Page:The Enormous Room.pdf/226

Rh smiled, rubbing his head foolishly. Twenty-seven men, bricks, planks and wheelbarrows. Ten metres. Bricks and planks. Men and wheelbarrows....

Also he told us, one night, in his gentle, crazy, shrugging voice, that once upon a time he played the fiddle with a big woman in Alsace-Lorraine for fifty francs a night; "c'est la misère"—adding quietly, "I can play well, I can play anything, I can play n'importe quoi."

Which I suppose and guess I scarcely believed—until one afternoon a man brought up a harmonica which he had purchased en ville; and the man tried it; and everyone tried it; and it was perhaps the cheapest instrument and the poorest that money can buy, even in the fair country of France; and everyone was disgusted—but, about six o'clock in the evening, a voice came from behind the last experimenter; a timid hasty voice:

"monsieur, monsieur, permettez?" the last experimenter turned and to his amazement saw Chaude Pisse the Pole, whom everyone had (of course) forgotten.

The man tossed the harmonica on the table with a scornful look (a menacingly scornful look) at the object of universal execration; and turned his back. Surplice, trembling from the summit of his filthy and beautiful head to the naked soles of his filthy and beautiful feet, covered the harmonica delicately and surely with one shaking paw; seated himself with a surprisingly deliberate and graceful gesture; closed his eyes, upon whose lashes there were big filthy tears ... and played....

... and suddenly:

He put the harmonica softly upon the table. He rose. He went quickly to his paillasse. He neither moved nor spoke nor responded to the calls for more music, to the cries of "Bis!"—"Bien joué!"—"Allez!"—"Va-g-y!" He was crying, quietly and carefully, to himself ... quietly and carefully crying, not wishing to annoy anyone ... hoping that people could not see that Their Fool had temporarily failed in his part.

The following day he was up as usual before anyone else,