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

creature with a wizened arm, a little creature in whose eyes tears for some reason are; with a placid youth (Mexique?) who smiles and says shakily:

“Goodbye, Johnny; I no for-get you,”

with a crazy old fellow who somehow or other has got inside B.’s tunic and is gesticulating and crying out and laughing; with a frank-eyed boy who claps me on the back and says:

“Goodbye and good luck t’you”

(is he The Young Skipper, by any chance?); with a lot of hungry wretched beautiful people⁠—I have given my bed to The Zulu, by Jove! and The Zulu is even now standing guard over it, and his friend The Young Pole has given me the address of “mon ami,” and there are tears in The Young Pole’s eyes, and I seem to be amazingly tall and altogether tearless⁠—and this is the nice Norwegian, who got drunk at Bordeaux and stole three (or four was it?) cans of sardines⁠ ⁠… and now I feel before me someone who also has tears in his eyes, someone who is in fact crying, someone whom I feel to be very strong and young as he hugs me quietly in his firm, alert arms, kissing me on both cheeks and on the lips.⁠ ⁠…

“Goo-bye, boy!”

—O goodbye, goodbye, I am going away, Jean; have a good time, laugh wonderfully when la neige comes.⁠ ⁠…

And I am standing somewhere with arms lifted up. “Si vous avez une lettre, sais-tu, il faut dire. For if I find a letter on you it will go hard with the man that gave it to you to take out.” Black. The Black Holster even. Does not examine my baggage. Wonder why? “Allez!” Jean’s letter to his gonzesse in Paris still safe in my little pocket under my belt. Ha, ha, by God, that’s a good one on you, you Black Holster, you Very Black Holster. That’s a good one. Glad I said goodbye to the cook. Why didn’t I give Monsieur Auguste’s little friend, the cordonnier, more than six francs for mending my shoes? He looked so injured. I am a fool, and I am going into the street, and I am going by myself with no planton into the little street of the little city of La Ferté Macé which is a little, a very little city in France, where once upon a time I used to catch water for an old man.⁠ ⁠…

I have already shaken hands with the cook, and with the cordonnier who has beautifully mended my shoes. I am saying goodbye to les deux balayeurs. I am shaking hands with the little (the very little) Machine-Fixer again. I have again given him a franc and I have given Garibaldi a franc. We had a drink a moment ago on me. The tavern is just opposite the gare, where there will soon be a train. I will get upon the soonness of the train and ride into the now of Paris. No, I must change at a station called Briouse did you say, Goodbye, mes amis, et bonne chance! They disappear, pulling and pushing a cart les deux balayeurs⁠ ⁠… de mes couilles⁠ ⁠… by Jove what a tin noise is coming, see the wooden engineer, he makes a funny gesture utterly composed (composed silently and entirely) of merde. Merde! Merde. A wee tiny absurd whistle coming from nowhere, from outside of me. Two men opposite. Jolt. A few houses, a fence, a wall, a bit of neige float foolishly by and through a window. These gentlemen in my compartment do not seem to know that La Misère exists. They are talking politics. Thinking that I don’t understand. By Jesus, that’s a good one. “Pardon me, gentlemen, but does one change at the next station for Paris?” Surprised. I thought so. “Yes, Monsieur, the next station.” By Hell I surprised somebody.⁠ ⁠…

Who are a million, a trillion, a nonillion young men? All are standing. I am standing. We are wedged in and on and over and under each other. Sardines. Knew a man once who was arrested for stealing sardines. I, sardine, look at three sardines, at three million sardines, at a carful of sardines. How did I get here? Oh yes of course. Briouse. Horrible name “Briouse.” Made a bluff at riding deuxième classe on a troisième classe ticket bought for me by les deux balayeurs. Gentleman in the compartment talked French with me till conductor appeared. “Tickets, gentlemen?” I extended mine dumbly. He gave me a look. “How? This is third class!” I looked intelligently ignorant. “Il ne comprend pas français” says the gentleman. “Ah!” says the conductor, “tease ease eye-ee thoorde claz tea-keat. You air een tea say-coend claz. You weel go ean-too tea thoorde claz weal you yes pleace at once?” So I got stung after all. Third is more amusing certainly, though goddamn hot with these sardines, including myself of course. O yes of course. Poilus en permission. Very old some. Others mere kids. Once saw a planton who never saw a razor. Yet he was réformé. C’est la guerre. Several of us get off and stretch at a little tank-town-station. Engine thumping up front somewhere in the darkness. Wait. They get their bidons filled. Wish I had a bidon, a dis-donc bidon n’est-ce pas. Faut pas t’en faire, who sang or said that?

Pee-p.⁠ ⁠…

We’re off.

I am almost asleep. Or myself. What’s the matter here? Sardines writhing about, cut it out, no room for that sort of thing. Jolt.

“Paris.”

Morning. Morning in Paris. I found my bed full of fleas this morning, and I couldn’t catch the fleas, though I tried hard because I was ashamed that anyone should find fleas in my bed which is at the Hotel des Saints Pères