The Enormous Room quotes

They all popped out together from one door, looking rather astonished. Something by way of explanation as well as farewell was most certainly required, so I made a speech in my best French:

“Gentlemen, friends, comrades⁠—I am going away immediately and shall be guillotined tomorrow.”

—“Oh hardly guillotined I should say,” remarked t-d, in a voice which froze my marrow despite my high spirits; while the cook and carpenter gaped audibly and the mechanician clutched a hopelessly smashed carburetor for support.

“Maybe,” I countered, trying not to appear enthusiastic. As a matter of fact I was never so excited and proud.

I was, to be sure, a criminal!

Well, well, thank God that settled one question for good and all—no more Section Sanitaire for me! No more Mr. A. and his daily lectures on cleanliness, deportment, etc.! In spite of myself I started to sing. The driver interrupted:

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 acknowledgment of the courtesy, and entered room number 2.

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. …

I put the bedroll down. I stood up.

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.

At this crisis along comes a little boy.

May God bless all males between seven and ten years of age in France!

The gendarme offered a suggestion, in these words: “Have you any change about you?” He knew, of course, that the sanitary official’s first act had been to deprive me of every last cent. The gendarme’s eyes were fine. They reminded me of … never mind.

It is funny I should have come back, of my own free will, to my company. I should have thought that being a deserter I would have preferred to remain in Paris.” The wine was terribly cold, and I thanked my divine host.

Never have I tasted such wine.

They had given me a chunk of war-bread in place of blessing when I left Noyon. I bit into it with renewed might. But the divine man across from me immediately produced a sausage, half of which he laid simply upon my knee.

I bit into it with renewed might. But the divine man across from me immediately produced a sausage, half of which he laid simply upon my knee. The halving was done with a large keen poilu’s knife.

I have not tasted a sausage since.

The pigs on my either hand had by this time overcome their respective inertias and were chomping cheek-murdering chunks. They had quite a layout, a regular picnic-lunch elaborate enough for kings or even presidents.

My laughter surprised the older considerably. He would have been more astonished had I yielded to the well-nigh irrepressible inclination, which at the moment suffused me, to clap him heartily upon the back.

Everything was blague. The driver, the café, the police, the morning, and least and last the excellent French Government.

We had walked for a half hour or more. My guide and protector now inquired of a workingman the location of the boucheries? “There is one right in front of you,” he was told. Sure enough, not a block away. I laughed again.

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.

On one side I read the name “Cornelius Vanderbilt”—on the other, in bold handwriting—“to my very dear friend Count F. A. de Bragard” and a date. “He hated to have me go.”

I was walking in a dream.

“Have you your sketchbooks and paints with you? What a pity. I am always intending to send to England for mine, but you know—one can’t paint in a place like this. It is impossible—all this dirt and these filthy people—it stinks! Ugh!”

He paused directly in front of the door and spoke with solemnity: “

A man might as well be dead.

”

I was not too famished myself to be unimpressed by the instantaneous change which had come over The Enormous Room’s occupants.

Never did Circe herself cast upon men so bestial an enchantment.

Among these faces convulsed with utter animalism I scarcely recognised my various acquaintances. The transformation produced by the planton’s shout was not merely amazing; it was uncanny, and not a little thrilling.

“That’s what I’m doing,” B.’s voice said.

“By God,” I said, “this is the finest place I’ve ever been in my life.”

“It’s the finest place in the world,” said B.’s voice.

“By God,” I said, “this is the finest place I’ve ever been in my life.”

“It’s the finest place in the world,” said B.’s voice.

“Thank Heaven, we’re out of A.’s way and the ⸻ Section Sanitaire,” I grunted as I placed my boots where a pillow might have been imagined.

Snores had already begun in various keys at various distances in various directions.

The candle flickered a little; as if darkness and itself were struggling to the death, and darkness were winning.

“I’ll get a chew from John” Harree’s voice said.

As the Surveillant said to us all, leaning out of a littlish window, and to me personally upon occasion—

“You are not prisoners. Oh, no. No indeed, I should say not. Prisoners are not treated like this. You are lucky.”

I had de la chance all right, but that was something which the pauvre M. Surveillant wot altogether not of. As for my fellow-prisoners, I am sorry to say that he was—it seems to my humble personality—quite wrong. For who was eligible to La Ferté?

tattooed in blue and green on his big hairy chest. A fine bear.

A bear whom no twitchings at his muzzle nor any starvation nor yet any beating could ever teach to dance⁠ ⁠… but then, I am partial to bears.

Of course none of this bear’s letters ever got posted—Le Directeur was not that sort of person; nor did this bear ever expect that they would go elsewhere than into the official wastebasket of La Ferté, which means that he wrote because he liked to;

le Surveillant in The Enormous Room after the promenade. I shall not enter in detail into the nature of the charges pressed in certain cases, but confine myself to quoting the close of a peroration which would have done Demosthenes credit:

“Même le balayeur a tiré un coup!”

The individual in question mildly deprecated M. le Surveillant’s opinion, while the audience roared and rocked with laughter of a somewhat ferocious sort. I have rarely seen the Surveillant so pleased with himself as after producing this bon mot.

His little, abrupt, conscientious, relentless, difficult self lived always in a single dimension—the somewhat beautiful dimension of Sorrow.

He was a Belgian, and one of two Belgians in whom I have ever felt the least or slightest interest

; for the Machine-Fixer might have been a Polak or an Idol or an Esquimo so far as his nationality affected his soul. By and large, that was the trouble—the Machine-Fixer had a soul.

The body was absolutely and fearlessly alive. In the impeccable and altogether admirable desolation of La Ferté and the Normandy Autumn Celina, easily and fiercely moving, was a kinesis.

The French Government must have already recognized this; it called her incorrigible.

Lena, also a Belgian, always and fortunately just missed being a type which in the American language (sometimes called “Slang”) has a definite nomenclature. Lena had the makings of an ordinary broad, and yet, thanks to La Misère, a certain indubitable personality became gradually rescued.

And accurate. Her exact movements were the movements of a mechanism. Including her voice, which had a purely mechanical timbre. She could do two things with this voice and two only—screech and boom. At times she tried to chuckle and almost fell apart.

Renée was in fact dead.

In looking at her for the first time, I realised that there may be something stylish about death.

Including her voice, which had a purely mechanical timbre. She could do two things with this voice and two only—screech and boom. At times she tried to chuckle and almost fell apart. Renée was in fact dead.

In looking at her for the first time, I realised that there may be something stylish about death.

This first time was interesting in the extreme. It was Lily’s birthday. We looked out of the windows which composed one side of the otherwise windowless Enormous Room;

Eventually Lena followed her example, capturing Lily en route. The scene must have consumed all of twenty minutes. The plantons were so mirth-stricken that they had to sit down and rest under the washing-shed.

Of all the inhabitants of The Enormous Room, Fritz and Harree and Pom Pom and Bathhouse John enjoyed it most.

I should include Jan, whose chin nearly rested on the windowsill with the little body belonging to it fluttering in an ugly interested way all the time.

He added, with tears in his own eyes:

“M’sieu’ Jean, a woman.”

I recall perfectly being in the kitchen one day, hiding from the eagle-eye of the Black Holster and enjoying a talk on the economic consequences of war, said talk being delivered by Afrique.

He landed precipitously, sprang from his machine and ran to the office of the general. He saluted, and cried in great excitement: “General, you are firing on the French!” The general regarded him without interest, without budging; then, he said, very simply:

“They have begun, they must finish.”

’ Which is why perhaps,” said One Eyed Dah-veed, looking two ways at once with his uncorrelated eyes, “the Germans entered Noyon. …” But to return to Mexique.

He and his brother had both participated in the revolution which made Carranza president. His description of which affair was utterly delightful.

“Every-body run a‑round with guns,” Mexique said. “And by-and-by no see to shoot everybody, so everybody go home.”

We asked if he had shot anybody himself. “Sure. I shoot everybody I do’no” Mexique answered laughing. “I t’ink every-body no hit me,” he added, regarding his stocky person with great and quiet amusement.

“Sure. I shoot everybody I do’no” Mexique answered laughing. “I t’ink every-body no hit me,” he added, regarding his stocky person with great and quiet amusement. When we asked him once what he thought about the war, he replied,

“I t’ink lotta bull⁠—,”

which, upon copious reflection, I decided absolutely expressed my own point of view.

I said that I was afraid I didn’t.

“Because in front of us we had the German shells, behind, the French machine guns, always the French machine guns, mon vieux.”

“Je ne comprends pas bien” I said in confusion, recalling all the highfalutin rigmarole which Americans believed—(little martyred Belgium protected by the allies from the inroads of the aggressor, etc.)—“why should the French put machine guns behind you?”

The porter was a creature whom Ugly does not even slightly describe. There are some specimens of humanity in whose presence one instantly and instinctively feels a profound revulsion, a revulsion which—perhaps because it is profound—cannot be analysed.

The Fighting Sheeney was one of these specimens. His face (or to use the good American idiom, his mug) was exceedingly coarse-featured and had an indefatigable expression of sheer brutality

—yet the impression which it gave could not be traced to any particular plane or line. I can and will say, however, that this face was most hideous—perhaps that is the word—when it grinned.

The night Rockyfeller and his slave arrived was a night to be remembered by everyone.

It was one of the wildest and strangest and most perfectly interesting nights I, for one, ever spent.

Rockyfeller had been corralled by Judas, and was enjoying a special bed to our right at the upper end of The Enormous Room.

It was during this period that Count Bragard lent us for our personal use his greatest treasure, a water glass.

“I don’t need it,” he said simply and pathetically.

Now, as I have said, a change in our relations came.

“Dat feller give dat English feller one hundred francs. Now he sorry.”

All of which meant merely that Count Bragard should have spelt his name, not Bra-, but with an l.

And I wonder to this day that the only letter of mine which ever reached America and my doting family should have been posted by this highly entertaining personage en ville, whither he went as a trusted inhabitant of La Ferté to do a few …

Tommy, who looked like a boiled lobster and had tears in his eyes when he escorted his idol back to captivity. … Mirabile dictu, so it was.

Well, such was the departure of a great man from among us.

And now, just to restore the reader’s faith in human nature, let me mention an entertaining incident which occurred during the latter part of my stay at La Ferté Macé.

they were wholly unbeautiful of face or form, some of them actually repellant; not one should I, even under more favourable 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.

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;

“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 worringly 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.

The plantons yelled for him to line up with the rest, who were waiting outside the gate, bag and baggage.

He covered his great king’s eyes with his long golden hands and went.

With him disappeared unspeakable sunlight, and the dark keen bright strength of the earth.

The plantons yelled for him to line up with the rest, who were waiting outside the gate, bag and baggage. He covered his great king’s eyes with his long golden hands and went.

With him disappeared unspeakable sunlight, and the dark keen bright strength of the earth.

Were I free with a canvas and some colours … but I am not free. And so I will buck the impossible to the best of my ability. Which, after all, is one way of wasting your time.

He did not come and he did not go. He drifted.

His angular anatomy expended and collected itself with an effortless spontaneity which is the prerogative of fairies perhaps, or at any rate of those things in which we no longer believe. But he was more.

… fists nearer and nearer, its ghastly yellow lips hurling cumulative volumes of rhythmic profanity, its blue eyes snapping like firecrackers, its enormous hairy chest heaving and tumbling like a monstrous hunk of seaweed, its flat soiled feet curling and uncurling their ten sour mutilated toes.

The Zulu puffed gently as he lay.

Bill The Hollander’s jaw, sticking into the direction of The Young Pole’s helpless gestures, looked (with the pitiless scorching face behind it) like some square house carried in the fore of a white cyclone. The Zulu depressed his chin;

…

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

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:

… 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.

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:

water and water and water and water and water. “Ah! You cannot see the other side of this water, monsieur? Wonderful, monsieur!”—He meditates it, smiling quietly; its wonder, how wonderful it is, no other side, and yet—the sea. In which fish swim. Wonderful.

He is utterly curious. He is utterly hungry.

We have bought cheese with The Zulu’s money. Surplice comes up, bows timidly and ingratiatingly with the demeanour of a million-times whipped but somewhat proud dog. He smiles. He says nothing, being terribly embarrassed. To help his embarrassment, we pretend we do not see him.

and I say, No, Précigne, feeling weirdly depressed, and Surplice is standing to my left, contemplating the departure of the incorrigibles with interested disappointment—

Surplice of whom no man takes any notice when that man leaves, be it for Hell or Paradise.⁠ ⁠…

And once a week the maître de chambre throws soap on the mattresses, and I hear a voice

he, The Butcher, being perhaps happiest when he can spend an evening showing us little parlour tricks fit for children of four and three years old; quite at his best when he remarks:

“Sickness doesn’t exist in France,”

meaning that one is either well or dead; or

meaning that one is either well or dead; or

“If they (the French) get an inventor they put him in prison.”

—So The Butcher is stooping heavily upon Surplice and slicing and gashing busily and carelessly, his thick lips stuck a little pursewise, his buried pig’s eyes glistening—and in a moment he cries “Fini!”

and to twinkle like sparks on a chimney-back and I made eighty francs every dimanche, and beer and wine, and to eat well. Maintenant … c’est fini … Et tout de suite (gesture of cutting himself in two) la tête.” And He says:

“O you who put the jerk into joys, come up hither. There’s a man up here called Christ who likes the violin.”

but when none appeared, it relapsed as suddenly into laughter—as if hugely amused at itself and everyone else including a little and tough boy, whom I had not previously noted, although his entrance had coincided with the muscle’s.

Thus into the misère of La Ferté Macé stepped lightly and proudly Jean le Nègre.

Of all the fine people in La Ferté, Monsieur Jean (“le noir” as he was entitled by his enemies) swaggers in my memory as the finest.

Thus into the misère of La Ferté Macé stepped lightly and proudly Jean le Nègre.

Of all the fine people in La Ferté, Monsieur Jean (“le noir” as he was entitled by his enemies) swaggers in my memory as the finest.

Jean’s first act was to complete the distribution (begun, he announced, among the plantons who had escorted him upstairs) of two pockets full of Cubebs. Right and left he gave them up to the last, remarking carelessly, “J’ne veux, moi.”

Yet the Puritan streak came out one day, in a discussion which lasted for several hours. Jean as in the case of France, spoke in dogma. His contention was very simple:

“The woman who smokes is not a woman.”

He defended it hotly against the attacks of all the nations represented; in vain did Belgian and Hollander, Russian and Pole, Spaniard and Alsatian, charge and countercharge—Jean remained unshaken.

He straightened proudly.

He stalked like a king through the doorway.

The astounded plantons and the embarrassed Surveillant followed, the latter closing the doors behind him. I was left with a cloud of angry witnesses.

As for Jean, one would hardly have recognised him.

It was as if the child had fled into the deeps of his soul, never to reappear.

Day after day went by, and Jean (instead of courting excitement as before) cloistered himself in solitude; or at most sought the company of B. and me and Le Petit Belge for a quiet chat or a cigarette.

Would the reader like to know what I was asked?

Ah, would I could say! Only dimly do I remember those moments

—only dimly do I remember looking through the lawyer at Apollyon’s clean collar—only dimly do I remember the gradual collapse of the captain of gendarmes, his slow but sure assumption of sleepfulness, the drooping of his soggy tête de cochon lower and lower till it …

… “Du pain; prenez, mes amis,” Afrique said. “Mangez comme vous voulez” the Cook quoth benignantly, with a glance at us over his placid shoulder. … Eat we most surely did.

We could have eaten the French Government.

The morning of the following day we went on promenade once more. It was neither pleasant nor unpleasant to promenade in the cour while somebody else was suffering in the Room of Sorrow. It was, in fact, rather thrilling.

“

I should rather have gone to prison with my friend,

” I stated briefly; and went into the dining-room, leaving the Surveillant uh-ahing in nothing short of complete amazement.

Of an afternoon I sat with Jean or Mexique or The Zulu on the long beam of silent iron, pondering very carefully nothing at all, replying to their questions or responding to their observations in a highly mechanical manner.

I felt myself to be, at last, a doll⁠—taken out occasionally and played with and put back into its house and told to go to sleep.

…

I went to another window and looked out. Sure enough.

Snow was falling, gradually and wonderfully falling, silently falling through the thick soundless Autumn.

… It seemed to me supremely beautiful, the snow. There was about it something unspeakably crisp and exquisite, something perfect and minute and gentle and fatal.