Page:The Enormous Room.pdf/275

264 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: