The Enormous Room by E. E. Cummings (best way to read ebooks .txt) 📕

very kind to my struggles over 10 and 9. He picked up the cannonball one day and threw it so hard that the wall separating the men’s cour from the cour des femmes shook, and a piece of stone fell off. At which the cannonball was taken away from us (to the grief of its daily wielders, Harree and Fritz) by four perspiring plantons, who almost died in the performance of their highly patriotic duty. His friend, The Barber, had a little shelf in The Enormous Room, all tricked out with an astonishing array of bottles, atomizers, tonics, powders, scissors, razors and other deadly implements. It has always been a mystère to me that our captors permitted this array of obviously dangerous weapons when we were searched almost weekly for knives. Had I not been in the habit of using B.’s safety razor I should probably have become better acquainted with The Barber. It was not his price, nor yet his technique, but the fear of contamination which made me avoid these instruments of hygiene. Not that I shaved to excess. On the contrary, the Surveillant often, nay biweekly (so soon as I began drawing certain francs from Norton Harjes) reasoned with me upon the subject of appearance; saying that I was come of a good family, and I had enjoyed (unlike my companions) an education, and that I should keep myself neat and clean and be a shining example to the filthy and ignorant⁠—adding slyly that the “hospital” would be an awfully nice place for me and my friend to live, and that there we could be by ourselves like gentlemen and have our meals served in the room, avoiding the salle a manger; moreover, the food would be what we liked, delicious food, especially cooked⁠ ⁠… all (quoth the Surveillant with the itching palm of a Grand Central Porter awaiting his tip) for a mere trifle or so, which if I liked I could pay him on the spot⁠—whereat I scornfully smiled, being inhibited by a somewhat selfish regard for my own welfare from kicking him through the window. To The Barber’s credit be it said: he never once solicited my trade, although the Surveillant’s “Soi-même” (oneself) lectures (as B. and I referred to them) were the delight of our numerous friends and must, through them, have reached his alert ears. He was a good-looking quiet man of perhaps thirty, with razor-keen eyes⁠—and that’s about all I know of him except that one day The Young Russian and The Barber, instead of passing from the cour directly to the building, made use of a little door in an angle between the stone wall and the kitchen; and that to such good effect that we never saw them again. Nor were the ever-watchful guardians of our safety, the lionhearted plantons, aware of what had occurred until several hours after; despite the fact that a ten-foot wall had been scaled, some lesser obstructions vanquished, and a run in the open made almost (one unpatriotically minded might be tempted to say) before their very eyes. But then⁠—who knows? May not the French Government deliberately have allowed them to escape, after⁠—through its incomparable spy system⁠—learning that The Barber and his young friend were about to attempt the life of the Surveillant with an atomizer brimfull of T.N.T.? Nothing could after all be more highly probable. As a matter of fact a couple of extra-fine razors (presented by the Soi-même-minded Surveillant to the wily coiffeur in the interests of public health) as well as a knife which belonged to the kitchen and had been lent to The Barber for the purpose of peeling potatoes⁠—he having complained that the extraordinary safety-device with which, on alternate days, we were ordinarily furnished for that purpose, was an insult to himself and his profession⁠—vanished into the rather thick air of Orne along with The Barber lui-même. I remember him perfectly in The Enormous Room, cutting apples deliberately with his knife and sharing them with the Young Russian. The night of the escape⁠—in order to keep up our morale⁠—we were helpfully told that both refugees had been snitched e’er they had got well without the limits of the town, and been remanded to a punishment consisting among other things, in travaux forcés à perpetuité⁠—verbum sapientibus, he that hath ears, etc. Also a nightly inspection was instituted; consisting of our being counted thrice by a planton, who then divided the total by three and vanished.

Soi-même reminds me of a pleasant spirit who graced our little company with a good deal of wit and elegance. He was called by B. and myself, after a somewhat exciting incident which I must not describe, but rather outline, by the agreeable title of Même le Balayeur. Only a few days after my arrival the incident in question happened. It seems (I was in la cour promenading for the afternoon) that certain more virile inhabitants of The Enormous Room, among them Harree and Pom Pom bien entendu, declined to se promener and kept their habitat. Now this was in fulfilment of a little understanding with three or more girls⁠—such as Celina, Lily and Renée⁠—who, having also declined the promenade, managed in the course of the afternoon to escape from their quarters on the second floor, rush down the hall and upstairs, and gain that landing on which was the only and well-locked door to The Enormous Room. The next act of this little comedy (or tragedy, as it proved for the participants, who got cabinot and pain sec⁠—male and female alike⁠—for numerous days thereafter) might well be entitled “Love will find a way.” Just how the door was opened, the lock picked, etc., from the inside is (of course) a considerable mystery to anyone