The Enormous Room

E >> Edward Estlin Cummings >> The Enormous Room

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21

The right body collapsed sufficiently to deposit a bowl just inside.

I smiled and said: "Good morning, sirs. The can stinks."

They did not smile and said: "Naturally." I smiled and said: "Please give
me a pencil. I want to pass the time." They did not smile and said:
"Directly."

I smiled and said: "I want some water, if you please."

They shut the door, saying "Later."

Klang and footsteps.

I contemplate the bowl which contemplates me. A glaze of greenish grease
seals the mystery of its content, I induce two fingers to penetrate the
seal. They bring me up a flat sliver of cabbage and a large, hard,
thoughtful, solemn, uncooked bean. To pour the water off (it is warmish
and sticky) without committing a nuisance is to lift the cover off _Ca
Pue_. I did.

Thus leaving beans and cabbage-slivers. Which I ate hurryingly, fearing a
ventral misgiving.

I pass a lot of time cursing myself about the pencil, looking at my
walls, my unique interior.

Suddenly I realize the indisputable grip of nature's humorous hand. One
evidently stands on _Ca Pue_ in such cases. Having finished, panting with
stink, I tumble on the bed and consider my next move.

The straw will do. Ouch, but it's Dirty.--Several hours elapse....

Steps and fumble. Klang. Repetition of promise to Monsieur Savy, etc.

Turnkeyish and turnkeyish. Identical expression. One body collapses
sufficiently to deposit a hunk of bread and a piece of water.

"Give your bowl."

I gave it, smiled and said: "Well, how about that pencil?"

"Pencil?" T-c looked at T-c.

They recited then the following word: "To-morrow." Klang and footsteps.

So I took matches, burnt, and with just 60 of them wrote the first stanza
of a ballade. To-morrow I will write the second. Day after to-morrow the
third. Next day the refrain. After--oh, well.

My whistling of Petroushka brought no response this evening.

So I climbed on _Ca Pue_, whom I now regarded with complete friendliness;
the new moon was unclosing sticky wings in dusk, a far noise from near
things.

I sang a song the "dirty Frenchmen" taught us, _mon ami et moi_. The song
says _Bon soir, Madame de la Lune_.... I did not sing out loud, simply
because the moon was like a mademoiselle, and I did not want to offend
the moon. My friends: the silhouette and _la lune_, not counting _Ca
Pue_, whom I regarded almost as a part of me.

Then I lay down, and heard (but could not see the silhouette eat
something or somebody) ... and saw, but could not hear, the incense of
_Ca Pue_ mount gingerly upon the taking air of twilight.

The next day.--Promise to M. Savy. Whang. "My pencil?"--"You don't need
any pencil, you're going away."--"When?"--"Directly."--"How
directly?"--"In an hour or two: your friend has already gone before. Get
ready."

Klang and steps.

Everyone very sore about me. I should worry, however.

One hour, I guess.

Steps. Sudden throwing of door open. Pause.

"Come out, American."

As I came out, toting bed and bed-roll, I remarked: "I'm sorry to leave
you," which made T-c furiously to masticate his insignificant moustache.

Escorted to _bureau_, where I am turned over to a very fat _gendarme_.

"This is the American." The v-f-g eyed me, and I read my sins in his
porklike orbs. "Hurry, we have to walk," he ventured sullenly and
commandingly.

Himself stooped puffingly to pick up the segregated sack. And I placed my
bed, bed-roll, blankets and ample _pelisse_ under one arm, my 150-odd
pound duffle-bag under the other; then I paused. Then I said, "Where's my
cane?"

The v-f-g hereat had a sort of fit, which perfectly became him.

I repeated gently: "When I came to the _bureau_ I had a cane."

"I don't give a damn about your cane," burbled my new captor frothily,
his pink evil eyes swelling with wrath.

"I'm staying," I replied calmly, and sat down on a curb, in the midst of
my ponderous trinkets.

A crowd of _gendarmes_ gathered. One didn't take a cane with one to
prison (I was glad to know where I was bound, and thanked this
communicative gentleman); or criminals weren't allowed canes; or where
exactly did I think I was, in the Tuileries? asks a rube movie-cop
personage.

"Very well, gentlemen," I said. "You will allow me to tell you
something." (I was beet-colored.) "In America that sort of thing isn't
done."

This haughty inaccuracy produced an astonishing effect, namely, the
prestidigitatorial vanishment of the v-f-g. The v-f-g's numerous
_confreres_ looked scared and twirled their whiskers.

I sat on the curb and began to fill a paper with something which I found
in my pockets, certainly not tobacco.

Splutter-splutter-fizz-Poop--the v-f-g is back, with my oak-branch in his
raised hand, slithering opprobria and mostly crying: "Is that huge piece
of wood what you call a cane? It is, is it? What? How? What the--," so
on.

I beamed upon him and thanked him, and explained that a "dirty Frenchman"
had given it to me as a souvenir, and that I would now proceed.

Twisting the handle in the loop of my sack, and hoisting the vast parcel
under my arm, I essayed twice to boost it on my back. This to the
accompaniment of HurryHurryHurryHurryHurryHurryHurry.... The third time I
sweated and staggered to my feet, completely accoutred.

Down the road. Into the _ville_. Curious looks from a few pedestrians. A
driver stops his wagon to watch the spider and his outlandish fly. I
chuckled to think how long since I had washed and shaved. Then I nearly
fell, staggered on a few steps, and set down the two loads.

Perhaps it was the fault of a strictly vegetarian diet. At any rate, I
couldn't move a step farther with my bundles. The sun sent the sweat
along my nose in tickling waves. My eyes were blind.

Hereupon I suggested that the v-f-g carry part of one of my bundles with
me, and received the answer: "I am doing too much for you as it is. No
_gendarme_ is supposed to carry a prisoner's baggage."

I said then: "I'm too tired."

He responded: "You can leave here anything you don't care to carry
further; I'll take care of it."

I looked at the _gendarme_. I looked several blocks through him. My lip
did something like a sneer. My hands did something like fists.

At this crisis along comes a little boy. May God bless all males between
seven and ten years of age in France!

The _gendarme_ offered a suggestion, in these words: "Have you any change
about you?" He knew, of course, that the sanitary official's first act
had been to deprive me of every last cent. The _gendarme's_ eyes were
fine. They reminded me of ... never mind. "If you have change," said he,
"you might hire this kid to carry some of your baggage." Then he lit a
pipe which was made in his own image, and smiled fattily.

But herein the v-f-g had bust his milk-jug. There is a slit of a pocket
made in the uniform of his criminal on the right side, and completely
covered by the belt which his criminal always wears. His criminal had
thus outwitted the gumshoe fraternity.

The _gosse_ could scarcely balance my smaller parcel, but managed after
three rests to get it to the station platform; here I tipped him
something like two cents (all I had) which, with dollar-big eyes, he took
and ran.

A strongly-built, groomed _apache_ smelling of cologne and onions greeted
my v-f-g with that affection which is peculiar to _gendarmes_. On me he
stared cynically, then sneered frankly.

With a little tooty shriek the funny train tottered in. My captors had
taken pains to place themselves at the wrong end of the platform. Now
they encouraged me to HurryHurryHurry.

I managed to get under the load and tottered the length of the train to a
car especially reserved. There was one other criminal, a
beautifully-smiling, shortish man, with a very fine blanket wrapped in a
water-proof oilskin cover. We grinned at each other (the most cordial
salutation, by the way, that I have ever exchanged with a human being)
and sat down opposite one another--he, plus my baggage which he helped me
lift in, occupying one seat; the _gendarme_-sandwich, of which I formed
the _piece de resistance_, the other.

The engine got under way after several feints; which pleased the Germans
so that they sent several scout planes right over the station, train, us
_et tout_. All the French anticraft guns went off together for the sake
of sympathy; the guardians of the peace squinted cautiously from their
respective windows, and then began a debate on the number of the enemy
while their prisoners smiled at each other appreciatively.

"_Il fait chaud_," said this divine man, prisoner, criminal, or what not,
as he offered me a glass of wine in the form of a huge tin cup overflowed
from the canteen in his slightly unsteady and delicately made hand. He is
a Belgian. Volunteered at beginning of war. Permission at Paris,
overstayed by one day. When he reported to his officer, the latter
announced that he was a deserter--I said to him, "It is funny. It is
funny I should have come back, of my own free will, to my company. I
should have thought that being a deserter I would have preferred to
remain in Paris." The wine was terribly cold, and I thanked my divine
host.

Never have I tasted such wine.

They had given me a chunk of war-bread in place of blessing when I left
Noyon. I bit into it with renewed might. But the divine man across from
me immediately produced a sausage, half of which he laid simply upon my
knee. The halving was done with a large keen poilu's knife.

I have not tasted a sausage since.

The pigs on my either hand had by this time overcome their respective
inertias and were chomping cheek-murdering chunks. They had quite a
layout, a regular picnic-lunch elaborate enough for kings or even
presidents. The v-f-g in particular annoyed me by uttering alternate
chompings and belchings. All the time he ate he kept his eyes half-shut;
and a mist overspread the sensual meadows of his coarse face.

His two reddish eyes rolled devouringly toward the blanket in its
waterproof roll. After a huge gulp of wine he said thickly (for his huge
moustache was crusted with saliva-tinted half-moistened shreds of food),
"You will have no use for that _machine la-bas_. They are going to take
everything away from you when you get there, you know. I could use it
nicely. I have wanted such a piece of rubber for a great while, in order
to make me a raincoat. Do you see?" (Gulp. Swallow.)

Here I had an inspiration. I would save the blanket-cover by drawing
these brigands' attention to myself. At the same time I would satisfy my
inborn taste for the ridiculous. "Have you a pencil?" I said. "Because I
am an artist in my own country, and will do your picture."

He gave me a pencil. I don't remember where the paper came from. I posed
him in a pig-like position, and the picture made him chew his moustache.
The apache thought it very droll. I should do his picture, too, at once.
I did my best; though protesting that he was too beautiful for my pencil,
which remark he countered by murmuring (as he screwed his moustache
another notch), "Never mind, you will try." Oh, yes, I would try all
right, all right. He objected, I recall, to the nose.

By this time the divine "deserter" was writhing with joy. "If you please,
Monsieur," he whispered radiantly, "it would be too great an honor, but
if you could--I should be overcome...."

Tears (for some strange reason) came into my eyes.

He handled his picture sacredly, criticised it with precision and care,
finally bestowed it in his inner pocket. Then we drank. It happened that
the train stopped and the _apache_ was persuaded to go out and get his
prisoner's canteen filled. Then we drank again.

He smiled as he told me he was getting ten years. Three years at solitary
confinement was it, and seven working in a gang on the road? That would
not be so bad. He wished he was not married, had not a little child. "The
bachelors are lucky in this war"--he smiled.

Now the gendarmes began cleaning their beards, brushing their stomachs,
spreading their legs, collecting their baggage. The reddish eyes, little
and cruel, woke from the trance of digestion and settled with positive
ferocity on their prey. "You will have no use...."

Silently the sensitive, gentle hands of the divine prisoner undid the
blanket-cover. Silently the long, tired, well-shaped arms passed it
across to the brigand at my left side. With a grunt of satisfaction the
brigand stuffed it in a large pouch, taking pains that it should not
show. Silently the divine eyes said to mine: "What can we do, we
criminals?" And we smiled at each other for the last time, the eyes and
my eyes.

A station. The _apache_ descends. I follow with my numerous _affaires_.
The divine man follows me--the v-f-g him.

The blanket-roll containing my large fur-coat got more and more unrolled;
finally I could not possibly hold it.

It fell. To pick it up I must take the sack off my back.

Then comes a voice, "allow me if you please, monsieur"--and the sack has
disappeared. Blindly and dumbly I stumble on with the roll; and so at
length we come into the yard of a little prison; and the divine man bowed
under my great sack.... I never thanked him. When I turned, they'd taken
him away, and the sack stood accusingly at my feet.

Through the complete disorder of my numbed mind flicker jabbings of
strange tongues. Some high boy's voice is appealing to me in Belgian,
Italian, Polish, Spanish and--beautiful English. "Hey, Jack, give me a
cigarette, Jack...."

I lift my eyes. I am standing in a tiny oblong space. A sort of court.
All around, two-story wooden barracks. Little crude staircases lead up to
doors heavily chained and immensely padlocked. More like ladders than
stairs. Curious hewn windows, smaller in proportion than the slits in a
doll's house. Are these faces behind the slits? The doors bulge
incessantly under the shock of bodies hurled against them from within.
The whole dirty _nouveau_ business about to crumble.

Glance one.

Glance two: directly before me. A wall with many bars fixed across one
minute opening. At the opening a dozen, fifteen, grins. Upon the bars
hands, scraggy and bluishly white. Through the bars stretching of lean
arms, incessant stretchings. The grins leap at the window, hands
belonging to them catch hold, arms belonging to the hands stretch in my
direction ... an instant; the new grins leap from behind and knock off
the first grins which go down with a fragile crashing like glass smashed:
hands wither and break, arms streak out of sight, sucked inward.

In the huge potpourri of misery a central figure clung, shaken but
undislodged. Clung like a monkey to central bars. Clung like an angel to
a harp. Calling pleasantly in a high boyish voice: "O Jack, give me a
cigarette."

A handsome face, dark, Latin smile, musical fingers strong.

I waded suddenly through a group of gendarmes (they stood around me
watching with a disagreeable curiosity my reaction to this). Strode
fiercely to the window.

Trillions of hands.

Quadrillions of itching fingers.

The angel-monkey received the package of cigarettes politely,
disappearing with it into howling darkness. I heard his high boy's voice
distributing cigarettes. Then he leaped into sight, poised gracefully
against two central bars, saying "Thank you, Jack, good boy" ... "Thanks,
_merci_, _gracias_ ..." a deafening din of gratitude reeked from within.

"Put your baggage in here," quoth an angry voice. "No, you will not take
anything but one blanket in your cell, understand." In French. Evidently
the head of the house speaking. I obeyed. A corpulent soldier importantly
lead me to my cell. My cell is two doors away from the monkey-angel, on
the same side. The high boy-voice, centralized in a torrent-like halo of
stretchings, followed my back. The head himself unlocked a lock. I
marched coldly in. The fat soldier locked and chained my door. Four feet
went away. I felt in my pocket, finding four cigarettes. I am sorry I did
not give these also to the monkey--to the angel. Lifted my eyes and saw
my own harp.

III

A PILGRIM'S PROGRESS

Through the bars I looked into that little and dirty lane whereby I had
entered; in which a sentinel, gun on shoulder, and with a huge revolver
strapped at his hip, monotonously moved. On my right was an old wall
overwhelmed with moss. A few growths stemmed from its crevices. Their
leaves were of a refreshing colour. I felt singularly happy, and
carefully throwing myself on the bare planks sang one after another all
the French songs which I had picked up in my stay at the ambulance; sang
La Madelon, sang AVec avEC DU, and Les Galiots Sont Lourds Dans
Sac--concluding with an inspired rendering of La Marseillaise, at which
the guard (who had several times stopped his round in what I choose to
interpret as astonishment) grounded arms and swore appreciatively.
Various officials of the jail passed by me and my lusty songs; I cared no
whit. Two or three conferred, pointing in my direction, and I sang a
little louder for the benefit of their perplexity. Finally out of voice I
stopped.

It was twilight.

As I lay on my back luxuriously, I saw through the bars of my twice
padlocked door a boy and a girl about ten years old. I saw them climb on
the wall and play together, obliviously and exquisitely, in the darkening
air. I watched them for many minutes; till the last moment of light
failed; till they and the wall itself dissolved in a common mystery,
leaving only the bored silhouette of the soldier moving imperceptibly and
wearily against a still more gloomy piece of autumn sky.

At last I knew that I was very thirsty; and leaping up began to clamor at
my bars. "Something to drink, please." After a long debate with the
sergeant of guards who said very angrily: "Give it to him," a guard took
my request and disappeared from view, returning with a more heavily armed
guard and a tin cup full of water. One of these gentry watched the water
and me, while the other wrestled with the padlock. The door being
minutely opened, one guard and the water painfully entered. The other
guard remained at the door, gun in readiness. The water was set down, and
the enterer assumed a perpendicular position which I thought merited
recognition; accordingly I said "_Merci_" politely, without getting up
from the planks. Immediately he began to deliver a sharp lecture on the
probability of my using the tin cup to saw my way out; and commended
haste in no doubtful terms. I smiled, asked pardon for my inherent
stupidity (which speech seemed to anger him) and guzzled the so-called
water without looking at it, having learned something from Noyon. With a
long and dangerous look at their prisoner, the gentlemen of the guard
withdrew, using inconceivable caution in the relocking of the door.

I laughed and fell asleep.

After (as I judged) four minutes of slumber, I was awakened by at least
six men standing over me. The darkness was intense, it was
extraordinarily cold. I glared at them and tried to understand what new
crime I had committed. One of the six was repeating: "Get up, you are
going away. Four o'clock." After several attempts I got up. They formed a
circle around me; and together we marched a few steps to a sort of
storeroom, where my great sack, small sack, and overcoat were handed to
me. A rather agreeably voiced guard then handed me a half-cake of
chocolate, saying (but with a tolerable grimness): "You'll need it,
believe me." I found my stick, at which "piece of furniture" they amused
themselves a little until I showed its use, by catching the ring at the
mouth of my sack in the curved end of the stick and swinging the whole
business unaided on my back. Two new guards--or rather _gendarmes_--were
now officially put in charge of my person; and the three of us passed
down the lane, much to the interest of the sentinel, to whom I bade a
vivid and unreturned adieu. I can see him perfectly as he stares stupidly
at us, a queer shape in the gloom, before turning on his heel.

Toward the very station whereat some hours since I had disembarked with
the Belgian deserter and my former escorts, we moved. I was stiff with
cold and only half awake, but peculiarly thrilled. The gendarmes on
either side moved grimly, without speaking; or returning monosyllables to
my few questions. Yes, we were to take the train. I was going somewhere,
then? "_B'en sure._"--"Where?"--"You will know in time."

After a few minutes we reached the station, which I failed to recognize.
The yellow flares of lamps, huge and formless in the night mist, some
figures moving to and fro on a little platform, a rustle of conversation:
everything seemed ridiculously suppressed, beautifully abnormal,
deliciously insane. Every figure was wrapped with its individual
ghostliness; a number of ghosts each out on his own promenade, yet each
for some reason selecting this unearthly patch of the world, this
putrescent and uneasy gloom. Even my guards talked in whispers. "Watch
him, I'll see about the train." So one went off into the mist. I leaned
dizzily against the wall nearest me (having plumped down my baggage) and
stared into the darkness at my elbow, filled with talking shadows. I
recognized _officiers anglais_ wandering helplessly up and down,
supported with their sticks; French lieutenants talking to each other
here and there; the extraordinary sense-bereft station master at a
distance looking like a cross between a jumping-jack and a goblin; knots
of _permissionaires_ cursing wearily or joking hopelessly with one
another or stalking back and forth with imprecatory gesticulations. "It's
a joke, too, you know, there are no more trains?"--"The conductor is
dead. I know his sister."--"Old chap, I am all in."--"Say, we are all
lost."--"What time is it?"--"My dear fellow, there is no more time, the
French Government forbids it." Suddenly burst out of the loquacious
opacity a dozen handfuls of Algeriens, their feet swaggering with
fatigue, their eyes burning, apparently by themselves--faceless in the
equally black mist. By threes and fives they assaulted the goblin who
wailed and shook his withered fist in their faces. There was no train. It
had been taken away by the French Government. "How do I know how the
poilus can get back to their regiments on time? Of course you'll all of
you be deserters, but is it my fault?" (I thought of my friend, the
Belgian, at this moment lying in a pen at the prison which I had just
quitted by some miracle.) ... One of these fine people from uncivilized,
ignorant, unwarlike Algeria was drunk and knew it, as did two of his very
fine friends who announced that as there was no train he should have a
good sleep at a farmhouse hard by, which farmhouse one of them claimed to
espy through the impenetrable night. The drunk was accordingly escorted
into the dark, his friends' abrupt steps correcting his own large
slovenly procedure out of earshot.... Some of the Black People sat down
near me and smoked. Their enormous faces, wads of vital darkness, swooned
with fatigue. Their vast gentle hands lay noisily about their knees.

The departed _gendarme_ returned, with a bump, out of the mist. The train
for Paris would arrive _de suite_. We were just in time, our movement had
so far been very creditable. All was well. It was cold, eh?

Then with the ghastly miniature roar of an insane toy the train for Paris
came fumbling into the station....

We boarded it, due caution being taken that I should not escape. As a
matter of fact I held up the would-be passengers for nearly a minute by
my unaided attempts to boost my uncouth baggage aboard. Then my captors
and I blundered heavily into a compartment in which an Englishman and two
French women were seated. My _gendarmes_ established themselves on either
side of the door, a process which woke up the Anglo-Saxon and caused a
brief gap in the low talk of the women. Jolt--we were off.

I find myself with a _francaise_ on my left and an _anglais_ on my right.
The latter has already uncomprehendingly subsided into sleep. The former
(a woman of about thirty) is talking pleasantly to her friend, whom I
face. She must have been very pretty before she put on the black. Her
friend is also a _veuve_. How pleasantly they talk, of _la guerre_, of
Paris, of the bad service; talk in agreeably modulated voices, leaning a
little forward to each other, not wishing to disturb the dolt at my
right. The train tears slowly on. Both the _gendarmes_ are asleep, one
with his hand automatically grasping the handle of the door. Lest I
escape. I try all sorts of positions, for I find myself very tired. The
best is to put my cane between my legs and rest my chin on it; but even
that is uncomfortable, for the Englishman has writhed all over me by this
time and is snoring creditably. I look him over; an Etonian, as I guess.
Certain well-bred-well-fedness. Except for the position--well, _c'est la
guerre_. The women are speaking softly. "And do you know, my dear, that
they had raids again in Paris? My sister wrote me."--"One has excitement
always in a great city, my dear."--

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21