard by the cabinet. The rear rank marched behind in a somewhat asymmetrical manner : a young stupid-looking clear-complexioned fellow( obviously a farmer,and having expensive black puttees and a handsome cap with a shiny black leather visor )slightly preceded a tall gliding thinnish unjudgable personage who peeped at everyone quietly and solemnly from beneath the visor of a somewhat large slovenly cloth cap,showing portions of a lean long incognizable face upon which sat or rather drooped a pair of mustachios identical in character with those which are sometimes pictorially attributed to a Chinese dignitary—in other words,the mustachios were exquisitely narrow,homogeneously downward,and made of something like black corn-silk. Behind les nouveaux staggered four paillasses motivated mysteriously by two pair of small legs belonging( as it proved )to Garibaldi and the little Machine-Fixer;who,coincident with the tumbling of the paillasses to the floor,perspiringly emerged to sight.

  The first thing the shifty-eyed triangular Hollander did was to exclaim Gottverdummer. The first thing the whiskery Belgian did was to grab his paillasse and stand guard over it. The first thing the youth in the leggings did was to stare helplessly about him,murmuring something whimperingly in Polish. The first thing the fourth nouveau did was pay no attention to anybody;lighting a cigarette in an unhurried manner as he did so,and puffing silently and slowly as if in all the universe nothing whatever save the taste of tobacco existed.

  A bevy of Hollanders were by this time about the triangle,asking him all at once Was he from so and so,What was in his box,How long had he been in coming,were on the point of trying the lock—when suddenly with incredible agility the unperturbed smoker shot a yard forward,landing quietly beside them;and exclaimed rapidly and briefly through his nose

  “Mang.”

  He said it almost petulantly,or as a child says “Tag! You’re it.”

  The onlookers recoiled,completely surprised. Whereat the frightened youth in black puttees sidled over and explained with a pathethically at once ingratiating and patronizing accent

  “Il n’est pas méchant. C’est un bonhomme. C’est mon ami. Il veut dire que c’est à lui,la caisse. Il parle pas français.”

  “It’s the Gottverdummer Polak’s box” said the Triangular Man exploding in Dutch—“They’re a pair of Polakers;and this man”( with a twist of his pale blue eyes in the direction of the Bewhiskered One )“and I had to carry it all the Gottverdummer way to this Gottverdummer place.”

  All this time the incognizable nouveau was smoking slowly and calmly,and looking at nothing at all with his black buttonlike eyes. Upon his face no faintest suggestion of expression could be discovered by the hungry minds which focused unanimously upon its almost stern contours. The deep furrows in the cardboardlike cheeks( furrows which resembled slightly the gills of some extraordinary fish,some unbreathing fish )moved not an atom. The mustache drooped in something like mechanical tranquility. The lips closed occasionally with a gesture at once abstracted and sensitive upon the lightly and carefully held cigarette;whose curling smoke accentuated the poise of the head,at once alert and uninterested.

  Monsieur Auguste broke in,speaking as I thought Russian—and in an instant he and the youth in puttees and the Unknowable’s cigarette and the box and the Unknowable had disappeared through the crowd in the direction of Monsieur Auguste’s paillasse,which was also the direction of the paillasse belonging to the Cordonnier as he was sometimes called—a diminutive man with immense mustachios of his own who promenaded with Monsieur Auguste,speaking sometimes French and as a general rule Russian or Polish.

  Which was my first glimpse,and is the reader’s,of the Zulu;he being one of The Delectable Mountains. For which reason I shall have more to say of him later,when I ascend The Delectable Mountains in a separate chapter or chapters;till when the reader must be content with the above however unsatisfactory description....

  One of the most utterly repulsive personages whom I have met in my life—perhaps( and on second thought I think certainly )the most utterly repulsive—was shortly after this presented to our midst by the considerate French government. I refer to The Fighting Sheeney. Whether or no he arrived after the Spanish Whoremaster I cannot say. I remember that Bill The Hollander—which was the name of the triangular rope-belted man with shifty blue eyes( co-arrivé with the whiskery Belgian;which Belgian,by the way,from his not to be exaggerated brutal look,B and myself called The Babysnatcher )—upon his arrival told great tales of a Spanish millionaire with whom he had been in prison just previous to his discovery of La Ferté. “He’ll be here too in a couple o’days” added Bill The Hollander,who had been fourteen years in These United States,spoke the language to a T,talked about “The America Lakes” and was otherwise amazingly well acquainted with The Land of The Free. And sure enough in less than a week one of the fattest men whom I have ever laid eyes on,over-dressed much beringed and otherwise wealthy-looking,arrived—and was immediately played up to by Judas( who could smell cash almost as far as le gouvernement français could smell sedition )and,to my somewhat surprise,by the utterly respectable Count Bragard. But most emphatically NOT by Mexique,who spent a half-hour talking to the nouveau in his own tongue,then drifted placidly over to our beds and informed us

  “You see dat feller over dere,dat fat feller? I speak Spanish to him. He no good. Tell me he mak
e fifty-tousand franc last year runnin’ whore-house in”( I think it was )“Brest. Son of bitch!”

  Dat fat feller lived in a perfectly huge bed which he contrived to have brought up for him immediately upon his arrival. The bed arrived in a knock-down state and with it a mechanician from la ville who set about putting it together,meanwhile indulging in many glances expressive not merely of interest but of amazement and even fear. I suppose the bed had to be of a special size in order to accommodate the circular millionaire,and being an extraordinary bed required the services of a skilled artisan—at all events,dat fat feller’s couch put The Skipper’s altogether in the shade. As I watched the process of construction it occurred to me that after all here was the last word in luxury—to call forth from the metropolis not only a special divan but with it a special slave,the Slave of the Bed....Dat fat feller had one of the prisoners perform his corvée for him. Dat fat feller bought enough at the canteen twice every day to stock a transatlantic liner for seven voyages,and never ate with the prisoners. I will mention him again à propos the Mecca of respectability,the Great White Throne of purity,Three rings Three—alias Count Bragard,to whom I have long since introduced my reader.

  So we come,willy-nilly,to The Fighting Sheeney.

  The Fighting Sheeney arrived carrying the expensive suit-case of a livid strangely unpleasant looking Roumanian gent,who wore a knit sweater of a strangely ugly red hue,impeccable clothes,and an immaculate velour hat which must have been worth easily fifty francs. We called this gent Rockyfeller. His personality might be faintly indicated by the adjective Disagreeable. The porter was a creature whom Ugly does not even slightly describe. There are some specimens of humanity in whose presence one instantly and instinctively feels a profound revulsion,a revulsion which—perhaps because it is profound—cannot be analyzed. The Fighting Sheeney was one of these specimens. His face( or to use the good American idiom,his mug )was exceedingly coarse-featured and had an indefatigable expression of sheer brutality—yet the impression which it gave could not be traced to any particular plane or line. I can and will say,however,that this face was most hideous—perhaps that is the word—when it grinned. When The Fighting Sheeney grinned you felt that he desired to eat you,and was prevented from eating you only by a superior desire to eat everybody at once. He and Rockyfeller came to us from I think it was the Santé;both accompanied B to Précigné. During the weeks which The Fighting Sheeney spent at La Ferté-Macé,the non-existence of the inhabitants of The Enormous Room was rendered something more than miserable. It was rendered well-nigh unbearable.