XIII
I SAY GOOD -BYE TO LA MISÈRE
To convince the reader that this history is mere fiction (and rather vulgarly violent fiction at that) nothing perhaps is needed save that ancient standby of sob-story writers and thrill-artists alike—the Happy Ending. As a matter of fact, it makes not the smallest difference to me whether anyone who has thus far participated in my travels does or does not believe that they and I are (as that mysterious animal, "the public" would say) "real." I do, however, very strenuously object to the assumption, on the part of anyone, that the heading of this, my final, chapter stands for anything in the nature of happiness. In the course of recalling (in God knows a rather clumsy and perfectly inadequate way) what happened to me between the latter part of August, 1917, and the first of January, 1918, I have proved to my own satisfaction (if not to anyone else's) that I was happier in La Ferté Macé, with The Delectable Mountains about me, than the very keenest words can pretend to express. I daresay it all comes down to a definition of happiness. And a definition of happiness I most certainly do not intend to attempt; but I can and will say this: to leave La Misère with the knowledge, and worse than that the feeling, that some of the finest people in the world are doomed to remain prisoners thereof for no one knows how long—are doomed to continue, possibly for years and tens of years and all the years which terribly are between them and their deaths, the grey and indivisible Non-existence which without apology you are quitting for Reality—cannot by any stretch of the imagination be conceived as constituting a Happy Ending to a great and personal adventure. That I write this chapter at all is due, purely and simply, to the, I daresay, unjustified hope on my part that—by recording certain events—it may hurl a little additional light into a very tremendous darkness....
At the outset let me state that what occurred subsequent to the departure for Précigne of B. and Pete and The Sheeneys and Rockyfeller is shrouded in a rather ridiculous indistinctness; due, I have to admit, to the depression which this departure inflicted upon my altogether too human nature. The judgment of the Three Wise Men had—to use a peculiarly vigorous (not to say vital) expression of my own day and time—knocked me for a loop. I spent the days intervening between the separation from "votre camarade" and my somewhat supernatural departure for freedom in attempting to partially straighten myself. When finally I made my exit, the part of me popularly referred to as "mind" was still in a slightly bent if not twisted condition. Not until some weeks of American diet had revolutionized my exterior did my interior completely resume the contours of normality. I am particularly neither ashamed nor proud of this (one might nearly say) mental catastrophe. No more ashamed or proud, in fact, than of the infection of three fingers which I carried to America as a little token of La Ferté's good-will. In the latter case I certainly have no right to boast, even should I find myself so inclined; for B. took with him to Précigne a case of what his father, upon B.'s arrival in The Home of The Brave, diagnosed as scurvy—which scurvy made my mutilations look like thirty cents or even less. One of my vividest memories of La Ferté consists in a succession of crackling noises associated with the disrobing of my friend. I recall that we appealed to Monsieur Ree-chard together, B. in behalf of his scurvy and I in behalf of my hand plus a queer little row of sores, the latter having proceeded to adorn that part of my face which was trying hard to be graced with a moustache. I recall that Monsieur Ree-chard decreed a bain for B., which bain meant immersion in a large tin tub partially filled with not quite luke-warm water. I, on the contrary, obtained a speck of zinc ointment on a minute piece of cotton, and considered myself peculiarly fortunate. Which details cannot possibly offend the reader's aesthetic sense to a greater degree than have already certain minutiae connected with the sanitary arrangements of The Directeur's little home for homeless boys and girls—therefore I will not trouble to beg the reader's pardon; but will proceed with my story proper or improper.
"Mais qu'est-ce que vous avez," Monsieur le Surveillant demanded, in a tone of profound if kindly astonishment, as I wended my lonely way to la soupe some days after the disappearance of les partis.
I stood and stared at him very stupidly without answering, having indeed nothing at all to say.
"But why are you so sad?" he asked.
"I suppose I miss my friend," I ventured.
"Mais—mais—" he puffed and panted like a very old and fat person trying to persuade a bicycle to climb a hill—"mais—vous avez de la chance!"
"I suppose I have," I said without enthusiasm.
"Mais—mais—parfaitement—vous avez de la chance—uh-ah—uh-ah—parceque—comprenez-vous—votre camarade—ah-ah—a attrapé prison!"
"Uh-ah!" I said wearily.
"Whereas," continued Monsieur, "you haven't. You ought to be extraordinarily thankful and particularly happy!"
"I should rather have gone to prison with my friend," I stated briefly; and went into the dining-room, leaving the Surveillant uh-ahing in nothing short of complete amazement.
I really believe that my condition worried him, incredible as this may seem. At the time I gave neither an extraordinary nor a particular damn about Monsieur le Surveillant, nor indeed about "l'autre américain" alias myself. Dimly, through a fog of disinterested inapprehension, I realized that—with the exception of the plantons and, of course, Apollyon—everyone was trying very hard to help me; that The Zulu, Jean, The Machine-Fixer, Mexique, The Young Skipper, even The Washing Machine Man (with whom I promenaded frequently when no one else felt like taking the completely unagreeable air) were kind, very kind, kinder than I can possibly say. As for Afrique and The Cook--there was nothing too good for me at this time. I asked the latter's permission to cut wood, and was not only accepted as a sawyer, but encouraged with assurances of the best coffee there was, with real sugar dedans. In the little space outside the cuisine, between the building and la cour, I sawed away of a morning to my great satisfaction; from time to time clumping my saboted way into the chef's domain in answer to a subdued signal from Afrique. Of an afternoon I sat with Jean or Mexique or The Zulu on the long beam of silent iron, pondering very carefully nothing at all, replying to their questions or responding to their observations in a highly mechanical manner. I felt myself to be, at last, a doll--taken out occasionally and played with and put back into its house and told to go to sleep....
One afternoon I was lying on my couch, thinking of the usual Nothing, when a sharp cry sung through The Enormous Room:
"Il tombe de la neige--Noël! Noël!"
I sat up. The Guard Champêtre was at the nearest window, dancing a little horribly and crying:
"Noël! Noël!"
I went to another window and looked out. Sure enough. Snow was falling, gradually and wonderfully falling, silently falling through the thick soundless Autumn.... It seemed to me supremely beautiful, the snow. There was about it something unspeakably crisp and exquisite, something perfect and minute and gentle and fatal.... The Guard Champêtre's cry began a poem in the back of my head, a poem about the snow, a poem in French, beginning Il tombe de la neige, Noël, Noël. I watched the snow. After a long time I returned to my bunk and I lay down, closing my eyes; feeling the snow's minute and crisp touch falling gently and exquisitely, falling perfectly and suddenly, through the thick soundless autumn of my imagination.... "L'américain! L'américain!"
Someone is speaking to me.
"Le petit belge avec le bras cassé est là-bas, à la porte, il veut parler...."
I marched the length of the room. The Enormous Room is filled with a new and beautiful darkness, the darkness of the snow outside, falling and falling and falling with the silent and actual gesture which has touched the soundless country of my mind as a child touches a toy it loves....
Through the locked door I heard a nervous whisper: "Dis à l'américain que je veux parler avec lui."—"Me voici" I said.
"Put your ear to the key-hole, M'sieu' Jean," said the Machine-Fixer's voice. The voice of the little Machine-Fixer, tremendously excited. I obey—"Alors. Qu'est-ce que c'est, mon ami?"
"M'sieu' Jean! Le Directeur va vous appeler tout de suite! You must get ready instantly! Wash and shave, eh? He's going to call you right away. And don't forget! Oloron! You will ask to go to Oloron Sainte Marie, where you can paint! Oloron Sainte Marie, Basse Pyrenées! N'oubliez pas, M'sieu' Jean! Et dépêchez-vous!"
"Merci bien, mon ami!"—I remember now. The little Machine-Fixer and I had talked. It seemed that la commission had decided that I was not a criminal, but only a suspect. As a suspect I would be sent to some place in France, any place I wanted to go, provided it was not on or near the sea coast. That was in order that I should not perhaps try to escape from France. The Machine-Fixer had advised me to ask to go to Oloron Sainte Marie. I should say that, as a painter, the Pyrenees particularly appealed to me. "Et qu'il fait beau, là-bas! The snow on the mountains! And it's not cold. And what mountains! You can live there very cheaply. As a suspect you will merely have to report once a month to the chief of police of Oloron Sainte Marie; he's an old friend of mine! He's a fine, fat, red-cheeked man, very kindly. He will make it easy for you, M'sieu' Jean, and will help you out in every way, when you tell him you are a friend of the little Belgian with the broken arm. Tell him I sent you. You will have a very fine time, and you can paint: such scenery to paint! My God—not like what you see from these windows. I advise you by all means to ask to go to Oloron."
So thinking I lathered my face, standing before Judas' mirror.
"You don't rub enough," the Alsatian advised, "il faut frotter bien!" A number of fellow-captives were regarding my toilet with surprise and satisfaction. I discovered in the mirror an astounding beard and a good layer of dirt. I worked busily, counselled by several voices, censured by the Alsatian, encouraged by Judas himself. The shave and the wash completed I felt considerably refreshed.
WHANG!
"L'américain en bas!" It was the Black Holster. I carefully adjusted my tunic and obeyed him.
The Directeur and the Surveillant were in consultation when I entered the latter's office. Apollyon, seated at a desk, surveyed me very fiercely. His subordinate swayed to and fro, clasping and unclasping his hands behind his back, and regarded me with an expression of almost benevolence. The Black Holster guarded the doorway.
Turning on me ferociously: "Your friend is wicked, very wicked, SAVEZ-VOUS?" Le Directeur shouted.
I answered quietly: "Oui? Je ne le savait pas."
"He is a bad fellow, a criminal, a traitor, an insult to civilization," Apollyon roared into my face.
"Yes?" I said again.
"You'd better be careful!" the Directeur shouted. "Do you know what's happened to your friend?"
"Sais pas," I said.
"He's gone to prison where he belongs!" Apollyon roared. "Do you understand what that means?"
"Perhaps," I answered, somewhat insolently I fear.
"You're lucky not to be there with him! Do you understand?" Monsieur Le Directeur thundered, "and next time pick your friends better, take more care, I tell you, or you'll go where he is—TO PRISON FOR THE REST OF THE WAR!"
"With my friend I should be well content in prison!" I said evenly, trying to keep looking through him and into the wall behind his black, big, spidery body.
"In God's Name, what a fool!" the Directeur bellowed furiously—and the Surveillant remarked pacifyingly: "He loves his comrade too much, that's all."—"But his comrade is a traitor and a villain!" objected the Fiend, at the top of his harsh voice--"Comprenez-vous; votre ami est UN SALOP!" he snarled at me.
He seems afraid that I don't get his idea, I said to myself. "I understand what you say," I assured him.
"And you don't believe it?" he screamed, showing his fangs and otherwise looking like an exceedingly dangerous maniac.
"Je ne le crois fas, Monsieur."
"O God's name!" he shouted. "What a fool, quel idiot, what a beastly fool!" And he did something through his froth-covered lips, something remotely suggesting laughter.
Hereupon the Surveillant again intervened. I was mistaken. It was lamentable. I could not be made to understand. Very true. But I had been sent for—"Do you know, you have been decided to be a suspect?" Monsieur le Surveillant turned to me, "and now you may choose where you wish to be sent." Apollyon was blowing and wheezing and muttering ... clenching his huge pinkish hands.
I addressed the Surveillant, ignoring Apollyon. "I should like, if I may, to go to Oloron Sainte Marie."
"What do you want to go there for?" the Directeur exploded threateningly.
I explained that I was by profession an artist, and had always wanted to view the Pyrenees. "The environment of Oloron would be most stimulating to an artist—"
"Do you know it's near Spain?" he snapped, looking straight at me.I knew it was, and therefore replied with a carefully childish ignorance: "Spain? Indeed! Very interesting."
"You want to escape from France, that's it?" the Directeur snarled.
"Oh, I hardly should say that!" the Surveillant interposed soothingly; "he is an artist, and Oloron is a very pleasant place for an artist. A very nice place, I hardly think his choice of Oloron a cause for suspicion. I should think it a very natural desire on his part."—His superior subsided snarling.
After a few more questions I signed some papers which lay on the desk, and was told by Apollyon to get out.
"When can I expect to leave?" I asked the Surveillant.
"Oh, it's only a matter of days, of weeks perhaps," he assured me benignantly.
"You'll leave when it's proper for you to leave!" Apollyon burst out. "Do you understand?"
"Yes, indeed. Thank you very much," I replied with a bow, and exited. On the way to The Enormous Room the Black Holster said to me sharply:
"Vous allez partir?"
"Oui."
He gave me such a look as would have turned a mahogany piano leg into a mound of smoking ashes, and slammed the key into the lock.
—Everyone gathered about me. "What news?"
"I have asked to go to Oloron as a suspect," I answered.
"You should have taken my advice and asked to go to Cannes," the fat Alsatian reproached me. He had indeed spent a great while advising me; but I trusted the little Machine-Fixer.
"Parti?" Jean le Nègre said with huge eyes, touching me gently.
"No, no. Later, perhaps; not now," I assured him. And he patted my shoulder and smiled, "Bon!" And we smoked a cigarette in honour of the snow, of which Jean—in contrast to the majority of les hommes—highly and unutterably approved. "C'est jolie!" he would say, laughing wonderfully. And next morning he and I went on an exclusive promenade, I in my sabots, Jean in a new pair of slippers which he had received (after many requests) from the bureau. And we strode to and fro in the muddy cour admiring la neige, not speaking.
One day, after the snowfall, I received from Paris a complete set of Shakespeare in the Everyman edition. I had forgotten completely that B. and I—after trying and failing to get William Blake—had ordered and paid for the better-known William; the ordering and communicating in general being done with the collaboration of Monsieur Pet-airs. It was a curious and interesting feeling which I experienced upon first opening to "As You Like It" ... the volumes had been carefully inspected, I learned, by the sécrétaire, in order to eliminate the possibility of their concealing something valuable or dangerous. And in this connection let me add that the sécrétaire or (if not he) his superiors, were a good judge of what is valuable—if not what is dangerous. I know this because, whereas my family several times sent me socks in every case enclosing cigarettes, I received invariably the former sans the latter. Perhaps it is not fair to suspect the officials of La Ferté of this peculiarly mean theft; I should, possibly, doubt the honesty of that very same French censor whose intercepting of B.'s correspondence had motivated our removal from the Section Sanitaire. Heaven knows I wish (like the Three Wise Men) to give justice where justice is due.
Somehow or other, reading Shakespeare did not appeal to my disordered mind. I tried Hamlet and Julius Caesar once or twice, and gave it up, after telling a man who asked "Shah-kay-spare, who is Shah-kay-spare?" that Mr. S. was the Homer of the English-speaking peoples--which remark, to my surprise, appeared to convey a very definite idea to the questioner and sent him away perfectly satisfied. Most of the timeless time I spent promenading in the rain and sleet with Jean le Nègre, or talking with Mexique, or exchanging big gifts of silence with The Zulu. For Oloron—I did not believe in it, and I did not particularly care. If I went away, good; if I stayed, so long as Jean and The Zulu and Mexique were with me, good. "M'en fou pas mal," pretty nearly summed up my philosophy.
At least the Surveillant let me alone on the Soi-Même topic. After my brief visit to Satan I wallowed in a perfect luxury of dirt. And no one objected. On the contrary everyone (realizing that the enjoyment of dirt may be made the basis of a fine art) beheld with something like admiration my more and more uncouth appearance. Moreover, by being dirtier than usual I was protesting in a (to me) very satisfactory way against all that was neat and tidy and bigoted and solemn and founded upon the anguish of my fine friends. And my fine friends, being my fine friends, understood. Simultaneously with my arrival at the summit of dirtiness—by the calendar, as I guess, December the twenty-first--came the Black Holster into The Enormous Room and with an excited and angry mien proclaimed loudly:
"L'américain! Allez chez le Directeur. De suite."
I protested mildly that I was dirty.
"N'importe. Allez avec moi," and down I went to the amazement of everyone and the great amazement of myself. "By Jove! wait till he sees me this time," I remarked half-audibly....
The Directeur said nothing when I entered.
The Directeur extended a piece of paper, which I read.
The Directeur said, with an attempt at amiability: "Alors, vous allez sortir."
I looked at him in eleven-tenths of amazement. I was standing in the bureau de Monsieur le Directeur du Camp de Triage de la Ferté Macé, Orne, France, and holding in my hand a slip of paper which said that if there was a man named Edward E. Cummings he should report immediately to the American Embassy, Paris, and I had just heard the words: "Well, you are going to leave."
Which words were pronounced in a voice so subdued, so constrained, so mild, so altogether ingratiating, that I could not imagine to whom it belonged. Surely not to the Fiend, to Apollyon, to the Prince of Hell, to Satan, to Monsieur le Directeur du Camp de Triage de la Ferté Macé--
"Get ready. You will leave immediately."
Then I noticed the Surveillant. Upon his face I saw an almost smile. He returned my gaze and remarked:
"Uh-ah, uh-ah, Oui."
"That's all," the Directeur said. "You will call for your money at the bureau of the Gestionnaire before leaving."
"Go and get ready," the Fencer said, and I certainly saw a smile....
"I? Am? Going? To? Paris?" somebody who certainly wasn't myself remarked in a kind of whisper.
"Parfaitement."--Pettish. Apollyon. But how changed. Who the devil is myself? Where in Hell am I? What is Paris--a place, a somewhere, a city, life; (to live: infinitive. Present first singular: I live. Thou livest). The Directeur. The Surveillant. La Ferté Macé, Orne, France. "Edward E. Cummings will report immediately." Edward E. Cummings. The Surveillant. A piece of yellow paper. The Directeur. A necktie. Paris. Life. Liberté. La liberté. "La Liberté!" I almost shouted in agony.
"Dépêchez-vous. Savez-vous, vous allez partir de suite. Cet après-midi. Pour Paris."
I turned, I turned so suddenly as almost to bowl over the Black Holster, Black Holster and all; I turned toward the door, I turned upon the Black Holster, I turned into Edward E. Cummings, I turned into what was dead and is now alive, I turned into a city, I turned into a dream--
I am standing in The Enormous Room for the last time. I am saying good-bye. No, it is not I who am saying good-bye. It is in fact somebody else, possibly myself. Perhaps myself has shaken hands with a little creature with a wizened arm, a little creature in whose eyes tears for some reason are; with a placid youth (Mexique?) who smiles and says shakily:
"Good-bye, Johnny; I no for-get you,"
with a crazy old fellow who somehow or other has got inside B.'s tunic and is gesticulating and crying out and laughing; with a frank-eyed boy who claps me on the back and says:
"Good-bye and good luck t'you"
(is he The Young Skipper, by any chance?); with a lot of hungry wretched beautiful people—I have given my bed to The Zulu, by Jove! and The Zulu is even now standing guard over it, and his friend The Young Pole has given me the address of "mon ami," and there are tears in The Young Pole's eyes, and I seem to be amazingly tall and altogether tearless—and this is the nice Norwegian, who got drunk at Bordeaux and stole three (or four was it?) cans of sardines ... and now I feel before me someone who also has tears in his eyes, someone who is in fact crying, someone whom I feel to be very strong and young as he hugs me quietly in his firm, alert arms, kissing me on both cheeks and on the lips....
"Goo-bye, boy!"
—O good-bye, good-bye, I am going away, Jean; have a good time, laugh wonderfully when la neige comes....
And I am standing somewhere with arms lifted up. "Si vous avez une lettre, sais-tu, il faut dire. For if I find a letter on you it will go hard with the man that gave it to you to take out." Black. The Black Holster even. Does not examine my baggage. Wonder why? "Allez!" Jean's letter to his gonzesse in Paris still safe in my little pocket under my belt. Ha, ha, by God, that's a good one on you, you Black Holster, you Very Black Holster. That's a good one. Glad I said good-bye to the cook. Why didn't I give Monsieur Auguste's little friend, the cordonnier, more than six francs for mending my shoes? He looked so injured. I am a fool, and I am going into the street, and I am going by myself with no planton into the little street of the little city of La Ferté Macé which is a little, a very little city in France, where once upon a time I used to catch water for an old man....
I have already shaken hands with the Cook, and with the cordonnier who has beautifully mended my shoes. I am saying good-bye to les deux balayeurs. I am shaking hands with the little (the very little) Machine-Fixer again. I have again given him a franc and I have given Garibaldi a franc. We had a drink a moment ago on me. The tavern is just opposite the gare, where there will soon be a train. I will get upon the soonness of the train and ride into the now of Paris. No, I must change at a station called Briouse did you say, Good-bye, mes amis, et bonne chance! They disappear, pulling and pushing a cart les deux balayeurs ... de mes couilles ... by Jove what a tin noise is coming, see the wooden engineer, he makes a funny gesture utterly composed (composed silently and entirely) of merde. Merde! Merde. A wee tiny absurd whistle coming from nowhere, from outside of me. Two men opposite. Jolt. A few houses, a fence, a wall, a bit of neige float foolishly by and through a window. These gentlemen in my compartment do not seem to know that La Misère exists. They are talking politics. Thinking that I don't understand. By Jesus, that's a good one. "Pardon me, gentlemen, but does one change at the next station for Paris?" Surprised. I thought so. "Yes, Monsieur, the next station." By Hell I surprised somebody...
Who are a million, a trillion, a nonillion young men? All are standing. I am standing. We are wedged in and on and over and under each other. Sardines. Knew a man once who was arrested for stealing sardines. I, sardine, look at three sardines, at three million sardines, at a carful of sardines. How did I get here? Oh yes of course. Briouse. Horrible name "Briouse." Made a bluff at riding deuxième classe on a troisième classe ticket bought for me by les deux balayeurs. Gentleman in the compartment talked French with me till conductor appeared. "Tickets, gentlemen?" I extended mine dumbly. He gave me a look. "How? This is third class!" I looked intelligently ignorant. "Il ne comprend pas français" says the gentleman. "Ah!" says the conductor, "tease ease eye-ee thoorde claz tea-keat. You air een tea say-coend claz. You weel go ean-too tea thoorde claz weal you yes pleace at once?" So I got stung after all. Third is more amusing certainly, though god-damn hot with these sardines, including myself of course. O yes of course. Poilus en permission. Very old some. Others mere kids. Once saw a planton who never saw a razor. Yet he was reformé. C'est la guerre. Several of us get off and stretch at a little tank-town-station. Engine thumping up front somewhere in the darkness. Wait. They get their bidons filled. Wish I had a bidon, a dis-donc bidon n'est-ce pas. Faut pas t'en faire, who sang or said that?
PEE-p....
We're off.
I am almost asleep. Or myself. What's the matter here? Sardines writhing about, cut it out, no room for that sort of thing. Jolt.
"Paris."
Morning. Morning in Paris. I found my bed full of fleas this morning, and I couldn't catch the fleas, though I tried hard because I was ashamed that anyone should find fleas in my bed which is at the Hotel des Saints Pères whither I went in a fiacre and the driver didn't know where it was. Wonderful. This is the American embassy. I must look funny in my pélisse. Thank God for the breakfast I ate somewhere ... good-looking girl, Parisienne, at the switch-board upstairs. "Go right in, sir." A-I English by God. So this is the person to whom Edward E. Cummings is immediately to report.
"Is this Mr. Cummings?"
"Yes." Rather a young man, very young in fact. Jove I must look queer.
"Sit down! We've been looking all over creation for you."
"Yes?"
"Have some cigarettes?"
"Yes."
By God he gives me a sac of Bull. Extravagant they are at the American Embassy. Can I roll one? I can. I do. Conversation. Pleased to see me. Thought I was lost for good. Tried every means to locate me. Just discovered where I was. What was it like? No, really? You don't mean it! Well I'll be damned! Look here; this man B., what sort of a fellow is he? Well I'm interested to hear you say that. Look at this correspondence. It seemed to me that a fellow who could write like that wasn't dangerous. Must be a little queer. Tell me, isn't he a trifle foolish? That's what I thought. Now I'd advise you to leave France as soon as you can. They're picking up ambulance men left and right, men who've got no business to be in Paris. Do you want to leave by the next boat? I'd advise it. Good. Got money? If you haven't we'll pay your fare. Or half of it. Plenty, eh? Norton-Harjes, I see. Mind going second class? Good. Not much difference on this line. Now you can take these papers and go to.... No time to lose, as she sails to-morrow. That's it. Grab a taxi, and hustle. When you've got those signatures bring them to me and I'll fix you all up. Get your ticket first, here's a letter to the manager of the Compagnie Générale. Then go through the police department. You can do it if you hurry. See you later. Make it quick, eh? Good-bye!
The streets. Les rues de Paris. I walked past Notre Dame. I bought tobacco. Jews are peddling things with American trade-marks on them, because in a day or two it's Christmas I suppose. Jesus it is cold. Dirty snow. Huddling people. La guerre. Always la guerre. And chill. Goes through these big mittens. To-morrow I shall be on the ocean. Pretty neat the way that passport was put through. Rode all day in a taxi, two cylinders, running on one. Everywhere waiting lines. I stepped to the head and was attended to by the officials of the great and good French Government. Gad that's a good one. A good one on le gouvernement français. Pretty good. Les rues sont tristes. Perhaps there's no Christmas, perhaps the French Government has forbidden Christmas. Clerk at Norton-Harjes seemed astonished to see me. O God it is cold in Paris. Everyone looks hard under lamplight, because it's winter I suppose. Everyone hurried. Everyone hard. Everyone cold. Everyone huddling. Everyone alive; alive: alive.
Shall I give this man five francs for dressing my hand? He said "anything you like, monsieur." Ship's doctor's probably well-paid. Probably not. Better hurry before I put my lunch. Awe-inspiring stink, because it's in the bow. Little member of the crew immersing his guess-what in a can of some liquid or other, groaning from time to time, staggers when the boat tilts. "Merci bien, Monsieur!" That was the proper thing. Now for the—never can reach it—here's the première classe one—any port in a storm.... Feel better now. Narrowly missed American officer but just managed to make it. Was it yesterday or day before saw the Vaterland, I mean the what deuce is it--the biggest afloat in the world boat. Damned rough. Snow falling. Almost slid through the railing that time. Snow. The snow is falling into the sea; which quietly receives it: into which it utterly and peacefully disappears. Man with a college degree returning from Spain, not disagreeable sort, talks Spanish with that fat man who's an Argentinian.--Tinian?--Tinish, perhaps. All the same. In other words Tin. Nobody at the table knows I speak English or am American. Hell, that's a good one on nobody. That's a pretty fat kind of a joke on nobody. Think I'm French. Talk mostly with those three or four Frenchmen going on permission to somewhere via New York. One has an accordion. Like second class. Wait till you see the gratte-ciels, I tell 'em. They say "Oui?" and don't believe. I'll show them. America. The land of the flea and the home of the dag'--short for dago of course. My spirits are constantly improving. Funny Christmas, second day out. Wonder if we'll dock New Year's Day. My God what a list to starboard. They say a waiter broke his arm when it happened, ballast shifted. Don't believe it. Something wrong. I know I nearly fell downstairs....
My God what an ugly island. Hope we don't stay here long. All the red-bloods first-class much excited about land. Damned ugly, I think.
Hullo. The tall, impossibly tall, incomparably tall, city shoulderingly upward into hard sunlight leaned a little through the octaves of its parallel edges, leaningly strode upward into firm hard snowy sunlight; the noises of America nearingly throbbed with smokes and hurrying dots which are men and which are women and which are things new and curious and hard and strange and vibrant and immense, lifting with a great ondulous stride firmly into immortal sunlight....