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Read Ebook: The Enormous Room by Cummings E E Edward Estlin
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Ebook has 693 lines and 90241 words, and 14 pages
"You rang the bell then," I commented--then to t-d: "Nice car for the wounded to ride in," I politely observed. T-d answered nothing....
Noyon.
"Does he mean me?" the driver asked innocently.
"Sure," I told him.
Nothing is said of B. or me.
"You are hungry?"
It was the erstwhile-ferocious speaking. A criminal, I remembered, is somebody against whom everything he says and does is very cleverly made use of. After weighing the matter in my mind for some moments I decided at all cost to tell the truth, and replied:
"I could eat an elephant."
Hereupon t-d lead me to the Kitchen Itself, set me to eat upon a stool, and admonished the cook in a fierce voice:
"Give this great criminal something to eat in the name of the French Republic!"
And for the first time in three months I tasted Food.
T-d seated himself beside me, opened a huge jack-knife, and fell to, after first removing his tin derby and loosening his belt.
One of the pleasantest memories connected with that irrevocable meal is of a large, gentle, strong woman who entered in a hurry, and seeing me cried out:
"What is it?"
"It's an American, my mother," t-d answered through fried potatoes.
"Why is he here?" the woman touched me on the shoulder, and satisfied herself that I was real.
"The good God is doubtless acquainted with the explanation," said t-d pleasantly. "Not myself being the--"
I bowed and looked around for something to pledge her in. T-d was watching. My eyes fell on a huge glass of red pinard. "Yes, drink," said my captor, with a smile. I raised my huge glass.
--This deed of gallantry quite won the cook who shovelled several helps of potatoes on my already empty plate. The tin derby approved also: "That's right, eat, drink, you'll need it later perhaps." And his knife guillotined another delicious hunk of white bread.
"Downstairs," he replied fuzzily, and readjusted his slumbers.
There was no one moving about in the little court. I lingered somewhat on the way upstairs. The stairs were abnormally dirty. When I reentered, t-d was roaring to himself. I read the journal through again. It must have been about three o'clock.
Suddenly t-d woke up, straightened and buckled his personality, and murmured: "It's time, come on."
Well! Did I know any more?--the American driver wanted to know.
Having proved to my own satisfaction that my fingers could still roll a pretty good cigarette, I answered: "No," between puffs.
The American drew nearer and whispered spectacularly: "Your friend is upstairs. I think they're examining him."
T-d got this; and though his rehabilitated dignity had accepted the "makin's" from its prisoner, it became immediately incensed:
"That's enough," he said sternly.
Braced by this news, poked from behind by my t-d, and waved on from before by M. le Ministre himself, I floated vaguely into a very washed, neat, business-like and altogether American room of modest proportions, whose door was immediately shut and guarded on the inside by my escort.
Monsieur le Ministre said:
"Lift your arms."
Then he went through my pockets. He found cigarettes, pencils, a jack-knife and several francs. He laid his treasures on a clean table and said: "You are not allowed to keep these. I shall be responsible." Then he looked me coldly in the eye and asked if I had anything else?
I told him that I believed I had a handkerchief.
He asked me: "Have you anything in your shoes?"
"My feet," I said, gently.
"Come this way," he said frigidly, opening a door which I had not remarked. I bowed in acknowledgment of the courtesy, and entered room number 2.
I looked into six eyes which sat at a desk.
Two belonged to a lawyerish person in civilian clothes, with a bored expression, plus a moustache of dreamy proportions with which the owner constantly imitated a gentleman ringing for a drink. Two appertained to a splendid old dotard , on whose protruding chest the rosette of the Legion pompously squatted. Numbers five and six had reference to Monsieur, who had seated himself before I had time to focus my slightly bewildered eyes.
Monsieur spoke sanitary English, as I have said.
"What is your name?"--"Edward E. Cummings."
--"Your second name?"--"E-s-t-l-i-n," I spelled it for him.--"How do you say that?"--I didn't understand.--"How do you say your name?"--"Oh," I said; and pronounced it. He explained in French to the moustache that my first name was Edouard, my second "A-s-tay-l-ee-n," and my third "Kay-umm-ee-n-gay-s"--and the moustache wrote it all down. Monsieur then turned to me once more:
Monsieur glanced significantly around. The rosette nodded a number of times. The moustache rang.
"You and your friend were together in Paris?" I said "yes." "How long?" "A month, while we were waiting for our uniforms."
Leaning forward Monsieur asked coldly and carefully: "What did you do in Paris?" to which I responded briefly and warmly: "We had a good time."
This reply pleased the rosette hugely. He wagged his head till I thought it would have tumbled off. Even the mustache seemed amused. Monsieur le Ministre de la Suret? de Noyon bit his lip. "Never mind writing that down," he directed the lawyer. Then, returning to the charge:
"You had a great deal of trouble with Lieutenant A.?"
I laughed outright at this complimentary nomenclature. "Yes, we certainly did."
He asked: "Why?"--so I sketched "Lieutenant" A. in vivid terms, making use of certain choice expressions with which one of the "dirty Frenchmen" attached to the section, a Parisien, master of argot, had furnished me. My phraseology surprised my examiners, one of whom observed sarcastically that I had made good use of my time in Paris.
Monsieur le Ministre asked: Was it true that B. and I were always together and preferred the company of the attached Frenchmen to that of our fellow-Americans?--to which I answered in the affirmative. Why? he wanted to know. So I explained that we felt that the more French we knew and the better we knew the French the better for us; expatiating a bit on the necessity for a complete mutual understanding of the Latin and Anglo-Saxon races if victory was to be won.
Again the rosette nodded with approbation.
Monsieur le Ministre may have felt that he was losing his case, for he played his trump card immediately: "You are aware that your friend has written to friends in America and to his family very bad letters." "I am not," I said.
"Your friend," said Monsieur in English, "is here a short while ago. I ask him if he is up in the aeroplane flying over Germans will he drop the bombs on Germans and he say no, he will not drop any bombs on Germans."
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