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

“Why do you shell out these? They cost fifteen sous, you may spend for them if you like, you understand what I’m saying? But some time when you have nothing” (extraordinary gently) “what then? Better to save for that day⁠ ⁠… better to buy du tabac and faire yourself; these are made of tobacco dust.”

And there was someone to the right who was saying: “Tomorrow is Sunday”⁠ ⁠… wearily. The King, lying upon his huge quilt, sobbing now only a little, heard:

“So⁠—ah⁠—he was born on a Sunday⁠—my wife is nursing him, she gives him the breast” (the gesture charmed) “she said to them she would not eat if they gave her that⁠—that’s not worth anything⁠—meat is necessary every day⁠ ⁠…” he mused. I tried to go.

“Sit there” (graciousness of complete gesture. The sheer kingliness of poverty. He creased the indescribably soft couverture for me and I sat and looked into his forehead bounded by the cube of square sliced hair. Blacker than Africa. Than imagination).

After this evening I felt that possibly I knew a little of The Wanderer, or he of me.

The Wanderer’s wife and his two daughters and his baby lived in the women’s quarters. I have not described and cannot describe these four. The little son of whom he was tremendously proud slept with his father in the great quilts in The Enormous Room. Of The Wanderer’s little son I may say that he had lolling buttons of eyes sewed on gold flesh, that he had a habit of turning cartwheels in one-third of his father’s trousers, that we called him The Imp. He ran, he teased, he turned handsprings, he got in the way, and he even climbed the largest of the scraggly trees in the cour one day. “You will fall,” Monsieur Peters (whose old eyes had a fondness for this irrepressible creature) remarked with conviction.⁠—“Let him climb,” his father said quietly. “I have climbed trees. I have fallen out of trees. I am alive.” The Imp shinnied like a monkey, shouting and crowing, up a lean gnarled limb⁠—to the amazement of the very planton who later tried to rape Celina and was caught. This planton put his gun in readiness and assumed an eager attitude of immutable heroism. “Will you shoot?” the father inquired politely. “Indeed it would be a big thing of which you might boast all your life: I, a planton, shot and killed a six-year-old child in a tree.”⁠—“C’est emmerdant,” the planton countered, in some confusion⁠—“he may be trying to escape. How do I know?”⁠—“Indeed, how do you know anything?” the father murmured quietly. “It’s a mystère.” The Imp, all at once, fell. He hit the muddy ground with a disagreeable thud. The breath was utterly knocked out of him. The Wanderer picked him up kindly. His son began, with the catching of his breath, to howl uproariously. “Serves him right, the ⸻ jackanapes,” a Belgian growled.⁠—“I told you so, didn’t I?” Monsieur Pet-airs worringly cried: “I said he would fall out of that tree!”⁠—“Pardon, you were right, I think,” the father smiled pleasantly. “Don’t be sad, my little son, everybody falls out of trees, they’re made for that by God,” and he patted The Imp, squatting in the mud and smiling. In five minutes The Imp was trying to scale the shed. “Come down or I fire,” the planton cried nervously⁠ ⁠… and so it was with The Wanderer’s son from morning till night. “Never,” said Monsieur Pet-airs with solemn desperation, “have I seen such an incorrigible child, a perfectly incorrigible child,” and he shook his head and immediately dodged a missile which had suddenly appeared from nowhere.

Night after night The Imp would play around our beds, where we held court with our chocolate and our candles; teasing us, cajoling us, flattering us, pretending tears, feigning insult, getting lectures from Monsieur Peters on the evil of cigarette smoking, keeping us in a state of perpetual inquietude. When he couldn’t think of anything else to do he sang at the top of his clear bright voice:

“C’est la guerre
faut pas t’en faire”

and turned a handspring or two for emphasis.⁠ ⁠… Mexique once cuffed him for doing something peculiarly mischievous, and he set up a great crying⁠—instantly The Wanderer was standing over Mexique, his hands clenched, his eyes sparkling⁠—it took a good deal of persuasion to convince the parent that his son was in error, meanwhile Mexique placidly awaited his end⁠ ⁠… and neither B. nor I, despite the Imp’s tormentings, could keep from laughing when he all at once with a sort of crowing cry rushed for the nearest post, jumped upon his hands, arched his back, and poised head-downward; his feet just touching the pillar. Barefooted, in a bright chemise and one-third of his father’s trousers.⁠ ⁠…

Being now in a class with “les hommes mariés” The Wanderer spent most of the day downstairs, coming up with his little son every night to sleep in The Enormous Room. But we saw him occasionally in the cour; and every other day when the dreadful cry was raised

“Allez, tout-le-monde, ’plicher les pommes!”

and we descended, in fair weather, to the lane between the building and the cour, and in foul (very foul I should say) the dynosaur-coloured sweating walls of the dining-room⁠—The Wanderer would quietly and slowly appear, along with the other hommes mariés, and take up the peeling of the amazingly cold potatoes which formed the pièce de résistance (in guise of Soupe) for both women and men at La Ferté. And if the wedded males did not all of them show up for this unagreeable task, a dreadful hullabaloo was instantly raised⁠—

“Les hommes mariés!”

and forth would more or less sheepishly issue the delinquents.

And I think The Wanderer, with his wife and children whom he loved as never have