The Enormous Room E. E. Cummings (snow like ashes TXT) š
- Author: E. E. Cummings
Book online Ā«The Enormous Room E. E. Cummings (snow like ashes TXT) šĀ». Author E. E. Cummings
The Young Pole seemed incapable of realising that the climax had come. He lay on his back, cringing a little and laughing foolishly. The Zulu (who slept next to him on our side) had, apparently, just lighted a cigarette which projected upward from a slender holder. The Zuluās face was as always absolutely expressionless. His chin, with a goodly growth of beard, protruded tranquilly from the blanket which concealed the rest of him with the exception of his feetā āfeet which were ensconced in large, somewhat clumsy, leather boots. As The Zulu wore no socks, the Xs of the rawhide lacings on his bare flesh (blue, of course, with cold) presented a rather fascinating design. The Zulu was, to all intents and purposes, gazing at the ceiling.ā āā ā¦
Bill The Hollander, clad only in his shirt, his long lean muscled legs planted far apart, shook one fist after another at the recumbent Young Pole, thundering (curiously enough in English):
āCome on you Gottverdummer son-of-a-bitch of a Polak bastard and fight! Get up out oā there you Polak hoor and Iāll kill you, you Gottverdummer bastard you! I stood enough oā your Gottverdummer nonsense you Gottverdummerā etc.
As Bill The Hollanderās thunder crescendoed steadily, cramming the utmost corners of The Enormous Room with Gottverdummers which echoingly telescoped one another, producing a dim huge shaggy mass of vocal anger, The Young Pole began to laugh less and less; began to plead and excuse and palliate and demonstrateā āand all the while the triangular tower in its naked legs and its palpitating chemise brandished its vast fists nearer and nearer, its ghastly yellow lips hurling cumulative volumes of rhythmic profanity, its blue eyes snapping like firecrackers, its enormous hairy chest heaving and tumbling like a monstrous hunk of seaweed, its flat soiled feet curling and uncurling their ten sour mutilated toes.
The Zulu puffed gently as he lay.
Bill The Hollanderās jaw, sticking into the direction of The Young Poleās helpless gestures, looked (with the pitiless scorching face behind it) like some square house carried in the fore of a white cyclone. The Zulu depressed his chin; his eyes (poking slowly from beneath the visor of the cap which he always wore, in bed or out of it) regarded the vomiting tower with an abstracted interest. He allowed one hand delicately to escape from the blanket and quietly to remove from his lips the gently burning cigarette.
āYou wonāt eh? You bloody Polak coward!ā
and with a speed in comparison to which lightning is snail-like the tower reached twice for the peaches-and-cream cheeks of the prone victim; who set up a tragic bellowing of his own, writhed upon his somewhat dislocated paillasse, raised his elbows shieldingly, and started to get to his feet by way of his trembling kneesā āto be promptly knocked flat. Such a howling as The Young Pole set up I have rarely heard: he crawled sideways; he got on one knee; he made a dart forwardā āand was caught cleanly by an uppercut, lifted through the air a yard, and spreadeagled against the stove which collapsed with an unearthly crash yielding an inky shower of soot upon the combatants and almost crowning The Hollander simultaneously with three four-feet sections of pipe. The Young Pole hit the floor, shouting, on his head, at the apogee of a neatly executed back-somersault, collapsed; rose yelling, and with flashing eyes picked up a length of the ruined tuyau which he lifted high in the airā āat which The Hollander seized in both fists a similar piece, brought it instantly forward and sideways with incognisable velocity and delivered such an immense wallop as smoothed The Young Pole horizontally to a distance of six feet; where he suddenly landed, stovepipe and all in a crash of entire collapse, having passed clear over The Zuluās head. The Zulu, remarking
āMuhā
floated hingingly to a sitting position and was saluted by
āLie down you
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