The Enormous Room Read online

  “That’s enough” he said sternly.

  And dragged me tout-à-coup upstairs,where I met B and his t-d coming out of the bureau door. B looked peculiarly cheerful. “I think we’re going to prison all right” he assured me.

  Braced by this news,poked from behind by my t-d,and waved on from before by M. le Ministre himself,I floated vaguely into a very washed neat businesslike and altogether American room of modest proportions,whose door was immediately shut and guarded on the inside by my escort.

  Monsieur le Ministre said:

  “Lift your arms.”

  Then he went through my pockets. He found cigarettes,pencils,a jack-knife,and several francs. He laid his treasures on a clean table and said : “You are not allowed to keep these. I shall be responsible.” Then he looked me coldly in the eye and asked if I had anything else?

  I told him that I believed I had a handkerchief.

  He asked me : “Have you anything in your shoes?”

  “My feet” I said,gently.

  “Come this way” he said frigidly,opening a door which I had not remarked. I bowed in acknowledgement of this courtesy,and entered room number 2.

  I looked into six eyes which sat at a desk.

  Two belonged to a lawyerish person in civilian clothes,with a bored expression,plus a mustache of dreamy proportions with which the owner constantly imitated a gentleman ringing for a drink. Two appertained to a splendid old dotard( a face all skee-jumps and toboggan-slides )on whose protruding chest the rosette of the Legion pompously squatted. Numbers five and six had reference to Monsieur,who had seated himself before I had time to focus my slightly bewildered eyes.

  Monsieur spoke sanitary English,as I have said.

  “What is your name?”—“Edward E. Cummings.”—“Your second name?”—“E-s-t-l-i-n” I spelled it for him.—“How do you say that?”—I didn’t understand.—“How do you say your name?”—“Oh” I said;and pronounced it. He explained in French to the mustache that my first name was Edouard,my second “A-s-tay-l-ee-n”,and my third “Say-u-deux m-ee-n-zhay-s”—and the mustache wrote it all down. Monsieur then turned to me once more :

  “You are Irish?”—“No” I said,“American.”—“You are Irish by family?”—“No,Scotch.”—“You are sure that there was never an Irishman in your parents?”—“So far as I know” I said,“there never was an Irishman there.”—“Perhaps a hundred years back?” he insisted.—“Not a chance” I said decisively. But Monsieur was not to be denied : “Your name it is Irish?”—“Cummings is a very old Scotch name” I told him fluently,“it used to be Comyn. A Scotchman named The Red Comyn was killed by Robert Bruce in a church. He was my ancestor and a very well-known man.”—“But your second name,where have you got that?”—“From an Englishman,a friend of my father.” This statement seemed to produce a very favorable impression in the case of the rosette,who murmured : “Un ami de son père,un anglais,bon!” several times. Monsieur,quite evidently disappointed,told the mustache in French to write down that I denied my Irish parentage;which the mustache did.

  “What does your father in America?”—“He is a minister of the gospel” I answered.—“Which church?”—“Unitarian.” This puzzled him. After a moment he had an inspiration : “That is the same as a Free Thinker?”—I explained in French that it wasn’t and that mon père was a holy man. At last Monsieur told the mustache to write : Protestant;and the mustache obediently did so.

  From this point our conversation was carried on in French,somewhat to the chagrin of Monsieur,but to the joy of the rosette and with the approval of the mustache. In answer to questions,I informed them that I was a student for five years at Harvard( expressing great surprise that they had never heard of Harvard),that I had come to New York and studied painting,that I had enlisted in New York as conducteur volontaire,embarking for France shortly after,about the middle of April.

  Monsieur asked : “You met B— on the paquebot?” I said I did.

  Monsieur glanced significantly around. The rosette nodded a number of times. The mustache rang.

  I understood that these kind people were planning to make me out the innocent victim of a wily villain,and could not forbear a smile. C’est rigolo,I said to myself;they’ll have a great time doing it.

  “You and your friend were together in Paris?” I said “Yes.” “How long?” “A month,while we were waiting for our uniforms.”

  A significant look by Monsieur,which is echoed by his confreres.

  Leaning forward Monsieur asked coldly and carefully : “What did you do in Paris?” to which I responded briefly and warmly “We had a good time.”

  This reply pleased the rosette hugely. He wagged his head till I thought it would have tumbled off. Even the mustache seemed amused. Monsieur le Ministre de Sûreté de Noyon bit his lip. “Never mind writing that down” he directed the lawyer. Then,returning to the charge:

  “You had a great deal of trouble with Lieutenant A.?”

  I laughed outright at this complimentary nomenclature. “Yes,we certainly did.”

  He asked : “Why?”—so I sketched “Lieutenant” A. in vivid terms,making use of certain choice expressions with which one of the “dirty Frenchmen” attached to the section,a Parisien,master of argot,had furnished me. My phraseology surprised my examiners,one of whom( I think the mustache )observed sarcastically that I had made good use of my time in Paris.

  Monsieur le Ministre asked : Was it true( a )that B and I were always together and( b )preferred the company of the attached Frenchmen to that of our fellow-Americans?—to which I answered in the affirmative. Why? he wanted to know. So I explained that we felt that the more French we knew and the better we knew the French,the better for us;expatiating a bit on the necessity for a complete mutual understanding of the Latin and Anglo-Saxon races if victory was to be won.

  Again the rosette nodded with approbation.

  Monsieur le Ministre may have felt that he was losing his case,for he played his trump card immediately : “You are aware that your friend has written to friends in America and to his family very bad letters.” “I am not” I said.

  In a flash I understood the motivation of Monsieur’s visit to Vingt-et-Un : the French censor had intercepted some of B’s letters,and had notified Mr. A. and Mr. A.’s translator,both of whom had thankfully testified to the bad character of B and( wishing very naturally to get rid of both of us at once )had further averred that we were always together and that consequently I might properly be regarded as a suspicious character. Whereupon they had received instructions to hold us at the section until Noyon could arrive and take charge—hence our failure to obtain our long overdue permission.

  “Your friend” said Monsieur in English,“is here a short while ago. I ask him if he is up in the aeroplane flying over Germans will he drop the bombs on Germans and he say no,he will not drop any bombs on Germans.”

  By this falsehood( such it happened to be )I confess that I was nonplussed. In the first place,I was at the time innocent of third-degree methods. Secondly : I remembered that,a week or so since,B myself and another American in the section had written a letter—which,on the advice of the sous-lieutenant who accompanied Vingt-et-Un as translator,we had addressed to the Under-Secretary of State in French Aviation—asking that inasmuch as the American government was about to take over the Red Cross( which meant that all the sections sanitaires would be affiliated with the American,and no longer with the French army )we three at any rate might be allowed to continue our association with the French by enlisting in l’Escadrille Lafayette. One of the “dirty Frenchmen” had written the letter for us in the finest language imaginable,from data supplied by ourselves.

  “You write a letter,your friend and you,for French aviation?”

  Here I corrected him : there were three of us;and why didn’t he have the third culprit arrested,might I ask? But he ignored this little digression,and wanted to know :�
�Why not American aviation?—to which I answered : Ah,but as my friend has so often said to me,the French are after all the finest people in the world.

  This double-blow stopped Noyon dead,but only for a second.

  “Did your friend write this letter?”—“No” I answered truthfully.—“Who did write it?”—“One of the Frenchmen attached to the section.”—“What is his name?”—“I’m sure I don’t know” I answered;mentally swearing that,whatever might happen to me,the scribe should not suffer. “At my urgent request” I added.

  Relapsing into French,Monsieur asked me if I would have any hesitation in dropping bombs on Germans? I said no,I wouldn’t. And why did I suppose I was fitted to become aviator? Because,I told him,I weighed 135 pounds and could drive any kind of auto or motorcycle.( I hoped he would make me prove this assertion,in which case I promised myself that I wouldn’t stop till I got to Munich;but no. )

  “Do you mean to say that my friend was not only trying to avoid serving in the American army but was contemplating treason as well?” I asked.

  “Well,that would be it,would it not?” he answered coolly. Then,leaning forward once more,he fired at me : “Why did you write to an official so high?”

  At this I laughed outright. “Because the excellent sous-­lieutenant who translated when Mr. Lieutenant A. couldn’t understand advised us to do so.”

  Following up this sortie,I addressed the mustache : “Write this down in the testimony—that I,here present,refuse utterly to believe that my friend is not as sincere a lover of France and the French people as any man living!—Tell him to write it” I commanded Noyon stonily. But Noyon shook his head,saying : “We have the very best reason for supposing your friend to be no friend of France.” I answered : “That is not my affair. I want my opinion of my friend written in;do you see?” “That’s reasonable” the rosette murmured;and the mustache wrote it down.

  “Why do you think we volunteered?” I asked sarcastically,when the testimony was complete.

  Monsieur le Ministre was evidently rather uncomfortable. He writhed a little in his chair,and tweaked his chin three or four times. The rosette and the mustache were exchanging animated phrases. At last Noyon,motioning for silence and speaking in an almost desperate tone,demanded :

  “Est-ce que vous détestez les boches?”

  I had won my own case. The question was purely perfunctory. To walk out of the room a free man I had merely to say yes. My examiners were sure of my answer. The rosette was leaning forward and smiling encouragingly. The mustache was making little ouis in the air with his pen. And Noyon had given up all hope of making me out a criminal. I might be rash,but I was innocent;the dupe of a superior and malign intelligence. I would probably be admonished to choose my friends more carefully next time and that would be all....

  Deliberately,I framed my answer :

  “Non. J’aime beaucoup les français.”

  Agile as a weasel,Monsieur le Ministre was on top of me : “It is impossible to love Frenchmen and not to hate Germans.”

  I did not mind his triumph in the least. The discomfiture of the rosette merely amused me. The surprise of the mustache I found very pleasant.

  Poor rosette! He kept murmuring desperately : “Fond of his friend,quite right. Mistaken of course,too bad,meant well.”

  With a supremely disagreeable expression on his immaculate face the victorious minister of security pressed his victim with regained assurance : “But you are doubtless aware of the atrocities committed by the boches?”

  “I have read about them” I replied very cheerfully.

  “You do not believe?”

  “Ça se peut.”

  “And if they are so,which of course they are”( tone of profound conviction )“you do not detest the Germans?”

  “Oh,in that case,of course anyone must detest them” I averred with perfect politeness.

  And my case was lost,forever lost. I breathed freely once more. All my nervousness was gone. The attempt of the three gentlemen sitting before me to endow my friend and myself with different fates had irrevocably failed.

  At the conclusion of a short conference I was told by Monsieur : “I am sorry for you,but due to your friend you will be detained a little while.”

  I asked : “Several weeks?”

  “Possibly” said Monsieur.

  This concluded the trial.

  Monsieur le Ministre conducted me into room number 1 again. “Since I have taken your cigarettes and shall keep them from you,I will give you some tobacco. Do you prefer English or French?”

  Because the French( paquet bleu )are stronger and because he expected me to say English,I said “French.”

  With a sorrowful expression Noyon went to a sort of book-case and took down a blue packet. I think I asked for matches,or else he had given back the few which he found on my person.

  Noyon,t-d and the grand criminal( alias I )now descended solemnly to the F.I.A.T. The more and more mystified conducteur conveyed us a short distance to what was obviously a prison-yard. Monsieur le Ministre watched me descend my voluminous baggage.

  This was carefully examined by Monsieur at the bureau of the prison. Monsieur made me turn everything topsy-turvy and inside-out. Monsieur expressed great surprise at a huge douille : where did I get it?—I said a French soldier gave it to me as a souvenir.—And several têtes d’obus?—Also souvenirs,I assured him merrily. Did Monsieur suppose I was caught in the act of blowing up the French government,or what exactly?—But here are a dozen sketchbooks,what is in them?—Oh,Monsieur,you flatter me : drawings.—Of fortifications?—Hardly;of poilus,children,and other ruins.—Ummmm.( Monsieur examined the drawings and found that I had spoken the truth. )Monsieur puts all these trifles into a small bag,with which I had been furnished( in addition to the huge duffle-bag )by the generous Croix-Rouge. Labels them( in French) : “Articles found in the baggage of Cummings and deemed inutile to the case at hand.” This leaves in the duffle-bag aforesaid : my fur coat,which I brought from New York,my bed and blankets and bed-roll,my civilian clothes,and about twenty-five pounds of soiled linen. “You may take the bed-roll and the folding bed into your cell”—the rest of my affaires will remain in safe keeping at the bureau.

  “Come with me” grimly croaked a lank turnkey-creature.

  Bed-roll and bed in hand,I came along.

  We had but a short distance to go;several steps in fact. I remember we turned a corner and somehow got sight of a sort of square near the prison. A military band was executing itself to the stolid delight of some handfuls of ragged civils. My new captor paused a moment;perhaps his patriotic soul was stirred. Then we traversed an alley with locked doors on both sides,and stopped in front of the last door on the right. A key opened it. The music could still be distinctly heard.

  The opened door showed a room,about sixteen feet short and four feet narrow,with a heap of straw in the further end. My spirits had been steadily recovering from the banality of their examination;and it was with a genuine and never-to-be-­forgotten thrill that I remarked,as I crossed what might have been the threshold : “Mais,on est bien ici.”

  A hideous crash nipped the last word. I had supposed the whole prison to have been utterly destroyed by earthquake,but it was only my door closing....

  CHAPTER TWO

  En Route

  I put the bed-roll down. I stood up.

  I was myself.

  An uncontrollable joy gutted me after three months of humiliation,of being bossed and herded and bullied and insulted. I was myself and my own master.

  In this delirium of relief( hardly noticing what I did )I inspected the pile of straw,decided against it,set up my bed,disposed the roll on it,and began to examine my cell.

  I have mentioned the length and breadth. The cell was ridiculously high;perhaps ten feet. The end with the door in it was peculiar. The door was not placed in the middle of this end,but at one side,allowing for a huge
iron can waist-high which stood in the other corner. Over the door and across the end,a grating extended. A slit of sky was always visible.

  Whistling joyously to myself,I took three steps which brought me to the door end. The door was massively made,all of iron or steel I should think. It delighted me. The can excited my curiosity. I looked over the edge of it. At the bottom reposefully lay a new human turd.

  I have a sneaking mania for wood-cuts,particularly when used to illustrate the indispensable psychological crisis of some out-worn romance. There is in my possession at this minute a masterful depiction of a tall bearded horrified man who,clad in an anonymous rig of goatskins,with a fantastic umbrella clasped weakly in one huge paw,bends to examine an indication of humanity in the somewhat cubist wilderness whereof he had fancied himself the owner....

  It was then that I noticed the walls. Arm-high they were covered with designs,mottos,pictures. The drawing had all been done in pencil. I resolved to ask for a pencil at the first opportunity.

  There had been Germans and Frenchmen imprisoned in this cell. On the right wall,near the door-end,was a long selection from Goethe,laboriously copied. Near the other end of this wall a satiric landscape took place. The technique of this landscape frightened me. There were houses,men,children. And there were trees. I began to wonder what a tree looks like,and laughed copiously.

  The back wall had a large and exquisite portrait of a German officer.

  The left wall was adorned with a yacht,flying a number—13. “My beloved boat” was inscribed in German underneath. Then came a bust of a German soldier,very idealized,full of unfear. After this,a masterful crudity—a doughnut-bodied rider,sliding with fearful rapidity down the acute back-bone of a totally transparent sausage-shaped horse who was moving simultaneously in five directions. The rider had a bored expression as he supported the stiff reins in one fist. His further leg assisted in his flight. He wore a German soldier’s cap and was smoking. I made up my mind to copy the horse and rider at once,so soon that is as I should have obtained a pencil.