The Enormous Room · Chapter 5 (1/4)

V

A Group of Portraits

With the reader’s permission I beg, at this point of my narrative, to indulge in one or two extrinsic observations.

In the preceding pages I have described my Pilgrim’s Progress from the Slough of Despond, commonly known as Section Sanitaire Vingt-et-Un (then located at Germaine) through the mysteries of Noyon, Gré and Paris to the Porte de Triage de La Ferté Macé, Orne. With the end of my first day as a certified inhabitant of the latter institution a definite progression is brought to a close. Beginning with my second day at La Ferté a new period opens. This period extends to the moment of my departure and includes the discovery of The Delectable Mountains, two of which⁠—The Wanderer and I shall not say the other⁠—have already been sighted. It is like a vast grey box in which are laid helter-skelter a great many toys, each of which is itself completely significant apart from the always unchanging temporal dimension which merely contains it along with the rest. I make this point clear for the benefit of any of my readers who have not had the distinguished privilege of being in jail. To those who have been in jail my meaning is at once apparent; particularly if they have had the highly enlightening experience of being in jail with a perfectly indefinite sentence. How, in such a case, could events occur and be remembered otherwise than as individualities distinct from Time Itself? Or, since one day and the next are the same to such a prisoner, where does Time come in at all? Obviously, once the prisoner is habituated to his environment, once he accepts the fact that speculation as to when he will regain his liberty cannot possibly shorten the hours of his incarceration and may very well drive him into a state of unhappiness (not to say morbidity), events can no longer succeed each other: whatever happens, while it may happen in connection with some other perfectly distinct happenings, does not happen in a scale of temporal priorities⁠—each happening is self-sufficient, irrespective of minutes, months and the other treasures of freedom.

It is for this reason that I do not purpose to inflict upon the reader a diary of my alternative aliveness and nonexistence at La Ferté⁠—not because such a diary would unutterably bore him, but because the diary or time method is a technique which cannot possibly do justice to timelessness. I shall (on the contrary) lift from their grey box at random certain (to me) more or less astonishing toys; which may or may not please the reader, but whose colours and shapes and textures are a part of that actual Present⁠—without future and past⁠—whereof they alone are cognizant who⁠—so to speak⁠—have submitted to an amputation of the world.

I have already stated that La Ferté was a Porte de Triage⁠—that is to say, a place where suspects of all varieties were herded by le gouvernement français preparatory to their being judged as to their guilt by a Commission. If the Commission found that they were wicked persons or dangerous persons, or undesirable persons, or puzzling persons, or persons in some way insusceptible of analysis, they were sent from La Ferté to a “regular” prison, called Précigne, in the province of Sarthe. About Précigne the most awful rumors were spread. It was whispered that it had a huge moat about it, with an infinity of barbed wire fences thirty-feet high, and lights trained on the walls all night to discourage the escape of prisoners. Once in Précigne you were “in” for good and all, pour la durée de la guerre, which durée was a subject of occasional and dismal speculation⁠—occasional for reasons, as I have mentioned, of mental health; dismal for unreasons of diet, privation, filth, and other trifles. La Ferté was, then, a stepping stone either to freedom or to Précigne. But the excellent and inimitable and altogether benignant French Government was not satisfied with its own generosity in presenting one merely with Précigne⁠—beyond that lurked a cauchemar called by the singularly poetic name: Isle de Groix. A man who went to Isle de Groix was done.

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? Anyone whom the police could find in the lovely country of France (a) who was not guilty of treason (b) who could not prove that he was not guilty of treason. By treason I refer to any little annoying habits of independent thought or action which en temps de guerre are put in a hole and covered over, with the somewhat naive idea that from their cadavers violets will grow, whereof the perfume will delight all good men and true and make such worthy citizens forget their sorrows. Fort Leavenworth, for instance, emanates even now a perfume which is utterly delightful to certain Americans. Just how many La Fertés France boasted (and for all I know may still boast) God Himself knows. At least, in that Republic, amnesty has been proclaimed, or so I hear.⁠—But to return to the Surveillants remark.

J’avais de la chance. Because I am by profession a painter and a writer. Whereas my very good friends, all of them deeply suspicious characters, most of them traitors, without exception lucky to have the use of their cervical vertebrae, etc., etc., could (with a few exceptions) write not a word and read not a word; neither could they faire la photographie as Monsieur Auguste chucklingly called it (at which I blushed with pleasure): worst of all, the majority of these dark criminals who had been caught in nefarious plots against the honour of France were totally unable to speak French. Curious thing. Often I pondered the unutterable and inextinguishable wisdom of the police, who⁠—undeterred by facts which would have deceived less astute intelligences into thinking that these men were either too stupid or too simple to be connoisseurs of the art of betrayal⁠—swooped upon their helpless prey with that indescribable courage which is the prerogative of policemen the world over, and bundled it into the La Fertés of that mighty nation upon some, at least, of whose public buildings it seems to me that I remember reading:

Liberté.

Egalité.

Fraternité.

And I wondered that France should have a use for Monsieur Auguste, who had been arrested (because he was a Russian) when his fellow munition workers struck and whose wife wanted him in Paris because she was hungry and because their child was getting to look queer and white. Monsieur Auguste, that desperate ruffian exactly five feet tall who⁠—when he could not keep from crying (one must think about one’s wife or even one’s child once or twice, I merely presume, if one loves them⁠—“et ma femme est très gen-tille, elle est fran-çaise et très belle, très, très belle, vrai-ment; elle n’est pas comme moi, un pet-it homme laid, ma femme est grande et belle, elle sait bien lire et é-crire, vrai-ment; et notre fils⁠ ⁠… vous dev-ez voir notre pet-it fils.⁠ ⁠…”)⁠—used to start up and cry out, taking B. by one arm and me by the other,

“Allons, mes amis! Chan-tons ‘Quackquackquack.’”

Whereupon we would join in the following song, which Monsieur Auguste had taught us with great care, and whose renditions gave him unspeakable delight:

“Un canard, déployant ses ailes

(Quackquackquack)

Il disait à sa canarde fidèle

(Quackquackquack)

Il disait (Quackquackquack)

Il faisait (Quackquackquack)

Quand” (spelling mine)

“finirons nos desseins,

Quack.

Quack.

Quack.

Qua-

ck.”

I suppose I will always puzzle over the ecstasies of That Wonderful Duck. And how Monsieur Auguste, the merest gnome of a man, would bend backwards in absolute laughter at this song’s spirited conclusion upon a note so low as to wither us all.

Then, too, the Schoolmaster.

A little fragile old man. His trousers were terrifically too big for him. When he walked (in an insecure and frightened way) his trousers did the most preposterous wrinkles. If he leaned against a tree in the cour, with a very old and also fragile pipe in his pocket⁠—the stem (which looked enormous in contrast to the owner) protruding therefrom⁠—his three-sizes too big collar would leap out so as to make his wizened neck appear no thicker than the white necktie which flowed upon his two-sizes too big shirt. He always wore a coat which reached below his knees, which coat, with which knees, perhaps someone had once given him. It had huge shoulders which sprouted, like wings, on either side of his elbows when he sat in The Enormous Room quietly writing at a tiny three-legged table, a very big pen walking away with his weak bony hand. His too big cap had a little button on top which looked like the head of a nail; and suggested that this old doll had once lost its poor grey head and had been repaired by means of tacking its head upon its neck, where it should be and properly belonged. Of what hideous crime was this being suspected? By some mistake he had three moustaches, two of them being eyebrows. He used to teach school in Alsace-Lorraine, and his sister is there. In speaking to you his kind face is peacefully reduced to triangles. And his tie buttons on every morning with a Bang! And off he goes; led about by his celluloid collar, gently worried about himself, delicately worried about the world. At eating time he looks sidelong as he stuffs soup into stiff lips. There are two holes where cheeks might have been. Lessons hide in his wrinkles. Bells ding in the oldness of eyes. Did he, by any chance, tell the children that there are such monstrous things as peace and good will⁠ ⁠… a corrupter of youth, no doubt⁠ ⁠… he is altogether incapable of anger, wholly timid and tintinnabulous. And he had always wanted so much to know⁠—if there were wild horses in America?

Yes, probably the Schoolmaster was a notorious seditionist. The all-wise French Government has its ways, which like the ways of God are wonderful.

I had almost forgot The Bear⁠—number two, not to be confused with the seeker of cigarette-ends. A big, shaggy person, a farmer, talked about “mon petit jardin,” an anarchist, wrote practically all the time (to the gentle annoyance of The Schoolmaster) at the queer-legged table; wrote letters (which he read aloud with evident satisfaction to himself) addressing “my confrères,” stimulating them to even greater efforts, telling them that the time was ripe, that the world consisted of brothers, etc. I liked The Bear. He had a sincerity which, if somewhat startlingly uncouth, was always definitely compelling. His French itself was both uncouth and startling. I hardly think he was a dangerous bear. Had I been the French Government I should have let him go berrying, as a bear must and should, to his heart’s content. Perhaps I liked him best for his great awkward way of presenting an idea⁠—he scooped it out of its environment with a hearty paw in a way which would have delighted anyone save le gouvernement français. He had, I think,

Vive la Liberté

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; which again means that he was essentially an artist⁠—for which reason I liked him more than a little. He lumbered off one day⁠—I hope to his brier-patch, and to his children, and to his confrères, and to all things excellent and livable and highly desirable to a bruin.