The Enormous Room

by E. E. Cummings

I turned, I turned so suddenly as almost to bowl over the Black Holster, Black Holster and all; I turned toward the door, I turned upon the Black Holster, I turned into Edward E. Cummings, I turned into what was dead and is now alive, I turned into a city, I turned into a dream—

I am standing in The Enormous Room for the last time. I am saying good-bye. No, it is not I who am saying good-bye. It is in fact somebody else, possibly myself. Perhaps myself has shaken hands with a little 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:

“Good-bye, 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:

“Good-bye 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 good-bye, good-bye, 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 good-bye 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 good-bye 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, Good-bye, 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….