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

the g. and g. nations demanded of their respective peoples the exact antithesis to thinking; said antitheses being vulgarly called Belief. Lest which statement prejudice some members of the American Legion in disfavour of the Machine-Fixer or rather of myself⁠—awful thought⁠—I hasten to assure everyone that the Machine-Fixer was a highly moral person. His morality was at times almost gruesome; as when he got started on the inhabitants of the women’s quarters. Be it understood that the Machine-Fixer was human, that he would take a letter⁠—provided he liked the sender⁠—and deliver it to the sender’s adorée without a murmur. That was simply a good deed done for a friend; it did not imply that he approved of the friend’s choice, which for strictly moral reasons he invariably and to the friend’s very face violently deprecated. To this little man of perhaps forty-five, with a devoted wife waiting for him in Belgium (a wife whom he worshipped and loved more than he worshipped and loved anything in the world, a wife whose fidelity to her husband and whose trust and confidence in him echoed in the letters which⁠—when we three were alone⁠—the little Machine-Fixer tried always to read to us, never getting beyond the first sentence or two before he broke down and sobbed from his feet to his eyes), to such a little person his reaction to les femmes was more than natural. It was in fact inevitable.

Women, to him at least, were of two kinds and two kinds only. There were les femmes honnêtes and there were les putains. In La Ferté, he informed us⁠—and as balayeur he ought to have known whereof he spoke⁠—there were as many as three ladies of the former variety. One of them he talked with often. She told him her story. She was a Russian, of a very fine education, living peacefully in Paris up to the time that she wrote to her relatives a letter containing the following treasonable sentiment:

“Je m’ennuie pour les neiges de Russie.”

The letter had been read by the French censor, as had B.’s letter; and her arrest and transference from her home in Paris to La Ferté Macé promptly followed. She was as intelligent as she was virtuous and had nothing to do with her frailer sisters, so the Machine-Fixer informed us with a quickly passing flash of joy. Which sisters (his little forehead knotted itself and his big bushy eyebrows plunged together wrathfully) were wicked and indecent and utterly despicable disgraces to their sex⁠—and this relentless Joseph fiercely and jerkily related how only the day before he had repulsed the painfully obvious solicitations of a Madame Potiphar by turning his back, like a good Christian, upon temptation and marching out of the room, broom tightly clutched in virtuous hand.

“M’sieu Jean” (meaning myself) “savez-vous”⁠—with a terrific gesture which consisted in snapping his thumbnail between his teeth⁠—“Ça pue!”

Then he added: “And what would my wife say to me if I came home to her and presented her with that which this creature had presented to me? They are animals,” cried the little Machine-Fixer; “all they want is a man. They don’t care who he is; they want a man. But they won’t get me!” And he warned us to beware.

Especially interesting, not to say valuable, was the Machine-Fixer’s testimony concerning the more or less regular “inspections” (which were held by the very same doctor who had “examined” me in the course of my first day at La Ferté) for les femmes; presumably in the interest of public safety. Les femmes, quoth the Machine-Fixer, who had been many times an eyewitness of this proceeding, lined up talking and laughing and⁠—crime of crimes⁠—smoking cigarettes, outside the bureau of M. le Médecin Major. “Une femme entre. Elle se lève les jupes jusqu’au menton et se met sur le banc. Le médecin major la regarde. Il dit de suite ‘Bon. C’est tout.’ Elle sort. Une autre entre. La même chose. ‘Bon. C’est fini.’⁠ ⁠… M’sieu’ Jean: prenez garde!”

And he struck a match fiercely on the black, almost square boot which lived on the end of his little worn trouser-leg, bending his small body forward as he did so, and bringing the flame upward in a violent curve. The flame settled on his little black pipe, his cheeks sucked until they must have met, and a slow unwilling noise arose, and with the return of his cheeks a small colorless wisp of possibly smoke came upon the air.⁠—“That’s not tobacco. Do you know what it is? It’s wood! And I sit here smoking wood in my pipe when my wife is sick with worrying.⁠ ⁠… M’sieu! Jean”⁠—leaning forward with jaw protruding and a oneness of bristly eyebrows, “Ces grands messieurs qui ne foutent pas mal si l’on creve de faim, savez-vous ils croient chacun qu’il est Le Bon Dieu Lui-Même. Et M’sieu’ Jean, savez-vous, ils sont tous”⁠—leaning right in my face, the withered hand making a pitiful fist of itself⁠—“ils. Sont. Des. Crapules!”

And his ghastly and toylike wizened and minute arm would try to make a pass at their lofty lives. O gouvernement français, I think it was not very clever of you to put this terrible doll in La Ferté; I should have left him in Belgium with his little doll-wife if I had been You; for when governments are found dead there is always a little doll on top of them, pulling and tweaking with his little hands to get back the microscopic knife which sticks firmly in the quiet meat of their hearts.

One day only did I see him happy or nearly happy⁠—when a Belgian baroness for some reason arrived, and was bowed and fed and wined by the delightfully respectful and perfectly behaved Official Captors⁠—“and I know of her in Belgium, she is a great lady, she is