The Enormous Room. E. E. Cummings

gathered. One didn't take a cane with one to prison (I was glad to know where I was bound, and thanked this communicative gentleman); or criminals weren't allowed canes; or where exactly did I think I was, in the Tuileries? asks a rube movie-cop personage.

      "Very well, gentlemen," I said. "You will allow me to tell you something." (I was beet-colored.) "In America that sort of thing isn't done."

      This haughty inaccuracy produced an astonishing effect, namely, the prestidigitatorial vanishment of the v-f-g. The v-f-g's numerous confrères looked scared and twirled their whiskers.

      I sat on the curb and began to fill a paper with something which I found in my pockets, certainly not tobacco.

      Splutter-splutter-fizz-Poop—the v-f-g is back, with my oak-branch in his raised hand, slithering opprobria and mostly crying: "Is that huge piece of wood what you call a cane? It is, is it? What? How? What the—," so on.

      I beamed upon him and thanked him, and explained that a "dirty Frenchman" had given it to me as a souvenir, and that I would now proceed.

      Twisting the handle in the loop of my sack, and hoisting the vast parcel under my arm, I essayed twice to boost it on my back. This to the accompaniment of HurryHurryHurryHurryHurryHurryHurry. … The third time I sweated and staggered to my feet, completely accoutred.

      Down the road. Into the ville. Curious looks from a few pedestrians. A driver stops his wagon to watch the spider and his outlandish fly. I chuckled to think how long since I had washed and shaved. Then I nearly fell, staggered on a few steps, and set down the two loads.

      Perhaps it was the fault of a strictly vegetarian diet. At any rate, I couldn't move a step farther with my bundles. The sun sent the sweat along my nose in tickling waves. My eyes were blind.

      Hereupon I suggested that the v-f-g carry part of one of my bundles with me, and received the answer: "I am doing too much for you as it is. No gendarme is supposed to carry a prisoner's baggage."

      I said then: "I'm too tired."

      He responded: "You can leave here anything you don't care to carry further; I'll take care of it."

      I looked at the gendarme. I looked several blocks through him. My lip did something like a sneer. My hands did something like fists.

      At this crisis along comes a little boy. May God bless all males between seven and ten years of age in France!

      The gendarme offered a suggestion, in these words: "Have you any change about you?" He knew, of course, that the sanitary official's first act had been to deprive me of every last cent. The gendarme's eyes were fine. They reminded me of … never mind. "If you have change," said he, "you might hire this kid to carry some of your baggage." Then he lit a pipe which was made in his own image, and smiled fattily.

      But herein the v-f-g had bust his milk-jug. There is a slit of a pocket made in the uniform of his criminal on the right side, and completely covered by the belt which his criminal always wears. His criminal had thus outwitted the gumshoe fraternity.

      The gosse could scarcely balance my smaller parcel, but managed after three rests to get it to the station platform; here I tipped him something like two cents (all I had) which, with dollar-big eyes, he took and ran.

      A strongly-built, groomed apache smelling of cologne and onions greeted my v-f-g with that affection which is peculiar to gendarmes. On me he stared cynically, then sneered frankly.

      With a little tooty shriek the funny train tottered in. My captors had taken pains to place themselves at the wrong end of the platform. Now they encouraged me to HurryHurryHurry.

      I managed to get under the load and tottered the length of the train to a car especially reserved. There was one other criminal, a beautifully-smiling, shortish man, with a very fine blanket wrapped in a water-proof oilskin cover. We grinned at each other (the most cordial salutation, by the way, that I have ever exchanged with a human being) and sat down opposite one another—he, plus my baggage which he helped me lift in, occupying one seat; the gendarme-sandwich, of which I formed the pièce de résistance, the other.

      The engine got under way after several feints; which pleased the Germans so that they sent several scout planes right over the station, train, us et tout. All the French anticraft guns went off together for the sake of sympathy; the guardians of the peace squinted cautiously from their respective windows, and then began a debate on the number of the enemy while their prisoners smiled at each other appreciatively.

      "Il fait chaud," said this divine man, prisoner, criminal, or what not, as he offered me a glass of wine in the form of a huge tin cup overflowed from the canteen in his slightly unsteady and delicately made hand. He is a Belgian. Volunteered at beginning of war. Permission at Paris, overstayed by one day. When he reported to his officer, the latter announced that he was a deserter—I said to him, "It is funny. It is funny I should have come back, of my own free will, to my company. I should have thought that being a deserter I would have preferred to remain in Paris." The wine was terribly cold, and I thanked my divine host.

      Never have I tasted such wine.

      They had given me a chunk of war-bread in place of blessing when I left Noyon. I bit into it with renewed might. But the divine man across from me immediately produced a sausage, half of which he laid simply upon my knee. The halving was done with a large keen poilu's knife.

      I have not tasted a sausage since.

      The pigs on my either hand had by this time overcome their respective inertias and were chomping cheek-murdering chunks. They had quite a layout, a regular picnic-lunch elaborate enough for kings or even presidents. The v-f-g in particular annoyed me by uttering alternate chompings and belchings. All the time he ate he kept his eyes half-shut; and a mist overspread the sensual meadows of his coarse face.

      His two reddish eyes rolled devouringly toward the blanket in its waterproof roll. After a huge gulp of wine he said thickly (for his huge moustache was crusted with saliva-tinted half-moistened shreds of food), "You will have no use for that machine là-bas. They are going to take everything away from you when you get there, you know. I could use it nicely. I have wanted such a piece of rubber for a great while, in order to make me a raincoat. Do you see?" (Gulp. Swallow.)