Book: The Enormous Room

E >> Edward Estlin Cummings >> The Enormous Room




Night after night The Imp would play around our beds, where we held court
with our chocolate and our candles; teasing us, cajoling us, flattering
us, pretending tears, feigning insult, getting lectures from Monsieur
Peters on the evil of cigarette smoking, keeping us in a state of
perpetual inquietude. When he couldn't think of anything else to do he
sang at the top of his clear bright voice:

"_C'est la guerre
faut pas t'en faire_"

and turned a handspring or two for emphasis.... Mexique once cuffed him
for doing something peculiarly mischievous, and he set up a great
crying--instantly The Wanderer was standing over Mexique, his hands
clenched, his eyes sparkling--it took a good deal of persuasion to
convince the parent that his son was in error, meanwhile Mexique placidly
awaited his end ... and neither B. nor I, despite the Imp's tormentings,
could keep from laughing when he all at once with a sort of crowing cry
rushed for the nearest post, jumped upon his hands, arched his back, and
poised head-downward; his feet just touching the pillar. Bare-footed, in
a bright chemise and one-third of his father's trousers....

Being now in a class with "_les hommes mariés_" The Wanderer spent most
of the day downstairs, coming up with his little son every night to sleep
in The Enormous Room. But we saw him occasionally in the _cour_; and
every other day when the dreadful cry was raised

"_Allez, tout-le-monde, 'plicher les pommes!_" and we descended, in fair
weather, to the lane between the building and the _cour_, and in foul
(very foul I should say) the dynosaur-coloured sweating walls of the
dining-room--The Wanderer would quietly and slowly appear, along with the
other _hommes mariés_, and take up the peeling of the amazingly cold
potatoes which formed the _pièce de resistance_ (in guise of _Soupe_) for
both women and men at La Ferté. And if the wedded males did not all of
them show up for this unagreeable task, a dreadful hullabaloo was
instantly raised--

"_LES HOMMES MARIÉS!_"

and forth would more or less sheepishly issue the delinquents.

And I think The Wanderer, with his wife and children whom he loved as
never have I seen a man love anything in this world, was partly happy;
walking in the sun when there was any, sleeping with his little boy in a
great gulp of softness. And I remember him pulling his fine beard into
two darknesses--huge-sleeved, pink-checked chemise--walking kindly like a
bear--corduroy bigness of trousers, waistline always amorous of
knees--finger-ends just catching tops of enormous pockets. When he feels,
as I think, partly happy, he corrects our pronunciation of the ineffable
Word--saying

"_O, May-err-DE!_"

and smiles. And once Jean Le Nègre said to him as he squatted in the
_cour_ with his little son beside him, his broad strong back as nearly
always against one of the gruesome and minute _pommiers_--

"_Barbu! j'vais couper ta barbe, barbu!_" Whereat the father answered
slowly and seriously.

"When you cut my beard you will have to cut off my head" regarding Jean
le Nègre with unspeakably sensitive, tremendously deep, peculiarly soft
eyes. "My beard is finer than that; you have made it too coarse," he
gently remarked one day, looking attentively at a piece of _photographie_
which I had been caught in the act of perpetrating: whereat I bowed my
head in silent shame.

"Demestre, Josef (_femme, née_ Feliska)" I read another day in the
Gestionnaire's book of judgment. O Monsieur le Gestionnaire, I should not
have liked to have seen those names in my book of sinners, in my album of
filth and blood and incontinence, had I been you.... O little, very
little, _gouvernement français_, and you, the great and comfortable
_messieurs_ of the world, tell me why you have put a gypsy who dresses
like To-morrow among the squabbling pimps and thieves of yesterday....

He had been in New York one day.

One child died at sea.

"_Les landes_" he cried, towering over The Enormous Room suddenly one
night in Autumn, "_je les connais commes ma poche_--Bordeaux? _Je sais où
que c'est._ Madrid? _Je sais où que c'est._ Tolède? Seville? Naples? _Je
sais où que c'est. Je les connais comme ma poche._"

He could not read. "Tell me what it tells," he said briefly and without
annoyance, when once I offered him the journal. And I took pleasure in
trying to do so.

One fine day, perhaps the finest day, I looked from a window of The
Enormous Room and saw (in the same spot that Lena had enjoyed her
half-hour promenade during confinement in the _cabinet_, as related) the
wife of The Wanderer, "_née_ Feliska," giving his baby a bath in a pail,
while The Wanderer sat in the sun smoking. About the pail an absorbed
group of _putains_ stood. Several _plantons_ (abandoning for one instant
their plantonic demeanour) leaned upon their guns and watched. Some even
smiled a little. And the mother, holding the brownish, naked, crowing
child tenderly, was swimming it quietly to and fro, to the delight of
Celina in particular. To Celina it waved its arms greetingly. She stooped
and spoke to it. The mother smiled. The Wanderer, looking from time to
time at his wife, smoked and pondered by himself in the sunlight.

This baby was the delight of the _putains_ at all times. They used to
take turns carrying it when on promenade. The Wanderer's wife, at such
moments, regarded them with a gentle and jealous weariness.

There were two girls, as I said. One, the littlest girl I ever saw walk
and act by herself, looked exactly like a gollywog. This was because of
the huge mop of black hair. She was very pretty. She used to sit with her
mother and move her toes quietly for her own private amusement. The older
sister was as divine a creature as God in His skillful and infinite
wisdom ever created. Her intensely sexual face greeted us nearly always
as we descended _pour la soupe_. She would come up to B. and me slenderly
and ask, with the brightest and darkest eyes in the world,

"_Chocolat, M'sieu'?_"

and we would present her with a big or small, as the case might be,
_morceau de chocolat_. We even called her _Chocolat_. Her skin was nearly
sheer gold; her fingers and feet delicately formed: her teeth wonderfully
white; her hair incomparably black and abundant. Her lips would have
seduced, I think, _le gouvernement français_ itself. Or any saint.

Well....

_Le gouvernement français_ decided in its infinite but unskillful wisdom
that The Wanderer, being an inexpressibly bad man (guilty of who knows
what gentleness, strength and beauty) should suffer as much as he was
capable of suffering. In other words, it decided (through its Three Wise
Men, who formed the visiting Commission whereof I speak anon) that the
wife, her baby, her two girls, and her little son should be separated
from the husband by miles and by stone walls and by barbed wire and by
Law. Or perhaps (there was a rumour to this effect) The Three Wise Men
discovered that the father of these incredibly exquisite children was not
her lawful husband. And of course, this being the case, the utterly and
incomparably moral French Government saw its duty plainly; which duty was
to inflict the ultimate anguish of separation upon the sinners concerned.
I know The Wanderer came from _la commission_ with tears of anger in his
great eyes. I know that some days later he, along with that deadly and
poisonous criminal Monsieur Auguste and that aged archtraitor Monsieur
Pet-airs, and that incomparably wicked person Surplice, and a ragged
gentle being who one day presented us with a broken spoon which he had
found somewhere--the gift being a purely spontaneous mark of approval and
affection--who for this reason was known as The Spoonman and the vast and
immeasurable honour of departing for Précigne _pour la durée de la
guerre_. If ever I can create by some occult process of imagining a deed
so perfectly cruel as the deed perpetrated in the case of Joseph
Demestre, I shall consider myself a genius. Then let us admit that the
Three Wise Men were geniuses. And let us, also and softly, admit that it
takes a good and great government perfectly to negate mercy. And let us,
bowing our minds smoothly and darkly, repeat with Monsieur le
Curée--"_toujours l'enfer...._"

The Wanderer was almost insane when he heard the judgment of _la
commission_. And hereupon I must pay my respects to Monsieur Pet-airs;
whom I had ever liked, but whose spirit I had not, up to the night
preceding The Wanderer's departure, fully appreciated. Monsieur Pet-airs
sat for hours at the card-table, his glasses continually fogging,
censuring The Wanderer in tones of apparent annoyance for his frightful
weeping (and now and then himself sniffing faintly with his big red
nose); sat for hours pretending to take dictation from Joseph Demestre,
in reality composing a great letter or series of great letters to the
civil and I guess military authorities of Orne on the subject of the
injustice done to the father of four children, one a baby at the breast,
now about to be separated from all he held dear and good in this world.
"I appeal" (Monsieur Pet-airs wrote in his boisterously careful, not to
say elegant, script) "to your sense of mercy and of fair play and of
honour. It is not merely an unjust thing which is being done, not merely
an unreasonable thing, it is an unnatural thing...." As he wrote I found
it hard to believe that this was the aged and decrepit and fussing biped
whom I had known, whom I had caricatured, with whom I had talked upon
ponderous subjects (a comparison between the Belgian and French cities
with respect to their location as favouring progress and prosperity, for
example); who had with a certain comic shyness revealed to me a secret
scheme for reclaiming inundated territories by means of an extraordinary
pump "of my invention." Yet this was he, this was Monsieur Pet-airs
Lui-Même; and I enjoyed peculiarly making his complete acquaintance for
the first and only time.

May the Heavens prosper him!

The next day The Wanderer appeared in the _cour_ walking proudly in a
shirt of solid vermilion.

He kissed his wife--excuse me, Monsieur Malvy, I should say the mother of
his children--crying very bitterly and suddenly.

The _plantons_ yelled for him to line up with the rest, who were waiting
outside the gate, bag and baggage. He covered his great king's eyes with
his long golden hands and went.

With him disappeared unspeakable sunlight, and the dark keen bright
strength of the earth.




IX

ZOO-LOO

This is the name of the second Delectable Mountain.

Zulu is he called, partly because he looks like what I have never seen,
partly because the sounds somehow relate to his personality and partly
because they seemed to please him.

He is, of all the indescribables I have known, definitely the most
completely or entirely indescribable. Then (quoth my reader) you will not
attempt to describe him, I trust.--Alas, in the medium which I am now
using a certain amount or at least quality of description is disgustingly
necessary. Were I free with a canvas and some colours ... but I am not
free. And so I will buck the impossible to the best of my ability. Which,
after all, is one way of wasting your time.

He did not come and he did not go. He drifted.

His angular anatomy expended and collected itself with an effortless
spontaneity which is the prerogative of fairies perhaps, or at any rate
of those things in which we no longer believe. But he was more. There are
certain things in which one is unable to believe for the simple reason
that he never ceases to feel them. Things of this sort--things which are
always inside of us and, in fact, are us and which consequently will not
be pushed off or away where we can begin thinking about them--are no
longer things; they, and the us which they are, equals A Verb; an IS. The
Zulu, then, I must perforce call an IS.

In this chapter I shall pretend briefly to describe certain aspects and
attributes of an IS. Which IS we have called The Zulu, who Himself
intrinsically and indubitably escapes analysis. _Allons!_

Let me first describe a Sunday morning when we lifted our heads to the
fight of the stove-pipes.

I was awakened by a roar, a human roar, a roar such as only a Hollander
can make when a Hollander is honestly angry. As I rose from the domain of
the subconscious, the idea that the roar belonged to Bill The Hollander
became conviction. Bill The Hollander, alias America Lakes, slept next to
The Young Pole (by whom I refer to that young stupid-looking farmer with
that peaches-and-cream complexion and those black puttees who had formed
the rear rank, with the aid of The Zulu Himself, upon the arrival of
Babysnatcher, Bill, Box, Zulu, and Young Pole aforesaid). Now this same
Young Pole was a case. Insufferably vain and self-confident was he.
Monsieur Auguste palliated most of his conceited offensiveness on the
ground that he was _un garçon_; we on the ground that he was obviously
and unmistakably The Zulu's friend. This Young Pole, I remember, had me
design upon the wall over his _paillasse_ (shortly after his arrival) a
virile _soldat_ clutching a somewhat dubious flag--I made the latter from
descriptions furnished by Monsieur Auguste and The Young Pole
himself--intended, I may add, to be the flag of Poland. Underneath which
beautiful picture I was instructed to perpetrate the flourishing
inscription

"_Vive la Pologne_"

which I did to the best of my limited ability and for Monsieur Auguste's
sake. No sooner was the _photographie_ complete than The Young Pole,
patriotically elated, set out to demonstrate the superiority of his race
and nation by making himself obnoxious. I will give him this credit: he
was _pas méchant_, he was, in fact, a stupid boy. The Fighting Sheeney
temporarily took him down a peg by flooring him in the nightly "_Boxe_"
which The Fighting Sheeney instituted immediately upon the arrival of The
Trick Raincoat--a previous acquaintance of The Sheeney's at La Santé; the
similarity of occupations (or non-occupation; I refer to the profession
of pimp) having cemented a friendship between these two. But, for all
that The Young Pole's Sunday-best clothes were covered with filth, and
for all that his polished puttees were soiled and scratched by the
splintery floor of The Enormous Room (he having rolled well off the
blanket upon which the wrestling was supposed to occur), his spirit was
dashed but for the moment. He set about cleaning and polishing himself,
combing his hair, smoothing his cap--and was as cocky as ever next
morning. In fact I think he was cockier; for he took to guying Bill The
Hollander in French, with which tongue Bill was only faintly familiar and
of which, consequently, he was doubly suspicious. As The Young Pole lay
in bed of an evening after _lumières éteintes_, he would guy his somewhat
massive neighbour in a childish almost girlish voice, shouting with
laughter when The Triangle rose on one arm and volleyed Dutch at him,
pausing whenever The Triangle's good-nature threatened to approach the
breaking point, resuming after a minute or two when The Triangle appeared
to be on the point of falling into the arms of Morpheus. This sort of
_blague_ had gone on for several nights without dangerous results. It
was, however, inevitable that sooner or later something would happen--and
as we lifted our heads on this particular Sunday morn we were not
surprised to see The Hollander himself standing over The Young Pole, with
clenched paws, wringing shoulders, and an apocalyptic face whiter than
Death's horse.

The Young Pole seemed incapable of realising that the climax had come. He
lay on his back, cringing a little and laughing foolishly. The Zulu (who
slept next to him on our side) had, apparently, just lighted a cigarette
which projected upward from a slender holder. The Zulu's face was as
always absolutely expressionless. His chin, with a goodly growth of
beard, protruded tranquilly from the blanket which concealed the rest of
him with the exception of his feet--feet which were ensconced in large,
somewhat clumsy, leather boots. As The Zulu wore no socks, the Xs of the
rawhide lacings on his bare flesh (blue, of course, with cold) presented
a rather fascinating design. The Zulu was, to all intents and purposes,
gazing at the ceiling....

Bill The Hollander, clad only in his shirt, his long lean muscled legs
planted far apart, shook one fist after another at the recumbent Young
Pole, thundering (curiously enough in English):

"Come on you _Gottverdummer_ son-of-a-bitch of a Polak bastard and fight!
Get up out o' there you Polak hoor and I'll kill you, you _Gottverdummer_
bastard you! I stood enough o' your _Gottverdummer_ nonsense you
_Gottverdummer_" etc.

As Bill The Hollander's thunder crescendoed steadily, cramming the utmost
corners of The Enormous Room with _Gottverdummers_ which echoingly
telescoped one another, producing a dim huge shaggy mass of vocal anger,
The Young Pole began to laugh less and less; began to plead and excuse
and palliate and demonstrate--and all the while the triangular tower in
its naked legs and its palpitating chemise brandished its vast fists
nearer and nearer, its ghastly yellow lips hurling cumulative volumes of
rhythmic profanity, its blue eyes snapping like fire-crackers, its
enormous hairy chest heaving and tumbling like a monstrous hunk of
sea-weed, its flat soiled feet curling and uncurling their ten sour
mutilated toes.

The Zulu puffed gently as he lay.

Bill The Hollander's jaw, sticking into the direction of The Young Pole's
helpless gestures, looked (with the pitiless scorching face behind it)
like some square house carried in the fore of a white cyclone. The Zulu
depressed his chin; his eyes (poking slowly from beneath the visor of the
cap which he always wore, in bed or out of it) regarded the vomiting
tower with an abstracted interest. He allowed one hand delicately to
escape from the blanket and quietly to remove from his lips the gently
burning cigarette.

"You won't eh? You bloody Polak coward!"

and with a speed in comparison to which lightning is snail-like the tower
reached twice for the peaches-and-cream cheeks of the prone victim; who
set up a tragic bellowing of his own, writhed upon his somewhat
dislocated _paillasse_, raised his elbows shieldingly, and started to get
to his feet by way of his trembling knees--to be promptly knocked flat.
Such a howling as The Young Pole set up I have rarely heard: he crawled
sideways; he got on one knee; he made a dart forward--and was caught
cleanly by an uppercut, lifted through the air a yard, and spread-eagled
against the stove which collapsed with an unearthly crash yielding an
inky shower of soot upon the combatants and almost crowning The Hollander
simultaneously with three four-feet sections of pipe. The Young Pole hit
the floor, shouting, on his head, at the apogee of a neatly executed
back-somersault, collapsed; rose yelling, and with flashing eyes picked
up a length of the ruined _tuyau_ which he lifted high in the air--at
which The Hollander seized in both fists a similar piece, brought it
instantly forward and sideways with incognisable velocity and delivered
such an immense wallop as smoothed The Young Pole horizontally to a
distance of six feet; where he suddenly landed, stove-pipe and all in a
crash of entire collapse, having passed clear over The Zulu's head. The
Zulu, remarking

"_Muh_"

floated hingingly to a sitting position and was saluted by

"Lie down you _Gottverdummer_ Polaker, I'll get you next."


In spite of which he gathered himself to rise upward, catching as he did
so a swish of The Hollander's pipe-length which made his cigarette leap
neatly, holder and all, upward and outward. The Young Pole had by this
time recovered sufficiently to get upon his hands and knees behind the
Zulu; who was hurriedly but calmly propelling himself in the direction of
the cherished cigarette-holder, which had rolled under the remains of the
stove. Bill The Hollander made for his enemy, raising perpendicularly ten
feet in air the unrecognisably dented summit of the pipe which his
colossal fists easily encompassed, the muscles in his treelike arms
rolling beneath the chemise like balloons. The Young Pole with a shriek
of fear climbed the Zulu--receiving just as he had compassed this human
hurdle a crack on the seat of his black pants that stood him directly
upon his head. Pivoting slightly for an instant he fell loosely at full
length on his own _paillasse_, and lay sobbing and roaring, one elbow
protectingly raised, interspersing the inarticulations of woe with a
number of sincerely uttered "_Assez!'s_". Meanwhile The Zulu had
discovered the whereabouts of his treasure, had driftingly resumed his
original position; and was quietly inserting the also-captured cigarette
which appeared somewhat confused by its violent aerial journey. Over The
Young Pole stood toweringly Bill The Hollander, his shirt almost in
ribbons about his thick bulging neck, thundering as only Hollanders
thunder

"Have you got enough you _Gottverdummer_ Polak?"

and The Young Pole, alternating nursing the mutilated pulp where his face
had been and guarding it with futile and helpless and almost infantile
gestures of his quivering hands, was sobbing

"_Oui, Oui, Oui, Assez!_"


And Bill The Hollander hugely turned to The Zulu, stepping accurately to
the _paillasse_ of that individual, and demanded

"And you, you _Gottverdummer_ Polaker, do you want t' fight?"

at which The Zulu gently waved in recognition of the compliment and
delicately and hastily replied, between slow puffs

"_Mog._"

Whereat Bill The Hollander registered a disgusted kick in The Young
Pole's direction and swearingly resumed his _paillasse_.

All this, the reader understands, having taken place in the terribly cold
darkness of the half-dawn.

That very day, after a great deal of examination (on the part of the
Surveillant) of the participants in this Homeric struggle--said
examination failing to reveal the particular guilt or the particular
innocence of either--Judas, immaculately attired in a white coat, arrived
from downstairs with a step ladder and proceeded with everyone's
assistance to reconstruct the original pipe. And a pretty picture Judas
made. And a pretty bum job he made. But anyway the stove-pipe drew; and
everyone thanked God and fought for places about _le poêle_. And Monsieur
Pet-airs hoped there would be no more fights for a while.

One might think that The Young Pole had learned a lesson. But no. He had
learned (it is true) to leave his immediate neighbour, America Lakes, to
himself; but that is all he had learned. In a few days he was up and
about, as full of _la blague_ as ever. The Zulu seemed at times almost
worried about him. They spoke together in Polish frequently and--on The
Zulu's part--earnestly. As subsequent events proved, whatever counsel The
Zulu imparted was wasted upon his youthful friend. But let us turn for a
moment to The Zulu himself.

He could not, of course, write any language whatever. Two words of French
he knew: they were _fromage_ and _chapeau_. The former he pronounced
"grumidge." In English his vocabulary was even more simple, consisting of
the single word "po-lees-man." Neither B. nor myself understood a
syllable of Polish (tho' we subsequently learned _Jin-dobri_,
_nima-Zatz_, _zampni-pisk_ and _shimay pisk_, and used to delight The
Zulu hugely by giving him

"_Jin-dobri, pan_"

every morning, also by asking him if he had a "_papierosa_");
consequently in that direction the path of communication was to all
intents shut. And withal--I say this not to astonish my reader but merely
in the interests of truth--I have never in my life so perfectly
understood (even to the most exquisite nuances) whatever idea another
human being desired at any moment to communicate to me, as I have in the
case of The Zulu. And if I had one-third the command over the written
word that he had over the unwritten and the unspoken--not merely that;
over the unspeakable and the unwritable--God knows this history would
rank with the deepest art of all time.

It may be supposed that he was master of an intricate and delicate system
whereby ideas were conveyed through signs of various sorts. On the
contrary. He employed signs more or less, but they were in every case
extraordinarily simple. The secret of his means of complete and
unutterable communication lay in that very essence which I have only
defined as an IS; ended and began with an innate and unlearnable control
over all which one can only describe as the homogeneously tactile. The
Zulu, for example communicated the following facts in a very few minutes,
with unspeakable ease, one day shortly after his arrival:

He had been formerly a Polish farmer, with a wife and four children. He
had left Poland to come to France, where one earned more money. His
friend (The Young Pole) accompanied him. They were enjoying life placidly
in, it may have been, Brest--I forget--when one night the _gendarmes_
suddenly broke into their room, raided it, turned it bottomside up,
handcuffed the two arch-criminals wrist to wrist, and said "Come with
us." Neither The Zulu nor The Young Pole had the ghost of an idea what
all this meant or where they were going. They had no choice but to obey,
and obey they did. Everyone boarded a train. Everyone got out. Bill The
Hollander and The Babysnatcher appeared under escort, handcuffed to each
other. They were immediately re-handcuffed to the Polish delegation. The
four culprits were hustled, by rapid stages, through several small
prisons to La Ferté Macé. During this journey (which consumed several
nights and days) the handcuffs were not once removed. The prisoners slept
sitting up or falling over one another. They urinated and defecated with
the handcuffs on, all of them hitched together. At various times they
complained to their captors that the agony caused by the swelling of
their wrists was unbearable--this agony, being the result of
over-tightness of the handcuffs, might easily have been relieved by one
of the _plantons_ without loss of time or prestige. Their complaints were
greeted by commands to keep their mouths shut or they'd get it worse than
they had it. Finally they hove in sight of La Ferté and the handcuffs
were removed in order to enable two of the prisoners to escort The Zulu's
box upon their shoulders, which they were only too happy to do under the
circumstances. This box, containing not only The Zulu's personal effects
but also a great array of cartridges, knives and heaven knows what
extraordinary souvenirs which he had gathered from God knows where, was a
strong point in the disfavour of The Zulu from the beginning; and was
consequently brought along as evidence. Upon arriving, all had been
searched, the box included, and sent to The Enormous Room. The Zulu (at
the conclusion of this dumb and eloquent recital) slipped his sleeve
gently above his wrist and exhibited a bluish ring, at whose persistence
upon the flesh he evinced great surprise and pleasure, winking happily to
us. Several days later I got the same story from The Young Pole in
French; but after some little difficulty due to linguistic
misunderstandings, and only after a half-hour's intensive conversation.
So far as directness, accuracy and speed are concerned, between the
method of language and the method of The Zulu, there was not the
slightest comparison.

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