The Enormous Room

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