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

fact that weather conditions on Sunday were invariably more indescribable than usual) a planton mounted to The Enormous Room and shouted;

“La Messe!”

several times; whereat the devotees lined up and were carefully conducted to the scene of spiritual operations.

The priest was changed every week. His assistant (whom I had the indescribable pleasure of seeing only upon Sundays) was always the same. It was his function to pick the priest up when he fell down after tripping upon his robe, to hand him things before he wanted them, to ring a huge bell, to interrupt the peculiarly divine portions of the service with a squeaking of his shoes, to gaze about from time to time upon the worshippers for purposes of intimidation, and finally⁠—most important of all⁠—to blow out the two big candles at the very earliest opportunity, in the interests (doubtless) of economy. As he was a short, fattish, ancient, strangely soggy creature and as his longish black suit was somewhat too big for him, he executed a series of profound efforts in extinguishing the candles. In fact he had to climb part way up the candles before he could get at the flame; at which moment he looked very much like a weakly and fat boy (for he was obviously in his second or fourth childhood) climbing a flagpole. At moments of leisure he abased his fatty whitish jowl and contemplated with watery eyes the floor in front of his highly polished boots, having first placed his ugly clubby hands together behind his most ample back.

Sunday: green murmurs in coldness. Surplice fiercely fearful, praying on his bony both knees, crossing himself.⁠ ⁠… The Fake French Soldier, alias Garibaldi, beside him, a little face filled with terror⁠ ⁠… the Bell cranks the sharp-nosed priest on his knees⁠ ⁠… titter from bench of whores⁠—

And that reminds me of a Sunday afternoon on our backs spent with the wholeness of a hill in Chevancourt, discovering a great apple pie, B. and Jean Stahl and Maurice le Menusier and myself; and the sun falling roundly before us.

—And then one Dimanche a new high old man with a sharp violet face and green hair⁠—“You are free, my children, to achieve immortality⁠—Songes, songez, donc⁠—L’Eternité est une existence sans durée⁠—Toujours le Paradis, toujours L’Enfer” (to the silently roaring whores) “Heaven is made for you”⁠—and the Belgian ten-foot farmer spat three times and wiped them with his foot, his nose dripping; and the nigger shot a white oyster into a far-off scarlet handkerchief⁠—and the priest’s strings came untied and he sidled crablike down the steps⁠—the two candles wiggle a strenuous softness.⁠ ⁠…

In another chapter I will tell you about the nigger.

And another Sunday I saw three tiny old females stumble forward, three very formerly and even once bonnets perched upon three wizened skulls, and flop clumsily before the priest, and take the wafer hungrily into their leathery faces.

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 lukewarm 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