John Passos - 1919

“Come along,” said the corporal. “Can’t ahnswer no question till you’ve seen Captain Cooper-Trahsk.” “But what about my slippers?” “You keep a civil tongue in your mouth and ahnswer all questions you’re harsked and it’ll be all the better for you…. Come along.”

When he followed the corporal down the same corridor he’d come in by all the English tommies stared at his bare feet. In the lavatory there was a shiny brass tap of cold water and a hunk of soap. First Joe took a long drink. He felt giddy and his knees were shaking. The cold water and washing his hands and face and feet made him feel better. The only thing he had to dry himself on was a roller towel already grimy. “Say, I need a shave,” he said. “You’ll ’ave to come along now,” said the corporal sternly. “But I got a Gillette somewheres….”

The corporal gave him an angry stare. They were going in the door of a nicely furnished office with a thick red and brown carpet on the floor. At a mahogany desk sat an elderly man with white hair and a round roastbeef face and lots of insignia on his uniform. “Is that…?” Joe began, but he saw that the corporal after clicking his heels and saluting had frozen into attention.

The elderly man raised his head and looked at them with a fatherly blue eye, “Ah… quite so…” he said. “Bring him up closer, corporal, and let’s have a look at him…. Isn’t he in rather a mess, corporal? You’d better give the poor beggar some shoes and stockings….” “Very good, sir,” said the corporal in a spiteful tone, stiffening to attention again. “At ease, corporal, at ease,” said the elderly man, putting on a pair of eyeglasses and looking at some papers on his desk. “This is… er… Zentner… claim American citizenship, eh?” “The name is Williams, sir.” “Ah, quite so… Joe Williams, seaman….” He fixed his blue eyes confidentially on Joe. “Is that your name, me boy?”

“Yessir.”

“Well, how do you come to be trying to get into England in wartime without passport or other identifying document?”

Joe told about how he had an American A.B. certificate and had been on the beach at B.A…. Buenos Aires. “And why were you… er… in this condition in the Argentine?” “Well, sir, I’d been on the Mallory Line and my ship sailed without me and I’d been painting the town red a little, sir, and the skipper pulled out ahead of schedule so that left me on the beach.”

“Ah… a hot time in the old town tonight… that sort of thing, eh?” The elderly man laughed; then suddenly he puckered up his brows. “Let me see… er… what steamer of the Mallory Line were you travelling on?” “The Patagonia , sir, and I wasn’t travellin’ on her, I was a seaman on board of her.”

The elderly man wrote a long while on a sheet of paper, then he lifted Joe’s cigarbox out of the desk drawer and began looking through the clippings and photographs. He brought out a photograph and turned it out so that Joe could see it. “Quite a pretty girl… is that your best beloved, Williams?” Joe blushed scarlet. “That’s my sister.” “I say she looks like a ripping girl… don’t you think so, corporal?” “Quite so, sir,” said the corporal distantly. “Now, me boy, if you know anything about the activities of German agents in South America… many of them are Americans or impostors masquerading as Americans… it’ll be much better for you to make a clean breast of it.”

“Honestly, sir,” said Joe, “I don’t know a thing about it. I was only in B.A. for a few days.” “Have you any parents living?” “My father’s a pretty sick man…. But I have my mother and sisters in Georgetown.” “Georgetown… Georgetown… let me see… isn’t that in British Guiana?” “It’s part of Washington, D.C.” “Of course… ah, I see you were in the navy….” The elderly man held off the picture of Joe and the two other gobs. Joe’s knees felt so weak he thought he was going to fall down. “No, sir, that was in the naval reserve.”

The elderly man put everything back in the cigarbox. “You can have these now, my boy…. You’d better give him a bit of breakfast and let him have an airing in the yard. He looks a bit weak on his pins, corporal.”

“Very good, sir.” The corporal saluted, and they marched out.

The breakfast was watery oatmeal, stale tea and two slices of bread with margarine on it. After it Joe felt hungrier than before. Still it was good to get out in the air, even if it was drizzling and the flagstones of the small courtyard where they put him were like ice to his bare feet under the thin slime of black mud that was over them.

There was another prisoner in the courtyard, a little fatfaced man in a derby hat and a brown overcoat, who came up to Joe immediately. “Say, are you an American?”

“Sure,” said Joe.

“My name’s Zentner… buyer in restaurant furnishings… from Chicago…. This is the tamnest outrage. Here I come to this tamned country to buy their tamned goods, to spend good American dollars…. Three days ago yet I placed a ten tousand dollar order in Sheffield. And they arrest me for a spy and I been here all night yet and only this morning vill they let me telephone the consulate. It is outrageous and I hafe a passport and visa all they vant. I can sue for this outrage. I shall take it to Vashington. I shall sue the British government for a hundred tousand dollars for defamation of character. Forty years an American citizen and my fader he came not from Chermany but from Poland…. And you, poor boy, I see that you haf no shoes. And they talk about the atrocious Chermans and if this ain’t an atrocity, vat is it?”

Joe was shivering and running round the court at a jogtrot to try to keep warm. Mr. Zentner took off his brown coat and handed it to him.

“Here, kid, you put that coat on.” “But, jeez, it’s too good; that’s damn nice of you.” “In adversity ve must help von anoder.”

“Dod gast it, if this is their spring, I hate to think what their winter’s like…. I’ll give the coat back to you when I go in. Jeez, my feet are cold…. Say, did they search you?” Mr. Zentner rolled up his eyes. “Outrageous,” he spluttered…“Vat indignities to a buyer from a neutral and friendly country. Vait till I tell the ambassador. I shall sue. I shall demand damages.” “Same here,” said Joe, laughing.

The corporal appeared in the door and shouted, “Williams.” Joe gave back the coat and shook Mr. Zentner’s fat hand. “Say, for Gawd’s sake, don’t forget to tell the consul there’s another American here. They’re talkin’ about sendin’ me to a concentration camp for duration.” “Sure, don’t vorry, boy. I’ll get you out,” said Mr. Zentner, puffing out his chest.

This time Joe was taken to a regular cell that had a little light and room to walk around. The corporal gave him a pair of shoes and some wool socks full of holes. He couldn’t get the shoes on but the socks warmed his feet up a little. At noon they handed him a kind of stew that was mostly potatoes with eyes in them and some more bread and margarine.

The third day when the turnkey brought the noonday slum, he brought a brownpaper package that had been opened. In it was a suit of clothes, shirt, flannel underwear, socks and even a necktie.

“There was a chit with it, but it’s against the regulaytions,” said the turnkey. “That outfit’ll make a bloomin’ toff out of you.”

Late that afternoon the turnkey told Joe to come along and he put on the clean collar that was too tight for his neck and the necktie and hitched up the pants that were much too big for him around the waist and followed along corridors and across a court full of tommies into a little office with a sentry at the door and a sergeant at a desk. Sitting on a chair was a busylooking young man with a straw hat on his knees. “’Ere’s your man, sir,” said the sergeant without looking at Joe. “I’ll let you question him.”