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

being informed that people are killing people for nobody knows what reason, that boats go under water and fire six-foot long bullets at ships, that America is not really outside this window close to which we are talking, that America is, in fact, over the sea. The sea: is that water?⁠—“c’est de l’eau, monsieur?” Ah: a great quantity of water; enormous amounts of water, water and then water; water and water and water and water and water. “Ah! You cannot see the other side of this water, monsieur? Wonderful, monsieur!”⁠—He meditates it, smiling quietly; its wonder, how wonderful it is, no other side, and yet⁠—the sea. In which fish swim. Wonderful.

He is utterly curious. He is utterly hungry. We have bought cheese with The Zulu’s money. Surplice comes up, bows timidly and ingratiatingly with the demeanour of a million-times whipped but somewhat proud dog. He smiles. He says nothing, being terribly embarrassed. To help his embarrassment, we pretend we do not see him. That makes things better:

“Fromage, monsieur?”

“Oui, c’est du fromage.”

“Ah-h-h-h-h-h-h.⁠ ⁠…”

his astonishment is supreme. C’est du fromage. He ponders this. After a little

“Monsieur, c’est bon, monsieur?”

asking the question as if his very life depended on the answer: “Yes, it is good,” we tell him reassuringly.

“Ah-h-h. Ah-h.”

He is once more superlatively happy. It is good, le fromage. Could anything be more superbly amazing? After perhaps a minute

“monsieur⁠—monsieur⁠—c’est chèr le fromage?”

“Very,” we tell him truthfully. He smiles, blissfully astonished. Then, with extreme delicacy and the utmost timidity conceivable

“monsieur, combien ça coute, monsieur?”

We tell him. He totters with astonishment and happiness. Only now, as if we had just conceived the idea, we say carelessly

“en voulez-vous?”

He straightens, thrilled from the top of his rather beautiful filthy head to the soleless slippers with which he promenades in rain and frost:

“Merci, Monsieur!”

We cut him a piece. He takes it quiveringly, holds it a second as a king might hold and contemplate the best and biggest jewel of his realm, turns with profuse thanks to us⁠—and disappears.⁠ ⁠…

He is perhaps most curious of this pleasantly sounding thing which everyone around him, everyone who curses and spits upon and bullies him, desires with a terrible desire⁠—Liberté. Whenever anyone departs Surplice is in an ecstasy of quiet excitement. The lucky man may be Fritz; for whom Bathhouse John is taking up a collection as if he, Fritz, were a Hollander and not a Dane⁠—for whom Bathhouse John is striding hither and thither, shaking a hat into which we drop coins for Fritz; Bathhouse John, chipmunk-cheeked, who talks Belgian, French, English and Dutch in his dreams, who has been two years in La Ferté (and they say he declined to leave, once, when given the chance), who cries “baigneur de femmes moi,” and every night hoists himself into his wooden bunk crying “goo-d ni-te”; whose favourite joke is “une section pour les femmes,” which he shouts occasionally in the cour as he lifts his paper-soled slippers and stamps in the freezing mud, chuckling and blowing his nose on the Union Jack⁠ ⁠… and now Fritz, beaming with joy, shakes hands and thanks us all and says to me “Goodbye, Johnny,” and waves and is gone forever⁠—and behind me I hear a timid voice

“monsieur, Liberté?”

and I say Yes, feeling that Yes in my belly and in my head at the same instant; and Surplice stands beside me, quietly marvelling, extremely happy, uncaring that le parti did not think to say goodbye to him. Or it may be Harree and Pompom who are running to and fro shaking hands with everybody in the wildest state of excitement, and I hear a voice behind me:

“Liberté, monsieur? Liberté?”

and I say, No, Précigne, feeling weirdly depressed, and Surplice is standing to my left, contemplating the departure of the incorrigibles with interested disappointment⁠—Surplice of whom no man takes any notice when that man leaves, be it for Hell or Paradise.⁠ ⁠…

And once a week the maître de chambre throws soap on the mattresses, and I hear a voice

“monsieur, voulez pas?”

and Surplice is asking that we give him our soap to wash with.

Sometimes, when he has made quelques sous by washing for others, he stalks quietly to the Butcher’s chair (everyone else who wants a shave having been served) and receives with shut eyes and a patient expression the blade of The Butcher’s dullest razor⁠—for The Butcher is not a man to waste a good razor on Surplice; he, The Butcher, as we call him, the successor of The Frog (who one day somehow managed to disappear like his predecessor The Barber), being a thug and a burglar fond of telling us pleasantly about German towns and prisons, prisons where men are not allowed to smoke, clean prisons where there is a daily medical inspection, where anyone who thinks he has a grievance of any sort has the right of immediate and direct appeal; he, The Butcher, being perhaps happiest when he can spend an evening showing us little parlour tricks fit for children of four and three years old; quite at his best when he remarks:

“Sickness doesn’t exist in France,”

meaning that one is either well or dead; or

“If they (the French) get an inventor they put him in prison.”

—So The Butcher is stooping heavily upon Surplice and slicing and gashing busily and carelessly, his thick lips stuck a little pursewise, his buried pig’s eyes glistening⁠—and in a moment he cries “Fini!” and poor Surplice rises unsteadily, horribly slashed, bleeding from at least three two-inch cuts and a dozen large scratches; totters over to his couch holding on to his face as if he were afraid it would fall off any moment; and lies down gently at full length, sighing with pleasurable surprise, cogitating the inestimable