The Enormous Room, E. E. Cummings [beautiful books to read txt] 📗

The older rang at the gate. A gendarme with a revolver answered his ring; and presently he was admitted, leaving the younger and myself to wait. And now I began to realize that this was the gendarmerie of the town, into which for safekeeping I was presently to be inducted for the night. My heart sank, I confess, at the thought of sleeping in the company of that species of humanity which I had come to detest beyond anything in hell or on earth. Meanwhile the doorman had returned with the older, and I was bidden roughly enough to pick up my baggage and march. I followed my guides down a corridor, up a staircase, and into a dark, small room where a candle was burning. Dazzled by the light and dizzied by the fatigue of my ten or twelve mile stroll, I let my baggage go; and leaned against a convenient wall, trying to determine who was now my tormentor.

Facing me at a table stood a man of about my own height, and, as I should judge, about forty years old. His face was seedy sallow and long. He had bushy semicircular eyebrows which drooped so much as to reduce his eyes to mere blinking slits. His cheeks were so furrowed that they leaned inward. He had no nose, properly speaking, but a large beak of preposterous widthlessness, which gave his whole face the expression of falling gravely downstairs, and quite obliterated the unimportant chin. His mouth was made of two long uncertain lips which twitched nervously. His cropped black hair was rumpled; his blouse, from which hung a croix de guerre, unbuttoned; and his unputteed shanks culminated in bed-slippers. In physique he reminded me a little of Ichabod Crane. His neck was exactly like a hen’s: I felt sure that when he drank he must tilt his head back as hens do in order that the liquid may run down their throats. But his method of keeping himself upright, together with certain spasmodic contractions of his fingers and the nervous “uh-ah, uh-ah” which punctuated his insecure phrases like uncertain commas, combined to offer the suggestion of a rooster; a rather moth-eaten rooster, which took itself tremendously seriously and was showing off to an imaginary group of admiring hens situated somewhere in the background of his consciousness.

“Vous êtes, uh-ah, l’Am-é-ri-cain?”

“Je suis Américain,” I admitted.

“Eh-bi-en uh-ah uh-ah⁠—We were expecting you.” He surveyed me with great interest.

Behind this seedy and restless personage I noted his absolute likeness, adorning one of the walls. The rooster was faithfully depicted à la Rembrandt at half-length in the stirring guise of a fencer, foil in hand, and wearing enormous gloves. The execution of this masterpiece left something to be desired; but the whole betokened a certain spirit and verve, on the part of the sitter, which I found difficulty in attributing to the being before me.

“Vous êtes uh-ah Kew-Mangz?”

“What?” I said, completely baffled by this extraordinary dissyllable.

“Comprenez vous fran-çais?”

“Un peu.”

“Bon. Alors, vous vous ap-pel-lez Kew Mangz, n’est-ce pas? Edouard Kew-Mangz?”

“Oh,” I said, relieved, “yes.” It was really amazing, the way he writhed around the G.

“Comment ça se prononce en anglais?”

I told him.

He replied benevolently, somewhat troubled “uh-ah uh-ah uh-ah⁠—why are you here, Kew-Mangz?”

At this question I was for one moment angrier than I had ever before been in all my life. Then I realized the absurdity of the situation, and laughed.⁠—“Sais pas.”

The questionnaire continued:

“You were in the Red Cross?”⁠—“Surely, in the Norton Harjes Ambulance, Section Sanitaire Vingt-et-Un.”⁠—“You had a friend there?”⁠—“Naturally.”⁠—“Il a écrit, votre ami, des bêtises, n’est ce pas?”⁠—“So they told me. N’en sais rien.”⁠—“What sort of person was your friend?”⁠—“He was a magnificent person, always très gentil with me.”⁠—(With a queer pucker the fencer remarked) “Your friend got you into a lot of trouble, though.”⁠—(To which I replied with a broad grin) “N’importe, we are camarades.”

A stream of puzzled uh-ahs followed this reply. The fencer, or rooster or whatever he might be, finally, picking up the lamp and the lock, said: “Alors, viens avec moi, Kew-Mangz.” I started to pick up the sac, but he told me it would be kept in the office (we being in the office). I said I had checked a large sac and my fur overcoat at Briouse, and he assured me they would be sent on by train. He now dismissed the gendarmes, who had been listening curiously to the examination. As I was conducted from the bureau I asked him point-blank: “How long am I to stay here?”⁠—to which he answered “Oh, peut-être un jour, deux jours, je ne sais pas.”

Two days in a gendarmerie would be enough, I thought. We marched out.

Behind me the bedslippered rooster uhahingly shuffled. In front of me clumsily gamboled the huge imitation of myself. It descended the terribly worn stairs. It turned to the right and disappeared.⁠ ⁠…

We were standing in a chapel.

The shrinking light which my guide held had become suddenly minute; it was beating, senseless and futile, with shrill fists upon a thick enormous moisture of gloom. To the left and right through lean oblongs of stained glass burst dirty burglars of moonlight. The clammy stupid distance uttered dimly an uncanny conflict⁠—the mutterless tumbling of brutish shadows. A crowding ooze battled with my lungs. My nostrils fought against the monstrous atmospheric slime which hugged a sweet unpleasant odour. Staring ahead, I gradually disinterred the pale carrion of the darkness⁠—an altar, guarded with the ugliness of unlit candles, on which stood inexorably the efficient implements for eating God.

I was to be confessed, then, of my guilty conscience, before retiring? It boded well for the morrow.

… the measured accents of the fencer: “Prenez votre paillasse.” I turned. He was bending over a formless