Page:The Enormous Room.pdf/269

258 quently 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....