Page:The Enormous Room.pdf/198

Rh Let me first describe a Sunday morning when we lifted our heads to the fight of the stove-pipes.

I was awakened by a roar, a human roar, a roar such as only a Hollander can make when a Hollander is honestly angry. As I rose from the domain of the subconscious, the idea that the roar belonged to Bill The Hollander became conviction. Bill The Hollander, alias America Lakes, slept next to The Young Pole (by whom I refer to that young stupid-looking farmer with that peaches-and-cream complexion and those black puttees who had formed the rear rank, with the aid of The Zulu Himself, upon the arrival of Babysnatcher, Bill, Box, Zulu, and Young Pole aforesaid). Now this same Young Pole was a case. Insufferably vain and self-confident was he. Monsieur Auguste palliated most of his conceited offensiveness on the ground that he was un garçon; we on the ground that he was obviously and unmistakably The Zulu's friend. This Young Pole, I remember, had me design upon the wall over his paillasse (shortly after his arrival) a virile soldat clutching a somewhat dubious flag—I made the latter from descriptions furnished by Monsieur Auguste and The Young Pole himself—intended, I may add, to be the flag of Poland. Underneath which beautiful picture I was instructed to perpetrate the flourishing inscription

"Vive la Pologne"

which I did to the best of my limited ability and for Monsieur Auguste's sake. No sooner was the photographie complete than The Young Pole, patriotically elated, set out to demonstrate the superiority of his race and nation by making himself obnoxious. I will give him this credit: he was pas méchant, he was, in fact, a stupid boy. The Fighting Sheeney temporarily took him down a peg by flooring him in the nightly "Boxe" which The Fighting Sheeney instituted immediately upon the arrival of The Trick Raincoat—a previous acquaintance of The Sheeney's at La Santé; the similarity of occupations (or non-occupation; I refer to the profession of pimp) having cemented a friendship between these two. But, for all that The Young Pole's Sunday-best clothes were covered with