The Enormous Room Page 6

  The older and I sat down,and the younger took his turn at promenading. I got up to buy a Fantasio at the stand ten steps away,and the older jumped up and escorted me to and from it. I think I asked him what he would read? and he said “Nothing.” Maybe I bought him a journal. So we waited,eyed by everyone in the Gare,laughed at by the officers and their marraines,pointed at by sinewy dames and decrepit bonshommes—the center of amusement for the whole station. In spite of my reading I felt distinctly uncomfortable. Would it never be Twelve? Here comes the younger,neat as a pin,looking fairly sterilized. He sits down on my left. Watches are ostentatiously consulted. It is time. En avant. I sling myself under my bags.

  “Where are we going now?” I asked the older. Curling the tips of his mustachios,he replied “Mah-say.”

  Marseilles! I was happy once more. I had always wanted to go to that great port of the Mediterranean,where one has new colours and strange customs,and where the people sing when they talk. But how extraordinary to have come to Paris—and what a trip lay before us. I was much muddled about the whole thing. Probably I was to be deported. But why from Marseilles? Where was Marseilles anyway? I was probably all wrong about its location. Who cared,after all? At least we were leaving the pointings and the sneers and the half-suppressed titters....

  Two fat and respectable bonshommes,the two gendarmes,and I,made up one compartment. The former talked an animated stream,the guards and I were on the whole silent. I watched the liquidating landscape and dozed happily. The gendarmes dozed,one at each door. The train rushed lazily across the earth,between farm-houses,into fields,along woods...the sunlight smacked my eye and cuffed my sleepy mind with colour.

  I was awakened by a noise of eating. My protectors,knife in hand,were consuming their meat and bread,occasionally tilting their bidons on high and absorbing the thin streams which spurted therefrom. I tried a little chocolat. The bonshommes were already busy with their repast. The older gendarme watched me chewing away at the chocolat,then commanded “Take some bread.” This astonished me,I confess,beyond anything which had heretofore occurred. I gazed mutely at him,wondering whether the gouvernement français had made away with his wits. He had relaxed amazingly : his cap lay beside him,his tunic was unbuttoned,he slouched in a completely undisciplined posture—his face seemed to have been changed from a peasant’s,it was almost open in expression and almost completely at ease. I seized the offered hunk and chewed vigorously on it. Bread was bread. The older appeared pleased with my appetite;his face softened still more,as he remarked : “Bread without wine doesn’t taste good” and proffered his bidon. I drank as much as I dared and thanked him : “Ça va mieux.” The pinard went straight to my brain,I felt my mind cuddled by a pleasant warmth,my thoughts became invested with a great contentment. The train stopped;and the younger sprang out carrying the empty bidons of himself and his confrere. When they and he returned,I enjoyed another coup. From that moment till we reached our destination at about eight o’clock the older and I got on extraordinarily well. When the gentlemen descended at their station he waxed almost familiar. I was in excellent spirits;rather drunk;extremely tired. Now that the two guardians and myself were alone in the compartment,the curiosity which had hitherto been stifled by etiquette and pride of capture came rapidly to light. Why was I here,anyway? I seemed well enough to them.—Because my friend had written some letters,I told them.—But I had done nothing myself?—I explained that nous étions toujours ensemble,mon ami et moi;that was the only reason which I knew of.—It was very funny to see how this explanation improved matters. The older in particular was immensely relieved.—I would without doubt,he said,be set free immediately upon my arrival. The French government didn’t keep people like me in prison.—They fired some questions about America at me,to which I imaginatively replied. I think I told the younger that the average height of buildings in America was nine hundred metres. He stared and shook his head doubtfully,but I convinced him in the end. Then in turn I asked questions,the first being : Where was my friend?—It seems that my friend had left Creil( or whatever it was )the morning of the day I had entered it.—Did they know where my friend was going?—They couldn’t say. They had been told that he was very dangerous.—So we talked on and on : How long had I studied French? I spoke very well. Was it hard to learn English?—

  Yet when I climbed out to relieve myself by the roadside one of them was at my heels.

  Finally watches were consulted,tunics buttoned,hats donned. I was told in a gruff voice to prepare myself;that we were approaching the end of our journey. Looking at the erstwhile participants in conversation,I scarcely knew them. They had put on with their caps a positive ferocity of bearing. I began to think that I had dreamed the incidents of the preceding hours.

  We descended at a minute,dirty station which possessed the air of having been dropped by mistake from the bung of the gouvernement français. The older sought out the station master,who having nothing to do was taking a siesta in a miniature waiting-room. The general countenance of the place was exceedingly depressing;but I attempted to keep up my spirits with the reflection that after all this was but a junction,and that from here we were to take a train for Marseilles herself. The name of the station,Briouze,I found somewhat dreary. And now the older returned with the news that our train wasn’t running today,and that the next train didn’t arrive till early morning,and should we walk? I could check my great sac and overcoat. The small sac I should carry along—it was only a step,after all.

  With a glance at the desolation of Briouze I agreed to the stroll. It was a fine night for a little promenade;not too cool,and with a promise of a moon stuck into the sky. The sac and coat were accordingly checked by the older;the station-master glanced at me and haughtily grunted( having learned that I was an American );and my protectors and I set out.

  I insisted that we stop at the first café and have some wine on me. To this my escorts agreed,making me go ten paces ahead of them,and waiting until I was through before stepping up to the bar—not from politeness,to be sure,but because( as I soon gathered )gendarmes were not any too popular in this part of the world,and the sight of two gendarmes with a prisoner might inspire the habitué to attempt a rescue. Furthermore,on leaving said café( a desolate place if I ever saw one,with a fearful patronne )I was instructed sharply to keep close to them but on no account to place myself between them,there being sundry villagers to be encountered before we struck the high road for Marseilles. Thanks to their forethought and my obedience the rescue did not take place,nor did our party excite even the curiosity of the scarce and soggy inhabitants of the unlovely town of Briouze.

  The highroad won,all of us relaxed considerably. The sac full of suspicious letters which I bore on my shoulder was not so light as I had thought,but the kick of the Briouze pinard thrust me forward at a good clip. The road was absolutely deserted;the night hung loosely around it,here and there tattered by attempting moonbeams. I was somewhat sorry to find the way hilly,and in places bad underfoot;yet the unknown adventure lying before me,and the delicious silence of the night( in which our words rattled queerly like tin soldiers in a plush-lined box )boosted me into a condition of mysterious happiness. We talked,the older and I,of strange subjects. As I suspected,he had been not always a gendarme. He had seen service among the Arabs. He had always liked languages and had picked up Arabian with great ease—of this he was very proud. For instance—the Arabian way of saying “Give me to eat” was this;when you wanted wine you said so and so;“Nice day” was something else. He thought I could pick it up inasmuch as I had done so creditably with French. He was absolutely certain that English was much easier to learn than French,and would not be moved. Now what was the American language like? I explained that it was a sort of Argot-English. When I gave him some phrases he was astonished—“It sounds like English!” he cried,and retailed his stock of English phrases for my approval. I tried hard to get his intonation of the Arabian,and he helped me on the difficult sounds.
America must be a strange place,he thought....

  After two hours walking he called a halt,bidding us rest. We all lay flat on the grass by the roadside. The moon was still battling with clouds. The darkness of the fields on either side was total. I crawled on hands and knees to the sound of silver-­trickling water and found a little spring-fed stream. Prone,weight on elbows,I drank heavily of its perfect blackness. It was icy,talkative,minutely alive.

  The older presently gave a perfunctory “alors”;we got up;I hoisted my suspicious utterances upon my shoulder,which recognized the renewal of hostilities with a neuralgic throb. I banged forward with bigger and bigger feet. A bird,scared,swooped almost into my face. Occasionally some night-noise pricked a futile minute hole in the enormous curtain of soggy darkness. Uphill now. Every muscle thoroughly aching,head spinning,I half-straightened my no longer obedient body;and jumped : face to face with a little wooden man hanging all by itself in a grove of low trees.

  —The wooden body clumsy with pain burst into fragile legs with absurdly large feet and funny writhing toes;its little stiff arms made abrupt cruel equal angles with the road. About its stunted loins clung a ponderous and jocular fragment of drapery. On one terribly brittle shoulder the droll lump of its neckless head ridiculously lived. There was in this complete silent doll a gruesome truth of instinct,a success of uncanny poignancy,an unearthly ferocity of rectangular emotion.

  For perhaps a minute the almost obliterated face and mine eyed one another in the silence of intolerable autumn.

  Who was this wooden man? Like a sharp black mechanical cry in the spongy organism of gloom stood the coarse and sudden sculpture of his torment;the big mouth of night carefully spurted the angular actual language of his martyred body. I had seen him before in the dream of some mediaeval saint,with a thief sagging at either side,surrounded by crisp angels. Tonight he was alone;save for myself,and the moon’s minute flower pushing between slabs of fractured cloud.

  I was wrong,the moon and I and he were not alone....A glance up the road gave me two silhouettes at pause. The gendarmes were waiting. I must hurry to catch up or incur suspicion by my sloth. I hastened forward,with a last look over my shoulder...the wooden man was watching us.

  When I came abreast of them,expecting abuse,I was surprised by the older’s saying quietly “We haven’t far to go”,and plunging forward imperturbably into the night.

  Nor had we gone a half hour before several dark squat forms confronted us : houses. I decided that I did not like houses—­particularly as now my guardians’ manner abruptly changed;once more tunics were buttoned,holsters adjusted,and myself directed to walk between and keep always up with the others. Now the road became thoroughly afflicted with houses,houses not however so large and lively as I had expected from my dreams of Marseilles. Indeed we seemed to be entering an extremely small and rather disagreeable town. I ventured to ask what its name was. “Mah-say” was the response. By this I was fairly puzzled. However the street led us to a square,and I saw the towers of a church sitting in the sky;between them the round yellow big moon looked immensely and peacefully conscious...no one was stirring in the little streets,all the houses were keeping the moon’s secret.

  We walked on.

  I was too tired to think. I merely felt the town as a unique unreality. What was it? I knew—the moon’s picture of a town. These streets with their houses did not exist,they were but a ludicrous projection of the moon’s sumptuous personality. This was a city of Pretend,created by the hypnotism of moonlight.—Yet when I examined the moon she too seemed but a painting of a moon,and the sky in which she lived a fragile echo of colour. If I blew hard the whole shy mechanism would collapse gently with a neat soundless crash. I must not,or lose all.

  We turned a corner,then another. My guides conferred concerning the location of something,I couldn’t make out what. Then the older nodded in the direction of a long dull dirty mass not a hundred yards away,which( as near as I could see )served either as a church or a tomb. Toward this we turned. All too soon I made out its entirely dismal exterior. Grey long stone walls,surrounded on the street side by a fence of ample proportions and uniformly dull colour. Now I perceived that we made toward a gate,singularly narrow and forbidding,in the grey long wall. No living soul appeared to inhabit this desolation.

  The older rang at the gate. A gendarme with a revolver answered his ring;and presently he was admitted,leaving the younger and myself to wait. And now I began to realize that this was the gendarmerie of the town,into which for safe-keeping I was presently to be inducted for the night. My heart sank,I confess,at the thought of sleeping in the company of that species of humanity which I had come to detest beyond anything in hell or on earth. Meanwhile the doorman had returned with the older,and I was bidden roughly enough to pick up my baggage and march. I followed my guides down a corridor,up a stair-case,and into a dark small room where a candle was burning. Dazzled by the light and dizzied by the fatigue of my ten or twelve mile stroll,I let my baggage go;and leaned against a convenient wall,trying to determine who was now my tormentor.

  Facing me at a table stood a man of about my own height,and as I should judge about forty years old. His face was seedy sallow and long. He had bushy semi-circular eyebrows which drooped so much as to reduce his eyes to mere blinking slits. His cheeks were so furrowed that they leaned inward. He had no nose,properly speaking,but a large beak of preposterous widthlessness,which gave his whole face the expression of falling gravely downstairs,and quite obliterated the unimportant chin. His mouth was made of two long uncertain lips which twitched nervously. His cropped black hair was rumpled;his blouse,from which hung a croix de guerre,unbuttoned;and his unputteed shanks culminated in bed-slippers. In physique he reminded me a little of Ichabod Crane. His neck was exactly like a hen’s : I felt sure that when he drank he must tilt his head back as hens do in order that the liquid may run down their throats. But his method of keeping himself upright,together with certain spasmodic contractions of his fingers and the nervous “uh-ah,uh-ah” which punctuated his insecure phrases like uncertain commas,combined to offer the suggestion of a rooster;a rather moth-eaten rooster,which took itself tremendously seriously and was showing-off to an imaginary group of admiring hens situated somewhere in the background of his consciousness.

  “Vous êtes uh-ah I’am-é-ri-cain?”

  “Je suis américain” I admitted.

  “Eh-bi-en uh-ah uh-ah—We were expecting you.” He surveyed me with great interest.

  Behind this seedy and restless personage I noted his absolute likeness,adorning one of the walls. The rooster was faithfully depicted à la Rembrandt at half-length in the stirring guise of a fencer,foil in hand and wearing enormous gloves. The execution of this masterpiece left something to be desired;but the whole betokened a certain spirit and verve,on the part of the sitter,which I found difficulty in attributing to the being before me.

  “Vous êtes uh-ah KEW-MANGZ?”

  “What?” I said,completely baffled by this extraordinary dissyllable.

  “Comprenez vous fran-çais?”

  “Un peu.”

  “Bon. Alors,vous vous ap-pel-lez KEW-MANGZ,n’est-ce-pas? Edouard KEW-MANGZ.”

  “Oh” I said,relieved,“yes.” It was really amazing,the way he writhed around the G.

  “Comment ça se pronounce en anglais?”

  I told him.

  He replied benevolently,somewhat troubled “uh-ah uh-ah uh-ah—Pour-quoi êtes-vous ici,KEW-MANGZ?”

  At this question I was for one moment angrier than I had ever before been in all my life. Then I realized the absurdity of the situation,and laughed.—“Sais pas.”

  The questionnaire continued:

  “You were in the Red Cross?”—“Surely,in the Norton-Harjes Ambulance,Section Sanitaire Vingt-et-Un.”—“You had a friend there?”—“Naturally.”—“Il a écrit,votre ami,des bê-tises,n’est-ce-pas?”—“So they told me. N’en sais rien.”—“What sort of a person was your friend?”—“
He was a magnificent person,always très gentil with me.”—(With a queer pucker the fencer remarked )“Your friend got you into a lot of trouble though.”—(To which I replied with a broad grin )“N’importe,we are camarades.”

  A stream of puzzled uh-ahs followed this reply. The fencer or rooster or whatever he might be finally,picking up the lamp and the lock,said : “Alors,venez,avec moi KEW-MANGZ.” I started to pick up the sac,but he told me it would be kept in the office( we being in the office). I said I had checked a large sac and my fur overcoat at Briouze,and he assured me they would be sent on by train. He now dismissed the gendarmes,who had been listening curiously to the examination. As I was conducted from the bureau I asked him point-blank : “How long am I to stay here?”—to which he answered “Oh peut-être un jour,deux jours,je ne sais pas.”

  Two days in a gendarmerie would be enough,I thought. We marched out.

  Behind me the bed-slippered rooster uh-ahing shuffled. In front of me clumsily gamboled the huge imitation of myself. It descended the terribly worn stairs. It turned to the right and disappeared....

  We were standing in a chapel.

  The shrinking light which my guide held had become suddenly minute;it was beating,senseless and futile,with shrill fists upon a thick enormous moisture of gloom. To the left and right through lean oblongs of stained glass burst dirty burglars of moonlight. The clammy stupid distance uttered dimly an uncanny conflict—the mutterless tumbling of brutish shadows. A crowding ooze battled with my lungs. My nostrils fought against the monstrous atmospheric slime which hugged a sweet unpleasant odour. Staring ahead,I gradually disinterred the pale carrion of the darkness—an altar,guarded with the ugliness of unlit candles,on which stood inexorably the efficient implements for eating God.