J. E. Bygate - "Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Durham"

Arthur Scott Bailey - "The Tale of Mrs. Ladybug"

George Chetwynd Griffith - "The Romance of Golden Star ..."

John Reed - "Ten Days That Shook the World"

Editorial
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

The Enormous Room

E >> Edward Estlin Cummings >> The Enormous Room




I marched the length of the room. The Enormous Room is filled with a new
and beautiful darkness, the darkness of the snow outside, falling and
falling and falling with the silent and actual gesture which has touched
the soundless country of my mind as a child touches a toy it loves....

Through the locked door I heard a nervous whisper: "_Dis a l'americain
que je veux parler avec lui._"--"_Me voici_" I said.

"Put your ear to the key-hole, _M'sieu' Jean_," said the Machine-Fixer's
voice. The voice of the little Machine-Fixer, tremendously excited. I
obey--"_Alors. Qu'est-ce que c'est, mon ami?_"

"_M'sieu' Jean! Le Directeur va vous appeler tout de suite!_ You must get
ready instantly! Wash and shave, eh? He's going to call you right away.
And don't forget! Oloron! You will ask to go to Oloron Sainte Marie,
where you can paint! Oloron Sainte Marie, Basse Pyrenees! _N'oubliez pas,
M'sieu' Jean! Et depechez-vous!_"

"_Merci bien, mon ami!_"--I remember now. The little Machine-Fixer and I
had talked. It seemed that _la commission_ had decided that I was not a
criminal, but only a suspect. As a suspect I would be sent to some place
in France, any place I wanted to go, provided it was not on or near the
sea coast. That was in order that I should not perhaps try to escape from
France. The Machine-Fixer had advised me to ask to go to Oloron Sainte
Marie. I should say that, as a painter, the Pyrenees particularly
appealed to me. "_Et qu'il fait beau, la-bas!_ The snow on the mountains!
And it's not cold. And what mountains! You can live there very cheaply.
As a suspect you will merely have to report once a month to the chief of
police of Oloron Sainte Marie; he's an old friend of mine! He's a fine,
fat, red-cheeked man, very kindly. He will make it easy for you, _M'sieu'
Jean_, and will help you out in every way, when you tell him you are a
friend of the little Belgian with the broken arm. Tell him I sent you.
You will have a very fine time, and you can paint: such scenery to paint!
My God--not like what you see from these windows. I advise you by all
means to ask to go to Oloron."

So thinking I lathered my face, standing before Judas' mirror.

"You don't rub enough," the Alsatian advised, "_il faut frotter bien!_" A
number of fellow-captives were regarding my toilet with surprise and
satisfaction. I discovered in the mirror an astounding beard and a good
layer of dirt. I worked busily, counselled by several voices, censured by
the Alsatian, encouraged by Judas himself. The shave and the wash
completed I felt considerably refreshed.

WHANG!

"_L'americain en bas!_" It was the Black Holster. I carefully adjusted my
tunic and obeyed him.

The Directeur and the Surveillant were in consultation when I entered the
latter's office. Apollyon, seated at a desk, surveyed me very fiercely.
His subordinate swayed to and fro, clasping and unclasping his hands
behind his back, and regarded me with an expression of almost
benevolence. The Black Holster guarded the doorway.

Turning on me ferociously: "Your friend is wicked, very wicked,
SAVEZ-VOUS?" Le Directeur shouted.

I answered quietly: "Oui? Je ne le savait pas."

"He is a bad fellow, a criminal, a traitor, an insult to civilization,"
Apollyon roared into my face.

"Yes?" I said again.

"You'd better be careful!" the Directeur shouted. "Do you know what's
happened to your friend?"

"_Sais pas_," I said.

"He's gone to prison where he belongs!" Apollyon roared. "Do you
understand what that means?"

"Perhaps," I answered, somewhat insolently I fear.

"You're lucky not to be there with him! Do you understand?" Monsieur Le
Directeur thundered, "and next time pick your friends better, take more
care, I tell you, or you'll go where he is--TO PRISON FOR THE REST OF THE
WAR!"

"With my friend I should be well content in prison!" I said evenly,
trying to keep looking through him and into the wall behind his black,
big, spidery body.

"In God's Name, what a fool!" the Directeur bellowed furiously--and the
Surveillant remarked pacifyingly: "He loves his comrade too much, that's
all."--"But his comrade is a traitor and a villain!" objected the Fiend,
at the top of his harsh voice--"_Comprenez-vous; votre ami est UN
SALOP!_" he snarled at me.

He seems afraid that I don't get his idea, I said to myself. "I
understand what you say," I assured him.

"And you don't believe it?" he screamed, showing his fangs and otherwise
looking like an exceedingly dangerous maniac.

"_Je ne le crois fas, Monsieur_."

"O God's name!" he shouted. "What a fool, _quel idiot_, what a beastly
fool!" And he did something through his froth-covered lips, something
remotely suggesting laughter.

Hereupon the Surveillant again intervened. I was mistaken. It was
lamentable. I could not be made to understand. Very true. But I had been
sent for--"Do you know, you have been decided to be a suspect?" Monsieur
le Surveillant turned to me, "and now you may choose where you wish to be
sent." Apollyon was blowing and wheezing and muttering ... clenching his
huge pinkish hands.

I addressed the Surveillant, ignoring Apollyon. "I should like, if I may,
to go to Oloron Sainte Marie."

"What do you want to go there for?" the Directeur exploded threateningly.

I explained that I was by profession an artist, and had always wanted to
view the Pyrenees. "The environment of Oloron would be most stimulating
to an artist--"

"Do you know it's near Spain?" he snapped, looking straight at me.

I knew it was, and therefore replied with a carefully childish ignorance:
"Spain? Indeed! Very interesting."

"You want to escape from France, that's it?" the Directeur snarled.

"Oh, I hardly should say that!" the Surveillant interposed soothingly;
"he is an artist, and Oloron is a very pleasant place for an artist. A
very nice place, I hardly think his choice of Oloron a cause for
suspicion. I should think it a very natural desire on his part."--His
superior subsided snarling.

After a few more questions I signed some papers which lay on the desk,
and was told by Apollyon to get out.

"When can I expect to leave?" I asked the Surveillant.

"Oh, it's only a matter of days, of weeks perhaps," he assured me
benignantly.

"You'll leave when it's proper for you to leave!" Apollyon burst out. "Do
you understand?"

"Yes, indeed. Thank you very much," I replied with a bow, and exited. On
the way to The Enormous Room the Black Holster said to me sharply:

"_Vous allez partir?_"

"_Oui._"

He gave me such a look as would have turned a mahogany piano leg into a
mound of smoking ashes, and slammed the key into the lock.

--Everyone gathered about me. "What news?"

"I have asked to go to Oloron as a suspect," I answered.

"You should have taken my advice and asked to go to Cannes," the fat
Alsatian reproached me. He had indeed spent a great while advising me;
but I trusted the little Machine-Fixer.

"_Parti?_" Jean le Negre said with huge eyes, touching me gently.

"No, no. Later, perhaps; not now," I assured him. And he patted my
shoulder and smiled, "_Bon!_" And we smoked a cigarette in honour of the
snow, of which Jean--in contrast to the majority of _les hommes_--highly
and unutterably approved. "_C'est jolie!_" he would say, laughing
wonderfully. And next morning he and I went on an exclusive promenade, I
in my _sabots_, Jean in a new pair of slippers which he had received
(after many requests) from the _bureau_. And we strode to and fro in the
muddy _cour_ admiring _la neige_, not speaking.

One day, after the snowfall, I received from Paris a complete set of
Shakespeare in the Everyman edition. I had forgotten completely that B.
and I--after trying and failing to get William Blake--had ordered and
paid for the better-known William; the ordering and communicating in
general being done with the collaboration of Monsieur Pet-airs. It was a
curious and interesting feeling which I experienced upon first opening to
"As You Like It" ... the volumes had been carefully inspected, I learned,
by the _secretaire_, in order to eliminate the possibility of their
concealing something valuable or dangerous. And in this connection let me
add that the _secretaire_ or (if not he) his superiors, were a good judge
of what is valuable--if not what is dangerous. I know this because,
whereas my family several times sent me socks in every case enclosing
cigarettes, I received invariably the former sans the latter. Perhaps it
is not fair to suspect the officials of La Ferte of this peculiarly mean
theft; I should, possibly, doubt the honesty of that very same French
censor whose intercepting of B.'s correspondence had motivated our
removal from the Section Sanitaire. Heaven knows I wish (like the Three
Wise Men) to give justice where justice is due.

Somehow or other, reading Shakespeare did not appeal to my disordered
mind. I tried Hamlet and Julius Caesar once or twice, and gave it up,
after telling a man who asked "Shah-kay-spare, who is Shah-kay-spare?"
that Mr. S. was the Homer of the English-speaking peoples--which remark,
to my surprise, appeared to convey a very definite idea to the questioner
and sent him away perfectly satisfied. Most of the timeless time I spent
promenading in the rain and sleet with Jean le Negre, or talking with
Mexique, or exchanging big gifts of silence with The Zulu. For Oloron--I
did not believe in it, and I did not particularly care. If I went away,
good; if I stayed, so long as Jean and The Zulu and Mexique were with me,
good. "_M'en fou pas mal_," pretty nearly summed up my philosophy.

At least the Surveillant let me alone on the Soi-Meme topic. After my
brief visit to Satan I wallowed in a perfect luxury of dirt. And no one
objected. On the contrary everyone (realizing that the enjoyment of dirt
may be made the basis of a fine art) beheld with something like
admiration my more and more uncouth appearance. Moreover, by being
dirtier than usual I was protesting in a (to me) very satisfactory way
against all that was neat and tidy and bigoted and solemn and founded
upon the anguish of my fine friends. And my fine friends, being my fine
friends, understood. Simultaneously with my arrival at the summit of
dirtiness--by the calendar, as I guess, December the twenty-first--came
the Black Holster into The Enormous Room and with an excited and angry
mien proclaimed loudly:

"_L'americain! Allez chez le Directeur. De suite._"

I protested mildly that I was dirty.

"_N'importe. Allez avec moi_," and down I went to the amazement of
everyone and the great amazement of myself. "By Jove! wait till he sees
me this time," I remarked half-audibly....

The Directeur said nothing when I entered.

The Directeur extended a piece of paper, which I read.

The Directeur said, with an attempt at amiability: "_Alors, vous allez
sortir._"

I looked at him in eleven-tenths of amazement. I was standing in the
bureau de Monsieur le Directeur du Camp de Triage de la Ferte Mace, Orne,
France, and holding in my hand a slip of paper which said that if there
was a man named Edward E. Cummings he should report immediately to the
American Embassy, Paris, and I had just heard the words:

"Well, you are going to leave."

Which words were pronounced in a voice so subdued, so constrained, so
mild, so altogether ingratiating, that I could not imagine to whom it
belonged. Surely not to the Fiend, to Apollyon, to the Prince of Hell, to
Satan, to Monsieur le Directeur du Camp de Triage de la Ferte Mace--

"Get ready. You will leave immediately."

Then I noticed the Surveillant. Upon his face I saw an almost smile. He
returned my gaze and remarked:

"_Uh-ah, uh-ah, Oui._"

"That's all," the Directeur said. "You will call for your money at the
_bureau_ of the Gestionnaire before leaving."

"Go and get ready," the Fencer said, and I certainly saw a smile....

"I? Am? Going? To? Paris?" somebody who certainly wasn't myself remarked
in a kind of whisper.

"_Parfaitement._"--Pettish. Apollyon. But how changed. Who the devil is
myself? Where in Hell am I? What is Paris--a place, a somewhere, a city,
life; (to live: infinitive. Present first singular: I live. Thou livest).
The Directeur. The Surveillant. La Ferte Mace, Orne, France. "Edward E.
Cummings will report immediately." Edward E. Cummings. The Surveillant. A
piece of yellow paper. The Directeur. A necktie. Paris. Life. _Liberte_.
_La liberte_. "_La Liberte!_" I almost shouted in agony.

"_Depechez-vous. Savez-vous, vous allez partir de suite. Cet apres-midi.
Pour Paris._"

I turned, I turned so suddenly as almost to bowl over the Black Holster,
Black Holster and all; I turned toward the door, I turned upon the Black
Holster, I turned into Edward E. Cummings, I turned into what was dead
and is now alive, I turned into a city, I turned into a dream--

I am standing in The Enormous Room for the last time. I am saying
good-bye. No, it is not I who am saying good-bye. It is in fact somebody
else, possibly myself. Perhaps myself has shaken hands with a little
creature with a wizened arm, a little creature in whose eyes tears for
some reason are; with a placid youth (Mexique?) who smiles and says
shakily:

"Good-bye, Johnny; I no for-get you,"

with a crazy old fellow who somehow or other has got inside B.'s tunic
and is gesticulating and crying out and laughing; with a frank-eyed boy
who claps me on the back and says:

"Good-bye and good luck t'you"

(is he The Young Skipper, by any chance?); with a lot of hungry wretched
beautiful people--I have given my bed to The Zulu, by Jove! and The Zulu
is even now standing guard over it, and his friend The Young Pole has
given me the address of "_mon ami_," and there are tears in The Young
Pole's eyes, and I seem to be amazingly tall and altogether tearless--and
this is the nice Norwegian, who got drunk at Bordeaux and stole three (or
four was it?) cans of sardines ... and now I feel before me someone who
also has tears in his eyes, someone who is in fact crying, someone whom I
feel to be very strong and young as he hugs me quietly in his firm, alert
arms, kissing me on both cheeks and on the lips....

"Goo-bye, boy!"

--O good-bye, good-bye, I am going away, Jean; have a good time, laugh
wonderfully when _la neige_ comes....

And I am standing somewhere with arms lifted up. "_Si vous avez une
lettre, sais-tu, il faut dire._ For if I find a letter on you it will go
hard with the man that gave it to you to take out." Black. The Black
Holster even. Does not examine my baggage. Wonder why? "_Allez!_" Jean's
letter to his gonzesse in Paris still safe in my little pocket under my
belt. Ha, ha, by God, that's a good one on you, you Black Holster, you
Very Black Holster. That's a good one. Glad I said good-bye to the cook.
Why didn't I give Monsieur Auguste's little friend, the _cordonnier_,
more than six francs for mending my shoes? He looked so injured. I am a
fool, and I am going into the street, and I am going by myself with no
_planton_ into the little street of the little city of La Ferte Mace
which is a little, a very little city in France, where once upon a time I
used to catch water for an old man....

I have already shaken hands with the Cook, and with the _cordonnier_ who
has beautifully mended my shoes. I am saying good-bye to _les deux
balayeurs_. I am shaking hands with the little (the very little)
Machine-Fixer again. I have again given him a franc and I have given
Garibaldi a franc. We had a drink a moment ago on me. The tavern is just
opposite the gare, where there will soon be a train. I will get upon the
soonness of the train and ride into the now of Paris. No, I must change
at a station called Briouse did you say, Good-bye, _mes amis, et bonne
chance!_ They disappear, pulling and pushing a cart _les deux balayeurs
... de mes couilles ..._ by Jove what a tin noise is coming, see the
wooden engineer, he makes a funny gesture utterly composed (composed
silently and entirely) of _merde_. _Merde!_ _Merde._ A wee tiny absurd
whistle coming from nowhere, from outside of me. Two men opposite. Jolt.
A few houses, a fence, a wall, a bit of _neige_ float foolishly by and
through a window. These gentlemen in my compartment do not seem to know
that La Misere exists. They are talking politics. Thinking that I don't
understand. By Jesus, that's a good one. "Pardon me, gentlemen, but does
one change at the next station for Paris?" Surprised. I thought so. "Yes,
Monsieur, the next station." By Hell I surprised somebody....

Who are a million, a trillion, a nonillion young men? All are standing. I
am standing. We are wedged in and on and over and under each other.
Sardines. Knew a man once who was arrested for stealing sardines. I,
sardine, look at three sardines, at three million sardines, at a carful
of sardines. How did I get here? Oh yes of course. Briouse. Horrible name
"Briouse." Made a bluff at riding _deuxieme classe_ on a _troisieme
classe_ ticket bought for me by _les deux balayeurs_. Gentleman in the
compartment talked French with me till conductor appeared. "Tickets,
gentlemen?" I extended mine dumbly. He gave me a look. "How? This is
third class!" I looked intelligently ignorant. "_Il ne comprend pas
francais_" says the gentleman. "Ah!" says the conductor, "tease ease
eye-ee thoorde claz tea-keat. You air een tea say-coend claz. You weel go
ean-too tea thoorde claz weal you yes pleace at once?" So I got stung
after all. Third is more amusing certainly, though god-damn hot with
these sardines, including myself of course. O yes of course. _Poilus en
permission._ Very old some. Others mere kids. Once saw a _planton_ who
never saw a razor. Yet he was _reforme. C'est la guerre._ Several of us
get off and stretch at a little tank-town-station. Engine thumping up
front somewhere in the darkness. Wait. They get their _bidons_ filled.
Wish I had a _bidon_, a _dis-donc bidon n'est-ce pas. Faut pas t'en
faire_, who sang or said that?

PEE-p....

We're off.

I am almost asleep. Or myself. What's the matter here? Sardines writhing
about, cut it out, no room for that sort of thing. Jolt.

"Paris."

Morning. Morning in Paris. I found my bed full of fleas this morning, and
I couldn't catch the fleas, though I tried hard because I was ashamed
that anyone should find fleas in my bed which is at the Hotel des Saints
Peres whither I went in a fiacre and the driver didn't know where it was.
Wonderful. This is the American embassy. I must look funny in my
_pelisse_. Thank God for the breakfast I ate somewhere ... good-looking
girl, Parisienne, at the switch-board upstairs. "Go right in, sir." A-I
English by God. So this is the person to whom Edward E. Cummings is
immediately to report.

"Is this Mr. Cummings?"

"Yes." Rather a young man, very young in fact. Jove I must look queer.

"Sit down! We've been looking all over creation for you."

"Yes?"

"Have some cigarettes?"

"Yes."

By God he gives me a sac of Bull. Extravagant they are at the American
Embassy. Can I roll one? I can. I do.

Conversation. Pleased to see me. Thought I was lost for good. Tried every
means to locate me. Just discovered where I was. What was it like? No,
really? You don't mean it! Well I'll be damned! Look here; this man B.,
what sort of a fellow is he? Well I'm interested to hear you say that.
Look at this correspondence. It seemed to me that a fellow who could
write like that wasn't dangerous. Must be a little queer. Tell me, isn't
he a trifle foolish? That's what I thought. Now I'd advise you to leave
France as soon as you can. They're picking up ambulance men left and
right, men who've got no business to be in Paris. Do you want to leave by
the next boat? I'd advise it. Good. Got money? If you haven't we'll pay
your fare. Or half of it. Plenty, eh? Norton-Harjes, I see. Mind going
second class? Good. Not much difference on this line. Now you can take
these papers and go to.... No time to lose, as she sails to-morrow.
That's it. Grab a taxi, and hustle. When you've got those signatures
bring them to me and I'll fix you all up. Get your ticket first, here's a
letter to the manager of the Compagnie Generale. Then go through the
police department. You can do it if you hurry. See you later. Make it
quick, eh? Good-bye!

The streets. _Les rues de Paris._ I walked past Notre Dame. I bought
tobacco. Jews are peddling things with American trade-marks on them,
because in a day or two it's Christmas I suppose. Jesus it is cold. Dirty
snow. Huddling people. _La guerre._ Always _la guerre_. And chill. Goes
through these big mittens. To-morrow I shall be on the ocean. Pretty neat
the way that passport was put through. Rode all day in a taxi, two
cylinders, running on one. Everywhere waiting lines. I stepped to the
head and was attended to by the officials of the great and good French
Government. Gad that's a good one. A good one on _le gouvernement
francais_. Pretty good. _Les rues sont tristes._ Perhaps there's no
Christmas, perhaps the French Government has forbidden Christmas. Clerk
at Norton-Harjes seemed astonished to see me. O God it is cold in Paris.
Everyone looks hard under lamplight, because it's winter I suppose.
Everyone hurried. Everyone hard. Everyone cold. Everyone huddling.
Everyone alive; alive: alive.

Shall I give this man five francs for dressing my hand? He said "anything
you like, monsieur." Ship's doctor's probably well-paid. Probably not.
Better hurry before I put my lunch. Awe-inspiring stink, because it's in
the bow. Little member of the crew immersing his guess-what in a can of
some liquid or other, groaning from time to time, staggers when the boat
tilts. "_Merci bien, Monsieur!_" That was the proper thing. Now for
the--never can reach it--here's the _premiere classe_ one--any port in a
storm.... Feel better now. Narrowly missed American officer but just
managed to make it. Was it yesterday or day before saw the Vaterland, I
mean the what deuce is it--the biggest afloat in the world boat. Damned
rough. Snow falling. Almost slid through the railing that time. Snow. The
snow is falling into the sea; which quietly receives it: into which it
utterly and peacefully disappears. Man with a college degree returning
from Spain, not disagreeable sort, talks Spanish with that fat man who's
an Argentinian.--Tinian?--Tinish, perhaps. All the same. In other words
Tin. Nobody at the table knows I speak English or am American. Hell,
that's a good one on nobody. That's a pretty fat kind of a joke on
nobody. Think I'm French. Talk mostly with those three or four Frenchmen
going on permission to somewhere via New York. One has an accordion. Like
second class. Wait till you see the _gratte-ciels_, I tell 'em. They say
"_Oui?_" and don't believe. I'll show them. America. The land of the flea
and the home of the dag'--short for dago of course. My spirits are
constantly improving. Funny Christmas, second day out. Wonder if we'll
dock New Year's Day. My God what a list to starboard. They say a waiter
broke his arm when it happened, ballast shifted. Don't believe it.
Something wrong. I know I nearly fell downstairs....

My God what an ugly island. Hope we don't stay here long. All the
red-bloods first-class much excited about land. Damned ugly, I think.

Hullo.

The tall, impossibly tall, incomparably tall, city shoulderingly upward
into hard sunlight leaned a little through the octaves of its parallel
edges, leaningly strode upward into firm hard snowy sunlight; the noises
of America nearingly throbbed with smokes and hurrying dots which are men
and which are women and which are things new and curious and hard and
strange and vibrant and immense, lifting with a great ondulous stride
firmly into immortal sunlight....

Copyright (c) 2007. topboookz.com. All rights reserved.