The Enormous Room · Chapter 4 (1/6)

IV

Le Nouveau

“Vous ne voulez pas de café?”

The threatening question recited in a hoarse voice woke me like a shot. Sprawled half on and half off my paillasse, I looked suddenly up into a juvenile pimply face with a red tassel bobbing in its eyes. A boy in a Belgian uniform was stooping over me. In one hand a huge pail a third full of liquid slime. I said fiercely: “Au contraire, je veux bien.” And collapsed on the mattress.

“Pas de quart, vous?” the face fired at me.

“Comprends pas,” I replied, wondering what on earth the words meant.

“English?”

“American.”

At this moment a tin cup appeared mysteriously out of the gloom and was rapidly filled from the pail, after which operation the tassel remarked: “Your friend here” and disappeared.

I decided I had gone completely crazy.

The cup had been deposited near me. Not daring to approach it, I boosted my aching corpse on one of its futile elbows and gazed blankly around. My eyes, wading laboriously through a dark atmosphere, a darkness gruesomely tactile, perceived only here and there lively patches of vibrating humanity. My ears recognised English, something which I took to be low-German and which was Belgian, Dutch, Polish, and what I guessed to be Russian.

Trembling with this chaos, my hand sought the cup. The cup was not warm; the contents, which I hastily gulped, were not even tepid. The taste was dull, almost bitter, clinging, thick, nauseating. I felt a renewed interest in living as soon as the deathful swallow descended to my abdomen, very much as a suicide who changes his mind after the fatal dose. I decided that it would be useless to vomit. I sat up. I looked around.

The darkness was rapidly going out of the sluggish stinking air. I was sitting on my mattress at one end of a sort of room, filled with pillars; ecclesiastical in feeling. I already perceived it to be of enormous length. My mattress resembled an island: all around it on the floor at distances varying from a quarter of an inch to ten feet (which constituted the limit of distinct vision) reposed startling identities. There was blood in some of them. Others consisted of a rind of blueish matter sustaining a core of yellowish froth. From behind me a chunk of hurtling spittle joined its fellows. I decided to stand up.

At this moment, at the far end of the room, I seemed to see an extraordinary vulture-like silhouette leap up from nowhere. It rushed a little way in my direction crying hoarsely “Corvée d’eau!”⁠—stopped, bent down at what I perceived to be a paillasse like mine, jerked what was presumably the occupant by the feet, shook him, turned to the next, and so on up to six. As there seemed to be innumerable paillasses, laid side by side at intervals of perhaps a foot with their heads to the wall on three sides of me, I was wondering why the vulture had stopped at six. On each mattress a crude imitation of humanity, wrapped ear-high in its blanket, lay and drank from a cup like mine and spat long and high into the room. The ponderous reek of sleepy bodies undulated toward me from three directions. I had lost sight of the vulture in a kind of insane confusion which arose from the further end of the room. It was as if he had touched off six high explosives. Occasional pauses in the minutely crazy din were accurately punctuated by exploding bowels; to the great amusement of innumerable somebodies, whose precise whereabouts the gloom carefully guarded.

I felt that I was the focus of a group of indistinct recumbents who were talking about me to one another in many incomprehensible tongues. I noticed beside every pillar (including the one beside which I had innocently thrown down my mattress the night before) a good sized pail, overflowing with urine, and surrounded by a large irregular puddle. My mattress was within an inch of the nearest puddle. What I took to be a man, an amazing distance off, got out of bed and succeeded in locating the pail nearest to him after several attempts. Ten invisible recumbents yelled at him in six languages.

All at once a handsome figure rose from the gloom at my elbow. I smiled stupidly into his clear hardish eyes. And he remarked pleasantly:

“Your friend’s here, Johnny, and wants to see you.”

A bulge of pleasure swooped along my body, chasing aches and numbness, my muscles danced, nerves tingled in perpetual holiday.

B. was lying on his camp-cot, wrapped like an Eskimo in a blanket which hid all but his nose and eyes.

“Hello, Cummings,” he said smiling. “There’s a man here who is a friend of Vanderbilt and knew Cézanne.”

I gazed somewhat critically at B. There was nothing particularly insane about him, unless it was his enthusiastic excitement, which might almost be attributed to my jack-in-the-box manner of arriving. He said: “There are people here who speak English, Russian, Arabian. There are the finest people here! Did you go to Gré? I fought rats all night there. Huge ones. They tried to eat me. And from Gré to Paris? I had three gendarmes all the way to keep me from escaping, and they all fell asleep.”

I began to be afraid that I was asleep myself. “Please be frank,” I begged. “Strictly entre nous: am I dreaming, or is this a bug-house?”

B. laughed, and said: “I thought so when I arrived two days ago. When I came in sight of the place a lot of girls waved from the window and yelled at me. I no sooner got inside than a queer looking duck whom I took to be a nut came rushing up to me and cried: ‘Too late for soup!’⁠—This is Campe de Triage de la Ferté Macé, Orne, France, and all these fine people were arrested as spies. Only two or three of them can speak a word of French, and that’s soupe!”

I said, “My God, I thought Marseilles was somewhere on the Mediterranean Ocean, and that this was a gendarmerie.”

“But this is M-a-c-é. It’s a little mean town, where everybody snickers and sneers at you if they see you’re a prisoner. They did at me.”

“Do you mean to say we’re espions too?”

“Of course!” B. said enthusiastically. “Thank God! And in to stay. Every time I think of the section sanitaire, and A. and his thugs, and the whole rotten red-taped Croix Rouge, I have to laugh. Cummings, I tell you this is the finest place on earth!”

A vision of the Chef de la section Sanitaire Ving-et-Un passed through my mind. The doughy face. Imitation-English-officer swagger. Large calves, squeaking puttees. The daily lecture: “I doughno what’s th’matter with you fellers. You look like nice boys. Well-edjucated. But you’re so dirty in your habits. You boys are always kickin’ because I don’t put you on a car together. I’m ashamed to do it, that’s why. I doughtwanta give this section a black eye. We gotta show these lousy Frenchmen what Americans are. We gotta show we’re superior to ’em. Those bastards doughno what a bath means. And you fellers are always hangin’ ’round, talkin’ with them dirty frog-eaters that does the cookin’ and the dirty work ’round here. How d’you boys expect me to give you a chance? I’d like to put you fellers on a car, I wanta see you boys happy. But I don’t dare to, that’s why. If you want me to send you out, you gotta shave and look neat, and keep away from them dirty Frenchmen. We Americans are over here to learn them lousy bastards something.”

I laughed for sheer joy.

A terrific tumult interrupted my mirth. “Par ici!”⁠—“Get out of the way you damn Polak!”⁠—“M’sieu, M’sieu!”⁠—“Over here!”⁠—“Mais non!”⁠—“Gott-ver-dummer!” I turned in terror to see my paillasse in the clutches of four men who were apparently rending it in as many directions.

One was a clean-shaven youngish man with lively eyes, alert and muscular, whom I identified as the man who had called me “Johnny.” He had hold of a corner of the mattress and was pulling against the possessor of the opposite corner: an incoherent personage enveloped in a buffoonery of amazing rags and patches, with a shabby head on which excited wisps of dirty hair stood upright in excitement, and the tall, ludicrous, extraordinary, almost noble figure of a dancing bear. A third corner of the paillasse was rudely grasped by a six-foot combination of yellow hair, red hooligan face, and sky-blue trousers; assisted by the undersized tasseled mucker in Belgian uniform, with a pimply rogue’s mug and unlimited impertinence of diction, who had awakened me by demanding if I wanted coffee. Albeit completely dazed by the uncouth vocal fracas, I realised in some manner that these hostile forces were contending, not for the possession of the mattress, but merely for the privilege of presenting the mattress to myself.

Before I could offer any advice on this delicate topic, a childish voice cried emphatically beside my ear: “Put the mattress here! What are you trying to do? There’s no use destroy‑ing a mat‑tress!”⁠—at the same moment the mattress rushed with cobalt strides in my direction, propelled by the successful efforts of the Belgian uniform and the hooligan visage, the clean-shaven man and the incoherent bear still desperately clutching their respective corners; and upon its arrival was seized with surprising strength by the owner of the child’s voice⁠—a fluffy little gnome-shaped man with a sensitive face which had suffered much⁠—and indignantly deposited beside B.’s bed in a space mysteriously cleared for its reception. The gnome immediately kneeled upon it and fell to carefully smoothing certain creases caused by the recent conflict, exclaiming slowly syllable by syllable: “Mon Dieu. Now, that’s better, you mustn’t do things like that.” The clean-shaven man regarded him loftily with folded arms, while the tassel and the trousers victoriously inquired if I had a cigarette?⁠—and upon receiving one apiece (also the gnome, and the clean-shaven man, who accepted his with some dignity) sat down without much ado on B.’s bed⁠—which groaned ominously in protest⁠—and hungrily fired questions at me. The bear meanwhile, looking as if nothing had happened, adjusted his ruffled costume with a satisfied air and (calmly gazing into the distance) began with singularly delicate fingers to stuff a stunted and ancient pipe with what appeared to be a mixture of wood and manure.

I was still answering questions, when a gnarled voice suddenly threatened, over our head: “Broom? You. Everybody. Clean. Surveillant says. Not me, no?”⁠—I started, expecting to see a parrot.

It was the silhouette.

A vulture-like figure stood before me, a demoralised broom clenched in one claw or fist: it had lean legs cased in shabby trousers, muscular shoulders covered with a rough shirt open at the neck, knotted arms, and a coarse insane face crammed beneath the visor of a cap. The face consisted of a rapid nose, droopy moustache, ferocious watery small eyes, a pugnacious chin, and sunken cheeks hideously smiling. There was something in the ensemble at once brutal and ridiculous, vigorous and pathetic.

Again I had not time to speak; for the hooligan in azure trousers hurled his butt at the bear’s feet, exclaiming: “There’s another for you, Polak!”⁠—jumped from the bed, seized the broom, and poured upon the vulture a torrent of Gott-ver-dummers, to which the latter replied copiously and in kind. Then the red face bent within a few inches of my own, and for the first time I saw that it had recently been young⁠—“I say I do your sweep for you” it translated pleasantly. I thanked it; and the vulture, exclaiming: “Good. Good. Not me. Surveillant. Harree does it for everybody. Hee, hee”⁠—rushed off, followed by Harree and the tassel. Out of the corner of my eye I watched the tall, ludicrous, extraordinary, almost proud figure of the bear stoop with quiet dignity, the musical fingers close with a singular delicacy upon the moist indescribable eighth-of-an-inch of tobacco.

I did not know that this was a Delectable Mountain.⁠ ⁠…

The clean-shaven man (who appeared to have been completely won over by his smoke), and the fluffy gnome, who had completed the arrangement of my paillasse, now entered into conversation with myself and B.; the clean-shaven one seating himself in Harree’s stead, the gnome declining (on the grounds that the bed was already sufficiently loaded) to occupy the place left vacant by the tassel’s exit, and leaning against the drab, sweating, poisonous wall. He managed, however, to call our attention to the shelf at B.’s head which he himself had constructed, and promised me a similar luxury toute de suite. He was a Russian, and had a wife and gosse in Paris. “My name is Monsieur Au-guste, at your service”⁠—and his gentle pale eyes sparkled. The clean-shaven talked distinct and absolutely perfect English. His name was Fritz. He was a Norwegian, a stoker on a ship. “You mustn’t mind that feller that wanted you to sweep. He’s crazy. They call him John the Baigneur. He used to be the bathman. Now he’s Maître de Chambre. They wanted me to take it⁠—I said, ‘F⁠⸺ it, I don’t want it.’ Let him have it. That’s no kind of a job, everyone complaining and on top of you morning till night. ‘Let them that wants the job take it’ I said. That crazy Dutchman’s been here for two years. They told him to get out and he wouldn’t, he was too fond of the booze” (I jumped at the slang) “and the girls. They took it away from John and give it to that little Ree-shar feller, that doctor. That was a swell job he had, baigneur, too. All the bloody liquor you can drink and a girl every time you want one. He ain’t never had a girl in his life, that Ree-shar feller.” His laughter was hard, clear, cynical. “That Pompom, the little Belgian feller was just here, he’s a great one for the girls. He and Harree. Always getting cabinot. I got it twice myself since I been here.”

All this time the enormous room was filling gradually with dirty light. In the further end six figures were brooming furiously, yelling to each other in the dust like demons. A seventh, Harree, was loping to and fro splashing water from a pail and enveloping everything and everybody in a ponderous and blasphemous fog of Gott-ver-dummers. Along three sides (with the exception, that is, of the nearer end, which boasted the sole door) were laid, with their lengths at right angles to the wall, at intervals of three or four feet, something like forty paillasses. On each, with half a dozen exceptions (where the occupants had not yet finished their coffee or were on duty for the corvée) lay the headless body of a man smothered in its blanket, only the boots showing.

The demons were working towards our end of the room. Harree had got his broom and was assisting. Nearer and nearer they came; converging, they united their separate heaps of filth in a loudly stinking single mound at the door. Brooms were stacked against the wall in the corner. The men strolled back to their mattresses.

Monsieur Auguste, whose French had not been able to keep pace with Fritz’s English, saw his chance, and proposed “now that the Room is all clean, let us go take a little walk, the three of us.” Fritz understood perfectly, and rose, remarking as he fingered his immaculate chin “Well, I guess I’ll take a shave before the bloody planton comes”⁠—and Monsieur Auguste, B., and I started down the room.