Page:The Enormous Room.pdf/129

118 The little Machine-Fixer, I happen to know, did finally leave La Ferté—for Précigne.

... In the kitchen worked a very remarkable person. Who wore sabots. And sang continuously in a very subdued way to himself as he stirred the huge black kettles. We, that is to say, B. and I, became acquainted with Afrique very gradually. You did not know Afrique suddenly. You became cognisant of Afrique gradually. You were in the cour, staring at ooze and dead trees, when a figure came striding from the kitchen lifting its big wooden feet after it rhythmically, unwinding a particoloured scarf from its waist as it came, and singing to itself in a subdued manner a jocular, and I fear, unprintable ditty concerning Paradise. The figure entered the little gate to the cour in a business-like way, unwinding continuously, and made stridingly for the cabinet situated up against the stone wall which separated the promenading sexes—dragging behind it on the ground a tail of ever-increasing dimensions. The cabinet reached, tail and figure parted company; the former fell inert to the limitless mud, the latter disappeared into the contrivance with a Jack-in-the-box rapidity. From which contrivance the continuing ditty

"le 'paradis est une maison...."

—Or again, it's a lithe pausing poise, intensely intelligent, certainly sensitive, delivering dryingly a series of sure and rapid hints that penetrate the fabric of stupidity accurately and whisperingly; dealing one after another brief and poignant instupidities, distinct and uncompromising, crisp and altogether arrowlike. The poise has a cigarette in its hand, which cigarette it has just pausingly rolled from material furnished by a number of carefully saved butts (whereof Afrique's pockets are invariably full). Its neither old nor young, but rather keen face hoards a pair of greyish-blue witty eyes, which face and eyes are directed upon us through the open door of a little room. Which little room is in the rear of the cuisine; a little room filled with the inexpressibly clean and soft odour of newly cut wood. Which wood we are pretending to split and pile for kindling. As a matter of fact we are en-