The Enormous Room - E. E. Cummings (sci fi books to read .TXT) 📗

cold and only half awake, but peculiarly thrilled. The gendarmes on either side moved grimly, without speaking; or returning monosyllables to my few questions. Yes, we were to take the train. I was going somewhere, then? “B’en sûr.”⁠—“Where?”⁠—“You will know in time.”

After a few minutes we reached the station, which I failed to recognize. The yellow flares of lamps, huge and formless in the night mist, some figures moving to and fro on a little platform, a rustle of conversation: everything seemed ridiculously suppressed, beautifully abnormal, deliciously insane. Every figure was wrapped with its individual ghostliness; a number of ghosts each out on his own promenade, yet each for some reason selecting this unearthly patch of the world, this putrescent and uneasy gloom. Even my guards talked in whispers. “Watch him, I’ll see about the train.” So one went off into the mist. I leaned dizzily against the wall nearest me (having plumped down my baggage) and stared into the darkness at my elbow, filled with talking shadows. I recognized officiers anglais wandering helplessly up and down, supported with their sticks; French lieutenants talking to each other here and there; the extraordinary sense-bereft station master at a distance looking like a cross between a jumping-jack and a goblin; knots of permissionnaires cursing wearily or joking hopelessly with one another or stalking back and forth with imprecatory gesticulations. “It’s a joke, too, you know, there are no more trains?”⁠—“The conductor is dead. I know his sister.”⁠—“Old chap, I am all in.”⁠—“Say, we are all lost.”⁠—“What time is it?”⁠—“My dear fellow, there is no more time, the French Government forbids it.” Suddenly burst out of the loquacious opacity a dozen handfuls of Algériens, their feet swaggering with fatigue, their eyes burning, apparently by themselves⁠—faceless in the equally black mist. By threes and fives they assaulted the goblin who wailed and shook his withered fist in their faces. There was no train. It had been taken away by the French Government. “How do I know how the poilus can get back to their regiments on time? Of course you’ll all of you be deserters, but is it my fault?” (I thought of my friend, the Belgian, at this moment lying in a pen at the prison which I had just quitted by some miracle.)⁠ ⁠… One of these fine people from uncivilized, ignorant, unwarlike Algeria was drunk and knew it, as did two of his very fine friends who announced that as there was no train he should have a good sleep at a farmhouse hard by, which farmhouse one of them claimed to espy through the impenetrable night. The drunk was accordingly escorted into the dark, his friends’ abrupt steps correcting his own large slovenly procedure out of earshot.⁠ ⁠… Some of the Black People sat down near me and smoked. Their enormous faces, wads of vital darkness, swooned with fatigue. Their vast gentle hands lay noisily about their knees.

The departed gendarme returned, with a bump, out of the mist. The train for Paris would arrive de suite. We were just in time, our movement had so far been very creditable. All was well. It was cold, eh?

Then with the ghastly miniature roar of an insane toy the train for Paris came fumbling into the station.⁠ ⁠…

We boarded it, due caution being taken that I should not escape. As a matter of fact I held up the would-be passengers for nearly a minute by my unaided attempts to boost my uncouth baggage aboard. Then my captors and I blundered heavily into a compartment in which an Englishman and two French women were seated. My gendarmes established themselves on either side of the door, a process which woke up the Anglo-Saxon and caused a brief gap in the low talk of the women. Jolt⁠—we were off.

I find myself with a française on my left and an anglais on my right. The latter has already uncomprehendingly subsided into sleep. The former (a woman of about thirty) is talking pleasantly to her friend, whom I face. She must have been very pretty before she put on the black. Her friend is also a veuve. How pleasantly they talk, of la guerre, of Paris, of the bad service; talk in agreeably modulated voices, leaning a little forward to each other, not wishing to disturb the dolt at my right. The train tears slowly on. Both the gendarmes are asleep, one with his hand automatically grasping the handle of the door. Lest I escape. I try all sorts of positions, for I find myself very tired. The best is to put my cane between my legs and rest my chin on it; but even that is uncomfortable, for the Englishman has writhed all over me by this time and is snoring creditably. I look him over; an Etonian, as I guess. Certain well-bred-well-fedness. Except for the position⁠—well, c’est la guerre. The women are speaking softly. “And do you know, my dear, that they had raids again in Paris? My sister wrote me.”⁠—“One has excitement always in a great city, my dear.”⁠—

Bump, slowing down. Bump⁠—bump.

It is light outside. One sees the world. There is a world still, the gouvernement français has not taken it away, and the air must be beautifully cool. In the compartment it is hot. The gendarmes smell worst. I know how I smell. What polite women.

“Enfin, nous voilà.” My guards awoke and yawned pretentiously. Lest I should think they had dozed off. It is Paris.

Some permissionaires cried “Paris.” The woman across from me said “Paris, Paris.” A great shout came up from every insane drowsy brain that had travelled with us⁠—a fierce and beautiful cry, which went the length of the train.⁠ ⁠… Paris, where one forgets, Paris, which is Pleasure, Paris, in whom our souls live, Paris, the beautiful, Paris at last.

The Englishman woke up and said heavily to me: “I say, where