Page:The Enormous Room.pdf/203

Rh One might think that The Young Pole had learned a lesson. But no. He had learned (it is true) to leave his immediate neighbour, America Lakes, to himself; but that is all he had learned. In a few days he was up and about, as full of la blague as ever. The Zulu seemed at times almost worried about him. They spoke together in Polish frequently and—on The Zulu's part—earnestly. As subsequent events proved, whatever counsel The Zulu imparted was wasted upon his youthful friend. But let us turn for a moment to The Zulu himself.

He could not, of course, write any language whatever. Two words of French he knew: they were fromage and chapeau. The former he pronounced "grumidge." In English his vocabulary was even more simple, consisting of the single word "po-lees-man." Neither B. nor myself understood a syllable of Polish (tho' we subsequently learned Jin-dobri, nima-Zatz, zampni-pisk and shimay pisk, and used to delight The Zulu hugely by giving him.

"Jin-dobri, pan"

every morning, also by asking him if he had a "papierosa"); consequently in that direction the path of communication was to all intents shut. And withal—I say this not to astonish my reader but merely in the interests of truth—I have never in my life so perfectly understood (even to the most exquisite nuances) whatever idea another human being desired at any moment to communicate to me, as I have in the case of The Zulu. And if I had one-third the command over the written word that he had over the unwritten and the unspoken—not merely that; over the unspeakable and the unwritable—God knows this history would rank with the deepest art of all time.

It may be supposed that he was master of an intricate and delicate system whereby ideas were conveyed through signs of various sorts. On the contrary. He employed signs more or less, but they were in every case extraordinarily simple. The secret of his means of complete and unutterable communication lay in that very essence which I have only defined as an IS; ended and began with an innate and unlearnable control