The Enormous Room

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Not long after The Zulu arrived I witnessed a mystery: it was toward the
second _soupe_, and B. and I were proceeding (our spoons in our hands) in
the direction of the door, when beside us suddenly appeared The Zulu--who
took us by the shoulders gently and (after carefully looking about him)
produced from, as nearly as one could see, his right ear a twenty franc
note; asking us in a few well-chosen silences to purchase with it
_confiture_, _fromage_, and _chocolat_ at the canteen. He silently
apologized for encumbering us with these errands, averring that he had
been found when he arrived to have no money upon him and consequently
wished to keep intact this little tradition. We were only too delighted
to assist so remarkable a prestidigitator--we scarcely knew him at that
time--and _apres la soupe_ we bought as requested, conveying the
treasures to our bunks and keeping guard over them. About fifteen minutes
after the _planton_ had locked everyone in, The Zulu driftingly arrived
before us; whereupon we attempted to give him his purchases--but he
winked and told us wordlessly that we should (if we would be so kind)
keep them for him, immediately following this suggestion by a request
that we open the marmalade or jam or whatever it might be
called--preserve is perhaps the best word. We complied with alacrity. Now
(he said soundlessly), you may if you like offer me a little. We did. Now
have some yourselves, The Zulu commanded. So we attacked the _confiture_
with a will, spreading it on pieces or, rather, chunks of the brownish
bread whose faintly rotten odour is one element of the life at La Ferte
which I, for one, find it easier to remember than to forget. And next, in
similar fashion, we opened the cheese and offered some to our visitor;
and finally the chocolate. Whereupon The Zulu rose up, thanked us
tremendously for our gifts, and--winking solemnly--floated off.

Next day he told us that he wanted us to eat all of the delicacies we had
purchased, whether or not he happened to be in the vicinity. He also
informed us that when they were gone we should buy more until the twenty
francs gave out. And, so generous were our appetites, it was not more
than two or three weeks later that The Zulu having discovered that our
supplies were exhausted produced from his back hair a neatly folded
twenty franc note; wherewith we invaded the canteen with renewed
violence. About this time The Spy got busy and The Zulu, with The Young
Pole for interpreter, was summoned to Monsieur le Directeur, who stripped
The Zulu and searched every wrinkle and crevice of his tranquil anatomy
for money (so The Zulu vividly informed us)--finding not a sou. The Zulu,
who vastly enjoyed the discomfiture of Monsieur, cautiously extracted
(shortly after this) a twenty franc note from the back of his neck, and
presented it to us with extreme care. I may say that most of his money
went for cheese, of which The Zulu was almost abnormally fond. Nothing
more suddenly delightful has happened to me than happened, one day, when
I was leaning from the next to the last window--the last being the
property of users of the cabinet--of The Enormous Room, contemplating the
muddy expanse below, and wondering how the Hollanders had ever allowed
the last two windows to be opened. Margherite passed from the door of the
building proper to the little washing shed. As the sentinel's back was
turned I saluted her, and she looked up and smiled pleasantly. And
then--a hand leapt quietly forward from the wall, just to my right; the
fingers clenched gently upon one-half a newly broken cheese; the hand
moved silently in my direction, cheese and all, pausing when perhaps six
inches from my nose. I took the cheese from the hand, which departed as
if by magic; and a little later had the pleasure of being joined at my
window by The Zulu, who was brushing cheese crumbs from his long slender
Mandarin mustaches, and who expressed profound astonishment and equally
profound satisfaction upon noting that I too had been enjoying the
pleasures of cheese. Not once, but several times, this Excalibur
appearance startled B. and me: in fact the extreme modesty and
incomparable shyness of The Zulu found only in this procedure a
satisfactory method of bestowing presents upon his two friends ... I
would I could see that long hand once more, the sensitive fingers poised
upon a half-camembert; the bodiless arm swinging gently and surely with a
derrick-like grace and certainty in my direction....

Not very long after The Zulu's arrival occurred an incident which I give
with pleasure because it shows the dauntless and indomitable, not to say
intrepid, stuff of which _plantons_ are made. The single _sceau_ which
supplied the (at this time) sixty-odd inhabitants of The Enormous Room
with drinking water had done its duty, shortly after our arrival from the
first _soupe_ with such thoroughness as to leave a number of unfortunate
(among whom I was one) waterless. The interval between _soupe_ and
promenade loomed darkly and thirstily before us unfortunates. As the
minutes passed, it loomed with greater and greater distinctness. At the
end of twenty minutes our thirst--stimulated by an especially salty dose
of lukewarm water for lunch--attained truly desperate proportions.
Several of the bolder thirsters leaned from the various windows of the
room and cried

"_De l'eau, planton; de l'eau, s'il vous plait_"

upon which the guardian of the law looked up suspiciously; pausing a
moment as if to identify the scoundrels whose temerity had so far got the
better of their understanding as to lead them to address him, a
_planton_, in familiar terms--and then grimly resumed his walk, gun on
shoulder, revolver on hip, the picture of simple and unaffected majesty.
Whereat, seeing that entreaties were of no avail, we put our seditious
and dangerous heads together and formulated a very great scheme; to wit,
the lowering of an empty tin-pail about eight inches high, which tin-pail
had formerly contained confiture, which confiture had long since passed
into the guts of Monsieur Auguste, The Zulu, B., myself, and--as The
Zulu's friend--The Young Pole. Now this fiendish imitation of The Old
Oaken Bucket That Hung In The Well was to be lowered to the good-natured
Marguerite (who went to and fro from the door of the building to the
washing shed); who was to fill it for us at the pump situated directly
under us in a cavernous chilly cave on the ground-floor, then rehitch it
to the rope, and guide its upward beginning. The rest was in the hands of
Fate.

Bold might the _planton_ be; we were no _faineants_. We made a little
speech to everyone in general desiring them to lend us their belts. The
Zulu, the immensity of whose pleasure in this venture cannot be even
indicated, stripped off his belt with unearthly agility--Monsieur Auguste
gave his, which we tongue-holed to The Zulu's--somebody else contributed
a necktie--another a shoe-string--The Young Pole his scarf, of which he
was impossibly proud--etc. The extraordinary rope so constructed was now
tried out in The Enormous Room, and found to be about thirty-eight feet
long; or in other words of ample length, considering that the window
itself was only three stories above terra firma. Margherite was put on
her guard by signs, executed when the _planton's_ back was turned (which
it was exactly half the time, as his patrol stretched at right angles to
the wing of the building whose third story we occupied). Having attached
the minute bucket to one end (the stronger looking end, the end which had
more belts and less neckties and handkerchiefs) of our improvised rope,
B., Harree, myself and The Zulu bided our time at the window--then
seizing a favourable opportunity, in enormous haste began paying out the
infernal contrivance. Down went the sinful tin-pail, safely past the
window-ledge just below us, straight and true to the waiting hands of the
faithful Margherite--who had just received it and was on the point of
undoing the bucket from the first belt when, lo! who should come in sight
around the corner but the pimply-faced brilliantly-uniformed
glitteringly-putteed _sergeant de plantons lui-meme_. Such amazement as
dominated his puny features I have rarely seen equalled. He stopped dead
in his tracks; for one second stupidly contemplated the window,
ourselves, the wall, seven neckties, five belts, three handkerchiefs, a
scarf, two shoe-strings, the jam pail, and Margherite--then, wheeling,
noticed the _planton_ (who peacefully and with dignity was pursuing a
course which carried him further and further from the zone of operations)
and finally, spinning around again, cried shrilly

"_Qu'est-ce que vous avez foutu avec cette machine-la?_"

At which cry the _planton_ staggered, rotated, brought his gun clumsily
off his shoulder, and stared, trembling all over with emotion, at his
superior.

"_La-bas!_" screamed the pimply _sergeant de plantons_, pointing fiercely
in our direction.

Margherite, at his first command, had let go the jam-pail and sought
shelter in the building. Simultaneously with her flight we all began
pulling on the rope for dear life, making the bucket bound against the
wall.

Upon hearing the dreadful exclamation "_La-bas!_" the _planton_ almost
fell down. The sight which greeted his eyes caused him to excrete a
single mouthful of vivid profanity, made him grip his gun like a hero,
set every nerve in his noble and faithful body tingling. Apparently
however he had forgotten completely his gun, which lay faithfully and
expectingly in his two noble hands.

"Attention!" screamed the sergeant.

The _planton_ did something to his gun very aimlessly and rapidly.

"FIRE!" shrieked the sergeant, scarlet with rage and mortification.

The _planton_, cool as steel, raised his gun.

"_NOM DE DIEU TIREZ!_"

The bucket, in big merry sounding jumps, was approaching the window below
us.

The _planton_ took aim, falling fearlessly on one knee, and closing both
eyes. I confess that my blood stood on tip-toe; but what was death to the
loss of that jam-bucket, let alone everyone's apparel which everyone had
so generously loaned? We kept on hauling silently. Out of the corner of
my eye I beheld the _planton_--now on both knees, musket held to his
shoulder by his left arm and pointing unflinchingly at us one and
all--hunting with his right arm and hand in his belt for cartridges! A
few seconds after this fleeting glimpse of heroic devotion had penetrated
my considerably heightened sensitivity--UP suddenly came the bucket and
over backwards we all went together on the floor of The Enormous Room.
And as we fell I heard a cry like the cry of a boiler announcing noon--

"Too late!"

I recollect that I lay on the floor for some minutes, half on top of The
Zulu and three-quarters smothered by Monsieur Auguste, shaking with
laughter....

Then we all took to our hands and knees, and made for our bunks.

I believe no one (curiously enough) got punished for this atrocious
misdemeanour--except the _planton_; who was punished for not shooting us,
although God knows he had done his very best.

And now I must chronicle the famous duel which took place between The
Zulu's compatriot, The Young Pole, and that herebefore introduced pimp,
The Fighting Sheeney; a duel which came as a climax to a vast deal of
teasing on the part of The Young Pole--who, as previously remarked, had
not learned his lesson from Bill The Hollander with the thoroughness
which one might have expected of him.

In addition to a bit of French and considerable Spanish, Rockyfeller's
valet spoke Russian very (I did not have to be told) badly. The Young
Pole, perhaps sore at being rolled on the floor of The Enormous Room by
the worthy Sheeney, set about nagging him just as he had done in the case
of neighbour Bill. His favourite epithet for the conqueror was "_moshki_"
or "_moski_" I never was sure which. Whatever it meant (The Young Pole
and Monsieur Auguste informed me that it meant "Jew" in a highly
derogatory sense) its effect upon the noble Sheeney was definitely
unpleasant. But when coupled with the word "_moskosi_," accent on the
second syllable or long o, its effect was more than unpleasant--it was
really disagreeable. At intervals throughout the day, on promenade, of an
evening, the ugly phrase

"_MOS-ki mosKOsi_"

resounded through The Enormous Room. The Fighting Sheeney, then rapidly
convalescing from syphilis, bided his time. The Young Pole moreover had a
way of jesting upon the subject of The Sheeney's infirmity. He would,
particularly during the afternoon promenade, shout various none too
subtle allusions to Moshki's physical condition for the benefit of _les
femmes_. And in response would come peals of laughter from the girls'
windows, shrill peals and deep guttural peals intersecting and breaking
joints like overlapping shingles on the roof of Craziness. So hearty did
these responses become one afternoon that, in answer to loud pleas from
the injured Moshki, the pimply _sergeant de plantons_ himself came to the
gate in the barbed wire fence and delivered a lecture upon the
seriousness of venereal ailments (heart-felt, I should judge by the looks
of him), as follows:

"_Il ne faut pas rigoler de ca. Savez-vous? C'est une maladie, ca,_"

which little sermon contrasted agreeably with his usual remarks
concerning, and in the presence of, _les femmes_, whereof the essence lay
in a single phrase of prepositional significance--

"_bon pour coucher avec_"

he would say shrilly, his puny eyes assuming an expression of amorous
wisdom which was most becoming....

One day we were all upon afternoon promenade, (it being _beau temps_ for
that part of the world), under the auspices of by all odds one of the
littlest and mildest and most delicate specimens of mankind that ever
donned the high and dangerous duties of a _planton_. As B. says: "He
always looked like a June bride." This mannikin could not have been five
feet high, was perfectly proportioned (unless we except the musket upon
his shoulder and the bayonet at his belt), and minced to and fro with a
feminine grace which suggested--at least to _les deux citoyens_ of These
United States--the extremely authentic epithet "fairy." He had such a
pretty face! and so cute a moustache! and such darling legs! and such a
wonderful smile! For plantonic purposes the smile--which brought two
little dimples into his pink cheeks--was for the most part suppressed.
However it was impossible for this little thing to look stern: the best
he could do was to look poignantly sad. Which he did with great success,
standing like a tragic last piece of uneaten candy in his big box at the
end of the _cour_, and eyeing the sinful _hommes_ with sad pretty eyes.
Won't anyone eat me?--he seemed to ask.--I'm really delicious, you know,
perfectly delicious, really I am.

To resume: everyone being in the _cour_, it was well filled, not only
from the point of view of space but of sound. A barnyard crammed with
pigs, cows, horses, ducks, geese, hens, cats and dogs could not possibly
have produced one-fifth of the racket that emanated, spontaneously and
inevitably, from the _cour_. Above which racket I heard _tout a coup_ a
roar of pain and surprise; and looking up with some interest and also in
some alarm, beheld The Young Pole backing and filling and slipping in the
deep ooze under the strenuous jolts, jabs and even haymakers of The
Fighting Sheeney, who, with his coat off and his cap off and his shirt
open at the neck, was swatting luxuriously and for all he was worth that
round helpless face and that peaches-and-cream complexion. From where I
stood, at a distance of six or eight yards, the impact of the Sheeney's
fist on The Young Pole's jaw and cheeks was disconcertingly audible. The
latter made not the slightest attempt to defend himself, let alone
retaliate; he merely skidded about, roaring and clutching desperately out
of harm's way his long white scarf, of which (as I have mentioned) he was
extremely proud. But for the sheer brutality of the scene it would have
been highly ludicrous. The Sheeney was swinging like a windmill and
hammering like a blacksmith. His ugly head lowered, the chin protruding,
lips drawn back in a snarl, teeth sticking forth like a gorilla's, he
banged and smote that moon-shaped physiognomy as if his life depended
upon utterly annihilating it. And annihilate it he doubtless would have,
but for the prompt (not to say punctual) heroism of The June Bride--who,
lowering his huge gun, made a rush for the fight; stopped at a safe
distance; and began squeaking at the very top and even summit of his
faint girlish voice:

"_Aux armes! Aux armes!_"

which plaintive and intrepid utterance by virtue of its very fragility
penetrated the building and released The Black Holster, who bounded
through the gate, roaring a salutation as he bounded, and in a jiffy had
cuffed the participants apart. "All right, whose fault is this?" he
roared. And a number of highly reputable spectators, such as Judas and
The Fighting Sheeney himself, said it was The Young Pole's fault.
"_Allez! Au cabinot! De suits!_" And off trickled the sobbing Young Pole,
winding his great scarf comfortingly about him, to the dungeon.

Some few minutes later we encountered The Zulu speaking with Monsieur
Auguste. Monsieur Auguste was very sorry. He admitted that The Young Pole
had brought his punishment upon himself. But he was only a boy. The
Zulu's reaction to the affair was absolutely profound: he indicated _les
femmes_ with one eye, his trousers with another, and converted his
utterly plastic personality into an amorous machine for several seconds,
thereby vividly indicating the root of the difficulty. That the stupidity
of his friend, The Young Pole, hurt The Zulu deeply I discovered by
looking at him as he lay in bed the next morning, limply and sorrowfully
prone; beside him the empty _paillasse_, which meant _cabinot_ ... his
perfectly extraordinary face (a face perfectly at once fluent and
angular, expressionless and sensitive) told me many things whereof even
The Zulu might not speak, things which in order entirely to suffer he
kept carefully and thoroughly ensconced behind his rigid and mobile eyes.

From the day that The Young Pole emerged from _cabinot_ he was our
friend. The _blague_ had been at last knocked out of him, thanks to Un
Mangeur de Blanc, as the little Machine-Fixer expressively called The
Fighting Sheeney. Which _mangeur_, by the way (having been exonerated
from all blame by the more enlightened spectators of the unequal battle)
strode immediately and ferociously over to B. and me, a hideous grin
crackling upon the coarse surface of his mug, and demanded--hiking at the
front of his trousers--

"_Bon, eh? Bien fait, eh?_"

and a few days later asked us for money, even hinting that he would be
pleased to become our special protector. I think, as a matter of fact, we
"lent" him one-eighth of what he wanted (perhaps we lent him five cents)
in order to avoid trouble and get rid of him. At any rate, he didn't
bother us particularly afterwards; and if a nickel could accomplish that
a nickel should be proud of itself.

And always, through the falling greyness of the desolate Autumn, The Zulu
was beside us, or wrapped around a tree in the _cour_, or melting in a
post after tapping Mexique in a game of hide-and-seek, or suffering from
toothache--God, I wish I could see him expressing for us the wickedness
of toothache--or losing his shoes and finding them under Garibaldi's bed
(with a huge perpendicular wink which told tomes about Garibaldi's fatal
propensities for ownership), or marvelling silently at the power of _les
femmes a propos_ his young friend--who, occasionally resuming his former
bravado, would stand in the black evil rain with his white farm scarf
twined about him, singing as of old:

"_Je suis content
pour mettre dedans
suis pas presse
pour tirer
ah-la-la-la ..._"

... And the Zulu came out of _la commission_ with identically the
expressionless expression which he had carried into it; and God knows
what The Three Wise Men found out about him, but (whatever it was) they
never found and never will find that Something whose discovery was worth
to me more than all the round and powerless money of the world--limbs'
tin grace, wooden wink, shoulderless, unhurried body, velocity of a
grasshopper, soul up under his arm-pits, mysteriously falling over the
ownness of two feet, floating fish of his slimness half a bird....

Gentlemen, I am inexorably grateful for the gift of these ignorant and
indivisible things.

X

SURPLICE

Let us ascend the third Delectable Mountain, which is called Surplice.

I will admit, in the beginning, that I never knew Surplice. This for the
simple reason that I am unwilling to know except as a last resource. And
it is by contrast with Harree The Hollander, whom I knew, and Judas, whom
I knew, that I shall be able to give you (perhaps) a little of Surplice,
whom I did not know. For that matter, I think Monsieur Auguste was the
only person who might possibly have known him; and I doubt whether
Monsieur Auguste was capable of descending to such depths in the case of
so fine a person as Surplice.

Take a sheer animal of a man. Take the incredible Hollander with
cobalt-blue breeches, shock of orange hair pasted over forehead, pink
long face, twenty-six years old, had been in all the countries of all the
world: "Australia girl fine girl--Japanese girl cleanest girl of the
world--Spanish girl all right--English girl no good, no face--everywhere
these things: Norway sailors German girls Sweedisher matches Holland
candles" ... had been to Philadelphia; worked on a yacht for a
millionaire; knew and had worked in the Krupp factories; was on two boats
torpedoed and one which struck a mine when in sight of shore through the
"looking-glass": "Holland almost no soldier--India" (the Dutch Indies)
"nice place, always warm there, I was in cavalry; if you kill a man or
steal one hundred franc or anything, in prison twenty-four hours; every
week black girl sleep with you because government want white children,
black girl fine girl, always doing something, your fingernails or clean
your ears or make wind because it's hot.... No one can beat German
people; if Kaiser tell man to kill his father and mother he do it
quick!"--the tall, strong, coarse, vital youth who remarked:

"I sleep with black girl who smoke a pipe in the night."

Take this animal. You hear him, you are afraid of him, you smell and you
see him and you know him--but you do not touch him.

Or a man who makes us thank God for animals, Judas, as we called him: who
keeps his moustaches in press during the night (by means of a kind of
transparent frame which is held in place by a band over his head); who
grows the nails of his two little fingers with infinite care; has two
girls with both of whom he flirts carefully and wisely, without ever once
getting into trouble; talks in French; converses in Belgian; can speak
eight languages and is therefore always useful to Monsieur le
Surveillant--Judas with his shining horrible forehead, pecked with little
indentures; with his Reynard full-face--Judas with his pale almost
putrescent fatty body in the _douche_--Judas with whom I talked one night
about Russia, he wearing my _pelisse_--the frightful and impeccable
Judas: take this man. You see him, you smell the hot stale odour of
Judas' body; you are not afraid of him, in fact, you hate him; you hear
him and you know him. But you do not touch him.

And now take Surplice, whom I see and hear and smell and touch and even
taste, and whom I do not know.

Take him in dawn's soft squareness, gently stooping to pick chewed
cigarette ends from the spitty floor ... hear him, all night: retchings
which light into the dark ... see him all day and all days, collecting
his soaked ends and stuffing them gently into his round pipe (when he can
find none he smokes tranquilly little splinters of wood) ... watch him
scratching his back (exactly like a bear) on the wall ... or in the
_cour_, speaking to no one, sunning his soul....

He is, we think, Polish. Monsieur Auguste is very kind to him, Monsieur
Auguste can understand a few words of his language and thinks they mean
to be Polish. That they are trying hard to be and never can be Polish.

Everyone else roars at him, Judas refers to him before his face as a
dirty pig, Monsieur Peters cries angrily: "_Il ne faut pas cracher par
terre_" eliciting a humble not to stay abject apology; the Belgians spit
on him; the Hollanders chaff him and bulldoze him now and then, crying
"Syph'lis"--at which he corrects them with offended majesty

"_pas syph'lis, Surplice_"

causing shouts of laughter from everyone--of nobody can he say My Friend,
of no one has he ever or will he ever say My Enemy.

When there is labour to do he works like a dog ... the day we had
_nettoyage de chambre_, for instance, and Surplice and The Hat did most
of the work; and B. and I were caught by the _planton_ trying to stroll
out into the _cour_ ... every morning he takes the pail of solid
excrement down, without anyone's suggesting that he take it; takes it as
if it were his, empties it in the sewer just beyond the _cour des femmes_
or pours a little (just a little) very delicately on the garden where
Monsieur le Directeur is growing a flower for his daughter--he has, in
fact, an unobstreperous affinity for excrement; he lives in it; he is
shaggy and spotted and blotched with it; he sleeps in it; he puts it in
his pipe and says it is delicious....

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