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

proportions, whose door was immediately shut and guarded on the inside by my escort.

Monsieur le Ministre said:

“Lift your arms.”

Then he went through my pockets. He found cigarettes, pencils, a jackknife and several francs. He laid his treasures on a clean table and said: “You are not allowed to keep these. I shall be responsible.” Then he looked me coldly in the eye and asked if I had anything else?

I told him that I believed I had a handkerchief.

He asked me: “Have you anything in your shoes?”

“My feet,” I said, gently.

“Come this way,” he said frigidly, opening a door which I had not remarked. I bowed in acknowledgment of the courtesy, and entered room number 2.

I looked into six eyes which sat at a desk.

Two belonged to a lawyerish person in civilian clothes, with a bored expression, plus a moustache of dreamy proportions with which the owner constantly imitated a gentleman ringing for a drink. Two appertained to a splendid old dotard (a face all ski-jumps and toboggan slides), on whose protruding chest the rosette of the Legion pompously squatted. Numbers five and six had reference to Monsieur, who had seated himself before I had time to focus my slightly bewildered eyes.

Monsieur spoke sanitary English, as I have said.

“What is your name?”⁠—“Edward E. Cummings.”

—“Your second name?”⁠—“E-s-t-l-i-n,” I spelled it for him.⁠—“How do you say that?”⁠—I didn’t understand.⁠—“How do you say your name?”⁠—“Oh,” I said; and pronounced it. He explained in French to the moustache that my first name was Edouard, my second “A-s-tay-l-ee-n,” and my third “Kay-u-mm-ee-n-gay-s”⁠—and the moustache wrote it all down. Monsieur then turned to me once more:

“You are Irish?”⁠—“No,” I said, “American.”⁠—“You are Irish by family?”⁠—“No, Scotch.”⁠—“You are sure that there was never an Irishman in your parents?”⁠—“So far as I know,” I said, “there never was an Irishman there.”⁠—“Perhaps a hundred years back?” he insisted⁠—“Not a chance,” I said decisively. But Monsieur was not to be denied: “Your name it is Irish?”⁠—“Cummings is a very old Scotch name,” I told him fluently, “it used to be Comyn. A Scotchman named The Red Comyn was killed by Robert Bruce in a church. He was my ancestor and a very well-known man.”⁠—“But your second name, where have you got that?”⁠—“From an Englishman, a friend of my father.” This statement seemed to produce a very favorable impression in the case of the rosette, who murmured: “Un ami de son père, un Anglais, bon!” several times. Monsieur, quite evidently disappointed, told the moustache in French to write down that I denied my Irish parentage; which the moustache did.

“What does your father in America?”⁠—“He is a minister of the gospel,” I answered. “Which church?”⁠—“Unitarian.” This puzzled him. After a moment he had an inspiration: “That is the same as a Free Thinker?”⁠—I explained in French that it wasn’t and that mon père was a holy man. At last Monsieur told the moustache to write: Protestant; and the moustache obediently did so.

From this point on our conversation was carried on in French, somewhat to the chagrin of Monsieur, but to the joy of the rosette and with the approval of the moustache. In answer to questions, I informed them that I was a student for five years at Harvard (expressing great surprise that they had never heard of Harvard), that I had come to New York and studied painting, that I had enlisted in New York as conducteur volontaire, embarking for France shortly after, about the middle of April.

Monsieur asked: “You met B⁠⸺ on the paquebot?” I said I did.

Monsieur glanced significantly around. The rosette nodded a number of times. The moustache rang.

I understood that these kind people were planning to make me out the innocent victim of a wily villain, and could not forbear a smile. C’est rigolo, I said to myself; they’ll have a great time doing it.

“You and your friend were together in Paris?” I said “yes.” “How long?” “A month, while we were waiting for our uniforms.”

A significant look by Monsieur, which is echoed by his confrères.

Leaning forward Monsieur asked coldly and carefully: “What did you do in Paris?” to which I responded briefly and warmly: “We had a good time.”

This reply pleased the rosette hugely. He wagged his head till I thought it would have tumbled off. Even the mustache seemed amused. Monsieur le Ministre de la Sûreté de Noyon bit his lip. “Never mind writing that down,” he directed the lawyer. Then, returning to the charge:

“You had a great deal of trouble with Lieutenant A.?”

I laughed outright at this complimentary nomenclature. “Yes, we certainly did.”

He asked: “Why?”⁠—so I sketched “Lieutenant” A. in vivid terms, making use of certain choice expressions with which one of the “dirty Frenchmen” attached to the section, a Parisien, master of argot, had furnished me. My phraseology surprised my examiners, one of whom (I think the moustache) observed sarcastically that I had made good use of my time in Paris.

Monsieur le Ministre asked: Was it true (a) that B. and I were always together and (b) preferred the company of the attached Frenchmen to that of our fellow-Americans?⁠—to which I answered in the affirmative. Why? he wanted to know. So I explained that we felt that the more French we knew and the better we knew the French the better for us; expatiating a bit on the necessity for a complete mutual understanding of the Latin and Anglo-Saxon races if victory was to be won.

Again the rosette nodded with approbation.

Monsieur le Ministre may have felt that he was losing his case, for he played his trump card immediately: “You are aware that your friend has written to friends in America and to his family very bad letters.” “I am not,” I said.

In a flash I understood the motivation of Monsieur’s visit to Vingt-et-Un: the French censor had intercepted some of B.’s letters, and had notified Mr. A. and Mr. A.’s translator, both of whom had