And I think of Jean le Nègre … you are something to dream over, Jean; summer and winter (birds and darkness) you go walking into my head; you are a sudden and chocolate-coloured thing, in your hands you have a habit of holding six or eight plantons (which you are about to throw away) and the flesh of your body is like the flesh of a very deep cigar. Which I am still and always quietly smoking: always and still I am inhaling its very fragrant and remarkable muscles. But I doubt if ever I am quite through with you, if ever I will toss you out of my heart into the sawdust of forgetfulness. Kid, Boy, I’d like to tell you: la guerre est finie.
O yes, Jean: I do not forget, I remember Plenty; the snow’s coming, the snow will throw again a very big and gentle shadow into The Enormous Room and into the eyes of you and me walking always and wonderfully up and down….
—Boy, Kid, Nigger, with the strutting muscles—take me up into your mind once or twice before I die (you know why: just because the eyes of me and you will be full of dirt some day). Quickly take me up into the bright child of your mind, before we both go suddenly all loose and silly (you know how it will feel). Take me up (carefully, as if I were a toy) and play carefully with me, once or twice, before I and you go suddenly all limp and foolish. Once or twice before you go into great Jack roses and ivory—(once or twice, Boy, before we together go wonderfully down into the Big Dirt laughing, bumped with the last darkness).
XII.
THREE WISE MEN
It must have been late in November when la commission arrived. La commission, as I have said, visited La Ferté every three months. That is to say, B. and I (by arriving when we did) had just escaped its clutches. I consider this one of the luckiest things in my life.
La commission arrived one morning, and began work immediately.
A list was made of les hommes who were to pass la commission, another of les femmes. These lists were given to the planton with the Wooden Hand. In order to avert any delay, those of the men whose names fell in the first half of the list were not allowed to enjoy the usual stimulating activities afforded by La Ferté’s supreme environment: they were, in fact, confined to The Enormous Room, subject to instant call—moreover they were not called one by one, or as their respective turns came, but in groups of three or four; the idea being that la commission should suffer no smallest annoyance which might be occasioned by loss of time. There were always, in other words, eight or ten men waiting in the upper corridor opposite a disagreeably crisp door, which door belonged to that mysterious room wherein la commission transacted its inestimable affairs. Not more than a couple of yards away ten or eight women waited their turns. Conversation between the men and the women had been forbidden in the fiercest terms by Monsieur le Directeur: nevertheless conversation spasmodically occurred, thanks to the indulgent nature of the Wooden Hand. The Wooden Hand must have been cuckoo—he looked it. If he wasn’t I am totally at a loss to account for his indulgence.
B. and I spent a morning in The Enormous Room without results, an astonishing acquisition of nervousness excepted. Après la soupe (noon) we were conducted en haut, told to leave our spoons and bread (which we did) and—in company with several others whose names were within a furlong of the last man called—were descended to the corridor. All that afternoon we waited. Also we waited all next morning. We spent our time talking quietly with a buxom pink-cheeked Belgian girl who was in attendance as translator for one of les femmes. This Belgian told us that she was a permanent inhabitant of La Ferté, that she and another femme honnête occupied a room by themselves, that her brothers were at the front in Belgium, that her ability to speak fluently several languages (including English and German) made her invaluable to Messieurs la commission, that she had committed no crime, that she was held as a suspecte, that she was not entirely unhappy. She struck me immediately as being not only intelligent but alive. She questioned us in excellent English as to our offenses, and seemed much pleased to discover that we were—to all appearances—innocent of wrong-doing.
From time to time our subdued conversation was interrupted by admonitions from the amiable Wooden Hand. Twice the door SLAMMED open, and Monsieur le Directeur bounced out, frothing at the mouth and threatening everyone with infinite cabinot, on the ground that everyone’s deportment or lack of it was menacing the aplomb of the commissioners. Each time, the Black Holster appeared in the background and carried on his master’s bullying until everyone was completely terrified—after which we were left to ourselves and the Wooden Hand once again.
B. and I were allowed by the latter individual—he was that day, at least, an individual not merely a planton—to peek over his shoulder at the men’s list. The Wooden Hand even went so far as to escort our seditious minds to the nearness of their examination by the simple yet efficient method of placing one of his human fingers opposite the name of him who was (even at that moment) within, submitting to the inexorable justice of le gouvernement français. I cannot honestly say that the discovery of this proximity of ourselves to our respective fates wholly pleased us; yet we were so weary of waiting that it certainly did not wholly terrify us. All in all, I think I have never been so utterly un-at-ease as while waiting for the axe to fall, metaphorically speaking, upon our squawking heads.