The Enormous Room E. E. Cummings (snow like ashes TXT) 📖

for three months and had had nothing to eat but bread and water during that time, having been told by the jailors (as he informed us, without a trace of bitterness) that they would shorten his sentence provided he did not partake of La Soupe during his incarceration⁠—that is to say, le gouvernement français had a little joke at Pete’s expense. Also he had known nobody during that time but the five fingers which deposited said bread and water with conscientious regularity on the ground beside him. Being a Hollander neither of these things killed him⁠—on the contrary, he merely turned into a ghost, thereby fooling the excellent French Government within an inch of its foolable life. He was a very excellent friend of ours⁠—I refer as usual to B. and myself⁠—and from the day of his arrival until the day of his departure to Précigne along with B. and three others I never ceased to like and to admire him. He was naturally sensitive, extremely the antithesis of coarse (which “refined” somehow does not imply) had not in the least suffered from a “good,” as we say, education, and possessed an at once frank and unobstreperous personality. Very little that had happened to Pete’s physique had escaped Pete’s mind. This mind of his quietly and firmly had expanded in proportion as its owner’s trousers had become too big around the waist⁠—altogether not so extraordinary as was the fact that, after being physically transformed as I have never seen a human being transformed by food and friends, Pete thought and acted with exactly the same quietness and firmness as before. He was a rare spirit, and I salute him wherever he is.

Mexique was a good friend of Pete’s, as he was of ours. He had been introduced to us by a man we called One Eyed David, who was married and had a wife downstairs, with which wife he was allowed to live all day⁠—being conducted to and from her society by a planton. He spoke Spanish well and French passably; had black hair, bright Jewish eyes, a dead-fish expression, and a both amiable and courteous disposition. One Eyed Dah-veed (as it was pronounced of course) had been in prison at Noyon during the German occupation, which he described fully and without hyperbole⁠—stating that no one could have been more considerate or just than the commander of the invading troops. Dah-veed had seen with his own eyes a French girl extend an apple to one of the common soldiers as the German army entered the outskirts of the city: “ ‘Take it,’ she said, ‘you are tired.’⁠—‘Madame,’ answered the German soldier in French, ‘thank you’⁠—and he looked in his pocket and found ten cents. ‘No, no,’ the young girl said. ‘I don’t want any money. I give it to you with good will.’⁠—‘Pardon, madame,’ said the soldier, ‘you must know that a German soldier is forbidden to take anything without paying for it.’ ”⁠—And before that, One Eyed Dah-veed had talked at Noyon with a barber whose brother was an aviator with the French Army: “ ‘My brother,’ the barber said to me, ‘told me a beautiful story the other day. He was flying over the lines, and he was amazed, one day, to see that the French guns were not firing on the boches but on the French themselves. He landed precipitously, sprang from his machine and ran to the office of the general. He saluted, and cried in great excitement: “General, you are firing on the French!” The general regarded him without interest, without budging; then, he said, very simply: “They have begun, they must finish.” ’ Which is why perhaps,” said One Eyed Dah-veed, looking two ways at once with his uncorrelated eyes, “the Germans entered Noyon.⁠ ⁠…” But to return to Mexique.

One night we had a soirée, as Dah-veed called it, apropos a pot of hot tea which Dah-veed’s wife had given him to take upstairs, it being damnably damp and cold (as usual) in The Enormous Room. Dah-veed, cautiously and in a low voice, invited us to his mattress to enjoy this extraordinary pleasure; and we accepted, B. and I, with huge joy; and sitting on Dah-veed’s paillasse we found somebody who turned out to be Mexique⁠—to whom, by his right name, our host introduced us with all the poise and courtesy vulgarly associated with a French salon.

For Mexique I cherish and always will cherish unmitigated affection. He was perhaps nineteen years old, very chubby, extremely good-natured; and possessed of an unruffled disposition which extended to the most violent and obvious discomforts a subtle and placid illumination. He spoke beautiful Spanish, had been born in Mexico, and was really called Philippe Burgos. He had been in New York. He criticised someone for saying “Yes” to us, one day, stating that no American said “Yes” but “Yuh”; which⁠—whatever the reader may think⁠—is to my mind a very profound observation. In New York he had worked nights as a fireman in some big building or other and slept days, and this method of seeing America he had enjoyed extremely. Mexique had one day taken ship (being curious to see the world) and worked as chauffeur⁠—that is to say in the stokehole. He had landed in, I think, Havre; had missed his ship; had inquired something of a gendarme in French (which he spoke not at all, with the exception of a phrase or two like “quelle heure qu’il est?”); had been kindly treated and told that he would be taken to a ship de suite⁠—had boarded a train in the company of two or three kind gendarmes, ridden a prodigious distance, got off the train finally with high hopes, walked a little distance, come in sight of the grey perspiring wall of La Ferté, and⁠—“So, I ask one of them: ‘Where is the Ship?’ He point to here and tell me, ‘There is the ship.’ I say: ‘This is