United States or Paraguay ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The sweetly soft odour of newly cut wood was around me. And all the time that Afrique was talking I heard clearly, through the shut door and through the kitchen wall and through the locked door of the cabinot situated directly across the hall from la cuisine, the insane gasping voice of a girl singing and yelling and screeching and laughing.
Upon being sentenced to cabinot, whether for writing an intercepted letter, fighting, threatening a planton, or committing some minor offense for the nth time, a man took one blanket from his bed, carried it downstairs to the cachot, and disappeared therein for a night or many days and nights as the case might be.
To reach my own bed took but a second. In another second I was back, bearing my great and sacred pelisse. I marched up to Jean. "Jean" I remarked with a smile, "you are going to the cabinot but you're coming back right away. I know that you are perfectly right. Put that on" and I pushed him gently into my coat.
Before I could utter a syllable the Surveillant raised his hand for silence: le negre had done wrong. He should be placed in the cabinot. Like a flash, with a horrible tearing sob, Jean leaped from the surrounding plantons and rushed for the coat which lay on his bed screaming "AHHHHH mon couteau!"
What I saw was this: five or six plantons were engaged in carrying out of the nearest cabinot two girls, who looked perfectly dead. Their bodies were absolutely limp. Their hands dragged foolishly along the floor as they were carried. Their upward white faces dangled loosely upon their necks. Their crumpled fingers sagged in the planton's arms. I recognised Lily and Renee.
Lena's confinement in the cabinot which dungeon I have already attempted to describe but to whose filth and slime no words can begin to do justice was in this case solitary. Punctually at the expiration of thirty minutes she was shoved back into the cabinot by the plantons.
And a number of highly reputable spectators, such as Judas and The Fighting Sheeney himself, said it was The Young Pole's fault. "Allez! Au cabinot! De suits!" And off trickled the sobbing Young Pole, winding his great scarf comfortingly about him, to the dungeon. Some few minutes later we encountered The Zulu speaking with Monsieur Auguste. Monsieur Auguste was very sorry.
I spoke with both balayeurs that night. They told me, independently, the same story: the four incorrigibles had been locked in the cabinot ensemble. They made so much noise, particularly Lily, that the plantons were afraid the Directeur would be disturbed.
From the day that The Young Pole emerged from cabinot he was our friend. The blague had been at last knocked out of him, thanks to Un Mangeur de Blanc, as the little Machine-Fixer expressively called The Fighting Sheeney. "Bon, eh? Bien fait, eh?" and a few days later asked us for money, even hinting that he would be pleased to become our special protector.
"You're god damn right its malheureux" I said, forgetting my French. "Quand meme, he has resisted authority" The Surveillant gently continued: "Now Jean, be quiet, you will be taken to the cabinot. You may as well go quietly and behave yourself like a good boy." At this I am sure my eyes started out of my head. All I could think of to say was: "Attends, un petit moment."
Word Of The Day