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

to be sure, a criminal! Well, well, thank God that settled one question for good and all⁠—no more Section Sanitaire for me! No more Mr. A. and his daily lectures on cleanliness, deportment, etc.! In spite of myself I started to sing. The driver interrupted:

“I heard you asking the tin lid something in French. Whadhesay?”

“Said that gink in the Renault is the head cop of Noyon,” I answered at random.

“Goodnight. Maybe we’d better ring off, or you’ll get in wrong with”⁠—he indicated t-d with a wave of his head that communicated itself to the car in a magnificent skid; and t-d’s derby rang out as the skid pitched t-d the length of the FIAT.

“You rang the bell then,” I commented⁠—then to t-d: “Nice car for the wounded to ride in,” I politely observed. T-d answered nothing.⁠ ⁠…

Noyon.

We drive straight up to something which looks unpleasantly like a feudal dungeon. The driver is now told to be somewhere at a certain time, and meanwhile to eat with the Head Cop, who may be found just around the corner⁠—(I am doing the translating for t-d)⁠—and, oh yes, it seems that the Head Cop has particularly requested the pleasure of this distinguished American’s company at déjeuner.

“Does he mean me?” the driver asked innocently.

“Sure,” I told him.

Nothing is said of B. or me.

Now, cautiously, t-d first and I a slow next, we descend. The FIAT rumbles off, with the distinguished one’s backward-glaring head poked out a yard more or less and that distinguished face so completely surrendered to mystification as to cause a large laugh on my part.

“You are hungry?”

It was the erstwhile-ferocious speaking. A criminal, I remembered, is somebody against whom everything he says and does is very cleverly made use of. After weighing the matter in my mind for some moments I decided at all cost to tell the truth, and replied:

“I could eat an elephant.”

Hereupon t-d led me to the Kitchen Itself, set me to eat upon a stool, and admonished the cook in a fierce voice:

“Give this great criminal something to eat in the name of the French Republic!”

And for the first time in three months I tasted Food.

T-d seated himself beside me, opened a huge jackknife, and fell to, after first removing his tin derby and loosening his belt.

One of the pleasantest memories connected with that irrevocable meal is of a large, gentle, strong woman who entered in a hurry, and seeing me cried out:

“What is it?”

“It’s an American, my mother,” t-d answered through fried potatoes.

“Why is he here?” the woman touched me on the shoulder, and satisfied herself that I was real.

“The good God is doubtless acquainted with the explanation,” said t-d pleasantly. “Not myself being the⁠—”

“Ah, mon pauvre” said this very beautiful sort of woman. “You are going to be a prisoner here. Everyone of the prisoners has a marraine, do you understand? I am their marraine. I love them and look after them. Well, listen: I will be your marraine, too.”

I bowed and looked around for something to pledge her in. T-d was watching. My eyes fell on a huge glass of red pinard. “Yes, drink,” said my captor, with a smile. I raised my huge glass.

“A la santé de ma marraine charmante!”

—This deed of gallantry quite won the cook (a smallish, agile Frenchman) who shovelled several helps of potatoes on my already empty plate. The tin derby approved also: “That’s right, eat, drink, you’ll need it later perhaps.” And his knife guillotined another delicious hunk of white bread.

At last, sated with luxuries, I bade adieu to my marraine and allowed t-d to conduct me (I going first, as always) upstairs and into a little den whose interior boasted two mattresses, a man sitting at the table, and a newspaper in the hands of the man.

“C’est un Américain,” t-d said by way of introduction. The newspaper detached itself from the man who said: “He’s welcome indeed: make yourself at home, Mr. American”⁠—and bowed himself out. My captor immediately collapsed on one mattress.

I asked permission to do the same on the other, which favor was sleepily granted. With half-shut eyes my Ego lay and pondered: the delicious meal it had just enjoyed; what was to come; the joys of being a great criminal⁠ ⁠… then, being not at all inclined to sleep, I read Le Petit Parisien quite through, even to Les Voies Urinaires.

Which reminded me⁠—and I woke up t-d and asked: “May I visit the vespasienne?”

“Downstairs,” he replied fuzzily, and readjusted his slumbers.

There was no one moving about in the little court. I lingered somewhat on the way upstairs. The stairs were abnormally dirty. When I reentered, t-d was roaring to himself. I read the journal through again. It must have been about three o’clock.

Suddenly t-d woke up, straightened and buckled his personality, and murmured: “It’s time, come on.”

Le bureau de Monsieur le Ministre was just around the corner, as it proved. Before the door stood the patient FIAT. I was ceremoniously informed by t-d that we would wait on the steps.

Well! Did I know any more?⁠—the American driver wanted to know.

Having proved to my own satisfaction that my fingers could still roll a pretty good cigarette, I answered: “No,” between puffs.

The American drew nearer and whispered spectacularly: “Your friend is upstairs. I think they’re examining him.”

T-d got this; and though his rehabilitated dignity had accepted the “makin’s” from its prisoner, it became immediately incensed:

“That’s enough,” he said sternly.

And dragged me tout-à-coup upstairs, where I met B. and his t-d coming out of the bureau door. B. looked peculiarly cheerful. “I think we’re going to prison all right,” he assured me.

Braced by this news, poked from behind by my t-d, and waved on from before by M. le Ministre himself, I floated vaguely into a very washed, neat, businesslike and altogether American room of modest