The Enormous Room | Page 8

I had come to New
York and studied painting, that I had enlisted in New York as
conducteur voluntaire, embarking for France shortly after, about the
middle of April.
Monsieur asked: "You met B---- on the paquebot?" I said I did.
Monsieur glanced significantly around. The rosette nodded a number of
times. The moustache rang.
I understood that these kind people were planning to make me out the
innocent victim of a wily villain, and could not forbear a smile. _C'est
rigoler_, I said to myself; they'll have a great time doing it.
"You and your friend were together in Paris?" I said "yes." "How
long?" "A month, while we were waiting for our uniforms."
A significant look by Monsieur, which is echoed by his confrères.
Leaning forward Monsieur asked coldly and carefully: "What did you
do in Paris?" to which I responded briefly and warmly: "We had a good
time."
This reply pleased the rosette hugely. He wagged his head till I thought
it would have tumbled off. Even the mustache seemed amused.
Monsieur le Ministre de la Sureté de Noyon bit his lip. "Never mind
writing that down," he directed the lawyer. Then, returning to the
charge:
"You had a great deal of trouble with Lieutenant A.?"

I laughed outright at this complimentary nomenclature. "Yes, we
certainly did."
He asked: "Why?"--so I sketched "Lieutenant" A. in vivid terms,
making use of certain choice expressions with which one of the "dirty
Frenchmen" attached to the section, a Parisien, master of argot, had
furnished me. My phraseology surprised my examiners, one of whom (I
think the moustache) observed sarcastically that I had made good use of
my time in Paris.
Monsieur le Ministre asked: Was it true (a) that B. and I were always
together and (b) preferred the company of the attached Frenchmen to
that of our fellow-Americans?--to which I answered in the affirmative.
Why? he wanted to know. So I explained that we felt that the more
French we knew and the better we knew the French the better for us;
expatiating a bit on the necessity for a complete mutual understanding
of the Latin and Anglo-Saxon races if victory was to be won.
Again the rosette nodded with approbation.
Monsieur le Ministre may have felt that he was losing his case, for he
played his trump card immediately: "You are aware that your friend has
written to friends in America and to his family very bad letters." "I am
not," I said.
In a flash I understood the motivation of Monsieur's visit to
Vingt-et-Un: the French censor had intercepted some of B.'s letters, and
had notified Mr. A. and Mr. A.'s translator, both of whom had
thankfully testified to the bad character of B. and (wishing very
naturally to get rid of both of us at once) had further averred that we
were always together and that consequently I might properly be
regarded as a suspicious character. Whereupon they had received
instructions to hold us at the section until Noyon could arrive and take
charge--hence our failure to obtain our long-overdue permission.
"Your friend," said Monsieur in English, "is here a short while ago. I
ask him if he is up in the aeroplane flying over Germans will he drop
the bombs on Germans and he say no, he will not drop any bombs on

Germans."
By this falsehood (such it happened to be) I confess that I was
nonplussed. In the first place, I was at the time innocent of third-degree
methods. Secondly, I remembered that, a week or so since, B., myself
and another American in the section had written a letter--which, on the
advice of the sous-lieutenant who accompanied Vingt-et-Un as
translator, we had addressed to the Under-Secretary of State in French
Aviation--asking that inasmuch as the American Government was
about to take over the Red Cross (which meant that all the Sanitary
Sections would be affiliated with the American, and no longer with the
French, Army) we three at any rate might be allowed to continue our
association with the French by enlisting in l'Esquadrille Lafayette. One
of the "dirty Frenchmen" had written the letter for us in the finest
language imaginable, from data supplied by ourselves.
"You write a letter, your friend and you, for French aviation?"
Here I corrected him: there were three of us; and why didn't he have the
third culprit arrested, might I ask? But he ignored this little digression,
and wanted to know: Why not American aviation?--to which I
answered: "Ah, but as my friend has so often said to me, the French are
after all the finest people in the world."
This double-blow stopped Noyon dead, but only for a second.
"Did your friend write this letter?"--"No," I answered truthfully.--"Who
did write it?"--"One of the Frenchmen attached to