Rigadoon
Page 1
Books by Céline
available in translation
RIGADOON
NORTH
CASTLE TO CASTLE
GUIGNOL’S BAND
DEATH ON THE INSTALLMENT PLAN
JOURNEY TO THE END OF THE NIGHT
First published in French by Éditions Gallimard
under the title RIGODON.
Copyright © 1969 by Éditions Gallimard
English translation copyright © 1974 by Dell Publishing Co., Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book
may be reproduced in any form or by any means
without the prior written permission of the Publisher,
excepting brief quotes used in connection with reviews
written specifically for inclusion in a magazine or newspaper.
Manufactured in the United States of America
First printing
Designed by Karen Gurwitz
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Destouches, Louis Ferdinand, 1894-1961.
Rigadoon.
The third of a trilogy, the title of the first
being North, and that of the second Castle to castle.
I. Title.
PZ3.D475Ri [PQ2607.E834] 843’.9‘12 73-19906
ISBN 0-440-07364-2
To the animals
Working with perfect integrity and extreme patience,
François Gibault has given us the text of Rigodon
without changing or omitting one word or punctuation
mark.
I thank him.
—LUCETTE DESTOUCHES
PREFACE
North, Castle to Castle, and Rigadoon form a trilogy, the last volume of which is now, more than seven years after Celine’s death, being made available to the public. Rigadoon was written in Meudon during 1960 and 1961 on yellow paper in a fine hand that is difficult and sometimes almost impossible to read.
Sensing the approach of death, Céline had worked unflaggingly on this last book. On the morning of July 1, 1961, he told his wife, Lucette, that Rigadoon was finished; then he wrote to Gaston Gallimard, informing him of the news. At six o’clock that evening he was dead.
Two successive versions of Rigadoon show how hard Céline worked on this book. Changes have been made on every page, almost in every line; one word is replaced by another and still another, then as often as not the third is replaced by the first; frequently the whole sentence is revised, reformulated. As this constant revision shows, Céline was so concerned with style that he could not let a sentence rest until he had assured himself that it would impress the reader as not written but spoken … and spoken spontaneously, without reflection.
His wife had asked the attorney André Damien to decipher Rigadoon. Aware of the importance of every detail, he devoted all his holidays and free time to the staggering task. Hadn’t Céline written in this same book:
“… just an accent here, a comma there … you’ve got to watch out for copyreaders, you see, they operate with ‘plain common sense’ … plain common sense’ is the death of rhythm! …”
In North, Castle to Castle, and Rigadoon we encounter the same circumstances of time, place, and action, and also the same characters: Céline, his wife Lucette, the actor Le Vigan, and Bébert.
It was in 1932, at the pet shop of the Samaritaine department store, that Le Vigan bought the cat whom he named Bébert and who was to become the most famous cat in contemporary French literature.
Adopted by Lucette and Louis-Ferdinand Céline, he accompanied them on their travels through a Europe in flames; he shared their life in hospitals, in prison, and in exile, and died in Meudon in 1952 at the age of twenty.
These are the principal actors in the book; the others are extras: Stationmasters of demolished stations, generals without an army, countless corpses, nurses, lost children, various animals, a lamentable procession of the living and the dead, all, with Céline, witnesses to the Apocalypse.
Rigadoon is not a novel but a chronicle. Indeed, Céline describes himself as:
“I, chronicler of Grands Guignols.”
Was he a chance spectator? Was he a victim of chance or an enlightened enthusiast, always in the front row at catastrophes, so as to get a good view of them, experience them, and tell about them?
In 1914, when he was only seventeen, he wrote prophetically in a text that was found shortly before his death and published under the title The Notebooks of Cuirassier Destouches:
“But what I want most of all is to live a life full of incidents that I hope providence will put in my path …”
and further on:
“… if I pass through the great crises that life holds in store for me, I shall perhaps be less unhappy than other men, for I wish to experience and to know …”
Later, on December 30, 1932, in a letter to Léon Daudet, he wrote:
“I take pleasure only in the grotesque on the confines of death.”
And in Féerie pour une Autre Fois:
“Nothing intoxicates me so much as great disasters, I easily get drunk on calamities, I don’t positively look for them, but they come to me like guests that have rights of a kind.”
At about 1 o’clock on the night of May 23, 1968, fire broke out in what had been Celine’s office in Meudon and then spread to the other rooms in the house, consuming furniture, mementoes, and manuscripts. By midnight the main house was reduced to a blind skeleton.
One can imagine the story that Louis-Ferdinand Destouches would have made of this “Célinian” catastrophe; what a fresco he would have painted! What an end for Rigadoon! He who no longer had the strength to attach himself to objects and had no other ambition than a mass grave!
But a few steps away from the ruins, the aviary was still intact and Toto the parrot very much alive. Today he is master of these ruins. Witness and guardian of ghosts, he is waiting for the Chinese in this Grand Guignol setting.
—FRANÇOIS GIBAULT
I can see that Poulet is down on me … Robert Poulet with his death sentence … he doesn’t talk about me any more in his column … I used to be the great this … the incomparable that … now I hardly get a word in passing, and pretty contemptuous at that. I know why, we quarreled … he finally got on my nerves with his way of beating about the bush … “Are you sure your convictions won’t bring you back to God?”
“Hell, no! … sure, I’m sure! I say the same as Ninon de Lenclos! God was invented by the priests! absolutely antireli-gious! … That’s my faith once and for all!”
“A fine authority your Ninon! … Is that all, Céline? hmm … ! hmm!”
“Certainly not, Poulet! There’s more to come!”
“Ah?! … I’m all ears!”
“All the little Jesus’ religions, Catholic, Protestant, or Jewish, all in the same boat! All one! they can nail him to the cross or bake him up in wafers, same difference! same imposture! fairy tales! hokum!”
“Is that all?”
“Far from it! Try and follow me, my dear imbecile.”
“Fire away!”
“There’s only one religion: Catholic, Protestant, or Jewish … all branches of the same ‘little Jesus’ chains! they hassle, they rip each other’s guts out? … blarney! … for the crowd! their big job, their only real job … perfect agreement … is to besot and destroy the white race.”
“What’s this, Céline? You?”
“Pure mongrelization. By marriage of course! With all the sacraments! Amen!”
“I don’t quite understand you, Céline …”
“You could try … you with your death sentence! colored blood, all colored blood is ‘dominant,’ yellow, red, or indigo … white blood is ‘dominated’ … always! the children of your lovely mix
ed marriages will always be yellow, black, red, never white, never again white! … Presto change-o! with all the blessings of the Church!”
“Christian civilization!”
“Creation, Poulet! imagination! hokum! imposture!”
“Come, come! God’s creation!”
“Mongrelization! twenty centuries of destruction, Poulet! nothing else! made to order! for that very purpose! every creation, from the moment it’s born, bears within it its own end, its assassination!”
“The Church assassinate, Céline?”
“That’s right! and you too! all your Church is good for! you holy asshole!”
“You’re too much given to paradoxes, Céline! the Chinese are antiracist! … and so are the blacks!”
“That’s rich! wait till they get here, won’t take them a year to fuck everybody! that’ll be the end of it! not a white man left! the white race has never existed … a ‘make-up base,’ that’s all! your real, honest-to-God man is black and yellow! The white man with his mongrelizing religion! his religions, Jewish, Catholic, Protestant! The white man is dead! dead as a doornail! Believe it or not!”
“Céline, you make me laugh …”
I never saw Poulet again … I read his articles from time to time … a remark or two … no more … I kind of bugged him …
Dingalinng! … a journalist on the phone …
“Maître! … Maaaître! Would you be kind enough to read the letter we’re sending you?”
“Monsieur! … monsieur! letters! … I throw them all in the waste basket, always have! … unread! … where would I be?”
“Maître, oh dear dear Maître! your opinion! two words!”
“Hell’s bells, I haven’t got any!”
“Oh, but you have, Maaître!”
“About what, dammit?”
“Our new literature!”
“That obscene antique? zounds, it doesn’t exist! Fetal stammering, that’s what it is!”
“Give us that in writing! … most hoonored Maître!”
“I’ve got a quicker way! take Brunetière, plagiarize him! he’s said it all!”
“Oh, but we want it from you! from you, dear Maaaître!”
“You won’t pester me any more? You won’t come around?”
“Word of honor, Maaître!”
“He said that literature, all literature, would be devoured!”
“But by whom, Maître?”
“By charlatans!”
“Write us that, Maître! Maître!”
“Hell’s britches, no! you’ll catch me writing when my teeth grow in again!”
“Couldn’t we drop in after all! and take down your extraordinary words?”
“Not mine! Brunetière’s! You pipsqueaks! Brunetière!”
“If you’d do us that honor! Maître! For our journal! Please!”
“What journal?”
How can I stop them from coming?
“L’Espoir!”
“But there is no hope, you poor punk!”
“Oh, have pity, write us that! Maître! Maître! Our young people don’t know you!”
“Glad to hear it, the swine! Put ‘em to work, knock ‘em out, make ‘em paint the Eiffel Tower head down …”
“Do you despair of our youth, Maaaître? underestimate France … its prodigious resources, our Algeria, our Academy, our participles?”
“To the shithouse, I tell you! the whole shebang! the country doesn’t exist any more, nothing but bureaucrats! … and funerals … a hundred languages stronger than ours have gone out of existence! How come you don’t talk Hittite? or Aramaic?”
“In that case, my dear Maître, we’ll definitely come to see you! We’ll knock your servants down, we’ll kill your dogs, we’ll spill your guts! and your rotten demented brains! hello! hello! Got that? Understand?”
“Sure thing! I’m ready! a ferocious interview! count on me! face to face with the wild beasts! a Roman conference! Hear me belch!”
“Splendid, Maître.”
“Come! Come quickly, my dear boys! let me embrace you! kiss you! …”
“Yum! Yum!”
A big bruiser and a little skinny guy … here they are! … I shut the dogs up in their kennel … I don’t want these two young men going around bragging that I’ve thrown them to the wild beasts … These two young men … the big one and the skinny one … have got acne … not very neat or clean, strong breath … kind of obstinate-looking, closed, convinced … they don’t go for discussion … Suits me … they wanted to come and here they are … So what?
“You’re from l’Espoir?”
“Exactly, Céline! We were wondering, we’re still wondering, we and our friends, if you’re really as crummy as everybody says?… And now we’ve come to ask you.”
“Who are these friends?”
“Well, first of all the magnificent Cousteau!”°
“First-class skunk if you ask me! … Where’s he out of?”
“Je Suis Partout.”
“Oh, working for Lesca and the Propagandastaffel.”
“He says you’re the one, that you were in the pay of the Germans, he said so in black and white, with his magnificent courage, in our Rivarol! one Rivarol is as good as ten Humas.° Did you know that? … What’s your answer to that, Céline?”
“Most tedious pipsqueaks, get this through your heads! if I were to answer all the damn foolishness, all the crap printed in the gazettes, not to mention my mail, it would take all that remains to me of life! … I’ve got my chronicle to finish, my enormous debts to pay! … Cousteau was a jealous little punk, a would-be deputy, just what it takes to make fanatics out of little jerks like you …”
The funny part of it, I’m thinking … these two young punks, these hotheads, could just as well be right, left, or center … any period … identical! … mean hidebound pricks the whole lot of them … Maillotins,° Guise conspirators,° partisans of Chambord° or Charles the Bold! … fuck all Causes! Etienne Marcel° or Juanovici° … this year that year! … let the future decide! movie stars’ tits and assorted thighs!
“Céline, we asked you on the phone and we ask you again: How far will you go in your career of egoism, treason, and cowardice?”
“Oh, very far, my good friends!”
“All right, but watch your step, Céline, you’ve only one last chance! We’ve come to warn you! Rally to our cause! or justice will be done! That’ll be the end! No more monkeyshines!”
“Curses! I thought it had been done already!”
“Christ, no! our justice! impeccable!”
“So what!”
“So what? Haven’t you read? … no, naturally, you don’t read! … except for a bit of smut!”
“Mercy! Have mercy! I’ve got to know!”
“The program of the new wave! our Espoir, a message from our supreme seer! Listen, take note, meditate, wretch! ‘The movement of History demands that France and Germany become brothers.’ “
“Get out! oh! what do I hear! the gangsters! out of my sight! you dare! I’ll let the dogs out!”
I was going to! they’d have gobbled them up … thin air! … my two zebras had disappeared! the wind was blowing …
I’d moved quickly, wasted a minimum of time before throwing those jokers out, but that didn’t prevent the newspapers and café terraces from embroidering on the incident. You know … the foulest of vipers has raised his head, yes! … he dares! … referred to our sublime leader as a big fart! … that’s right! what’s more, he claimed he’d been robbed! … thrown into jail, etc. … etc. … and wounded in the war, with 75% disability … and decorated with the Médaille Militaire long before Pétain …
Shit! don’t suppose I didn’t react! … I rummage, I fish … found it … a quotation to knock them dead! … quick, I call a press conference … I read! … a quotation from Barjavel …
“In my opinion, the twentieth century has thus far produced only one innovator, and that is Ferdinand. I should go so far as to say, only one writer. I
hope you won’t be offended. He is so much above us. That he should be tortured and persecuted is only normal. That is a terrible tiring to write when you consider that this is a living man, but at the same time, what with his greatness, one cannot help regarding him as outside of the times and contingencies that are crushing him. I profoundly believe that the greater a man is the more he exposes himself to being wounded by all. Peace and quiet are only for the mediocre, for those whose heads disappear in the crowd. Céline would like to return to Paris or at least France, and you’re doing everything you can to help him, but rest assured of this: wherever he is, he’ll be persecuted. His hope of finding peace somewhere else is only a dream. He won’t find peace anywhere. Wherever he goes, he’ll be persecuted to the death. And he knows it. And he can’t help it, and neither can we. The most we can do is to proclaim, on every occasion, that he is the greatest, and even in doing that we bring down on him the decupled hatred of the midgets, the mediocrities, the eunuchs, of all those who burst with jealous hatred the moment anyone raises their heads to show them the summits. They are the multitude.”
I expected some effect … none at all! … on the contrary! “His Barjavel, good joke! as putrid as he is! … Throw ‘em on the dump! Both of them!”
Dingaling-ling again! … The phone … This is really too much! Molière died of being pestered … Poquelin! … Poquelin! … just this little Intermezzo if you please! … and this ballet! … and Louis XIV is giving a big dinner! tonight! … two thousand guests! … yes, tonight! Molière died of being pestered … he should have said: go fuck yourself! … to the galleys, Poquelin! … but he was meek as a lamb, he died on the stage, coughing his lungs out, giving his last drop of blood and good will … I know what to expect … me, not Molière … knocking myself out for Ben Achille° …
I’d better relax, it’s too much … dingaling! … another bell! The Figaro! my daily reading! just in time … my relaxation, the death notices … my meat! how long rich people manage to live, and how happily! … unbelievable! … in their châteaux, called to their maker! … 80 … 90 … 100! With every possible blessing … Grand Cross of everything! and Holy Sepulcher! … and those rip-roaring funerals … every kind of unction, Bishop, Prefect, Chamber of Commerce, and the Devil himself in his tilbury …