Book: The Enormous Room

E >> Edward Estlin Cummings >> The Enormous Room




This, as I say, must have occurred toward the last of November.

For a week we waited.

Fritz, having waited months for a letter from the Danish consul in reply
to the letters which he, Fritz, wrote every so often and sent through _le
bureau_--meaning the _sécrétaire_--had managed to get news of his
whereabouts to said consul by unlawful means; and was immediately, upon
reception of this news by the consul, set free and invited to join a ship
at the nearest port. His departure (than which a more joyous I have never
witnessed) has been already mentioned in connection with the third
Delectable Mountain, as has been the departure for Précigne of Pom Pom
and Harree ensemble. Bill the Hollander, Monsieur Pet-airs, Mexique, The
Wanderer, the little Machine-Fixer, Pete, Jean le Nègre, The Zulu and
Monsieur Auguste (second time) were some of our remaining friends who
passed the commission with us. Along with ourselves and these fine people
were judged gentlemen like the Trick Raincoat and the Fighting Sheeney.
One would think, possibly, that Justice--in the guise of the Three Wise
Men--would have decreed different fates, to (say) The Wanderer and The
Fighting Sheeney. _Au contraire_. As I have previously remarked, the ways
of God and of the good and great French Government are alike inscrutable.

Bill the Hollander, whom we had grown to like, whereas at first we were
inclined to fear him, Bill the Hollander who washed some towels and
handkerchiefs and what-nots for us and turned them a bright pink, Bill
the Hollander who had tried so hard to teach The Young Pole the lesson
which he could only learn from The Fighting Sheeney, left us about a week
after _la commission_. As I understand it, they decided to send him back
to Holland under guard in order that he might be jailed in his native
land as a deserter. It is beautiful to consider the unselfishness of _le
gouvernement français_ in this case. Much as _le gouvernement français_
would have liked to have punished Bill on its own account and for its own
enjoyment, it gave him up--with a Christian smile--to the punishing
clutches of a sister or brother government: without a murmur denying
itself the incense of his sufferings and the music of his sorrows. Then
too it is really inspiring to note the perfect collaboration of _la
justice française_ and _la justice hollandaise_ in a critical moment of
the world's history. Bill certainly should feel that it was a great
honour to be allowed to exemplify this wonderful accord, this exquisite
mutual understanding, between the punitive departments of two nations
superficially somewhat unrelated--that is, as regards customs and
language. I fear Bill didn't appreciate the intrinsic usefulness of his
destiny. I seem to remember that he left in a rather _Gottverdummerish_
condition. Such is ignorance.

Poor Monsieur Pet-airs came out of the commission looking extraordinarily
_épaté_. Questioned, he averred that his penchant for inventing
forcepumps had prejudiced _ces messieurs_ in his disfavour; and shook his
poor old head and sniffed hopelessly. Mexique exited in a placidly
cheerful condition, shrugging his shoulders and remarking:

"I no do nut'ing. Dese fellers tell me wait few days, after you go free,"
whereas Pete looked white and determined and said little--except in Dutch
to the Young Skipper and his mate; which pair took _la commission_ more
or less as a healthy bull calf takes nourishment: there was little doubt
that they would refind _la liberté_ in a short while, judging from the
inability of the Three Wise Men to prove them even suspicious characters.
The Zulu uttered a few inscrutable gestures made entirely of silence and
said he would like us to celebrate the accomplishment of this ordeal by
buying ourselves and himself a good fat cheese apiece--his friend The
Young Pole looked as if the ordeal had scared the life out of him
temporarily; he was unable to say whether or no he and "_mon ami_" would
leave us: _la commission_ had adopted, in the case of these twain, an
awe-inspiring taciturnity. Jean Le Nègre, who was one of the last to
pass, had had a tremendously exciting time, due to the fact that _le
gouvernement français's_ polished tools had failed to scratch his mystery
either in French or English--he came dancing and singing toward us; then,
suddenly suppressing every vestige of emotion, solemnly extended for our
approval a small scrap of paper on which was written:

CALAIS,

remarking: "_Qu-est-ce que ça veut dire?_"--and when we read the word for
him, "_m'en vais à Calais, moi, travailler à Calais, très bon!_"--with a
jump and a shout of laughter pocketing the scrap and beginning the Song
of Songs:

"_apres la guerre finit...._"

A trio which had been hit and hard hit by the Three Wise Men were, or
was, The Wanderer and the Machine-Fixer and Monsieur Auguste--the former
having been insulted in respect to Chocolat's mother (who also occupied
the witness-stand) and having retaliated, as nearly as we could discover,
with a few remarks straight from the shoulder à propos Justice (O
Wanderer, did you expect honour among the honourable?); the Machine-Fixer
having been told to shut up in the midst of a passionate plea for mercy,
or at least fair-play, if not in his own case in the case of the wife who
was crazed by his absence; Monsieur Auguste having been asked (as he had
been asked three months before by the honorable commissioners), Why did
you not return to Russia with your wife and your child at the outbreak of
the war?--and having replied, with tears in his eyes and that gentle
ferocity of which he was occasionally capable:

"Be-cause I didn't have the means. I am not a mil-lion-aire, Sirs."

The Baby-Snatcher, the Trick Raincoat, the Messenger Boy, the Fighting
Sheeney and similar gentry passed the commission without the slightest
apparent effect upon their disagreeable personalities.

It was not long after Bill the Hollander's departure that we lost two
Delectable Mountains in The Wanderer and Surplice. Remained The Zulu and
Jean le Nègre.... B. and I spent most of our time when on promenade
collecting rather beautifully hued leaves in _la cour_. These leaves we
inserted in one of my notebooks, along with all the colours which we
could find on cigarette boxes, chocolate wrappers, labels of various
sorts and even postage stamps. (We got a very brilliant red from a
certain piece of cloth.) Our efforts puzzled everyone (including the
_plantons_) more than considerably; which was natural, considering that
everyone did not know that by this exceedingly simple means we were
effecting a study of colour itself, in relation to what is popularly
called "abstract" and sometimes "non-representative" painting. Despite
their natural puzzlement everyone (_plantons_ excepted) was
extraordinarily kind and brought us often valuable additions to our
chromatic collection. Had I, at this moment and in the city of New York,
the complete confidence of one-twentieth as many human beings I should
not be so inclined to consider The Great American Public as the most
aesthetically incapable organization ever created for the purpose of
perpetuating defunct ideals and ideas. But of course The Great American
Public has a handicap which my friends at La Ferté did not as a rule
have--education. Let no one sound his indignant yawp at this. I refer to
the fact that, for an educated gent or lady, to create is first of all to
destroy--that there is and can be no such thing as authentic art until
the _bons trucs_ (whereby we are taught to see and imitate on canvas and
in stone and by words this so-called world) are entirely and thoroughly
and perfectly annihilated by that vast and painful process of Unthinking
which may result in a minute bit of purely personal Feeling. Which minute
bit is Art.

Ah well, the revolution--I refer of course to the intelligent
revolution--is on the way; is perhaps nearer than some think, is possibly
knocking at the front doors of The Great Mister Harold Bell Wright and
The Great Little Miss Pollyanna. In the course of the next ten thousand
years it may be possible to find Delectable Mountains without going to
prison--captivity, I mean, Monsieur le Surveillant--it may be possible, I
daresay, to encounter Delectable Mountains who are not in prison....

The Autumn wore on.

Rain did, from time to time, not fall: from time to time a sort of
unhealthy almost-light leaked from the large uncrisp corpse of the sky,
returning for a moment to our view the ruined landscape. From time to
time the eye, travelling carefully with a certain disagreeable suddenly
fear no longer distances of air, coldish and sweet, stopped upon the
incredible clearness of the desolate, without-motion, Autumn. Awkward and
solemn clearness, making louder the unnecessary cries, the hoarse
laughter of the invisible harlots in their muddy yard, pointing a cool
actual finger at the silly and ferocious group of man-shaped beings
huddled in the mud under four or five little trees, came strangely in my
own mind pleasantly to suggest the ludicrous and hideous and beautiful
antics of the insane. Frequently I would discover so perfect a command
over myself as to reduce _la promenade_ easily to a recently invented
mechanism; or to the demonstration of a collection of vivid and unlovely
toys around and around which, guarding them with impossible heroism,
funnily moved purely unreal _plantons_ always absurdly marching, the
maimed and stupid dolls of my imagination. Once I was sitting alone on
the long beam of silent iron and suddenly had the gradual complete unique
experience of death....

It became amazingly cold.

One evening B. and myself and, I think it was the Machine-Fixer, were
partaking of the warmth of a _bougie_ hard by and, in fact, between our
ambulance beds, when the door opened, a _planton_ entered, and a list of
names (none of which we recognized) was hurriedly read off with (as in
the case of the last _partis_, including The Wanderer and Surplice) the
admonition:

"Be ready to leave early to-morrow morning."

--and the door shut loudly and quickly. Now one of the names which had
been called sounded somewhat like "Broom," and a strange inquietude
seized us on this account. Could it possibly have been "B."? We made
inquiries of certain of our friends who had been nearer the _planton_
than ourselves. We were told that Pete and The Trick Raincoat and The
Fighting Sheeney and Rockyfeller were leaving--about "B." nobody was able
to enlighten us. Not that opinions in this matter were lacking. There was
plenty of opinions--but they contradicted each other to a painful extent.
_Les hommes_ were in fact about equally divided; half considering that
the occult sound had been intended for "B.," half that the somewhat
asthmatic _planton_ had unwittingly uttered a spontaneous grunt or sigh,
which sigh or grunt we had mistaken for a proper noun. Our uncertainty
was augmented by the confusion emanating from a particular corner of The
Enormous Room, in which corner The Fighting Sheeney was haranguing a
group of spectators on the pregnant topic: What I won't do to Précigne
when I get there. In deep converse with Bathhouse John we beheld the very
same youth who, some time since, had drifted to a place beside me at _la
soupe_--Pete The Ghost, white and determined, blond and fragile: Pete the
Shadow....

I forget who, but someone--I think it was the little
Machine-Fixer--established the truth that an American was to leave the
next morning. That, moreover, said American's name was B.

Whereupon B. and I became extraordinarily busy.

The Zulu and Jean le Nègre, upon learning that B. was among the _partis_,
came over to our beds and sat down without uttering a word. The former,
through a certain shy orchestration of silence, conveyed effortlessly and
perfectly his sorrow at the departure; the latter, by his bowed head and
a certain very delicate restraint manifested in the wholly exquisite
poise of his firm alert body, uttered at least a universe of grief.

The little Machine-Fixer was extremely indignant; not only that his
friend was going to a den of thieves and ruffians, but that his friend
was leaving in such company as that of _ce crapule_ (meaning Rockyfeller)
and _les deux mangeurs de blanc_ (to wit, The Trick Raincoat and The
Fighting Sheeney). "_c'est malheureux_," he repeated over and over,
wagging his poor little head in rage and despair--"it's no place for a
young man who has done no wrong, to be shut up with pimps and cutthroats,
_pour la durée de la guerre; le gouvernement français a bien fait!_" and
he brushed a tear out of his eye with a desperate rapid brittle
gesture.... But what angered the Machine-Fixer most was that B. and I
were about to be separated--"_M'sieu' Jean_" (touching me gently on the
knee) "they have no hearts, _la commission_; they are not simply unjust,
they are cruel, _savez-vous_? Men are not like these; they are not men,
they are Name of God I don't know what, they are worse than the animals;
and they pretend to Justice" (shivering from top to toe with an
indescribable sneer) "Justice! My God, Justice!"

All of which, somehow or other, did not exactly cheer us.

And, the packing completed, we drank together for The Last Time. The Zulu
and Jean Le Nègre and the Machine-Fixer and B. and I--and Pete The Shadow
drifted over, whiter than I think I ever saw him, and said simply to me:

"I'll take care o' your friend, Johnny."

... and then at last it was _lumières éteintes_; and _les deux
américains_ lay in their beds in the cold rotten darkness, talking in low
voices of the past, of Petroushka, of Paris, of that brilliant and
extraordinary and impossible something: Life.

Morning. Whitish. Inevitable. Deathly cold.

There was a great deal of hurry and bustle in The Enormous Room. People
were rushing hither and thither in the heavy half-darkness. People were
saying good-bye to people. Saying good-bye to friends. Saying good-bye to
themselves. We lay and sipped the black evil dull certainly not coffee;
lay on our beds, dressed, shuddering with cold, waiting. Waiting. Several
of _les hommes_ whom we scarcely knew came up to B. and shook hands with
him and said good luck and good-bye. The darkness was going rapidly out
of the dull black evil stinking air. B. suddenly realized that he had no
gift for The Zulu; he asked a fine Norwegian to whom he had given his
leather belt if he, the Norwegian, would mind giving it back, because
there was a very dear friend who had been forgotten. The Norwegian, with
a pleasant smile, took off the belt and said "Certainly" ... he had been
arrested at Bordeaux, where he came ashore from his ship, for stealing
three cans of sardines when he was drunk ... a very great and dangerous
criminal ... he said "Certainly," and gave B. a pleasant smile, the
pleasantest smile in the world. B. wrote his own address and name in the
inside of the belt, explained in French to The Young Pole that any time
The Zulu wanted to reach him all he had to do was to consult the belt;
The Young Pole translated; The Zulu nodded; The Norwegian smiled
appreciatively; The Zulu received the belt with a gesture to which words
cannot do the faintest justice--

A _planton_ was standing in The Enormous Room, a _planton_ roaring and
cursing and crying, "Hurry, those who are going to go."--B. shook hands
with Jean and Mexique and the Machine-Fixer and the Young Skipper, and
Bathhouse John (to whom he had given his ambulance tunic, and who was
crazy-proud in consequence) and the Norwegian and the Washing Machine Man
and The Hat and many of _les hommes_ whom we scarcely knew.--The Black
Holster was roaring:

"_Allez, nom de Dieu, l'américain!_"

I went down the room with B. and Pete, and shook hands with both at the
door. The other _partis_, alias The Trick Raincoat and The Fighting
Sheeney, were already on the way downstairs. The Black Holster cursed us
and me in particular and slammed the door angrily in my face--

Through the little peephole I caught a glimpse of them, entering the
street. I went to my bed and lay down quietly in my great _pélisse_. The
clamour and filth of the room brightened and became distant and faded. I
heard the voice of the jolly Alsatian saying:

"_Courage, mon ami_, your comrade is not dead; you will see him later,"
and after that, nothing. In front of and on and within my eyes lived
suddenly a violent and gentle and dark silence.

The Three Wise Men had done their work. But wisdom cannot rest....

Probably at that very moment they were holding their court in another La
Ferté committing to incomparable anguish some few merely perfectly
wretched criminals: little and tall, tremulous and brave--all of them
white and speechless, all of them with tight bluish lips and large
whispering eyes, all of them with fingers weary and mutilated and
extraordinarily old ... desperate fingers; closing, to feel the final
luke-warm fragment of life glide neatly and softly into forgetfulness.




XIII

I SAY GOOD-BYE TO LA MISÈRE

To convince the reader that this history is mere fiction (and rather
vulgarly violent fiction at that) nothing perhaps is needed save that
ancient standby of sob-story writers and thrill-artists alike--the Happy
Ending. As a matter of fact, it makes not the smallest difference to me
whether anyone who has thus far participated in my travels does or does
not believe that they and I are (as that mysterious animal, "the public"
would say) "real." I do, however, very strenuously object to the
assumption, on the part of anyone, that the heading of this, my final,
chapter stands for anything in the nature of happiness. In the course of
recalling (in God knows a rather clumsy and perfectly inadequate way)
what happened to me between the latter part of August, 1917, and the
first of January, 1918, I have proved to my own satisfaction (if not to
anyone else's) that I was happier in La Ferté Macé, with The Delectable
Mountains about me, than the very keenest words can pretend to express. I
daresay it all comes down to a definition of happiness. And a definition
of happiness I most certainly do not intend to attempt; but I can and
will say this: to leave La Misère with the knowledge, and worse than that
the feeling, that some of the finest people in the world are doomed to
remain prisoners thereof for no one knows how long--are doomed to
continue, possibly for years and tens of years and all the years which
terribly are between them and their deaths, the grey and indivisible
Non-existence which without apology you are quitting for Reality--cannot
by any stretch of the imagination be conceived as constituting a Happy
Ending to a great and personal adventure. That I write this chapter at
all is due, purely and simply, to the, I daresay, unjustified hope on my
part that--by recording certain events--it may hurl a little additional
light into a very tremendous darkness....

At the outset let me state that what occurred subsequent to the departure
for Précigne of B. and Pete and The Sheeneys and Rockyfeller is shrouded
in a rather ridiculous indistinctness; due, I have to admit, to the
depression which this departure inflicted upon my altogether too human
nature. The judgment of the Three Wise Men had--to use a peculiarly
vigorous (not to say vital) expression of my own day and time--knocked me
for a loop. I spent the days intervening between the separation from
"_votre camarade_" and my somewhat supernatural departure for freedom in
attempting to partially straighten myself. When finally I made my exit,
the part of me popularly referred to as "mind" was still in a slightly
bent if not twisted condition. Not until some weeks of American diet had
revolutionized my exterior did my interior completely resume the contours
of normality. I am particularly neither ashamed nor proud of this (one
might nearly say) mental catastrophe. No more ashamed or proud, in fact,
than of the infection of three fingers which I carried to America as a
little token of La Ferté's good-will. In the latter case I certainly have
no right to boast, even should I find myself so inclined; for B. took
with him to Précigne a case of what his father, upon B.'s arrival in The
Home of The Brave, diagnosed as scurvy--which scurvy made my mutilations
look like thirty cents or even less. One of my vividest memories of La
Ferté consists in a succession of crackling noises associated with the
disrobing of my friend. I recall that we appealed to Monsieur Ree-chard
together, B. in behalf of his scurvy and I in behalf of my hand plus a
queer little row of sores, the latter having proceeded to adorn that part
of my face which was trying hard to be graced with a moustache. I recall
that Monsieur Ree-chard decreed a _bain_ for B., which _bain_ meant
immersion in a large tin tub partially filled with not quite luke-warm
water. I, on the contrary, obtained a speck of zinc ointment on a minute
piece of cotton, and considered myself peculiarly fortunate. Which
details cannot possibly offend the reader's aesthetic sense to a greater
degree than have already certain minutiae connected with the sanitary
arrangements of The Directeur's little home for homeless boys and
girls--therefore I will not trouble to beg the reader's pardon; but will
proceed with my story proper or improper.

"_Mais qu'est-ce que vous avez_," Monsieur le Surveillant demanded, in a
tone of profound if kindly astonishment, as I wended my lonely way to _la
soupe_ some days after the disappearance of _les partis_.

I stood and stared at him very stupidly without answering, having indeed
nothing at all to say.

"But why are you so sad?" he asked.

"I suppose I miss my friend," I ventured.

"_Mais--mais--_" he puffed and panted like a very old and fat person
trying to persuade a bicycle to climb a hill--"_mais--vous avez de la
chance!_"

"I suppose I have," I said without enthusiasm.

"_Mais--mais--parfaitement--vous avez de la
chance--uh-ah--uh-ah--parceque--comprenez-vous--votre camarade--ah-ah--a
attrapé prison!_"

"Uh-ah!" I said wearily.

"Whereas," continued Monsieur, "you haven't. You ought to be
extraordinarily thankful and particularly happy!"

"I should rather have gone to prison with my friend," I stated briefly;
and went into the dining-room, leaving the Surveillant uh-ahing in
nothing short of complete amazement.

I really believe that my condition worried him, incredible as this may
seem. At the time I gave neither an extraordinary nor a particular damn
about Monsieur le Surveillant, nor indeed about "_l'autre américain_"
alias myself. Dimly, through a fog of disinterested inapprehension, I
realized that--with the exception of the _plantons_ and, of course,
Apollyon--everyone was trying very hard to help me; that The Zulu, Jean,
The Machine-Fixer, Mexique, The Young Skipper, even The Washing Machine
Man (with whom I promenaded frequently when no one else felt like taking
the completely unagreeable air) were kind, very kind, kinder than I can
possibly say. As for Afrique and The Cook--there was nothing too good for
me at this time. I asked the latter's permission to cut wood, and was not
only accepted as a sawyer, but encouraged with assurances of the best
coffee there was, with real sugar _dedans_. In the little space outside
the _cuisine_, between the building and _la cour_, I sawed away of a
morning to my great satisfaction; from time to time clumping my _saboted_
way into the _chef's_ domain in answer to a subdued signal from Afrique.
Of an afternoon I sat with Jean or Mexique or The Zulu on the long beam
of silent iron, pondering very carefully nothing at all, replying to
their questions or responding to their observations in a highly
mechanical manner. I felt myself to be, at last, a doll--taken out
occasionally and played with and put back into its house and told to go
to sleep....

One afternoon I was lying on my couch, thinking of the usual Nothing,
when a sharp cry sung through The Enormous Room:

"_Il tombe de la neige--Noël! Noël!_"

I sat up. The Guard Champêtre was at the nearest window, dancing a little
horribly and crying:

"_Noël! Noël!_"

I went to another window and looked out. Sure enough. Snow was falling,
gradually and wonderfully falling, silently falling through the thick
soundless Autumn.... It seemed to me supremely beautiful, the snow. There
was about it something unspeakably crisp and exquisite, something perfect
and minute and gentle and fatal.... The Guard Champêtre's cry began a
poem in the back of my head, a poem about the snow, a poem in French,
beginning _Il tombe de la neige, Noël, Noël._ I watched the snow. After a
long time I returned to my bunk and I lay down, closing my eyes; feeling
the snow's minute and crisp touch falling gently and exquisitely, falling
perfectly and suddenly, through the thick soundless autumn of my
imagination....

"_L'américain! L'américain!_"

Someone is speaking to me.

"_Le petit belge avec le bras cassé est là-bas, à la porte, il veut
parler...._"

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