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

the pleasure of being joined at my window by The Zulu, who was brushing cheese crumbs from his long slender Mandarin mustaches, and who expressed profound astonishment and equally profound satisfaction upon noting that I too had been enjoying the pleasures of cheese. Not once, but several times, this Excalibur appearance startled B. and me: in fact the extreme modesty and incomparable shyness of The Zulu found only in this procedure a satisfactory method of bestowing presents upon his two friends⁠ ⁠… I would I could see that long hand once more, the sensitive fingers poised upon a half-camembert; the bodiless arm swinging gently and surely with a derrick-like grace and certainty in my direction.⁠ ⁠…

Not very long after The Zulu’s arrival occurred an incident which I give with pleasure because it shows the dauntless and indomitable, not to say intrepid, stuff of which plantons are made. The single seau which supplied the (at this time) sixty-odd inhabitants of The Enormous Room with drinking water had done its duty, shortly after our arrival from the first soupe with such thoroughness as to leave a number of unfortunate (among whom I was one) waterless. The interval between soupe and promenade loomed darkly and thirstily before us unfortunates. As the minutes passed, it loomed with greater and greater distinctness. At the end of twenty minutes our thirst⁠—stimulated by an especially salty dose of lukewarm water for lunch⁠—attained truly desperate proportions. Several of the bolder thirsters leaned from the various windows of the room and cried,

“De l’eau, planton; de l’eau, s’il vous plaît”

upon which the guardian of the law looked up suspiciously; pausing a moment as if to identify the scoundrels whose temerity had so far got the better of their understanding as to lead them to address him, a planton, in familiar terms⁠—and then grimly resumed his walk, gun on shoulder, revolver on hip, the picture of simple and unaffected majesty. Whereat, seeing that entreaties were of no avail, we put our seditious and dangerous heads together and formulated a very great scheme; to wit, the lowering of an empty tin-pail about eight inches high, which tin-pail had formerly contained confiture, which confiture had long since passed into the guts of Monsieur Auguste, The Zulu, B., myself, and⁠—as The Zulu’s friend⁠—The Young Pole. Now this fiendish imitation of The Old Oaken Bucket That Hung In The Well was to be lowered to the good-natured Marguerite (who went to and fro from the door of the building to the washing shed); who was to fill it for us at the pump situated directly under us in a cavernous chilly cave on the ground-floor, then rehitch it to the rope, and guide its upward beginning. The rest was in the hands of Fate.

Bold might the planton be; we were no fainéants. We made a little speech to everyone in general desiring them to lend us their belts. The Zulu, the immensity of whose pleasure in this venture cannot be even indicated, stripped off his belt with unearthly agility⁠—Monsieur Auguste gave his, which we tongue-holed to The Zulu’s⁠—somebody else contributed a necktie⁠—another a shoestring⁠—The Young Pole his scarf, of which he was impossibly proud⁠—etc. The extraordinary rope so constructed was now tried out in The Enormous Room, and found to be about thirty-eight feet long; or in other words of ample length, considering that the window itself was only three stories above terra firma. Margherite was put on her guard by signs, executed when the planton’s back was turned (which it was exactly half the time, as his patrol stretched at right angles to the wing of the building whose third story we occupied). Having attached the minute bucket to one end (the stronger looking end, the end which had more belts and less neckties and handkerchiefs) of our improvised rope, B., Harree, myself and The Zulu bided our time at the window⁠—then seizing a favourable opportunity, in enormous haste began paying out the infernal contrivance. Down went the sinful tin-pail, safely past the window-ledge just below us, straight and true to the waiting hands of the faithful Margherite⁠—who had just received it and was on the point of undoing the bucket from the first belt when, lo! who should come in sight around the corner but the pimply-faced brilliantly-uniformed glitteringly-putteed sergeant de plantons lui-même. Such amazement as dominated his puny features I have rarely seen equalled. He stopped dead in his tracks; for one second stupidly contemplated the window, ourselves, the wall, seven neckties, five belts, three handkerchiefs, a scarf, two shoestrings, the jam pail, and Margherite⁠—then, wheeling, noticed the planton (who peacefully and with dignity was pursuing a course which carried him further and further from the zone of operations) and finally, spinning around again, cried shrilly

“Qu’est-ce que vous avez foutu avec cette machine-là?”

At which cry the planton staggered, rotated, brought his gun clumsily off his shoulder, and stared, trembling all over with emotion, at his superior.

“Là-bas!” screamed the pimply sergeant de plantons, pointing fiercely in our direction.

Margherite, at his first command, had let go the jam-pail and sought shelter in the building. Simultaneously with her flight we all began pulling on the rope for dear life, making the bucket bound against the wall.

Upon hearing the dreadful exclamation “Là-bas!” the planton almost fell down. The sight which greeted his eyes caused him to excrete a single mouthful of vivid profanity, made him grip his gun like a hero, set every nerve in his noble and faithful body tingling. Apparently however he had forgotten completely his gun, which lay faithfully and expectingly in his two noble hands.

“Attention!” screamed the sergeant.

The planton did something to his gun very aimlessly and rapidly.

“Fire!” shrieked the sergeant, scarlet with rage and mortification.

The planton, cool as steel,