The beefy-neck bellowed:
“Are you all here?”
A shrill roar of language answered. He looked contemptuously around him, upon the thirty clamouring faces each of which wanted to eat him—puttees, revolver and all. Then he cried:
“Allez, descendez.”
Squirming, jostling, fighting, roaring, we poured slowly through the doorway. Ridiculously. Horribly. I felt like a glorious microbe in huge absurd din irrevocably swathed. B. was beside me. A little ahead Monsieur Auguste’s voice protested. Count Bragard brought up the rear.
When we reached the corridor nearly all the breath was knocked out of me. The corridor being wider than the stairs allowed me to inhale and look around. B. was yelling in my ear:
“Look at the Hollanders and the Belgians! They’re always ahead when it comes to food!”
Sure enough: John the Bathman, Harree and Pompom were leading this extraordinary procession. Fritz was right behind them, however, and pressing the leaders hard. I heard Monsieur Auguste crying in his child’s voice:
“If every-body goes slow-er we will ar-rive soon-er. You mustn’t act like that!”
Then suddenly the roar ceased. The melee integrated. We were marching in orderly ranks. B. said:
“The Surveillant!”
At the end of the corridor, opposite the kitchen window, there was a flight of stairs. On the third stair from the bottom stood (teetering a little slowly back and forth, his lean hands joined behind him and twitching regularly, a kepi tilted forward on his cadaverous head so that its visor almost hid the weak eyes sunkenly peering from under droopy eyebrows, his pompous rooster-like body immaculately attired in a shiny uniform, his puttees sleeked, his cross polished)—The Fencer. There was a renovated look about him which made me laugh. Also his pose was ludicrously suggestive of Napoleon reviewing the armies of France.
Our column’s first rank moved by him. I expected it to continue ahead through the door and into the open air, as I had myself done in going from les douches to le cour; but it turned a sharp right and then sharp left, and I perceived a short hall, almost hidden by the stairs. In a moment I had passed The Fencer myself and entered the hall. In another moment I was in a room, pretty nearly square, filled with rows of pillars. On turning into the hall the column had come almost to a standstill. I saw that the reason for this slowing-down lay in the fact that on entering the room every man in turn passed a table and received a piece of bread from the chef. When B. and I came opposite the table the dispenser of bread smiled pleasantly and nodded to B., then selected a large hunk and pushed it rapidly into B.’s hands with an air of doing something which he shouldn’t. B. introduced me, whereupon the smile and selection was repeated.
“He thinks I’m a German,” B. explained in a whisper, “and that you are a German too.” Then aloud, to the cook: “My friend here needs a spoon. He just got here this morning and they haven’t given him one.”
The excellent person at the bread table hereupon said to me: “You shall go to the window and say I tell you to ask for spoon and you will catch one spoon”—and I broke through the waiting line, approached the kitchen-window, and demanded of a roguish face within:
“A spoon, please.”
The roguish face, which had been singing in a high faint voice to itself, replied critically but not unkindly:
“You’re a new one?”
I said that I was, that I had arrived late last night.
It disappeared, reappeared, and handed me a tin spoon and cup, saying:
“You haven’t a cup?”—“No,” I said.
“Here. Take this. Quick.” Nodding in the direction of the Surveillant, who was standing all this time on the stairs behind me.
I had expected from the cook’s phrase that something would be thrown at me which I should have to catch, and was accordingly somewhat relieved at the true state of affairs. On re-entering the salle à manger I was greeted by many cries and wavings, and looking in their direction perceived everybody uproariously seated at wooden benches which were placed on either side of an enormous wooden table. There was a tiny gap on one bench where a place had been saved for me by B., with the assistance of Monsieur Auguste, Count Bragard, Harree and several other fellow-convicts. In a moment I had straddled the bench and was occupying the gap, spoon and cup in hand, and ready for anything.
The din was perfectly terrific. It had a minutely large quality. Here and there, in a kind of sonal darkness, solid sincere unintelligible absurd wisps of profanity heavily flickered. Optically the phenomenon was equally remarkable: seated waggingly swaying corpselike figures, swaggering, pounding with their little spoons, roaring, hoarse, unkempt. Evidently Monsieur le Surveillant had been forgotten. All at once the roar bulged unbearably. The roguish man, followed by the chef himself, entered with a suffering waddle, each of them bearing a huge bowl of steaming something. At least six people immediately rose, gesturing and imploring: “Ici”—“Mais non, ici”—“Mettez par ici”—
The bearers plumped their burdens carefully down, one at the head of the table and one in the middle. The men opposite the bowls stood up. Every man seized the empty plate in front of him and shoved it into his neighbour’s hand; the plates moved toward the bowls, were
