The Enormous Room Read online

  I have remarked that catching water was a mixed pleasure. The mixedness of the pleasure came from certain highly respectable citizens,and more often citizenesses,of la ville de La Ferté-Macé;who had a habit of endowing the poor water-catchers with looks which I should not like to remember too well,at the same moment clutching whatever infants they carried or wore or had on leash spasmodically to them. Honestly,I never ceased to be surprised by the scorn,contempt,disgust,and frequently sheer ferocity manifested in the male and particularly in the female faces. All the ladies wore,of course,black;they were wholly unbeautiful of face or form,some of them actually repellent;not one should I,even under more favorable circumstances,have enjoyed meeting. The first time I caught water everybody in the town was returning from church,and a terrific sight it was. Vive la bourgeoisie I said to myself,ducking the shafts of censure by the simple means of hiding my face behind the moving water-barrel.

  La vieille

  But one day—as I started to inform the reader—somebody and I were catching water,and in fact had caught our last load,and were returning with it down the street;when I,who was striding rapidly behind( trying to lessen with both hands the impetus of the machine )suddenly tripped and almost fell with surprise—

  On the curb of the little unbeautiful street a figure was sitting,a female figure dressed in utterly barbaric pinks and vermilions,having a dark shawl thrown about her shoulders;a positively Arabian face delimited by a bright coif of some tenuous stuff,slender golden hands holding with extraordinary delicacy what appeared to be a baby of not more than three months old,and beside her a black-haired child of perhaps three years and beside this child a girl of fourteen,dressed like the woman in crashing hues,with the most exquisite face I had ever known.

  Nom de dieu,I thought vaguely. Am I or am I not completely asleep? And the man in the shafts craned his neck in stupid amazement,and the planton twirled his mustache and assumed that intrepid look which only a planton( or a gendarme )perfectly knows how to assume in the presence of female beauty.

  That night The Wanderer was absent from la soupe,having been called by Apollyon to the latter’s office upon a matter of superior import. Everyone was abuzz with the news. The gypsy’s wife and three children,one a baby at the breast,were outside demanding to be made prisoners. Would the Directeur allow it? They had been told a number of times by plantons to go away,as they sat patiently waiting to be admitted to captivity. No threats pleas nor arguments had availed. The wife said she was tired of living without her husband—roars of laughter from all the Belgians and most of the Hollanders,I regret to say Pete included—and wanted merely and simply to share his confinement. Moreover,she said,without him she was unable to support his children;and it was better that they should grow up with their father as prisoners than starve to death without him. She would not be moved. The Black Holster told her he would use force—she answered nothing. Finally she had been admitted pending judgment. Also sprach,highly excited,the balayeur.

  The Wanderer sweeping

  “Looks like a fucking hoor” was the Belgian-Dutch verdict,a verdict which was obviously due to the costume of the lady in question almost as much as to the untemperamental natures sojourning at La Ferté. B and I agreed that she and her children were the most beautiful people we had ever seen,or would ever be likely to see. So la soupe ended,and everybody belched and gasped and trumpeted up to The Enormous Room as usual.

  That evening,about six o’clock,I heard a man crying as if his heart were broken. I crossed The Enormous Room. Half-lying on his paillasse,his great beard pouring upon his breast,his face lowered,his entire body shuddering with sobs,lay The Wanderer. Several of les hommes were about him,standing in attitudes ranging from semi-amusement to stupid sympathy,listening to the anguish which—as from time to time he lifted his majestic head—poured slowly and brokenly from his lips. I sat down beside him. And he told me “Je l’ai acheté pour six cent francs et je l’ai vendu pour quatre cent cinquante—it was not a horse of this race but of the race”( I could not catch the word )“as long as from here to that post—j’ai pleuré un quart d’heure comme si j’avais une gosse morte—and it is seldom I weep over horses—je dis : Bijou,quittes,au r’oir et bon jour”...

  The vain little dancer interrupted about “réformé horses”...“Excuses donc—this was no réformé horse,such as goes to the front—these are some horses—pardon,whom you give eat,this,it is colique,that,the other,it’s colique—this never—he could go forty kilometres a day...”

  One of the strongest men I have seen in my life is crying because he has had to sell his favourite horse. No wonder les hommes in general are not interested. Someone said : Be of good cheer,Demestre,your wife and kids are well enough.

  “Yes—they are not cold;they have a bed like that”( a high gesture toward the quilt of many colours on which we were sitting,such a quilt as I have not seen since;a feathery deepness soft to the touch as air in Spring )“qui vaut trois fois this of mine—but tu comprends,le matin il ne fait pas chaud”—then he dropped his head,and lifted it again crying

  “Et mes outils,I had many—and my garments—where are they put,où—où? Kis! And I had chemises...this is poor”( looking at himself as a prince might look at his disguise)—“and like this,that—where?

  “Si the voiture is not sold...I never will stay here for la durée de la guerre. No—bahsht! To resume,that is why I need...”

  (more than upright in the priceless bed—the twicestreaming darkness of his beard,his hoarse sweetness of voice—his immense perfect face and deeply softnesses eyes—pouring voice )

  “my wife sat over there,she spoke to No one and bothered Nobody—why was my wife taken here and shut up? Had she done anything? There is a wife who fait la putain and turns,to everyone and another,whom I bring another tomorrow...but a woman qui n’aime que son mari,qui n’attend que son mari”

  (the tone bulged,and the eyes together)

  “—Ces cigarettes ne fument pas!” I added an apology,having presented him with the package. “Why do you dépense pour these? They cost fifteen sous,you may spend for them if you like,you understand what I’m saying? But some time when you have nothing”( extraordinarily gently )“what then? Better to save for that day...better to buy du tabac and faire yourself;these sont fait de la poussière du tabac.”

  And there was someone to the right who was saying “Demain,c’est Dimanche alors”—wearily. The King lying upon his huge quilt,sobbing now only a little,heard:

  “So—ah—il est tombé un dimanche—ma femme est en nourrice,elle donne la petite à téter”( the gesture charmed )“she said to them she would not eat if they gave her that—ça ne vaut rien du tout—il faut de la viande,tous les jours...” he mused. I tried to go.

  “Assieds là”( graciousness of complete gesture. The sheer kingliness of poverty. He creased the indescribably soft couverture for me and I sat and looked into his forehead bounded by the cube of square sliced hair. Blacker than Africa. Than imagination. )

  After this evening I felt that possibly I knew a little of The Wanderer,or he of me.

  The Wanderer’s wife and his two daughters and his baby lived in the women’s quarters. I have not described and cannot describe these four. The little son of whom he was tremendously proud slept with his father in the great quilts in The Enormous Room. Of The Wanderer’s little son I may say that he had lolling buttons of eyes sewed on gold flesh,that he had a habit of turning cartwheels in one third of his father’s trousers,that we called him The Imp. He ran,he teased,he turned handsprings,he got in the way,and he even climbed the largest of the scraggly trees in the cour one day. “You will fall” Monsieur Peters( whose old eyes had a fondness for this irrepressible creature )remarked with conviction.—“Let him climb” his father said quietly. “I have climbed trees. I have fallen out of trees. I am alive.” The Imp shinnied like a monkey,shouting and crowing,up a lean gnarled limb—to the amazement of the very planton who later tried
to rape Celina and was caught. This planton put his gun in readiness and assumed an eager attitude of immutable heroism. “Will you shoot?” the father inquired politely. “Indeed it would be a big thing of which you might boast all your life;I,a planton,shot and killed a six year old child in a tree.”—“C’est emmerdant” the planton countered,in some confusion—“he may be trying to escape. How do I know?”—“Indeed,how do you know anything?” the father murmured quietly,“It’s a mystère.” The Imp,all at once,fell. He hit the muddy ground with a disagreeable thud. The breath was utterly knocked out of him. The Wanderer picked him up kindly. His son began,with the catching of his breath,to howl uproariously. “Serves him right,the — jackanapes” a Belgian growled.—“I told you so,didn’t I?” Monsieur Pet-airs worryingly cried : “I said he would fall out of that tree!”—“Pardon,you were right I think” the father smiled pleasantly. “Don’t be sad my little son,everybody falls out of trees,they’re made for that by God” and he patted The Imp,squatting in the mud and smiling. In five minutes The Imp was trying to scale the shed. “Come down or I fire” the planton cried nervously...and so it was with The Wanderer’s son from morning till night. “Never” said Monsieur Pet-airs with solemn desperation,“have I seen such an incorrigible child,a perfectly incorrigible child” and he shook his head and immediately dodged a missile which had suddenly appeared from nowhere.

  The Wanderer’s Boy

  Night after night The Imp would play around our beds,where we held court with our chocolat and our bougie;teasing us,cajoling us,flattering us,pretending tears,feigning insult,getting lectures from Monsieur Peters on the evil of cigarette smoking,keeping us in a state of perpetual inquietude. When he couldn’t think of anything else to do he sang at the top of his clear bright voice:

  “C’est la guerre

  faut pas t’en faire”

  and turned a handspring or two for emphasis...Mexique once cuffed him for doing something peculiarly mischievous,and he set up a great crying—instantly The Wanderer was standing over Mexique,his hands clenched,his eyes sparkling—it took a good deal of persuasion to convince the parent that the son was in error,meanwhile Mexique placidly awaited his end...and neither B nor I,despite The Imp’s tormentings,could keep from laughing when he all at once with a sort of crowing cry rushed for the nearest post,jumped up on his hands,arched his back,and poised head-downward;his feet just touching the pillar. Bare-footed,in a bright chemise and one-third of his father’s trousers...

  Being now in a class with “less hommes mariés” The Wanderer spent most of the day downstairs,coming up with his little son every night to sleep in The Enormous Room. But we saw him occasionally in the cour;and every other day when the dreadful cry was raised

  “Allez,tout-le-monde,’plucher les pommes!”

  and we descended to,in fair weather,the lane between the building and the cour,and in foul( very foul I should say )the dinosaur-coloured sweating walls of the dining-room—The Wanderer would quietly and slowly appear,along with other hommes mariés,and take up the peeling of the amazingly cold potatoes which formed the pièce de résistance( in guise of Soupe )for both women and men at La Ferté. And if the wedded males did not all of them show up for this unagreeable task,a dreadful hullabaloo was instantly raised—

  “LES HOMMES MARIES!”

  and forth would more or less sheepishly issue the delinquents.

  And I think The Wanderer,with his wife and children whom he loved as never have I seen a man love anything in this world,was partly happy;walking in the sun when there was any,sleeping with his little boy in a great gulp of softness. And I remember him pulling his fine beard into two darknesses—huge-sleeved,pink-checked chemise—walking kindly like a bear—corduroy bigness of trousers,waistline always amorous of knees—finger-ends just catching tops of enormous pockets. When he feels,as I think,partly happy,he corrects our pronunciation of the ineffable Word—saying

  “O,May-errr-DE!”

  and smiles. And once Jean Le Nègre said to him,as he squatted in the cour with his little son beside him,his broad strong back as nearly always against one of the gruesome and minute pommiers—

  “Barbu! j’vais couper ta barbe,barbu!” Whereat the father answered,slowly and seriously

  “Quand vous arrachez ma barbe,il faut couper ma tête” regarding Jean Le Nègre with unspeakably sensitive tremendously deep peculiarly soft eyes. “My beard is finer than that;you have made it too coarse” he gently remarked one day,looking attentively at a piece of photographie which I had been caught in the act of perpetrating;whereat I bowed my head in silent shame.

  “Demestre,Josef( femme,née Feliska )” I read another day in the Gestionnaire’s book of judgment. O Monsieur le Gestionnaire,I should not have liked to have seen those names in my book of sinners,in my album of filth and blood and incontinence,had I been you...O little,very little,gouvernement français,and you the great and comfortable messieurs of the world,tell me why you have put a gypsy who dresses like Tomorrow among the squabbling pimps and thieves of yesterday...

  He had been in New York one day.

  One child died at sea.

  “Les landes” he cried,towering over The Enormous Room suddenly one night in autumn,“je les connais commes ma poche—Bordeaux? Je sais où que c’est. Madrid? Je sais où que c’est. Tolède? Séville? Naples? Je sais où que c’est. Je les connais comme ma poche.”

  He could not read. “Tell me what it tells” he said briefly and without annoyance,when once I offered him the journal. And I took pleasure in trying to do so.

  One fine day,perhaps the finest day,I looked from a window of The Enormous Room and saw( in the same spot that Lena had enjoyed her half-hour promenade during confinement in the cabinot,as related )the wife of The Wanderer,“née Feliska”,giving his baby a bath in a pail,while The Wanderer sat in the sun smoking. About the pail an absorbed group of putains stood. Several plantons( abandoning for one instant their plantonic demeanor )leaned upon their guns and watched. Some even smiled a little. And the mother,holding the brownish naked crowing child tenderly,was swimming it quietly to and fro,to the delight of Celina in particular. To Celina it waved its arms greetingly. She stooped and spoke to it. The mother smiled. The Wanderer,looking from time to time at his wife,smoked and pondered by himself in the sunlight.

  Le Bain

  This baby was the delight of the putains at all times. They used to take turns carrying it when on promenade. The Wanderer’s wife,at such moments,regarded them with a gentle and jealous weariness.

  There were two girls,as I said. One,the littlest girl I ever saw walk and act by herself,looked exactly like a gollywog. This was because of the huge mop of black hair. She was very pretty. She used to sit with her mother and move her toes quietly for her own private amusement. The older sister was as divine a creature as God in his skillful and infinite wisdom ever created. Her intensely sexual face greeted us nearly always as we descended pour la soupe. She would come up to B and me slenderly and ask,with the brightest and darkest eyes in the world,

  “Chocolat,M’sieu”

  and we would present her with a big or small,as the case might be,morceau de chocolat. We even called her Chocolat. Her skin was nearly sheer gold;her fingers and feet delicately formed;her teeth wonderfully white;her hair incomparably black and abundant. Her lips would have seduced,I think,le gouvernement français itself. Or any saint.

  Le gouvernement français decided in its infinite but unskillful wisdom that The Wanderer,being an inexpressibly bad man( guilty of who knows what gentleness strength and beauty )should suffer as much as he was capable of suffering. In other words,it decided( through its Three Wise Men,who formed the visiting Commission whereof I speak anon )that the wife,her baby,her two girls,and her little son should be separated from the husband by miles and by stone-walls and by barbed-wire and by Law. Or perhaps( there was a rumour to this effect )the Three Wise Men discovered that the father of these incredibly exquisite children was
not her lawful husband. And of course,this being the case,the utterly and incomparably moral French government saw its duty plainly;which duty was to inflict the ultimate anguish of separation upon the sinners concerned. I know that The Wanderer came from la commission with tears of anger in his great eyes. I know that some days later he,along with that deadly and poisonous criminal Monsieur Auguste,and that aged arch-traitor Monsieur Pet-airs,and that incomparably wicked person Surplice,and a ragged gentle being who one day presented us with a broken spoon which he had found somewhere—the gift being a purely spontaneous mark of approval and affection—who for this reason was known to us as The Spoonman,had the vast and immeasurable honour of departing for Précigné pour la durée de la guerre. If ever I can create by some occult process of imagining a deed so perfectly cruel as the deed perpetrated in the case of Josef Demestre,I shall consider myself a genius. Then let us admit that the Three Wise Men were geniuses. And let us,also and softly,admit that it takes a good and great government perfectly to negate mercy. And let us,bowing our minds smoothly and darkly,repeat with Monsieur le Curé—“toujours l’enfer...”