The Enormous Room Read online

  The night Rockyfeller and his slave arrived was a night to be remembered by everyone. It was one of the wildest and strangest and most perfectly interesting nights I,for one,ever spent. Rockyfeller had been corralled by Judas,and was enjoying a special bed to our right at the upper end of The Enormous Room. At the canteen he had purchased a large number of candles in addition to a great assortment of dainties which he and Judas were busily enjoying—when the planton came up,counted us thrice,divided by three,gave the order “Lumières éteintes”,and descended locking the door behind him. Everyone composed himself for miserable sleep. Everyone except Judas,who went on talking to Rockyfeller,and Rockyfeller,who proceeded to light one of his candles and begin a pleasant and conversational evening. The Fighting Sheeney lay stark-naked on a paillasse between me and his lord. The Fighting Sheeney told everyone that to sleep stark-naked was to avoid bugs( whereof everybody including myself had a goodly portion ). The Fighting Sheeney was,however,quieted by the planton’s order;whereas Rockyfeller continued to talk and munch to his heart’s content. This began to get on everybody’s nerves. Protests in a number of languages arose from all parts of The Enormous Room. Rockyfeller gave a contemptuous look around him and proceeded with his conversation. A curse emanated from the darkness. Up sprang The Fighting Sheeney,stark-naked;strode over to the bed of the curser,and demanded ferociously

  “Boxe? Vous!”

  The curser was apparently fast asleep,and even snoring. The Fighting Sheeney turned away disappointed,and had just reached his paillasse when he was greeted by a number of uproariously discourteous remarks uttered in all sorts of tongues. Over he rushed,threatened,received no response,and turned back to his place. Once more ten or twelve voices insulted him from the darkness. Once more The Fighting Sheeney made for them,only to find sleeping innocents. Again he tried to go to bed. Again the shouts arose,this time with redoubled violence and in greatly increased number. The Fighting Sheeney was at his wits’ end. He strode about challenging everyone to fight,receiving not the slightest recognition,cursing,reviling,threatening,bullying. The darkness always waited for him to resume his paillasse,then burst out in all sorts of maledictions upon his head and the sacred head of his lord and master. The latter was told to put out his candle,go to sleep,and give the rest a chance to enjoy what pleasure they might in forgetfulness of their woes. Whereupon he appealed to The Sheeney to stop this. The Sheeney( almost weeping )said he had done his best,that everyone was a pig,that nobody would fight,that it was disgusting. Roars of applause. Protests from the less strenuous members of our circle against the noise in general : Let him have his foutue candle,Shut up,Go to sleep yourself,etc. Rockyfeller kept on talking( albeit visibly annoyed by the ill-breeding of his fellow-captives )to the smooth and oily Judas. The noise or rather noises increased. I was for some reason angry at Rockyfeller—I think I had a curious notion that if I couldn’t have a light after “lumières éteintes”,and if my very good friends were none of them allowed to have one,then by God neither should Rockyfeller. At any rate I passed a few remarks calculated to wither the by this time a little nervous Übermensch;got up,put on some enormous sabots( which I had purchased from a horrid little boy whom the French government had arrested with his parent,for some cause unknown—which horrid little boy told me that he had “found” the sabots “in a train” on the way to La Ferté )shook myself into my fur coat,and banged as noisemakingly as I knew how over to One Eyed Dah-veed’s paillasse,where Mexique joined us. “It is useless to sleep” said One Eyed Dah-veed in French and Spanish. “True” I agreed,“therefore let’s make all the noise we can.”

  Steadily the racket bulged in the darkness. Human cries quips and profanity had now given place to wholly inspired imitations of various not to say sundry animals. Afrique exclaimed—with great pleasure I recognized his voice through the impenetrable gloom—

  “Agahagahagahagahagah”

  —perhaps,said I,he means a machine gun;it sounds like either that or a monkey. The Wanderer crowed beautifully. Monsieur Auguste’s bosom friend,le Cordonnier,uttered an astonishing

  “meeee-ooooooOW!”

  which provoked a tornado of laughter and some applause. Mooings chirpings cacklings—there was a superb hen—neighings he-hawings roarings bleatings growlings quackings peepings screamings bellowings,and—something else,of course—set The Enormous Room suddenly and entirely alive. Never have I imagined such a ménagerie as had magically instated itself within the erstwhile soggy and dismal four walls of our chambre. Even such staid characters as Count Bragard set up a little bawling. Monsieur Pet-airs uttered a tiny aged crowing,to my immense astonishment and delight. The dying,the sick,the ancient,the mutilated,made their contributions to the common pandemonium. And then,from the lower left darkness,sprouted one of the very finest noises which ever fell on human ears—the noise of a little dog with floppy ears who was tearing after something on very short legs and carrying his very fuzzy tail straight up in the air as he tore;a little dog who was busier than he was wise,louder than he was big;a red-tongued foolish breathless intent little dog with black eyes and a great smile and woolly paws—which noise,conceived and executed by The Lobster,sent The Enormous Room into an absolute and incurable hysteria.

  The Fighting Sheeney was at a stand-still. He knew not how to turn. At last he decided to join with the insurgents,and wailed brutally and dismally. That was the last straw : Rockyfeller,who could no longer( even by shouting to Judas )make himself heard,gave up conversation and gazed angrily about him;angrily yet fearfully,as if he expected some of these numerous bears lions tigers and baboons to leap upon him from the darkness. His livid super-disagreeable face trembled with the flickering cadence of the bougie. His lean lips clenched with mortification and wrath. “Vous êtes chef de chambre” he said fiercely to Judas—“why don’t you make the men stop this? C’est emmerdant.” “Ah” replied Judas smoothly and insinuatingly—“They are only men,and boors at that;you can’t expect them to have any manners.” A tremendous group of Something Elses greeted this remark together with cries insults groans and linguistic trumpetings. I got up and walked the length of the room to the cabinet( situated as always by this time of night in a pool of urine which was in certain places six inches deep,from which pool my sabots somewhat protected me )and returned,making as loud a clattering as I was able. Suddenly the voice of Monsieur Auguste leaped through the din in an

  “Alors! c’est as-sez.”

  The next thing we knew he had reached the window just below the cabinet( the only window,by the way,not nailed up with good long wire nails for the sake of warmth )and was shouting in a wild high gentle angry voice to the sentinel below—

  “Plan-ton! C’est im-possi-ble de dor-mir!”

  The Lobster

  A great cry “OUI!JE VIENS!” floated up—every single noise dropped—Rockyfeller shot out his hand for the candle,seized it in terror,blew it out as if blowing it out were the last thing he would do in this life—and The Enormous Room hung silent;enormously dark,enormously expectant...

  BANG! Open flew the door. “Alors,qui m’appelle? Qu’est-ce qu’on fout ici.” And the Black Holster,revolver in hand,flashed his torch into the inky stillness of the chambre. Behind him stood two plantons white with fear;their trembling hands clutching revolvers,the barrels of which shook ludicrously.

  “C’est moi,plan-ton!”—Monsieur Auguste explained that no one could sleep because of the noise,and that the noise was because “ce monsieur là” would not extinguish his bougie when everyone wanted to sleep. The Black Holster turned to the room at large and roared : “You children of Merde don’t let this happen again or I’ll fix you every one of you.”—Then he asked if anyone wanted to dispute this assertion( he brandishing his revolver the while )and was answered by peaceful snorings. Then he said by X Y and Z he’d fix the noisemakers in the morning and fix them good—and looked for approbation to his trembling assistants. Then he swore twenty or thirty times for lu
ck,turned,and thundered out on the heels of his fleeing confreres who almost tripped over each other in their haste to escape from The Enormous Room. Never have I seen a greater exhibition of bravery than was afforded by the Black Holster,revolver in hand,holding at bay the snoring and weaponless inhabitants of The Enormous Room. Vive les plantons. He should have been a gendarme.

  Of course Rockyfeller,having copiously tipped the officials of La Ferté upon his arrival,received no slightest censure nor any hint of punishment for his deliberate breaking of an established rule—a rule for the breaking of which any one of the common scum( e.g. thank God,myself )would have got cabinot de suite. No indeed. Several of les hommes,however,got pain sec—not because they had been caught in an act of vociferous protestation by the Black Holster,which they had not—but just on principle,as a warning to the rest of us and to teach us a wholesome respect for( one must assume )law and order. One and all,they heartily agreed that it was worth it. Everyone knew,of course,that the Spy had peached. For,by Jove,even in The Enormous Room there was a man who earned certain privileges and acquired a complete immunity from punishments by squealing on his fellow-sufferers at each and every opportunity. A really ugly person,with a hard knuckling face and treacherous hands,whose daughter lived downstairs in a separate room apart from les putains( against which “dirty” “filthy” “whores” he could not say enough—“Hi’d rather die than ’ave my daughter with them stinkin’ ’ores” remarked once to me this strictly moral man,in Cockney English )and whose daughter( aged thirteen )was generally supposed to serve the Directeur in a pleasurable capacity. One did not need to be warned against the Spy( as both B and I were warned,upon our arrival )—a single look at that phiz was enough for anyone partially either intelligent or sensitive. This phiz or mug had,then,squealed. Which everyone took as a matter of course and admitted among themselves that hanging was too good for him.

  But the vast and unutterable success achieved by the Ména­gerie was this—Rockyfeller,shortly after,left our ill-bred society for “l’hôpital”;the very same “hospital” whose comforts and seclusion Monsieur le Surveillant had so dextrously recommended to B and myself. Rockyfeller kept The Fighting Sheeney in his pay,in order to defend him when he went on promenade : otherwise our connection with him was definitely severed,his new companions being Muskowitz the Cock-eyed Millionaire,and The Belgian Song Writer—who told everyone to whom he spoke that he was a government official( “de la blague” cried the little Machine-Fixer,“c’est un menteur!” Adding that he knew of this person in Belgium and that this person was a man who wrote popular ditties ). Would to Heaven we had got rid of the slave as well as the master—but unfortunately The Fighting Sheeney couldn’t afford to follow his lord’s example. So he went on making a nuisance of himself,trying hard to curry favor with B and me,getting into fights,and bullying everyone generally.

  Also this lion-hearted personage spent one whole night shrieking and moaning on his paillasse after an injection by Monsieur Richard—for syphilis. Two or three men were,in the course of a few days,discovered to have had syphilis for some time. They had it in their mouths. I don’t remember them particularly,except that at least one was a Belgian. Of course they and The Fighting Sheeney had been using the common dipper and drinking-water pail. Le gouvernement français couldn’t be expected to look out for a little thing like venereal disease among prisoners : didn’t it have enough to do curing those soldiers who spent their time on permission trying their best to infect themselves with both gonorrhea and syphilis? Let not the reader suppose I am day-­dreaming : let him rather recall that I had had the honour of being a member of Section Sanitaire Vingt-et-Un,which helped evacuate the venereal hospital at Ham,with whose inhabitants( in odd moments )I talked and walked and learned several things about la guerre. Let the reader—if he does not realize it already—realize that This Great War For Humanity etc.,did not agree with some people’s ideas,and that some people’s ideas made them prefer to the glories of the front line the torments( I have heard my friends at Ham screaming a score of times )attendant upon venereal diseases. Or as one of my aforesaid friends told me—after discovering that I was,in contrast to les américains,not bent upon making France discover America but rather upon discovering France and les français myself—

  “Mon vieux,c’est tout-à-fait simple. Je m’en vais en permission. Je demande à aller à Paris,parce qu’il y a des gonzesses là-bas qui sont toutes malades! J’attrape le syphilis,et,quand il est possible,la gonnorrhée aussi. Je reviens. Je pars pour la première ligne. Je suis malade. L’hôpital. Le médecin me dit : il ne faut pas fumer ni boire,comme ça vous serez bientôt guéri. ‘Merci,monsieur le médecin!’ Je fume toujours et je bois toujours et je ne suis pas guéri. Je reste cinq,six,sept semaines. Peut-être des mois. Enfin,je suis guéri. Je rejoins mon régiment. Et maintenant,c’est mon tour d’aller en permission. Je m’en vais. Encore la même chose. C’est joli ça,tu sais.”

  But about the syphilitics at La Ferté : they were,somewhat tardily to be sure,segregated in a very small and dirty room—for a matter of,perhaps two weeks. And the Surveillant actually saw to it that during this period they ate la soupe out of individual china bowls.

  I scarcely know whether The Fighting Sheeney made more of a nuisance of himself during his decumbiture or during the period which followed it—which period houses an astonishing number of fights rows bullyings,etc. He must have had a light case for he was guéri in no time,and on everyone’s back as usual. Well,I will leave him for the nonce;in fact I will leave him until I come to The Young Pole,who wore black puttees and spoke of The Zulu as “mon ami”—The Young Pole whose troubles I will recount in connection with the second Delectable Mountain Itself. I will leave The Sheeney with the observation that he was almost as vain as he was vicious;for with that ostentation,one day when we were in the kitchen,did he show me a post-card received that afternoon from Paris,whereon I read “Comme vous êtes beau” and promises to send more money as fast as she earned it and,hoping that he had enjoyed her last present,the signature( in a big,adoring hand)

  “Ta môme. Alice”

  and when I had read it—sticking his map up into my face,The Fighting Sheeney said with emphasis:

  “No travailler moi. Femme travaille,fait les noces,tout le temps. Toujours avec officiers anglais. Gagne beaucoup,cent francs,deux cent francs,trois cent francs,toutes les nuits. Anglais riches. Femme me donne tout. Moi no travailler. Bon,eh?”

  A charming fellow,The Fighting Sheeney.

  Now I must tell you what happened to the poor Spanish Whoremaster. I have already noted the fact that Count Bragard conceived an immediate fondness for this roly-poly individual,whose belly—as he lay upon his back of a morning in bed—rose up with the sheets blankets and quilts as much as two feet above the level of his small stupid head studded with chins. I have said that this admiration on the part of the admirable Count and R.A. for a personage of the Spanish Whoremaster’s profession somewhat interested me. The fact is,a change had recently come in our own relations with Vanderbilt’s friend. His cordiality toward B and myself had considerably withered. From the time of our arrivals the good nobleman had showered us with favors and advice. To me,I may say,he was even extraordinarily kind. We talked painting for example : Count Bragard folded a piece of paper,tore it in the centre of the folded edge,unfolded it carefully,exhibiting a good round hole,and remarking—“Do you know this trick? It’s an English trick,Mr. Cummings”—held the paper before him and gazed profoundly through the circular aperture at an exceptionally disappointing section of the altogether gloomy landscape,visible thanks to one of the ecclesiastical windows of The Enormous Room. “Just look at that,Mr. Cummings” he said with quiet dignity. I looked. I tried my best to find something to the left—“No,no,straight through” Count Bragard corrected me. “There’s a lovely bit of landscape” he said sadly. “If I only had my paints here. I thought,you know,of asking my housekeeper to send
them on from Paris—but how can you paint in a bloody place like this with all these bloody pigs around you? It’s ridiculous to think of it. And it’s tragic,too” he added grimly,with something like tears in his grey tired eyes.

  Or we were promenading The Enormous Room after ­supper—the evening promenade in the cour having been officially eliminated owing to the darkness and the cold of the autumn twilight—and through the windows the dull bloating colours of sunset pouring faintly;and the Count stops dead in his tracks and regards the sunset without speaking for a number of seconds. Then—“it’s glorious,isn’t it?” he asks quietly. I say “Glorious indeed.” He resumes his walk with a sigh,and I accompany him. “Ce n’est pas difficile à peindre,un coucher du soleil,it’s not hard” he remarks gently. “NO?” I say with deference. “Not hard a bit” the Count says beginning to use his hands. “You only need three colours,you know. Very simple.” “Which colours are they?” I inquire ignorantly. “Why,you know of course” he says surprised. “Burnt sienna,cadmium yellow,and—er—there! I can’t think of it. I know it as well as I know my own face. So do you. Well,that’s stupid of me.”