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

cobalt-blue breeches, shock of orange hair pasted over forehead, pink long face, twenty-six years old, had been in all the countries of all the world: “Australia girl fine girl⁠—Japanese girl cleanest girl of the world⁠—Spanish girl all right⁠—English girl no good, no face⁠—everywhere these things: Norway sailors German girls Sweedisher matches Holland candles”⁠ ⁠… had been to Philadelphia; worked on a yacht for a millionaire; knew and had worked in the Krupp factories; was on two boats torpedoed and one which struck a mine when in sight of shore through the “looking-glass”: “Holland almost no soldier⁠—India” (the Dutch Indies) “nice place, always warm there, I was in cavalry; if you kill a man or steal one hundred franc or anything, in prison twenty-four hours; every week black girl sleep with you because government want white children, black girl fine girl, always doing something, your fingernails or clean your ears or make wind because it’s hot.⁠ ⁠… No one can beat German people; if Kaiser tell man to kill his father and mother he do it quick!”⁠—the tall, strong, coarse, vital youth who remarked:

“I sleep with black girl who smoke a pipe in the night.”

Take this animal. You hear him, you are afraid of him, you smell and you see him and you know him⁠—but you do not touch him.

Or a man who makes us thank God for animals, Judas, as we called him: who keeps his moustaches in press during the night (by means of a kind of transparent frame which is held in place by a band over his head); who grows the nails of his two little fingers with infinite care; has two girls with both of whom he flirts carefully and wisely, without ever once getting into trouble; talks in French; converses in Belgian; can speak eight languages and is therefore always useful to Monsieur le Surveillant⁠—Judas with his shining horrible forehead, pecked with little indentures; with his Reynard full-face⁠—Judas with his pale almost putrescent fatty body in the douche⁠—Judas with whom I talked one night about Russia, he wearing my pelisse⁠—the frightful and impeccable Judas: take this man. You see him, you smell the hot stale odour of Judas’ body; you are not afraid of him, in fact, you hate him; you hear him and you know him. But you do not touch him.

And now take Surplice, whom I see and hear and smell and touch and even taste, and whom I do not know.

Take him in dawn’s soft squareness, gently stooping to pick chewed cigarette ends from the spitty floor⁠ ⁠… hear him, all night: retchings which light into the dark⁠ ⁠… see him all day and all days, collecting his soaked ends and stuffing them gently into his round pipe (when he can find none he smokes tranquilly little splinters of wood)⁠ ⁠… watch him scratching his back (exactly like a bear) on the wall⁠ ⁠… or in the cour, speaking to no one, sunning his soul.⁠ ⁠…

He is, we think, Polish. Monsieur Auguste is very kind to him, Monsieur Auguste can understand a few words of his language and thinks they mean to be Polish. That they are trying hard to be and never can be Polish.

Everyone else roars at him, Judas refers to him before his face as a dirty pig, Monsieur Peters cries angrily:

“Il ne faut pas cracher par terre”

eliciting a humble not to stay abject apology; the Belgians spit on him; the Hollanders chaff him and bulldoze him now and then, crying “Syph’lis”⁠—at which he corrects them with offended majesty

“pas syph’lis, Surplice”

causing shouts of laughter from everyone⁠—of nobody can he say My Friend, of no one has he ever or will he ever say My Enemy.

When there is labour to do he works like a dog⁠ ⁠… the day we had nettoyage de chambre, for instance, and Surplice and The Hat did most of the work; and B. and I were caught by the planton trying to stroll out into the cour⁠ ⁠… every morning he takes the pail of solid excrement down, without anyone’s suggesting that he take it; takes it as if it were his, empties it in the sewer just beyond the cour des femmes or pours a little (just a little) very delicately on the garden where Monsieur le Directeur is growing a flower for his daughter⁠—he has, in fact, an unobstreperous affinity for excrement; he lives in it; he is shaggy and spotted and blotched with it; he sleeps in it; he puts it in his pipe and says it is delicious.⁠ ⁠…

And he is intensely religious, religious with a terrible and exceedingly beautiful and absurd intensity⁠ ⁠… every Friday he will be found sitting on a little kind of stool by his paillasse reading his prayerbook upside down; turning with enormous delicacy the thin difficult leaves, smiling to himself as he sees and does not read. Surplice is actually religious, and so are Garibaldi and I think The Woodchuck (a little dark sad man who spits blood with regularity); by which I mean they go to la messe for la messe, whereas everyone else goes pour voir les femmes. And I don’t know for certain why The Woodchuck goes, but I think it’s because he feels entirely sure he will die. And Garibaldi is afraid, immensely afraid. And Surplice goes in order to be surprised, surprised by the amazing gentleness and delicacy of God⁠—Who put him, Surplice, upon his knees in La Ferté Macé, knowing that Surplice would appreciate His so doing.

He is utterly ignorant. He thinks America is out of a particular window on your left as you enter The Enormous Room. He cannot understand the submarine. He does now know that there is a war. On being informed upon these subjects he is unutterably surprised, he is inexpressibly astonished. He derives huge pleasure from this astonishment. His filthy rather proudly noble face radiates the pleasure he receives upon