Surplice bent backward, staring over his left, then his right, shoulder, pulled at his jacket first one way then the other—thereby making his improvised tail to wag, which sent The Enormous Room into spasms of merriment—finally caught sight of the incriminating appendage, pulled his coat to the left, seized the paper, tore it off, threw it fiercely down, and stamped madly on the crumpled 606; spluttering and blustering and waving his arms; slavering like a mad dog. Then he faced the most prominently vociferous corner and muttered thickly and crazily:
“Wuhwuhwuhwuhwuh….”
Then he strode rapidly to his paillasse and lay down; in which position I caught him, a few minutes later, smiling and even chuckling … very happy … as only an actor is happy whose efforts have been greeted with universal applause….
In addition to being called “Syph’lis” he was popularly known as “Chaude Pisse, the Pole.” If there is anything particularly terrifying about prisons, or at least imitations of prisons such as La Ferté, it is possibly the utter obviousness with which (quite unknown to themselves) the prisoners demonstrate willy-nilly certain fundamental psychological laws. The case of Surplice is a very exquisite example: everyone, of course, is afraid of les maladies vénériennes—accordingly all pick an individual (of whose inner life they know and desire to know nothing, whose external appearance satisfies the requirements of the mind à propos what is foul and disgusting) and, having tacitly agreed upon this individual as a Symbol of all that is evil, proceed to heap insults upon him and enjoy his very natural discomfiture … but I shall remember Surplice on his both knees sweeping sacredly together the spilled sawdust from a spittoon-box knocked over by the heel of the omnipotent planton; and smiling as he smiled at la messe when Monsieur le Curé told him that there was always Hell….
He told us one day a great and huge story of an important incident in his life, as follows:
“Monsieur, disabled me—yes, monsieur—disabled—I work, many people, house, very high, third floor, everybody, planks up there—planks no good—all shake…” (here he began to stagger and rotate before us) “begins to fall … falls, falls, all, all twenty-seven men—bricks— planks—wheelbarrows—all—ten metres … zuhzuhzuhzuhzuhPOOM!… everybody hurt, everybody killed, not me, injured … oui monsieur”—and he smiled, rubbing his head foolishly. Twenty-seven men, bricks, planks and wheelbarrows. Ten metres. Bricks and planks. Men and wheelbarrows….
Also he told us, one night, in his gentle, crazy, shrugging voice, that once upon a time he played the fiddle with a big woman in Alsace-Lorraine for fifty francs a night; “c’est la misère”—adding quietly, “I can play well, I can play anything, I can play n’importe quoi.”
Which I suppose and guess I scarcely believed—until one afternoon a man brought up a harmonica which he had purchased en ville; and the man tried it; and everyone tried it; and it was perhaps the cheapest instrument and the poorest that money can buy, even in the fair country of France; and everyone was disgusted—but, about six o’clock in the evening, a voice came from behind the last experimenter; a timid hasty voice:
“monsieur, monsieur, permettez?”
the last experimenter turned and to his amazement saw Chaude Pisse the Pole, whom everyone had (of course) forgotten.