The Enormous Room · Chapter 3 (2/3)

Having thus consummated breakfast, my guardian suggested a walk. Agreed. I felt I had the strength of ten because the coffee was pure. Moreover it would be a novelty to me promener sans 150-odd pounds of baggage. We set out.

As we walked easily and leisurely the by this time well peopled streets of the vicinity, my guard indulged himself in pleasant conversation. Did I know Paris much? He knew it all. But he had not been in Paris for several (eight was it?) years. It was a fine place, a large city to be sure. But always changing. I had spent a month in Paris while waiting for my uniform and my assignment to a section sanitaire? And my friend was with me? H-mmm-mm.

A perfectly typical runt of a Paris bull eyed us. The older saluted him with infinite respect, the respect of a shabby rube deacon for a well-dressed burglar. They exchanged a few well-chosen words, in French of course. “What ya got there?”⁠—“An American.”⁠—“What’s wrong with him?”⁠—“H-mmm” mysterious shrug of the shoulders followed by a whisper in the ear of the city thug. The latter contented himself with “Ha-aaa”⁠—plus a look at me which was meant to wipe me off the earth’s face (I pretended to be studying the morning meanwhile). Then we moved on, followed by ferocious stares from the Paris bull. Evidently I was getting to be more of a criminal every minute; I should probably be shot tomorrow, not (as I had assumed erroneously) the day after. I drank the morning with renewed vigor, thanking heaven for the coffee, Paris; and feeling complete confidence in myself. I should make a great speech (in Midi French). I should say to the firing squad: “Gentlemen, c’est de la blague, tu sais? Moi, je connais la soeur du conducteur.”⁠ ⁠… They would ask me when I preferred to die. I should reply, “Pardon me, you wish to ask me when I prefer to become immortal?” I should answer: “What matter? It’s all the same to me, because there isn’t any more time⁠—the French Government forbids it.”

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. It was eight years all right.

The older bought a great many things in the next five minutes: sausage, cheese, bread, chocolate, pinard rouge. A bourgeoise with an unagreeable face and suspicion of me written in headlines all over her mouth served us with quick hard laconicisms of movement. I hated her and consequently refused my captor’s advice to buy a little of everything (on the ground that it would be a long time till the next meal), contenting myself with a cake of chocolate⁠—rather bad chocolate, but nothing to what I was due to eat during the next three months. Then we retraced our steps, arriving at the station after several mistakes and inquiries, to find the younger faithfully keeping guard over my two sacs and overcoat.

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 bonhommes⁠—the centre 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 colors 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 bonhommes, 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 farmhouses, 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 chocolate. The bonhommes were already busy with their repast. The older gendarme watched me chewing away at the chocolate, then commanded, “Take some bread.” This astonished me, I confessed, 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 for 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 canteens of himself and his comrade. When they and he returned, I enjoyed another cup. 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 we used to be together all the time, 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 my turn I asked questions, the first being: Where was my friend?⁠—It seems that my friend had left Gré (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 all this was but a junction, and that from here we were to take a train for Marseilles herself. The name of the station, Briouse, 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 to Marseilles? 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 Briouse 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 habitués to attempt a rescue. Furthermore, on leaving the 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 Briouse.

The high road 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 Briouse 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 medieval saint, with a thief sagging at either side, surrounded with 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 suspicions 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 guardian’s 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.