The Enormous Room

by E. E. Cummings

VII.
AN APPROACH TO THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS

“Sunday (says Mr. Pound with infinite penetration) is a dreadful day,
Monday is much pleasanter.
Then let us muse a little space
Upon fond Nature’s morbid grace.”

It is a great and distinct pleasure to have penetrated and arrived upon the outside of La Dimanche. We may now—Nature’s morbid grace being a topic whereof the reader has already heard much and will necessarily hear more—turn to the “much pleasanter,” the in fact “Monday,” aspect of La Ferté; by which I mean les nouveaux whose arrivals and reactions constituted the actual kinetic aspect of our otherwise merely real Nonexistence. So let us tighten our belts, (everyone used to tighten his belt at least twice a day at La Ferté, but for another reason—to follow and keep track of his surely shrinking anatomy) seize our staffs into our hands, and continue the ascent begun with the first pages of the story.

One day I found myself expecting La Soupe Number 1 with something like avidity. My appetite faded, however, upon perceiving a vision en route to the empty place at my left. It slightly resembled a tall youth not more than sixteen or seventeen years old, having flaxen hair, a face whose whiteness I have never seen equalled, and an expression of intense starvation which might have been well enough in a human being but was somewhat unnecessarily uncanny in a ghost. The ghost, floating and slenderly, made for the place beside me, seated himself suddenly and gently like a morsel of white wind, and regarded the wall before him. La soupe arrived. He obtained a plate (after some protest on the part of certain members of our table to whom the advent of a newcomer meant only that everyone would get less for lunch), and after gazing at his portion for a second in apparent wonderment at its size caused it gently and suddenly to disappear. I was no sluggard as a rule, but found myself outclassed by minutes—which, said I to myself, is not to be worried over since ’tis sheer vanity to compete with the supernatural. But (even as I lugged the last spoonful of luke-warm greasy water to my lips) this ghost turned to me for all the world as if I too were a ghost, and remarked softly:

“Will you lend me ten cents? I am going to buy tobacco at the canteen.”

One has no business crossing a spirit, I thought; and produced the sum cheerfully—which sum disappeared, the ghost arose slenderly and soundlessly, and I was left with emptiness beside me.

Later I discovered that this ghost was called Pete.

Pete was a Hollander, and therefore found firm and staunch friends in Harree, John o’ the Bathhouse and the other Hollanders. In three days Pete discarded the immateriality which had constituted the exquisite definiteness of his advent, and donned the garb of flesh-and-blood. This change was due equally to La Soupe and the canteen, and to the finding of friends. For Pete had been in solitary confinement for three months and had had nothing to eat but bread and water during that time, having been told by the jailors (as he informed us, without a trace of bitterness) that they would shorten his sentence provided he did not partake of La Soupe during his incarceration—that is to say, le gouvernement français had a little joke at Pete’s expense. Also he had known nobody during that time but the five fingers which deposited said bread and water with conscientious regularity on the ground beside him. Being a Hollander neither of these things killed him—on the contrary, he merely turned into a ghost, thereby fooling the excellent French Government within an inch of its foolable life. He was a very excellent friend of ours—I refer as usual to B. and myself—and from the day of his arrival until the day of his departure to Précigne along with B. and three others I never ceased to like and to admire him. He was naturally sensitive, extremely the antithesis of coarse (which “refined” somehow does not imply) had not in the least suffered from a “good,” as we say, education, and possessed an at once frank and unobstreperous personality. Very little that had happened to Pete’s physique had escaped Pete’s mind. This mind of his quietly and firmly had expanded in proportion as its owner’s trousers had become too big around the waist—altogether not so extraordinary as was the fact that, after being physically transformed as I have never seen a human being transformed by food and friends, Pete thought and acted with exactly the same quietness and firmness as before. He was a rare spirit, and I salute him wherever he is.

Mexique was a good friend of Pete’s, as he was of ours. He had been introduced to us by a man we called One Eyed David, who was married and had a wife downstairs, with which wife he was allowed to live all day—being conducted to and from her society by a planton. He spoke Spanish well and French passably; had black hair, bright Jewish eyes, a dead-fish expression, and a both amiable and courteous disposition. One Eyed Dah-veed (as it was pronounced of course) had been in prison at Noyon during the German occupation, which he described fully and without hyperbole—stating that no one could have been more considerate or just than the commander of the invading troops. Dah-veed had seen with his own eyes a French girl extend an apple to one of the common soldiers as the German army entered the outskirts of the city: “‘Take it,’ she said, ‘you are tired.’—‘Madame,’ answered the German soldier in French, ‘thank you’—and he looked in his pocket and found ten cents. ‘No, no,’ the young girl said. ‘I don’t want any money. I give it to you with good will.’—‘Pardon, madame,’ said the soldier, ‘you must know that a German soldier is forbidden to take anything without paying for it.’”—And before that, One Eyed Dah-veed had talked at Noyon with a barber whose brother was an aviator with the French Army: “‘My brother,’ the barber said to me, ‘told me a beautiful story the other day. He was flying over the lines, and he was amazed, one day, to see that the French guns were not firing on the boches but on the French themselves. He landed precipitously, sprang from his machine and ran to the office of the general. He saluted, and cried in great excitement: “General, you are firing on the French!” The general regarded him without interest, without budging; then, he said, very simply: “They have begun, they must finish.” “Which is why perhaps,” said One Eyed Dah-veed, looking two ways at once with his uncorrelated eyes, “the Germans entered Noyon….” But to return to Mexique.

One night we had a soirée, as Dah-veed called it, à propos a pot of hot tea which Dah-veed’s wife had given him to take upstairs, it being damnably damp and cold (as usual) in The Enormous Room. Dah-veed, cautiously and in a low voice, invited us to his mattress to enjoy this extraordinary pleasure; and we accepted, B. and I, with huge joy; and sitting on Dah-veed’s paillasse we found somebody who turned out to be Mexique—to whom, by his right name, our host introduced us with all the poise and courtesy vulgarly associated with a French salon.