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Cummings, E. E. (Edward Estlin), 1894-1962

"The Enormous Room"

"All right, whose fault is this?" he
roared. And a number of highly reputable spectators, such as Judas and
The Fighting Sheeney himself, said it was The Young Pole's fault.
"_Allez! Au cabinot! De suits!_" And off trickled the sobbing Young Pole,
winding his great scarf comfortingly about him, to the dungeon.
Some few minutes later we encountered The Zulu speaking with Monsieur
Auguste. Monsieur Auguste was very sorry. He admitted that The Young Pole
had brought his punishment upon himself. But he was only a boy. The
Zulu's reaction to the affair was absolutely profound: he indicated _les
femmes_ with one eye, his trousers with another, and converted his
utterly plastic personality into an amorous machine for several seconds,
thereby vividly indicating the root of the difficulty. That the stupidity
of his friend, The Young Pole, hurt The Zulu deeply I discovered by
looking at him as he lay in bed the next morning, limply and sorrowfully
prone; beside him the empty _paillasse_, which meant _cabinot_ ... his
perfectly extraordinary face (a face perfectly at once fluent and
angular, expressionless and sensitive) told me many things whereof even
The Zulu might not speak, things which in order entirely to suffer he
kept carefully and thoroughly ensconced behind his rigid and mobile eyes.


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