The Enormous Room E. E. Cummings (snow like ashes TXT) đ
- Author: E. E. Cummings
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The four female incorrigibles encountered less difficulty in attaining cabinot than any four specimens of incorrigibility among les hommes. Not only were they placed in dungeon vile with a frequency which amounted to continuity; their sentences were far more severe than those handed out to the men. Up to the time of my little visit to La FertĂ© I had innocently supposed that in referring to women as âthe weaker sexâ a man was strictly within his rights. La FertĂ©, if it did nothing else for my intelligence, rid it of this overpowering error. I recall, for example, a period of sixteen days and nights spent (during my stay) by the woman Lena in the cabinot. It was either toward the latter part of October or the early part of November that this occurred, I will not be sure which. The dampness of the Autumn was as terrible, under normal conditionsâ âthat is to say in The Enormous Roomâ âas any climatic eccentricity which I have ever experienced. We had a wood-burning stove in the middle of the room, which antiquated apparatus was kept going all day to the vast discomfort of eyes and noses not to mention throats and lungsâ âthe pungent smoke filling the room with an atmosphere next to unbreathable, but tolerated for the simple reason that it stood between ourselves and death. For even with the stove going full blast the wall never ceased to sweat and even trickle, so overpowering was the dampness. By night the chill was to myselfâ âfortunately bedded at least eighteen inches from the floor and sleeping in my clothes; bedroll, blankets, and all, under and over me and around meâ ânot merely perceptible but desolating. Once my bed broke, and I spent the night perforce on the floor with only my mattress under me; to awake finally in the whitish dawn perfectly helpless with rheumatism. Yet with the exception of my bed and B.âs bed and a wooden bunk which belonged to Bathhouse John, every paillasse lay directly on the floor; moreover the men who slept thus were three-quarters of them miserably clad, nor had they anything beyond their lightweight blanketsâ âwhereas I had a complete outfit including a big fur coat, which I had taken with me (as previously described) from the Section Sanitaire. The morning after my night spent on the floor I pondered, having nothing to do and being unable to move, upon the subject of my physical enduranceâ âwondering just how the men about me, many of them beyond middle age, some extremely delicate, in all not more than five or six as rugged constitutionally as myself, lived through the nights in The Enormous Room. Also I recollected glancing through an open door into the womenâs quarters, at the risk of being noticed by the planton in whose charge I was at the time (who, fortunately, was stupid even for a planton, else I should have been well punished for my curiosity) and beholding paillasses identical in all respects with ours reposing on the floor; and I thought, if it is marvellous that old men and sick men can stand this and not die, it is certainly miraculous that girls of eleven and fifteen, and the baby which I saw once being caressed out in the womenâs cour with unspeakable gentleness by a little putain whose name I do not know, and the dozen or so oldish females whom I have often seen on promenadeâ âcan stand this and not die. These things I mention not to excite the readerâs pity nor yet his indignation; I mention them because I do not know of any other way to indicateâ âit is no more than indicatingâ âthe significance of the torture perpetrated under the Directeurâs direction in the case of the girl Lena. If incidentally it throws light on the personality of the torturer I shall be gratified.
Lenaâs confinement in the cabinotâ âwhich dungeon I have already attempted to describe but to whose filth and slime no words can begin to do justiceâ âwas in this case solitary. Once a day, of an afternoon and always at the time when all the men were upstairs after the second promenade (which gave the writer of this history an exquisite chance to see an atrocity at firsthand), Lena was taken out of the cabinot by three plantons and permitted a half-hour promenade just outside the door of the building, or in the same localityâ âdelimited by barbed wire on one side and the washing-shed on anotherâ âmade famous by the scene of inebriety above described. Punctually at the expiration of thirty minutes she was shoved back into the cabinot by the plantons. Every day for sixteen days I saw her; noted the indestructible bravado of her gait and carriage, the unchanging timbre of her terrible laughter in response to the salutation of an inhabitant of The Enormous Room (for there were at least six men who spoke to her daily, and took their pain sec and their cabinot in punishment therefor with the pride of
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