Book: The Enormous Room

E >> Edward Estlin Cummings >> The Enormous Room




The priest was changed every week. His assistant (whom I had the
indescribable pleasure of seeing only upon Sundays) was always the same.
It was his function to pick the priest up when he fell down after
tripping upon his robe, to hand him things before he wanted them, to ring
a huge bell, to interrupt the peculiarly divine portions of the service
with a squeaking of his shoes, to gaze about from time to time upon the
worshippers for purposes of intimidation, and finally--most important of
all--to blow out the two big candles at the very earliest opportunity, in
the interests (doubtless) of economy. As he was a short, fattish,
ancient, strangely soggy creature and as his longish black suit was
somewhat too big for him, he executed a series of profound efforts in
extinguishing the candles. In fact he had to climb part way up the
candles before he could get at the flame; at which moment he looked very
much like a weakly and fat boy (for he was obviously in his second or
fourth childhood) climbing a flag-pole. At moments of leisure he abased
his fatty whitish jowl and contemplated with watery eyes the floor in
front of his highly polished boots, having first placed his ugly clubby
hands together behind his most ample back.

Sunday: green murmurs in coldness. Surplice fiercely fearful, praying on
his bony both knees, crossing himself.... The Fake French Soldier, alias
Garibaldi, beside him, a little face filled with terror ... the Bell
cranks the sharp-nosed priest on his knees ... titter from bench of
whores--

And that reminds me of a Sunday afternoon on our backs spent with the
wholeness of a hill in Chevancourt, discovering a great apple pie, B. and
Jean Stahl and Maurice le Menusier and myself; and the sun falling
roundly before us.

--And then one _Dimanche_ a new high old man with a sharp violet face and
green hair--"You are free, my children, to achieve immortality--_Songes,
songez, donc--L'Eternité est une existence sans durée----Toujours le
Paradis, toujours L'Enfer_" (to the silently roaring whores) "Heaven is
made for you"--and the Belgian ten-foot farmer spat three times and wiped
them with his foot, his nose dripping; and the nigger shot a white oyster
into a far-off scarlet handkerchief--and the priest's strings came untied
and he sidled crablike down the steps--the two candles wiggle a strenuous
softness....

In another chapter I will tell you about the nigger.

And another Sunday I saw three tiny old females stumble forward, three
very formerly and even once bonnets perched upon three wizened skulls,
and flop clumsily before the priest, and take the wafer hungrily into
their leathery faces.




VII

AN APPROACH TO THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS

"Sunday (says Mr. Pound with infinite penetration) is
a dreadful day,
Monday is much pleasanter.
Then let us muse a little space
Upon fond Nature's morbid grace."

It is a great and distinct pleasure to have penetrated and arrived upon
the outside of _La Dimanche_. We may now--Nature's morbid grace being a
topic whereof the reader has already heard much and will necessarily hear
more--turn to the "much pleasanter," the in fact "Monday," aspect of La
Ferté; by which I mean _les nouveaux_ whose arrivals and reactions
constituted the actual kinetic aspect of our otherwise merely real
Nonexistence. So let us tighten our belts, (everyone used to tighten his
belt at least twice a day at La Ferté, but for another reason--to follow
and keep track of his surely shrinking anatomy) seize our staffs into our
hands, and continue the ascent begun with the first pages of the story.

One day I found myself expecting _La Soupe_ Number 1 with something like
avidity. My appetite faded, however, upon perceiving a vision en route to
the empty place at my left. It slightly resembled a tall youth not more
than sixteen or seventeen years old, having flaxen hair, a face whose
whiteness I have never seen equalled, and an expression of intense
starvation which might have been well enough in a human being but was
somewhat unnecessarily uncanny in a ghost. The ghost, floating and
slenderly, made for the place beside me, seated himself suddenly and
gently like a morsel of white wind, and regarded the wall before him. _La
soupe_ arrived. He obtained a plate (after some protest on the part of
certain members of our table to whom the advent of a newcomer meant only
that everyone would get less for lunch), and after gazing at his portion
for a second in apparent wonderment at its size caused it gently and
suddenly to disappear. I was no sluggard as a rule, but found myself
outclassed by minutes--which, said I to myself, is not to be worried over
since 'tis sheer vanity to compete with the supernatural. But (even as I
lugged the last spoonful of luke-warm greasy water to my lips) this ghost
turned to me for all the world as if I too were a ghost, and remarked
softly:

"Will you lend me ten cents? I am going to buy tobacco at the canteen."

One has no business crossing a spirit, I thought; and produced the sum
cheerfully--which sum disappeared, the ghost arose slenderly and
soundlessly, and I was left with emptiness beside me.

Later I discovered that this ghost was called Pete.

Pete was a Hollander, and therefore found firm and staunch friends in
Harree, John o' the Bathhouse and the other Hollanders. In three days
Pete discarded the immateriality which had constituted the exquisite
definiteness of his advent, and donned the garb of flesh-and-blood. This
change was due equally to _La Soupe_ and the canteen, and to the finding
of friends. For Pete had been in solitary confinement for three months
and had had nothing to eat but bread and water during that time, having
been told by the jailors (as he informed us, without a trace of
bitterness) that they would shorten his sentence provided he did not
partake of _La Soupe_ during his incarceration--that is to say, _le
gouvernement français_ had a little joke at Pete's expense. Also he had
known nobody during that time but the five fingers which deposited said
bread and water with conscientious regularity on the ground beside him.
Being a Hollander neither of these things killed him--on the contrary, he
merely turned into a ghost, thereby fooling the excellent French
Government within an inch of its foolable life. He was a very excellent
friend of ours--I refer as usual to B. and myself--and from the day of
his arrival until the day of his departure to Précigne along with B. and
three others I never ceased to like and to admire him. He was naturally
sensitive, extremely the antithesis of coarse (which "refined" somehow
does not imply) had not in the least suffered from a "good," as we say,
education, and possessed an at once frank and unobstreperous personality.
Very little that had happened to Pete's physique had escaped Pete's mind.
This mind of his quietly and firmly had expanded in proportion as its
owner's trousers had become too big around the waist--altogether not so
extraordinary as was the fact that, after being physically transformed as
I have never seen a human being transformed by food and friends, Pete
thought and acted with exactly the same quietness and firmness as before.
He was a rare spirit, and I salute him wherever he is.

Mexique was a good friend of Pete's, as he was of ours. He had been
introduced to us by a man we called One Eyed David, who was married and
had a wife downstairs, with which wife he was allowed to live all
day--being conducted to and from her society by a _planton_. He spoke
Spanish well and French passably; had black hair, bright Jewish eyes, a
dead-fish expression, and a both amiable and courteous disposition. One
Eyed Dah-veed (as it was pronounced of course) had been in prison at
Noyon during the German occupation, which he described fully and without
hyperbole--stating that no one could have been more considerate or just
than the commander of the invading troops. Dah-veed had seen with his own
eyes a French girl extend an apple to one of the common soldiers as the
German army entered the outskirts of the city: "'Take it,' she said, 'you
are tired.'--'Madame,' answered the German soldier in French, 'thank
you'--and he looked in his pocket and found ten cents. 'No, no,' the
young girl said. 'I don't want any money. I give it to you with good
will.'--'Pardon, madame,' said the soldier, 'you must know that a German
soldier is forbidden to take anything without paying for it.'"--And
before that, One Eyed Dah-veed had talked at Noyon with a barber whose
brother was an aviator with the French Army: "'My brother,' the barber
said to me, 'told me a beautiful story the other day. He was flying over
the lines, and he was amazed, one day, to see that the French guns were
not firing on the boches but on the French themselves. He landed
precipitously, sprang from his machine and ran to the office of the
general. He saluted, and cried in great excitement: "General, you are
firing on the French!" The general regarded him without interest, without
budging; then, he said, very simply: "They have begun, they must
finish." "Which is why perhaps," said One Eyed Dah-veed, looking two
ways at once with his uncorrelated eyes, "the Germans entered Noyon...."
But to return to Mexique.

One night we had a _soirée_, as Dah-veed called it, _à propos_ a pot of
hot tea which Dah-veed's wife had given him to take upstairs, it being
damnably damp and cold (as usual) in The Enormous Room. Dah-veed,
cautiously and in a low voice, invited us to his mattress to enjoy this
extraordinary pleasure; and we accepted, B. and I, with huge joy; and
sitting on Dah-veed's _paillasse_ we found somebody who turned out to be
Mexique--to whom, by his right name, our host introduced us with all the
poise and courtesy vulgarly associated with a French salon.

For Mexique I cherish and always will cherish unmitigated affection. He
was perhaps nineteen years old, very chubby, extremely good-natured; and
possessed of an unruffled disposition which extended to the most violent
and obvious discomforts a subtle and placid illumination. He spoke
beautiful Spanish, had been born in Mexico, and was really called
Philippe Burgos. He had been in New York. He criticised someone for
saying "Yes" to us, one day, stating that no American said "Yes" but
"Yuh"; which--whatever the reader may think--is to my mind a very
profound observation. In New York he had worked nights as a fireman in
some big building or other and slept days, and this method of seeing
America he had enjoyed extremely. Mexique had one day taken ship (being
curious to see the world) and worked as chauffeur--that is to say in the
stoke-hole. He had landed in, I think, Havre; had missed his ship; had
inquired something of a _gendarme_ in French (which he spoke not at all,
with the exception of a phrase or two like "_quelle heure qu'il est?_");
had been kindly treated and told that he would be taken to a ship _de
suite_--had boarded a train in the company of two or three kind
_gendarmes_, ridden a prodigious distance, got off the train finally with
high hopes, walked a little distance, come in sight of the grey
perspiring wall of La Ferté, and--"So, I ask one of them: 'Where is the
Ship?' He point to here and tell me, 'There is the ship.' I say: 'This is
a God Dam Funny Ship'"--quoth Mexique, laughing.

Mexique played dominoes with us (B. having devised a set from
card-board), strolled The Enormous Room with us, telling of his father
and brother in Mexico, of the people, of the customs; and--when we were
in the _cour_--wrote the entire conjugation of _tengo_ in the deep mud
with a little stick, squatting and chuckling and explaining. He and his
brother had both participated in the revolution which made Carranza
president. His description of which affair was utterly delightful.

"Every-body run a-round with guns" Mexique said. "And bye-and-bye no see
to shoot everybody, so everybody go home." We asked if he had shot
anybody himself. "Sure. I shoot everybody I do'no" Mexique answered
laughing. "I t'ink every-body no hit me" he added, regarding his stocky
person with great and quiet amusement. When we asked him once what he
thought about the war, he replied, "I t'ink lotta bull--," which, upon
copious reflection, I decided absolutely expressed my own point of view.

Mexique was generous, incapable of either stupidity or despondency, and
mannered as a gentleman is supposed to be. Upon his arrival he wrote
almost immediately to the Mexican (or is it Spanish?) consul--"He know my
fader in Mexico"--stating in perfect and unambiguous Spanish the facts
leading to his arrest; and when I said good-bye to _La Misère_ Mexique
was expecting a favorable reply at any moment, as indeed he had been
cheerfully expecting for some time. If he reads this history I hope he
will not be too angry with me for whatever injustice it does to one of
the altogether pleasantest companions I have ever had. My notebooks, one
in particular, are covered with conjugations which bear witness to
Mexique's ineffable good-nature. I also have a somewhat superficial
portrait of his back sitting on a bench by the stove. I wish I had
another of Mexique out in _le jardin_ with a man who worked there who was
a Spaniard, and whom the Surveillant had considerately allowed Mexique to
assist; with the perfectly correct idea that it would be pleasant for
Mexique to talk to someone who could speak Spanish--if not as well as he,
Mexique, could, at least passably well. As it is, I must be content to
see my very good friend sitting with his hands in his pockets by the
stove with Bill the Hollander beside him. And I hope it was not many days
after my departure that Mexique went free. Somehow I feel that he went
free ... and if I am right, I will only say about Mexique's freedom what
I have heard him slowly and placidly say many times concerning not only
the troubles which were common property to us all but his own peculiar
troubles as well.

"That's fine."

Here let me introduce the Guard Champêtre, whose name I have already
taken more or less in vain. A little, sharp, hungry-looking person who,
subsequent to being a member of a rural police force (of which membership
he seemed rather proud), had served his _patrie_--otherwise known as _La
Belgique_--in the capacity of motorcyclist. As he carried dispatches from
one end of the line to the other his disagreeably big eyes had absorbed
certain peculiarly inspiring details of civilised warfare. He had, at one
time, seen a bridge hastily constructed by _les alliés_ over the Yser
River, the cadavers of the faithful and the enemy alike being thrown in
helter-skelter to make a much needed foundation for the timbers. This
little procedure had considerably outraged the Guard Champêtre's sense of
decency. The Yser, said he, flowed perfectly red for a long time. "We
were all together: Belgians, French, English ... we Belgians did not see
any good reason for continuing the battle. But we continued. O indeed we
continued. Do you know why?"

I said that I was afraid I didn't.

"Because in front of us we had the German shells, behind, the French
machine guns, always the French machine guns, _mon vieux_."

"_Je ne comprends pas bien_" I said in confusion, recalling all the
highfalutin rigmarole which Americans believed--(little martyred Belgium
protected by the allies from the inroads of the aggressor, etc.)--"why
should the French put machine guns behind you?"

The Guard Champêtre lifted his big empty eyes nervously. The vast hollows
in which they lived darkened. His little rather hard face trembled within
itself. I thought for a second he was going to throw a fit at my
feet--instead of doing which he replied pettishly, in a sunken bright
whisper:

"To keep us going forward. At times a company would drop its guns and
turn to run. Pupupupupupupupup ..." his short unlovely arms described
gently the swinging of a _mitrailleuse_ ... "finish. The Belgian
soldiers to left and right of them took the hint. If they did
not--pupupupupupup.... O we went forward. Yes. _Vive le patriotisme._"

And he rose with a gesture which seemed to brush away these painful
trifles from his memory, crossed the end of the room with short rapid
steps, and began talking to his best friend Judas, who was at that moment
engaged in training his wobbly mustachios.... Toward the close of my
visit to La Ferté the Guard Champêtre was really happy for a period of
two days--during which time he moved in the society of a rich,
intelligent, mistakenly arrested and completely disagreeable youth in
bone spectacles, copious hair and spiral putees, whom B. and I partially
contented ourselves by naming Jo Jo The Lion Faced Boy. Had the charges
against Jo Jo been stronger my tale would have been longer--fortunately
for _tout le monde_ they had no basis; and back went Jo Jo to his native
Paris, leaving the Guard Champêtre with Judas and attacks of only
occasionally interesting despair.

The reader may suppose that it is about time another Delectable Mountain
appeared upon his horizon. Let him keep his eyes wide open, for here one
comes....

Whenever our circle was about to be increased, a bell from somewhere afar
(as a matter of fact the gate which had admitted my weary self to La
Ferté upon a memorable night, as already has been faithfully recounted)
tanged audibly--whereat up jumped the more strenuous inhabitants of The
Enormous Room and made pell-mell for the common peephole, situated at the
door end or nearer end of our habitat and commanding a somewhat
fragmentary view of the gate together with the arrivals, male and female,
whom the bell announced. In one particular case the watchers appeared
almost unduly excited, shouting "four!"--"big box"--"five _gendarmes_!"
and other incoherences with a loudness which predicted great things. As
nearly always, I had declined to participate in the mêlée; and was still
lying comfortably horizontal on my bed (thanking God that it had been
well and thoroughly mended by a fellow prisoner whom we called The Frog
and Le Coiffeur--a tremendously keen-eyed man with a large drooping
moustache, whose boon companion, chiefly on account of his shape and
gait, we knew as The Lobster) when the usual noises attendant upon the
unlocking of the door began with exceptional violence. I sat up. The door
shot open, there was a moment's pause, a series of grunting remarks
uttered by two rather terrible voices; then in came four _nouveaux_ of a
decidedly interesting appearance. They entered in two ranks of two each.
The front rank was made up of an immensely broad shouldered hipless and
consequently triangular man in blue trousers belted with a piece of
ordinary rope, plus a thick-set ruffianly personage the most prominent
part of whose accoutrements were a pair of hideous whiskers. I leaped to
my feet and made for the door, thrilled in spite of myself. By the, in
this case, shifty blue eyes, the pallid hair, the well-knit form of the
rope's owner I knew instantly a Hollander. By the coarse brutal features
half-hidden in the piratical whiskers, as well as by the heavy mean
wandering eyes. I recognised with equal speed a Belgian. Upon his
shoulders the front rank bore a large box, blackish, well-made, obviously
very weighty, which box it set down with a grunt of relief hard by the
cabinet. The rear rank marched behind in a somewhat asymmetrical manner:
a young, stupid-looking, clear-complexioned fellow (obviously a farmer,
and having expensive black puttees and a handsome cap with a shiny black
leather visor) slightly preceded a tall, gliding, thinnish, unjudgeable
personage who peeped at everyone quietly and solemnly from beneath the
visor of a somewhat large slovenly cloth cap showing portions of a lean,
long, incognisable face upon which sat, or rather drooped, a pair of
mustachios identical in character with those which are sometimes
pictorially attributed to a Chinese dignitary--in other words, the
mustachios were exquisitely narrow, homogeneously downward, and made of
something like black corn-silk. Behind _les nouveaux_ staggered four
_paillasses_ motivated mysteriously by two pair of small legs belonging
(as it proved) to Garibaldi and the little Machine-Fixer; who, coincident
with the tumbling of the mattresses to the floor, perspiringly emerged to
sight.

The first thing the shifty-eyed Hollander did was to exclaim
_Gottverdummer_. The first thing the whiskery Belgian did was to grab his
_paillasse_ and stand guard over it. The first thing the youth in the
leggings did was to stare helplessly about him, murmuring something
whimperingly in Polish. The first thing the fourth _nouveau_ did was pay
attention to anybody; lighting a cigarette in an unhurried manner as he
did so, and puffing silently and slowly as if in all the universe nothing
whatever save the taste of tobacco existed.

A bevy of Hollanders were by this time about the triangle, asking him all
at once Was he from so and so, What was in his box. How long had he been
in coming, etc. Half a dozen stooped over the box itself, and at least
three pairs of hands were on the point of trying the lock--when suddenly
with incredible agility the unperturbed smoker shot a yard forward,
landing quietly beside them; and exclaimed rapidly and briefly through
his nose.

"_Mang._"

He said it almost petulantly, or as a child says "Tag! You're it."

The onlookers recoiled, completely surprised. Whereat the frightened
youth in black puttees sidled over and explained with a pathetic, at once
ingratiating and patronising, accent.

"He is not nasty. He's a good fellow. He's my friend. He wants to say
that it's his, that box. He doesn't speak French."

"It's the _Gottverdummer_ Polak's box," said the Triangular Man exploding
in Dutch. "They're a pair of Polakers; and this man" (with a twist of his
pale-blue eyes in the direction of the Bewhiskered One) "and I had to
carry it all the _Gottverdummer_ way to this _Gottverdummer_ place."

All this time the incognizable _nouveau_ was smoking slowly and calmly,
and looking at nothing at all with his black buttonlike eyes. Upon his
face no faintest suggestion of expression could be discovered by the
hungry minds which focussed unanimously upon its almost stern contours.
The deep furrows in the cardboardlike cheeks (furrows which resembled
slightly the gills of some extraordinary fish, some unbreathing fish)
moved not an atom. The moustache drooped in something like mechanical
tranquillity. The lips closed occasionally with a gesture at once
abstracted and sensitive upon the lightly and carefully held cigarette;
whose curling smoke accentuated the poise of the head, at once alert and
uninterested.

Monsieur Auguste broke in, speaking, as I thought, Russian--and in an
instant he and the youth in puttees and the Unknowable's cigarette and
the box and the Unknowable had disappeared through the crowd in the
direction of Monsieur Auguste's _paillasse_, which was also the direction
of the _paillasse_ belonging to the Cordonnier as he was sometimes
called--a diminutive man with immense mustachios of his own who
promenaded with Monsieur Auguste, speaking sometimes French but, as a
general rule, Russian or Polish.

Which was my first glimpse, and is the reader's, of the Zulu; he being
one of the Delectable Mountains. For which reason I shall have more to
say of him later, when I ascend the Delectable Mountains in a separate
chapter or chapters; till when the reader must be content with the above,
however unsatisfactory description....

One of the most utterly repulsive personages whom I have met in my
life--perhaps (and on second thought I think certainly) the most utterly
repulsive--was shortly after this presented to our midst by the
considerate French government. I refer to The Fighting Sheeney. Whether
or no he arrived after the Spanish Whoremaster I cannot say. I remember
that Bill the Hollander--which was the name of the triangular rope-belted
man with shifty blue eyes (co-_arrivé_ with the whiskey Belgian; which
Belgian, by the way, from his not to be exaggerated brutal look, B. and
myself called The Baby-snatcher)--upon his arrival told great tales of a
Spanish millionaire with whom he had been in prison just previous to his
discovery of La Ferté. "He'll be here too in a couple o' days," added
Bill the Hollander, who had been fourteen years in These United States,
spoke the language to a T, talked about "The America Lakes," and was
otherwise amazingly well acquainted with The Land of The Free. And sure
enough, in less than a week one of the fattest men whom I have ever laid
eyes on, over-dressed, much beringed and otherwise wealthy-looking,
arrived--and was immediately played up to by Judas (who could smell cash
almost as far as _le gouvernement français_ could smell sedition) and, to
my somewhat surprise, by the utterly respectable Count Bragard. But most
emphatically NOT by Mexique, who spent a half-hour talking to the
_nouveau_ in his own tongue, then drifted placidly over to our beds and
informed us:

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