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. le 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 naïve 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 Surveillant 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 the 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 same prey 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 made la grève,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,vraiment;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,
“Al-lons,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 cane fidèle
( Quackquackquack )
Il chantait( Quackquackquack )
Il faisait( Quackquackquack )
Quand”( spelling mine )
“finiront 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 wore always a coat which reached below his knees,which coat with which knees perhaps some one 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 mustaches,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 tintinabulous. 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. But how about Emile?
The Schoolmaster
Emile the Bum. Is the reader acquainted with the cartoons of Mr. F. Opper? If not,he cannot properly relish this personage. Emile the Bum was a man of thought. In chasing his legs,his trousers’ seat scoots intriguingly up-and-to-the-side. How often,Emile the Bum,après la soupe,have I ascended behind thee;going slowly up and up and up the miserable stairs behind thy pants’ timed slackness. Emile possesses a scarf which he winds about his ample thighs,thereby connecting his otherwise elusively independent trousers with that very important individual—his stomach. His face is unshaven. He is unshorn. Like all Belgians he has a quid in his gums night and day,which quid he buys outside in the town;for in his capacity of Somethingorother( perhaps assistant sweeper )he journeys( under proper surveillance )occasionally from the gates which unthoughtful men may not leave. His F. Opper soul peeps from slippery little eyes. Having entered an argument—be its subject the rights of humanity,the price of potatoes,or the wisdom of warfare—Emile the Bum sticks to his theme and his man. He is,curiously enough,above all things sincere. He is almost treacherously sincere. Having argued a man to a standstill and won from him an object admission of complete defeat,Emile stalks rollingly away. Upon reaching a distance of perhaps five metres he suddenly makes a rush at his victim—having turned around with the velocity of lightning,in fact so quickly that no one saw him do it;—his victim writhes anew under the lash of Emile the Bum’s insatiate loquacity,—admits,confesses,begs pardon—and off Emile stalks rollingly...to turn again and dash back at his almost weeping opponent,thundering sputteringly with rejuvenated vigour,a vigour which annihilates everything( including reason )before it. Otherwise,considering that he is a Belgian,he is extraordinarily good-natured and minds his business rollingly and sucks his quid happily. Not a tremendously harmful individual,one could say...and why did the French government need him behind lock and key,I wonder? It was his fatal eloquence,doubtless,which betrayed him to the clutches of La Misère. Gendarmes are sensitive in peculiar ways;they do not stand for any misleading infor
mation upon the probable destiny of the price of potatoes—since it is their duty and their privilege to resent all that is seditious to The Government,and since The Government includes the Minister of Agriculture( or something ),and since the Minister of Something includes,of course,potatoes,and that means that no one is at liberty to in any way( however slightly or insinuatingly )insult a potato. I bet Emile the Bum insulted two potatoes.
We still have,however,the problem of the man in the Orange Cap. The man in the Orange Cap was,optically as well as in every other respect,delightful. Until The Zulu came( of which more later )he was a little and quietly lonely. The Zulu,however,played with him. He was always chasing The Zulu around trees in the cour;dodging,peeping,tagging him on his coat,and sometimes doing something like laughing. Before The Zulu came he was lonely because nobody would have anything to do with the little man in the Orange Cap. This was not because he had done something unpopular;on the contrary,he was perfectly well behaved. It was because he could not speak. Perhaps I should say with more accuracy that he could not articulate. This fact did not prevent the little man in the Orange Cap from being shy. When I asked him,one day,what he had been arrested for,he replied GOO in the shyest manner imaginable. He was altogether delightful. Subconsciously everyone was,of course,fearful that he himself would go nuts—everyone with the exception of those who had already gone nuts,who were in the wholly pleasant situation of having no fear. The still sane were therefore inclined to snub and otherwise affront their luckier fellow-sufferers—unless,as in the case of Bathhouse John,the insane was fully protected by a number of unbeatable gentlemen of his own nationality. The little person was snubbed and affronted at every turn. He didn’t care the littlest personal bit,beyond being quietly lonely so far as his big blue expressionless eyes were concerned,and keeping out of the way when fights were on. Which fights he sometimes caught himself enjoying,whereupon he would go sit under a very small apple-tree and ruminate thoroughly upon non-existence until he had sufficiently punished himself. I still don’t see how the gouvernement français decided to need him at La Ferté,unless—ah! that’s it...he was really a super-intelligent crook who had robbed the cabinet of the greatest cabinet-minister of the greatest cabinet-minister’s cabinet papers,a crime involving the remarkable and demoralizing disclosure that President Poincaré had,the night before,been discovered in an unequal hand to hand battle with a défaitistically minded bed-bug...and all the apparent idiocy of the little man with the Orange Cap was a skillfully executed bluff...and probably he was,even when I knew him,gathering evidence of a nature so derogatory as to be well-nigh unpublishable even by the disgusting Défaitiste Organ Itself;evidence about the innocent and faithful plantons...yes,now I remember,I asked him in French if it wasn’t a fine day( because,as always,it was raining,and he and I alone had dared the promenade together )and he looked me straight in the eyes,and said WOO,and smiled shyly. That would seem to corroborate the theory that he was a master mind,for( obviously )the letters W,O,O,stand for Wilhelm,Ober,Olles,which again is Austrian for Down With Yale. Yes,yes. Le gouvernement français was right,as always. Somebody once told me that the little person was an Austrian,and that The Silent Man was an Austrian,and that—whisper it—they were both Austrians! And that was why they were arrested;just as so-and-so( being a Turk )was naturally arrested,and so-and-so,a Pole,was inevitable naturally and of course( en temps de guerre )arrested. And me,an American;wasn’t me arrested? I said Me certainly was,and Me’s friend,too.
Once I did see the Orange Cap walk shyly up to The Silent Man. They looked at each other,both highly embarrassed,both perhaps conscious that they ought to say something Austrian to each other. The Silent Man looked away. The little person’s face became vacant and lonely,and he tip-toed quietly back to his apple-tree.
“So-and-so,being a Turk” moved in one night,paillasse and all—having arrived from Paris on a very late train,heavily guarded by three gendarmes—to a vacant spot temporarily which separated my bed from the next bed on my right. Of the five definite and confirmed amusements which were established at La Ferté—to wit( 1 )spitting( 2 )playing cards( 3 )insulting plantons( 4 )writing the girls,and( 5 )fighting—I possessed a slight aptitude for the first only. By long practice,leaning with various more accomplished artists from a window and attempting to hit either the sentinel below or a projecting window-ledge or a spot of mud which,after refined and difficult intellectual exercise,we all had succeeded in agreeing upon,I had become not to be sure a master of the art of spitting but a competitor to be reckoned with so far as accuracy was concerned. Spitting in bed was not only amusing,it was—for climatic and other reasons—a necessity. The vacant place to my right made a very agreeable not to say convenient spittoon. Not everyone,in fact only two or three,had my advantage. But everyone had to spit at night. As I lay in bed,having for the third time spit into my spittoon,I was roused by a vision in neatly pressed pajamas which had arisen from the darkness directly beside me. I sat up and confronted a small and as nearly as I could make out Jewish ghost,with sensitive eyes and an expression of mild protest centred in his talking cheeks. The language,said I,is Arabian—but who ever heard of an Arabian in pajamas? So I humbly apologized in French,explaining that his advent was to me as unexpected as it was pleasant. Next morning we exchanged the visiting-cards which prisoners use,that is to say he smoked one of my cigarettes and I one of his,and I learned that he was a Turk whose brother worked in Paris for a confectioner. With a very graceful and polite address he sought in his not over-copious baggage and produced,to my delight and astonishment,the most delicious sweet-meats which I have ever sampled. His generosity was as striking as his refinement. We were fast friends in fifteen minutes. Of an evening,subsequently,he would sit on B’s bed or mine and tell us about how he could not imagine that he could have been arrested;tell it with a restrained wonderment which we found extraordinarily agreeable. He was not at all annoyed when we questioned him about the Arabian Turkish and Persian languages,and when pressed he wrote a little for us with a simplicity and elegance that were truly enchanting. I have spent many contented minutes sitting alone copying certain of these rhythmic fragments. We hinted that he might perhaps sing,at which he merely blushed as if he were remembering( or possibly dreaming of )something distant and too pleasant for utterance.
He was altogether too polite not to have been needed at La Ferté.
In supposing that we needed a professor of dancing the French government made,perhaps,one little mistake—I am so bold as to say this because I recall that the extraordinary being in question was with us only a short while. Whither he went the Lord knows,but he left with great cheerfulness. A vain blond boy of perhaps eighteen in blue velvet corduroy pantaloons,who wore a big sash,and exclaimed to us all in confidence
“Moi,j’suis professeur de danse.”
Adding that he held at that minute “vingt diplômes”. The Hollanders had no use for him but we rather liked him—as you would like a somewhat absurd peacock who,for some reason,lit upon the sewer in which you were living for the eternal nonce. About him I remember nothing else;save that he talked boxing with an air of bravado and addressed everyone as “mon vieux”. When he left,clutching his baggage lightly and a little pale,it was as if our dung-heap were minus a butterfly. I imagine that Monsieur Malvy was fond of collecting butterflies—until he got collected himself. Some day I must visit him,at the Santé or whatever health resort he inhabits,and( introducing myself as one of those whom he sent to La Ferté-Macé )question him upon the subject.
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 confreres”,stimulating them to even greater efforts,telling them that the time was ri
pe,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 any one 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 or 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 waste-basket 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 confreres,and to all things excellent and livable and highly desirable to a bruin.
The Young Russian and The Barber escaped while I was enjoying my little visit at Orne. The former was an immensely tall and very strong boy of nineteen or under;who had come to our society by way of solitary confinement,bread and water for months,and other reminders that to err is human,etc. Unlike Harree,whom if anything he exceeded in strength,he was very quiet. Everyone let him alone. I “caught water” in the town with him several times and found him an excellent companion. He taught me the Russian numerals up to ten,and was very kind to my struggles over 10 and 9. He picked up the cannon-ball one day and threw it so hard that the wall separating the men’s cour from the cour des femmes shook,and a piece of stone fell off. At which the cannon-ball was taken away from us( to the grief of its daily wielders,Harree and Fritz )by four perspiring plantons who almost died in the performance of their highly patriotic duty. His friend,The Barber,had a little shelf in The Enormous Room,all tricked out with an astonishing array of bottles atomisers tonics powders scissors,razors and other deadly implements. It has always been a mystère to me that our captors permitted this array of obviously dangerous weapons when we were searched almost weekly for knives. Had I not been in the habit of using B’s safety-razor I should probably have become better acquainted with The Barber. It was not his price,nor yet his technique,but the fear of contamination which made me avoid these instruments of hygiene. Not that I shaved to excess. On the contrary,the Surveillant often,nay bi-weekly( so soon as I began drawing certain francs from Norton Harjes )reasoned with me upon the subject of appearance;saying that I was come of a good family,that I had enjoyed( unlike my companions )an education,and that I should keep myself neat and clean and be a shining example to the filthy and ignorant—adding slyly that the “hospital” would be an awfully nice place for me and my friend to live,and that there we could be by ourselves like gentlemen and have our meals served in the room,avoiding the salle à manger;moreover the food would be what we liked,delicious food,especially cooked...all( quoth the Surveillant with the itching palm of a Grand Central Porter awaiting his tip )for a mere trifle or so,which if I liked I could pay him on the spot—whereat I scornfully smiled,being inhibited by a somewhat selfish regard for my own welfare from kicking him through the window. To The Barber’s credit be it said : he never once solicited my trade,although the Surveillant’s “Soi-même” lectures( as B and I referred to them )were the delight of our numerous friends and must,through them,have reached his alert ears. He was a good-looking quiet man of perhaps thirty,with razor-keen eyes—and that’s about all I know of him except that one day The Young Russian and The Barber,instead of passing from the cour directly to the building,made use of a little door in an angle between the stone wall and the kitchen,and that to such good effect that we never saw them again. Nor were the ever-watchful guardians of our safety,the lion-hearted plantons,aware of what had occurred until several hours after;despite the fact that a ten-foot wall had been scaled,some lesser obstructions vanquished,and a run in the open made almost( one unpatriotically-minded might be tempted to say )before their very eyes. But then—who knows? May not the French government deliberately have allowed them to escape,after—through its incomparable spy system—learning that The Barber and his young friend were about to attempt the life of the Surveillant with an atomizer brim-full of T.N.T.? Nothing could after all be more highly probable. As a matter of fact,a couple of extra-fine razors( presented by the Soi-même-minded Surveillant to the wily coiffeur in the interests of public health )as well as a knife which belonged to the cuisine and had been lent to The Barber for the purpose of peeling potatoes—he having complained that the extraordinary safety-device with which,on alternate days,we were ordinarily furnished for that purpose,was an insult to himself and his profession—vanished into the rather thick air of Orne along with The Barber lui-même,I remember him perfectly in The Enormous Room,cutting apples deliberately with his knife and sharing them with The Young Russian. The night of the escape—in order to keep up our morale—we were helpfully told that both refugees had been snitched ere they had got well without the limits of the town,and been remanded to a punishment consisting,among other things,in travaux forcés à perpetuité—verbum sapientibus,he that hath ears,etc. Also a nightly inspection was instituted;consisting of our being counted thrice by a planton,who then divided the total by 3 and vanished.
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