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

Protests in a number of languages arose from all parts of The Enormous Room. Rockyfeller gave a contemptuous look around him and proceeded with his conversation. A curse emanated from the darkness. Up sprang The Fighting Sheeney, stark naked; strode over to the bed of the curser, and demanded ferociously:

“Boxe? Vous!”

The curser was apparently fast asleep, and even snoring. The Fighting Sheeney turned away disappointed, and had just reached his paillasse when he was greeted by a number of uproariously discourteous remarks uttered in all sorts of tongues. Over he rushed, threatened, received no response, and turned back to his place. Once more ten or twelve voices insulted him from the darkness. Once more The Fighting Sheeney made for them, only to find sleeping innocents. Again he tried to go to bed. Again the shouts arose, this time with redoubled violence and in greatly increased number. The Fighting Sheeney was at his wits’ end. He strode about challenging everyone to fight, receiving not the slightest recognition, cursing, reviling, threatening, bullying. The darkness always waited for him to resume his mattress, then burst out in all sorts of maledictions upon his head and the sacred head of his lord and master. The latter was told to put out his candle, go to sleep and give the rest a chance to enjoy what pleasure they might in forgetfulness of their woes. Whereupon he appealed to The Sheeney to stop this. The Sheeney (almost weeping) said he had done his best, that everyone was a pig, that nobody would fight, that it was disgusting. Roars of applause. Protests from the less strenuous members of our circle against the noise in general: Let him have his foutue candle, Shut up, Go to sleep yourself, etc. Rockyfeller kept on talking (albeit visibly annoyed by the ill-breeding of his fellow-captives) to the smooth and oily Judas. The noise, or rather noises, increased. I was for some reason angry at Rockyfeller⁠—I think I had a curious notion that if I couldn’t have a light after “lumières éteintes,” and if my very good friends were none of them allowed to have one, then, by God! neither should Rockyfeller. At any rate, I passed a few remarks calculated to wither the by this time a little nervous Übermensch; got up, put on some enormous sabots (which I had purchased from a horrid little boy whom the French Government had arrested with his parent, for some cause unknown⁠—which horrid little boy told me that he had “found” the sabots “in a train” on the way to La Ferté) shook myself into my fur coat, and banged as noisemakingly as I knew how over to One Eyed Dah-veed’s paillasse, where Mexique joined us. “It is useless to sleep,” said One Eyed Dah-veed in French and Spanish. “True,” I agreed; “therefore, let’s make all the noise we can.”

Steadily the racket bulged in the darkness. Human cries, quips and profanity had now given place to wholly inspired imitations of various, not to say sundry, animals. Afrique exclaimed⁠—with great pleasure I recognised his voice through the impenetrable gloom:

“Agahagahagahagahagah!”

—“perhaps,” said I, “he means a machine gun; it sounds like either that or a monkey.” The Wanderer crowed beautifully. Monsieur Auguste’s bosom friend, le Cordonnier, uttered an astonishing:

“Meeee-ooooooow!”

which provoked a tornado of laughter and some applause. Mooings, chirpings, cacklings⁠—there was a superb hen⁠—neighings, he-hawing, roarings, bleatings, growlings, quackings, peepings, screamings, bellowings, and⁠—something else, of course⁠—set The Enormous Room suddenly and entirely alive. Never have I imagined such a menagerie as had magically instated itself within the erstwhile soggy and dismal four walls of our chamber. Even such staid characters as Count Bragard set up a little bawling. Monsieur Pet-airs uttered a tiny aged crowing to my immense astonishment and delight. The dying, the sick, the ancient, the mutilated, made their contributions to the common pandemonium. And then, from the lower left darkness, sprouted one of the very finest noises which ever fell on human ears⁠—the noise of a little dog with floppy ears who was tearing after something on very short legs and carrying his very fuzzy tail straight up in the air as he tore; a little dog who was busier than he was wise, louder than he was big; a red-tongued foolish breathless intent little dog with black eyes and a great smile and woolly paws⁠—which noise, conceived and executed by The Lobster, sent The Enormous Room into an absolute and incurable hysteria.

The Fighting Sheeney was at a standstill. He knew not how to turn. At last he decided to join with the insurgents, and wailed brutally and dismally. That was the last straw: Rockyfeller, who could no longer (even by shouting to Judas) make himself heard, gave up conversation and gazed angrily about him; angrily yet fearfully, as if he expected some of these numerous bears, lions, tigers and baboons to leap upon him from the darkness. His livid super-disagreeable face trembled with the flickering cadence of the candle. His lean lips clenched with mortification and wrath. “Vous êtes chef de chambre,” he said fiercely to Judas⁠—“why don’t you make the men stop this? C’est emmerdant.” “Ah,” replied Judas smoothly and insinuatingly⁠—“They are only men, and boors at that; you can’t expect them to have any manners.” A tremendous group of Something Elses greeted this remark together with cries, insults, groans and linguistic trumpetings. I got up and walked the length of the room to the cabinet (situated as always by this time of night in a pool which was in certain places six inches deep, from which pool my sabots somewhat protected me) and returned, making as loud a clattering as I was able. Suddenly the voice of Monsieur Auguste leaped through the din in an

“Alors! c’est as-sez.”

The next thing we knew he had reached the window just below the cabinet (the only window, by the way, not nailed up with good long wire nails