The Enormous Room

Having accomplished the nettoyage (at which we were by this time adepts, thanks to Mr. A.’s habit of detailing us to wash any car which its driver and aide might consider too dirty a task for their own hands) we proceeded in search of a little water for personal use. B. speedily finished his ablutions. I was strolling carelessly and solo from the cook-wagon toward one of the two tents⁠—which protestingly housed some forty huddling Americans by night⁠—holding in my hand an historic morceau de chocolat, when a spick, not to say span, gentleman in a suspiciously quiet French uniform allowed himself to be driven up to the bureau, by two neat soldiers with tin derbies, in a Renault whose painful cleanliness shamed my recent efforts. This must be a general at least, I thought, regretting the extremely undress character of my uniform, which uniform consisted of overalls and a cigarette.

Having furtively watched the gentleman alight and receive a ceremonious welcome from the chief and the aforesaid French lieutenant who accompanied the section for translatory reasons, I hastily betook myself to one of the tents, where I found B. engaged in dragging all his belongings into a central pile of frightening proportions. He was surrounded by a group of fellow-heroes who hailed my coming with considerable enthusiasm. “Your bunky’s leaving” said somebody. “Going to Paris” volunteered a man who had been trying for three months to get there. “Prison you mean” remarked a confirmed optimist whose disposition had felt the effects of French climate.

I needed no second invitation to sleep. Fully dressed, I fell on my paillasse with a weariness which I have never felt before or since. But I did not close my eyes: for all about me there rose a sea of most extraordinary sound⁠ ⁠… the hitherto empty and minute room became suddenly enormous: weird cries, oaths, laughter, pulling it sideways and backward, extending it to inconceivable depth and width, telescoping it to frightful nearness. From all directions, by at least thirty voices in eleven languages (I counted as I lay Dutch, Belgian, Spanish, Turkish, Arabian, Polish, Russian, Swedish, German, French⁠—and English) at distances varying from seventy feet to a few inches, for twenty minutes I was ferociously bombarded. Nor was my perplexity purely aural. About five minutes after lying down, I saw (by a hitherto unnoticed speck of light which burned near the doors which I had entered) two extraordinary looking figures⁠—one a well-set man with a big, black beard, the other a consumptive with a bald head and sickly moustache, both clad only in their knee-length chemises, hairy legs naked, feet bare⁠—wander down the room and urinate profusely in the corner nearest me. This act accomplished, the figures wandered back, greeted with a volley of ejaculatory abuse from the invisible co-occupants of my new sleeping-apartment; and disappeared in darkness.

I remarked to myself that the gendarmes of this gendarmerie were peculiarly up in languages, and fell asleep.

We had in succession gazed from the windows, crossed the end of the room, and started down the other side, Monsieur Auguste marching between us⁠—when suddenly B. exclaimed in English “Good morning! How are you today?” And I looked across Monsieur Auguste, anticipating another Harree or at least a Fritz. What was my surprise to see a spare majestic figure of manifest refinement, immaculately apparelled in a crisp albeit collarless shirt, carefully mended trousers in which the remains of a crease still lingered, a threadbare but perfectly fitting swallowtail coat, and newly varnished (if somewhat ancient) shoes. Indeed for the first time since my arrival at La Ferté I was confronted by a perfect type: the apotheosis of injured nobility, the humiliated victim of perfectly unfortunate circumstances, the utterly respectable gentleman who had seen better days. There was about him, moreover, something irretrievably English, nay even pathetically Victorian⁠—it was as if a page of Dickens was shaking my friend’s hand. “Count Bragard, I want you to meet my friend Cummings”⁠—he saluted me in modulated and courteous accents of indisputable culture, gracefully extending his pale hand. “I have heard a great deal about you from B., and wanted very much to meet you. It is a pleasure to find a friend of my friend B., someone congenial and intelligent in contrast to these swine”⁠—he indicated the room with a gesture of complete contempt. “I see you were strolling. Let us take a turn.” Monsieur Auguste said tactfully, “I’ll see you soon, friends,” and left us with an affectionate shake of the hand and a sidelong glance of jealousy and mistrust at B.’s respectable friend.

Whenever our circle was about to be increased, a bell from somewhere afar (as a matter of fact the gate which had admitted my weary self to La Ferté upon a memorable night, as already has been faithfully recounted) tanged audibly⁠—whereat up jumped the more strenuous inhabitants of The Enormous Room and made pell-mell for the common peephole, situated at the door end or nearer end of our habitat and commanding a somewhat fragmentary view of the gate together with the arrivals, male and female, whom the bell announced. In one particular case the watchers appeared almost unduly excited, shouting “four!”⁠—“big box”⁠—“five gendarmes!” and other incoherences with a loudness which predicted great things. As nearly always, I had declined to participate in the melee; and was still lying comfortably horizontal on my bed (thanking God that it had been well and thoroughly mended by a fellow prisoner whom we called The Frog and Le Coiffeur⁠—a tremendously keen-eyed man with a large drooping moustache, whose boon companion, chiefly on account of his shape and gait, we knew as The Lobster) when the usual noises attendant upon the unlocking of the door began with exceptional violence. I sat up. The door shot open, there was a moment’s pause, a series of grunting remarks uttered by two rather terrible voices; then in came four nouveaux of a decidedly interesting appearance. They entered in two ranks of two each. The front rank was made up of an immensely broad shouldered hipless and consequently triangular man in blue trousers belted with a piece of ordinary rope, plus a thickset ruffianly personage the most prominent part of whose accoutrements were a pair of hideous whiskers. I leaped to my feet and made for the door, thrilled in spite of myself. By the, in this case, shifty blue eyes, the pallid hair, the well-knit form of the rope’s owner I knew instantly a Hollander.

On a certain day the ringing of the bell and accompanying rush of men to the window facing the entrance gate was supplemented by an unparalleled volley of enthusiastic exclamations in all the languages of La Ferté Macé⁠—provoking in me a certainty that the queen of fair women had arrived. This certainty thrillingly withered when I heard the cry: “Il y a un noir!” Fritz was at the best peephole, resisting successfully the onslaught of a dozen fellow prisoners, and of him I demanded in English, “Who’s come?”⁠—“Oh, a lot of girls,” he yelled, “and there’s a nigger too”⁠—hereupon writhing with laughter.

I attempted to get a look, but in vain; for by this at least two dozen men were at the peephole, fighting and gesticulating and slapping each other’s back with joy. However, my curiosity was not long in being answered. I heard on the stairs the sound of mounting feet, and knew that a couple of plantons would before many minutes arrive at the door with their new prey. So did everyone else⁠—and from the farthest beds uncouth figures sprang and rushed to the door, eager for the first glimpse of the nouveau; which was very significant, as the ordinary procedure on arrival of prisoners was for everybody to rush to his own bed and stand guard over it.

Even as the plantons fumbled with the locks I heard the inimitable, unmistakable divine laugh of a negro. The door opened at last. Entered a beautiful pillar of black strutting muscle topped with a tremendous display of the whitest teeth on earth.