“Where the devil is the American?” cried the planton.
“Here I am.”
“Follow me.”
I followed his back and rump and holster through the little gate in the barbed wire fence and into the building, at which point he commanded “Proceed.”
I asked “Where?”
“Straight ahead,” he said angrily.
I proceeded. “Left!” he cried. I turned. A door confronted me. “Entrez,” he commanded. I did. An unremarkable looking gentleman in a French uniform, sitting at a sort of table. “Monsieur le médecin, le nouveau.” The doctor got up. “Open your shirt.” I did. “Take down your pants.” I did. “All right.” Then, as the planton was about to escort me from the room: “English?” he asked with curiosity. “No,” I said, “American.” “Vraiment”—he contemplated me with attention. “South American are you?” “United States” I explained. “Vraiment”—he looked curiously at me, not disagreeably in the least. “Pourquoi vous êtes ici?” “I don’t know,” I said smiling pleasantly, “except that my friend wrote some letters which were intercepted by the French censor.” “Ah,” he remarked. “C’est tout.”
And I departed. “Proceed!” cried the Black Holster. I retraced my steps, and was about to exit through the door leading to the cour, when “Stop! Nom de Dieu! Proceed!”
I asked “Where?” completely bewildered.
“Up,” he said angrily.
I turned to the stairs on the left, and climbed.
“Not so fast there,” he roared behind me.
I slowed up. We reached the landing. I was sure that the Gestionnaire was a very fierce man—probably a lean slight person who would rush at me from the nearest door saying “Hands up” in French, whatever that may be. The door opposite me stood open. I looked in. There was the Surveillant standing, hands behind back, approvingly regarding my progress. I was asking myself, Should I bow? when a scurrying and a tittering made me look left, along a dark and particularly dirty hall. Women’s voices … I almost fell with surprise. Were not those shadows’ faces peering a little boldly at me from doors? How many girls were there—it sounded as if there were a hundred—
“Qu’est-ce que vous faites,” etc., and the planton gave me a good shove in the direction of another flight of stairs. I obligingly ascended; thinking of the Surveillant as a spider, elegantly poised in the centre of his nefarious web, waiting for a fly to make too many struggles. …
At the top of this flight I was confronted by a second hall. A shut door indicated the existence of a being directly over the Surveillant’s holy head. Upon this door, lest I should lose time in speculating, was in ample letters inscribed:
Gestionnaire
I felt unutterably lost. I approached the door. I even started to push it.
“Attends, Nom de Dieu.” The planton gave me another shove, faced the door, knocked twice, and cried in accents of profound respect: “Monsieur le Gestionnaire”—after which he gazed at me with really supreme contempt, his neat pig-like face becoming almost circular.
I said to myself: This Gestionnaire, whoever he is, must be a very terrible person, a frightful person, a person utterly without mercy.
From within a heavy, stupid, pleasant voice lazily remarked:
“Entrez.”
The planton threw the door open, stood stiffly on the threshold, and gave me the look which plantons give to eggs when plantons are a little hungry.
I crossed the threshold, trembling with (let us hope) anger.
Before me, seated at a table, was a very fat personage with a black skull cap perched upon its head. Its face was possessed of an enormous nose, on which pince-nez precariously roosted; otherwise the face was large, whiskered, very German and had three chins. Extraordinary creature. Its belly, as it sat, was slightly dented by the tabletop, on which tabletop rested several enormous tomes similar to those employed by the recording angel on the Day of Judgment, an inkstand or two, innumerable pens and pencils, and some positively fatal looking papers. The person was dressed in worthy and semi-dismal clothes amply cut to afford a promenade for the big stomach. The coat was of that extremely thin black material which occasionally is affected by clerks and dentists and more often by librarians. If ever I looked upon an honest German jowl, or even upon a caricature thereof, I looked upon one now. Such a round fat red pleasant beer-drinking face as reminded me only and immediately of huge meerschaum pipes, Deutsche Verein mottos, sudsy seidels of Wurtzburger, and Jacob Wirth’s (once upon a time) brachwurst. Such pin-like pink merry eyes as made me think of Kris Kringle himself. Such extraordinarily huge reddish hands as might have grasped six seidels together in the Deutsche Küchen on 13th street. I gasped with pleasurable relief.
Monsieur le Gestionnaire looked as if he was trying very hard, with the aid of his beribboned glasses and librarian’s jacket (not to mention a very ponderous gold watch-chain and locket that were supported by his copious equator) to appear possessed of the solemnity necessarily emanating from his lofty and responsible office. This solemnity, however, met its Waterloo in his frank and stupid eyes, not to say his trilogy of cheerful chins—so much so that I felt like crying “Wie gehts!” and cracking him on his huge back. Such an animal! A contented animal, a bulbous animal; the only living hippopotamus in captivity, fresh from the Nile.
He contemplated me with a natural, under the circumstances, curiosity. He even naively contemplated me. As if I were hay. My hay-coloured head perhaps pleased him, as a hippopotamus. He would perhaps eat me. He grunted, exposing tobacco-yellow tusks, and his tiny eyes twittered. Finally he gradually uttered, with a thick accent, the following
