Self Condemned

by Lewis, Wyndham

  They left Mrs. Waechter, and returned to their apartment. The smoke was thickening all the time, and they had not been in the apartment above four or five minutes before the water began coming in at the door, and they were soon standing with water over their shoes. “So they have got their hoses playing at last,” said René. “They must be shooting some back into the annex, to discourage the fire from spreading, I suppose.” But Hester was too tired and miserable to reply. They were both hastily collecting what had not found a place in the portmanteau, into another suitcase. René pulled the curtains aside, and the fire had now spread to the entire front of the hotel. Massive smoke was apt to obscure the flames. At one moment a leaping tongue of fire could be seen in front of a full-bellied black cloud, spreading out as it ascended into the sky: at another moment small and nimble flames would tumble and whirl as though escaping from something hotter than themselves. They both stood dreamily at the window: their eyes seemed to be saying to the flames, “Yes, all right. Leave nothing.”

  As they left the Room, René stopped and looked back. He was not looking at a room but at a life. “Farewell, three awful years!” he said. “You will soon be ashes.” But he did not wish that to happen. The Room was him, it was them, they might never be so happy again. And that was a dreadful thought: but it is what we always think when we say goodbye to something forever.

  The Russian was still there at his door; his eyes were apparently immune to smoke, but two huddled figures beyond him seemed to have their faces buried in handkerchiefs.

  “‘Bye,” said René. “You are waiting for flames, eh?”

  “I guess so,” the Russian replied, looking up the corridor.

  Leaving the annex, they crossed the road to Mrs. Waechter’s, and put the typewriter, rugs, attaché case, and another small suitcase down beside the other things in the hall. They went back to the sidewalk and walked slowly over towards the annex door. On the way, René looked at her and said, “I have a lot of manuscript in that suitcase we stored. I am going down into the cellar. No risk. I will go no farther than is safe.”

  But Hester’s face, which was quite stiff with cold, took on a peculiar expression. The muscles which were automatically directed to produce an expression of anguish, only succeeded in realizing a dismal snigger, tears rolling down her cheeks, caused by the intense cold. She poked her arm through his, however, and dragged him away from the annex, which they had reached. “There is nothing in that suitcase that matters, is there? Do not go back into the hotel,” she begged him. “No, I won’t allow you to go down into the cellar, René. Do come away.”

  He tolerated this forcible removal for a few yards only, then he stopped.

  “I shall only be down there for a few minutes,” he told her, as he moved back towards the annex door. “I am only going to have a look: if it is impossible to do anything about the suitcase, I will come back immediately.” He disengaged himself, crossed the sidewalk to the door, passed inside, and ran down the steps to the basement.

  Hester followed him up to the door, and there she took up her position, although there was a good deal of pushing to and fro.

  René found that there was not more than an inch of water in the corridor below street level, but it was extremely hot. Striking a match, he moved rapidly along the left wall as far as the furnace room. As he looked in he saw that the furnace was still functioning, and the light from one of its doors disclosed the fact that someone was standing near it. He went in and found that it was the Indian, who seemingly was warming himself and smoking a cigarette.

  “A good place when it’s forty below,” said the Indian.

  “Indeed it is,” René answered, warming his hands at the furnace. The Indian came forward, and with an expert deftness, opened another of the furnace doors.

  “All clinkers!” he said contemptuously, waving his hand towards the glare. René recalled that his job was said to be that of “an engineer,” which might mean anything from janitor to the designer of marine engines. But he certainly had a janitor’s or fireman’s indignation with the quality of the coal.

  “I am down here to see if I could get into the storage room.

  I have a large suitcase there.”

  The Indian shook his head.“I shouldn’t go much beyond this.”

  “You think it is unsafe?”

  “I damn well know it is,” the Indian answered irritably.“There is a very heavy door a few yards along there. It is fireproofed. The storeroom is beyond that. But the fire has almost reached it I guess. And the storeroom would be locked anyway.”

  “I will have a peek,” said René. As he left the furnace room, René heard the Indian mutter something.

  He wondered, of course, why the Indian had strong feelings about what lay beyond the door. And also, of course, it flitted through his mind that this was rather an odd place for him to be. But he thought it most likely that this man had come down there on the same errand as himself — which would account for his irritability: then had remained in the furnace room as the warmest place he could find.

  Out in the corridor he struck a match, and through the smoke (which was not so thick down here) he saw, he thought, the door. He walked in that direction. Suddenly, with the unexpectedness which always accompanies such experiences, he ran into the door, from which he recoiled with an exclamation of surprise. This surprise, too, was paradoxical, for naturally the door would be hot since the atmosphere was absolutely stifling. He fumbled for the door handle and snatched his hand away with outraged astonishment — in spite of the fact that if the door was hot its metal handle would certainly be hotter. He thrust his hand beneath his overcoat, where it was flexible below the pocket. His hand muffled in this way, he seized the door handle and violently turned it, pushing the door an inch or so open. Hot smoke poured out in his face, and there was the stench of burning which was intensely pungent. He was again taken entirely by surprise and was almost overcome as the inrush of smoke all but choked him. Almost in the same moment that he opened the door he pulled it towards him again, and it shut fast, it seeming to René that it was a new lock, it closed so easily. He staggered, coughing and spitting, away from the door, and as he could hardly see he felt his way along the wall until he reached the furnace room.

  As he stood just inside the door he heard the Indian’s laughter, who remarked genially, “Had a look-see for yourself. You don’t think you’ll go in and fetch your case?” René laughed grittily and shook his head.

  After a moment he said, “I had a look. The fire is nearer than you suppose.”

  “Oh no it isn’t.”

  “Have you looked in there recently?”

  “No,” the Indian said. “No need to do that.” He coughed and spat. “I’m sticking around down here. Waiting for those guys to put the fire out. And this is the warmest place I can find.” He continued to ponder darkly over the clinkers.

  With a good-night René left the furnace room and made haste to return to Hester. As he was moving along the corridor he recalled that during the instant while the door was ajar, and before his eyes had become full of smarting tears, he had seen a glow through the smoke. He computed that the fire was twenty yards or more beyond the door.

  When he reached the street door he found Hester standing just outside it, up to her ankles in water.The water was cataracting down the annex stairs, and across the sidewalk into the gutter, freezing as it went. And everywhere else, of course, there was quite thick ice, on which they certainly would have slipped, had they not been wearing their overshoes, whose India-rubber soles at least enabled them to stand. Without that they could not even have stood up, for they had not the lifelong habit of walking on ice of the Momacoans.

  Hester’s face, as he first caught sight of it, alarmed him, for she was beside herself, it was clear, with fear, cold and discouragement. He must get her, he thought, into some warm room as soon as possible. As soon as she saw him a congealed grin of rapture disfigured her face. “Ah, darling, that is good.” She was shive
ring, as he took her arm, and he led her as rapidly as possible across to Mrs.Waechter’s.

  This good woman hastened out to meet them, and led them into her parlour. Unsolicited, she proceeded to make a pot of tea for them, and when René spoke of the necessity of finding a lodging for the remainder of the night, she offered them a large room which happened to be empty. All this satisfactorily settled, René took his leave. “You sit here for a bit, the tea will help you to dégeler.” Hester was so profoundly chilled that she did not resist very much, telling him only not to be too long away.

  Mrs. Waechter came to the front door with him.

  “The hydrants being frozen gave the flames a big start. I hardly think they will stop them now.” — “Nor do I.” And René told her what he had seen when he opened the fire door near the furnace room. “It would take a stream of water as thick as the River St. Lawrence to drown all that. It has got too deep a hold. It started deep-down.” — “I guess it did.”And Mrs.Waechter shook her head.

  René made his way round to the front of the hotel. It was of course impossible to cut through by the side of the beverage room, so he made a wide detour. He slipped several times in his haste, the last time rolling over in the snow. After that he went slower, a little lame from his heavy fall. He came into the main road, which was now a brilliant and sinister scene, wildly lighted by the fire, and in a haze of smoke. Rather more than half-way up the block he reached a small hotel. Two firemen came up to its entrance from the opposite direction, and he stood aside to allow them to pass in. The first was dabbing his nose which was bleeding. They practically all of them suffered from nose bleeding, as the result of the great efforts they were obliged to make, in the appalling cold. Small icicles were hanging from the nostrils of the second fireman; and his moustache, where his breathing moistened it, was full of minute icicles too. Some of them depended in front of his mouth, where, however, his breath tended to melt them. Wherever there was moisture there was ice. These two men had come to the hotel for a cup of hot coffee. René also noticed later on various householders, giving the firemen warm drinks; women also brought cups of hot coffee to the firemen working the hoses.

  The proprietor was a French Canadian. He was a man who had spent some years in France and spoke French correctly. René and he had often talked together, and, when le sieur Jean Lafitte saw René enter his hotel, he called out genially, “Ah, vous voilà sans domicile. Où ce que vous allez gîter a présent?” Monsieur Lafitte was in the best of good temper. He was making money, and his principal rival was in process of elimination. Inside was a small beverage room where coffee and sandwiches were being served. It was full of refugees from the Hotel Blundell. There was a great clamour, as everyone wished to describe their sensations, to disclose their losses, to denounce the fire, to show their wounds. There were women with nothing but their fur coats covering their pyjamas, everything else left behind. There were men with singed hair and children with chattering teeth, chattering with fear and cold. As René entered a man near the door was complaining that firemen had seized him and refused to allow him the time even to cross the room, and fetch his money from the pocket of his suit, in the closet. But the topic that dominated all the others was the problem of insurance. The loudest howls, the most distended eyes, had an economic origin.

  René sat down and talked to an old American whom he knew slightly, and who was alone — but not alone from preference. It was quite clear that he could hardly bear to sit there, maintaining an involuntary silence. He was a little bag of fermenting words which, if René had not happened to sit down, would have burst: and there would have been a little figure conversing heatedly with itself, in the accents of Michigan and Illinois. For René, he was a little mine of information, waiting feverishly for its prospector, in the form of a parchment-pale, kid face, all its wrinkles tautly stretched, the neat silver-grey American suit enclosed in the neat dark padded overcoat, and the neat grey hat hung on the back of the head, its brim rising above the bright ironically darting grey eyes.

  All René had to say was “Well!” and he began at once; he was well-nigh incontinent.The fire, he blurted out, came up from the basement. It was already a well-nourished flame when it sprang through the mezzanine. And at this point the American assured him that with it seemed to come a very strong smell of benzene.

  “You first smelt benzene when you saw the flame?” said René.

  “Yes, but I smelt it everywhere.”

  Obviously the old drummer had a firebug story to tell. “I had an apartment on the mezzanine. From the beginning of the ringing of the bell, I had at most six minutes to dress and throw my things together. When I first put my head out of my room, when the bell rang, I saw a smallish flame: when I left the room less than ten minutes later there were big flames. The staircase, I don’t have to tell you, forks up from the lounge, joining the mezzanine balcony on either side. These flames were thirty or forty feet from the entrance to my apartment, and I, of course, had to go down the opposite side to them. In the apartment where the fire first hit the mezzanine the man was badly burned, and is in hospital.”

  “I see,” said René.

  The old American looked at him with his bright inquisitive eyes. “It was Mr. Martin who was ringing the bell,” he said impressively. “He had got there mighty quick. Your fellow countryman was pulling away there as if he had been ringing a church bell for morning prayers. Of course most people got out of my part of the hotel when I did. Many must have lost all their belongings. I had a grip and nothing else, and most of my stuff was still in the grip. I got back here last night. So packing wasn’t any problem for me. Oh boy was I glad! There’s plenty of people’s lost everything, and the firemen were rushing about shooing everybody out of their apartments, throwing them out in some cases.”

  “People in the upper floors?” René suggested.

  “No, just everywhere. It was all so sudden. I heard the elevator working non-stop, but that could not have lasted long because of the electricity. No time at all. Of course in the upper part of the hotel many of them had to come down on the fire escapes.

  As they put their hands on the old fire escapes they nearly froze to the metal.”

  “Was not the metal covered on the fire escapes?” René objected.

  “I guess not. But maybe it was the metal fire ladders of the hotel they were talking about. That lot — it was two women and two men — lost everything. And are they mad — why, one of them went round with a gun looking for Mrs. Plant, and your compatriot, Mr. Martin, they would like to find him too! But the management has done ‘the vanishing trick,’ as I heard a man say.”

  “Any casualties, any dead?”

  “They say there are seven Peasoups up in a top apartment, who didn’t hear the bell. They must be dead by now. A fireman tried to reach them, but he could not pass through the flames. I saw a woman jump out of a window.” He pointed out of the window.“There are three corpses right out there, along the edges of the sidewalk, waiting to go to the mortuary.”

  René left him, still talking. Outside in the hall there were numbers of people: there was one man in a blue dressing gown, thanking a woman for having bathed his feet (which were bare) in warm water. “Where are you going to get some shoes?” asked René. “I’m damned if I know,” said the man with a laugh, “nor where I am going to get anything else. Everything I possess is burned by this time.The firemen pulled me out of bed, practically carried me on to the fire escape.”

  René pushed his way out into the street again, and moved towards the fire.

  In front of the last house in the block, which was that of the Friseur, were three bodies with their faces covered, their feet on the edge of the gutter. Two reporters were bending over them, removing one by one the cloths which had been laid over the face. As René drew level with them they uncovered the nearest face. It was Affie.

  René stepped quickly forward. “Hold on a minute!” he said.

  The two reporters looked up. They were French Ca
nadians, he noticed. Affie’s head had a deep scar, reaching down to the left eye. One of the reporters pointed to the scar. “Looks as if someone had hit her on the head,” he said.

  “It does,” René said. Almost automatically he said to himself, “She must have got that while snooping. She must have had her eye at a keyhole … and someone came up behind her.” — Aloud, he said, “This was the manageress.”

  The two reporters opened their notebooks.“The manageress?”

  “Yes,” René answered. “Mrs. McAffie.”

  René crossed the road to observe the progress of the fire. He had to pick his way among the fire engines, which entirely blocked the roadway: but he found a path, stepping on and over hoses, shouted at by firemen, who would have him choose some other route. The irritation of these men increased as they noticed him shaking with laughter.

  He was thinking, “To be lying in the snow. Dead.” Perhaps he was dreaming. Here was something that was not in conformity with a waking reality. It was what was absurd in himself, that suddenly he had been confronted with. Sudden death presents its card with a leer. He thought now that he had seen a smile on Affie’s face. He could not be sure of this but he thought he had. She had understood the Absurd. So it was that he found himself doing what the firemen thought he was doing; it was a convulsion of meaningless mirth.

  He had now reached the other side of the road, and stood gazing up at the flaming edifice.

  There were groups of people standing all along the sidewalk, and gazing up, as he was. The two who were beside him were talking, and one of them was telling the other how he had telephoned to a friend the other side of the river. This friend had informed him that a huge cloud of smoke was spreading all over the city. René moved along until he was actually in front of the hotel. The noise was formidable, there was the throbbing of the engines, the firemen shouting to one another, the excited talk of the spectators, in addition to the roaring and crackling of flames, and occasional crashes inside the burning building, and less frequently, though more disagreeably, outside. A section, for instance, of burning wood and masonry fell almost on top of the men manipulating a fire escape: for several fire escapes were still feeling their way on the sides of the hotel, watching for guests who might still be there and seeking to escape. The fireman kept people at a distance, and René was already as near as he could get without protest. The fireman passed him, and asked a woman who was standing in her porch if she had some old socks she could give him. He held up his hands, both of which were becoming useless with frostbite. He followed her into the house, and came out a little later with his hands bandaged.