Rigadoon

by Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Mighty well informed! … I’d better not see him …

  “You’ll come back another time! in two months! … a week!”

  “Certainly … certainly! …”

  Yes, but the trouble is … it’s all so dated! …

  “We’re too old! … our stuff doesn’t mean anything any more!”

  “Oh, but it does! … it does, Marcel! … some people still take an interest!”

  “Who?”

  “Hm, maybe the folklorists!”

  “Think so?”

  “Ten letters a day!”

  “You read them?”

  “No! … but the phone calls!”

  “How many?”

  “Two a week … you understand, Marcel … though you don’t understand very much, especially since your sickness … it’s all a question of floods! … follow me! … try! I won’t repeat … when I was a kid, we often went to Ablon, summer and winter … believe me, I learned a lot, all the little secrets of the river, the banks, the gravel pits … I learned all the fine points of sculling, nobody could beat me … I could come up against that terrible current and slip into port, to the eighth of an inch! with one hand! take it from me, I was an artist! a hair’s breadth too short, the current would sweep you away! one scream! good-bye! … high water was my meat! with a flick of the wrist I’d twine my way between convoys, the bow waves of the barges, vicious rudders, long before I knew how to multiply or even add … and now, Marcel, listen carefully … marvel at the phenomenon … upstream … I don’t get around much any more, no desire to and I haven’t the strength, but when I was a kid I was the upstream champ! … all this bores you, it’s insipid! … the big flood can’t mean anything to you, you weren’t born yet … everything was submerged, the Seine gone mad, dams and banks swept away, lime trees and towpaths under water, the whole plain, villas and furniture … national disaster! … so bad that years later everything was mud, even the Cour de Rome° … You can’t have any idea, Marcel …”

  “Never mind … if you say so …”

  “I say so and I’ll prove it! doubting Thomas! but nowadays, same as with everything else, we only get phony floods! … since 1910, I mean … the elements act up as if something big were going to happen … and then practically nothing …”

  “What are you driving at, Ferdinand? cut it short! I’ve got to get home for lunch, it’s twelve o’clock and I’ve got people coming …”

  “All right, you oaf! … get this through your head … the torrents that smash everything, that stop navigation, that twist bridges, crush cities, make hash out of tugboats and barges, spare the narrow strip of water along the banks! … the same with the fury of public opinion! if you’re caught in midstream, you’re pulverized …”

  He doesn’t let me finish …

  “You’ve said all that! it’s five after twelve, I’ve got people coming!”

  “I’m not done yet! … ignoramus … you’ve got to learn! that little strip at the edge, that’s where your expert boatman holds his skiff! it takes all his skill! hard work, believe me, you shaggy hog! you hors d’oeuvres hound!”

  “I see … got to be going now!”

  “One second! you subhuman! the Black Sea Scrolls … ever heard of them?”

  “Make it quick! … what’s that?”

  “A whole humanity … perished!”

  “So what?”

  “This one will perish too!”

  “What you don’t know!”

  “It cost me plenty! now I take my precautions! I made my prediction for next year … never again … now I only predict for the year 3000!”

  “No kidding?”

  “Everything that’ll happen! I can’t foresee the school programs but I know the history and geography they’ll be teaching in the year 3000!”

  “You mean you prognosticate?”

  “Nostradamus! … exactly! but he was sibylline, foggy, allegorical. My prediction is clear, straightforward, no charades …”

  “Okay, make it quick!”

  He looks at his watch … Christ, can he be annoying!

  “Afraid of missing the radishes? … the anchovies? the foie gras? admit it, you monster!”

  “No, but you’re holding me up for nothing …”

  “For nothing, you say! … I’m doing you a favor and you insult me!”

  “Fire away!”

  “‘The white men invented the atom bomb; shortly afterward, they perished.’ You want me to tell you how?”

  He shrugs his shoulders … He closes, half closes his eyes, like a crocodile …

  “Is it long?”

  “No! you can see for yourself, barely two pages! … you can damn well listen, you pale incompetent! … several hypotheses: they perished in wars, from alcoholism, motorcars, overeating … other authors tend to believe that they succumbed to religions and substitute fanaticisms, politics, family, sports, social climbing … all their religions, Catholic, Hebraic, Protestant, Freemason … first and most of all, Rome or rue Cadet!° same creed: mongrelize! their absolute article of faith! do you understand, you ignoramus?”

  “Yes … not much!”

  “Wait for the end! the white man’s blood doesn’t hold up under mongrelization! … it turns black, yellow! … and that’s the end! the white man was born a mongrel, he was created to perish! dominated blood! Agincourt, Verdun, Stalingrad, the Maginot Line, Algeria, pure hash! … white meat! now you can go to lunch!”

  “Now you’ve insulted me. You satisfied?”

  “Didn’t you want them to hang me?”

  “No, never!”

  “Shoot me, then! and how!… beat it, Tartuffe!”

  Hee hee! … a grim laugh! we were on the outs … it lasted two weeks … he came back, we talked about different things … when you’ve reached a certain age, no use getting mad … we’ll all be taking the train and that’s that: murderers and murdered … same train! choo! choo! the engine … it’s time … I hope he comes back, the bastard! … mongrel or not! …

  I could entertain you some more, or at least try, with my Nostradamus, my yellow army in Brest, my black army at the Montparnasse Station, the capitulation of Saint-Denis. But I’ll be seventy when this book comes out and by that time your family papers will have run these episodes into the ground, a thousand and one magazines will have photographed them from every angle … “nobody’s amused by us any more” … Marcel warned me … we might as well be modest … which reminds me that in New York, on the back streets near Battery Place, you’ll find old ladies about my age, spinsters in tiny little apartments half a mile from Times Square, fancyworking furniture and knickknacks, embroidering armchairs, upholstering prie-dieus, painting and trimming the cunningest flowerpot covers, things that would bring good prices on the rue de Provence … they heat with wood, they’ve got their regular tradesmen right around the corner, they live like me here in Meudon, insensible to fashions, serenely out of date … but in no great hurry to pass on! … though there are plenty of young old maids in the neighborhood … that go in for upholstery too and are just waiting to take over their equipment, their canvas and wool … Marlene, Maurice Dache,° Chaplin … all one to these old ladies! a president? another? stratosphere, bubblegum, Fifth Avenue! you see the skyscrapers, their summits, seems a lot of people live up there … these old ladies have work to do, no time to crane their necks! … an embroidered cushion takes a year … same here, I’m not the idle type, the clowning goggle-eyed tourist, far from it! working my fingers to the bone on the little jobs Achille pays me for! a pittance! a joke! but even so! fine tapestries, artful embroideries, style, that’s my trade! … not many customers, you’ll say, and so hateful! all right with me! they’ll be faithful to me at leastl jealous? insanely! … they’ll still be talking about me, about my horrible books, when there are no Frenchmen left … I’ll be transplanted to Mali when this little appendage to Asia has been wiped completely off the map! its people, former whites … blond, chestnut, brunette! incredible! … one of History’s bum jo
kes! … deciphered out of a dead language, I’ll have my little chance … at last!

  In the meantime I’m keeping you waiting … I lost you at Zornhof … Harras° and the Reichsbevoll had just left us … I’ve run out on you, you and my comics … quick, back to business and you! this way, Ladies and Gentlemen! … another two thousand pages at least! Achille that wants to see me dead! and inherit everything! gratis pro Deo! born to the part! so clever … he thinks! he can get in line and follow the guide! that’s me! now you’re going to see something … This magic lantern … magic, I say! period and all; like you were there in person!

  Bergson tells us! you fill a wooden box, a big one, with fine iron filings, and you plunk your fist in, a good hard punch … what do you see? you’ve made a crater … the exact same shape as your fist! … To understand what’s happened, this phenomenon, two kinds of intelligence, two explanations … the intelligence of the befuddled ant, who wonders by what miracle another insect, an ant like itself, has been able to keep all these filings in a state of equilibrium, in the shape of a crater … and the other intelligence, genius, yours, mine, explains it by saying that a simple blow of the fist has sufficed … as a chronicler I have to choose … with the ant explanation I could amuse you … scurrying around in the filings … with the fist explanation I could entertain you too, but much less … the Chinese in Brest … all churches in the same boat … Demolition and Co… . Hebraic, Rome, Protestant, tutti frutti! “League of Mongrelization”! in the short time I’ve left to live, I’d better not annoy you too much … not tell you you’re a lot of stumbling dipsos … Byzantium got along fine for ten centuries, bluffing the world … the world saw nothing but conspiracies, double and triple chariot races, buggeries … and then the Turks … and then curtains … will the same happen here? possible! all right with you … I, chronicler of Grands Guignols, will show you, without mirrors or false bottoms, the finest spectacle that ever was, the burning of the impregnable bastions … the contortions and the mimicry … which a lot of people survived!

  “What’s this? Byzantium? a thousand years? Byzantine yourself! Byzantium didn’t have the resources that we have, thank God! … progress, monsieur! atomic progress! a thousand years! your thousand years, bah! a minute! … a quarter revolution of the cyclotron! science, monsieur! you look pretty sick with your Byzantium! … you retarded slow-motion primate! … one minute, monsieur, for your whole decadence … at the most!”

  “Your Greek fire! … archaic!”

  Another detractor … I won’t tell you who or where from … I don’t answer … I know them …

  “Come on, Céline, cut the clowning … your readers have a right to expect it… even of you! that stuff about the Chinese in Brest may amuse people for a minute … no morel all your anti-white … mongrelizing churches … ho! hum! doubtful humor! … your public wants something else! … you didn’t know? … brain surgery, color vivisection, three-forceps deliveries, the production of ‘geniuses’ in the chromoplastic factories of the Cordilleras at an altitude of 12,000 feet…”

  “Curses! ‘paleface’ that I am, monsieur! and stubborn as such!”

  “The ‘redskins’ perished, didn’t they?”

  “With a good deal of help from liquor … I only drink water … the redskins have their reservations and their privileges … their conqueror protected them … but paleface that I am, the conqueror has only one thought, to debase me more and more! to make off with everything I have, to humiliate me to death … and if one of the ‘great autolyzer’s’ cops looks around and finds me at the bottom of the sewer, Fréjus° will be nothing to what I can expect, the torrents of sulphuric acid! Buffalo Bill’s wild-western heart was in the right place! … racist, yes, but fair play … the Sioux had a chance! … at a gallop, bzing! … but there in the sewer, zero! … they’ll never bring us to the Châtelet° … species to be exterminated, covered with shame … drowned in shit …”

  Hard time getting started! … but I’ve got to, I promised! … my age? tomorrow I can only be more gaga … I’ve shillyshallied enough!

  Here we are! … homage to the reader! … a low bow! … back in the exact same place … Harras has just left… time to take action, now or never! … we’ve got the main thing, our pass, signed and stamped by the Reichsbevoll … and still the same idea, Denmark … the crossing … the opposite coast, Nordport … still a certain amount of traffic, so they say, it’s possible … we’ll see! … main thing to make it quick … our pass won’t be good for more than two three days …

  “What do you think, Le Vig?”°

  He leaves the decision to me … okay, Le Vig will stay here … with Bébert … we’ll go to Warnemünde and take a look … he’ll wait for us, not more than two three days … see if the ferry’s still running … if it’s possible to get on board … clandestinely … I’m not too keen, neither is Le Vig … we’re clandestine enough already … and we’ll find out if over there in Denmark they’re not worse than over here … it’s possible!

  “You’ll take care of our stuff and the cat … Don’t go too far away!”

  He shouldn’t get any funny ideas!

  “Count on me! … except I know what to expect at the manor!”

  “You can go to the farm across the way!”

  “No dice! … anyplace but there!”

  No use arguing … we leave him …

  “Good-bye, Le Vig! … so long, Bébert!”

  We know the road to Moorsburg … we’ve got our pass … but even so … we don’t meet anybody … they’re bound to be suspicious … I hobble … but pretty fast … I know how to manage my two canes … no time to lose … straight to the station! there’s a crowd at the door … and inside, soldiers, civilians, peasants, workers, all sorts, like the Métro … and every language … there hasn’t been a train in six days … the Berlin-Rostock … nothing to do but wait … we’re pretty well used to that, I can say … there we are, standing … then we sit down outside, on the iron bench … we’ll see the train coming if it comes … ah, here comes somebody! … talking about trains! … Le Vig! … sure enough, it’s him! didn’t hang around Zornhof ° very long! … couldn’t stand it … here he is with a pushcart …

  “Say, you haven’t wasted any time! what you got there?”

  “Our stuff!”

  I take a look … a bundle of shirts, dirty … and some burlap bags, empty …

  “You think it was worth the bother? … where’s Bébert? …”

  He had him in his musette bag, slung over his shoulder … Bébert goes miow! … we pat him …

  “Got anything to eat?”

  He shows me … in his duffel coat… a whole pile of butterbrot …

  “Swiped ‘em?”

  “Yeah … at the Kretzers’ °, they’d split!”

  “And the pushcart?”

  “Ditto! … they had everything!”

  I see he knows his way around …

  “They didn’t use kid gloves at my pad either! … it was better stocked, too! … four bicycles! … hell! … and all the stuff in the cupboards! … it’s the way of the world!”

  I see that he’s come out of his dream … he’s realistic … and proud of himself …

  “You’re going to stay at the station?”

  “Rather have them murder me at Zornhof?”

  “Think so?”

  “I sure do!”

  “You’ll wait for us?”

  “There’s company, I won’t be alone … people! lots of people! … nobody’ll notice me … nothing like railroad stations! … everybody’s waiting … I’ll wait for you … me and Bébert!”

  “Whatever you say … we won’t be long!”

  “If it’s too long you won’t find us! oh, we won’t go back to Zornhof! … don’t worry! … never!”

  That sounds definite … one more remark he makes …

  “I’ve got Bébert! luckily! you’d never come back for me! listen! … listen! …”

  He hears something … i
t’s true! … choo! choo! a train … asthmatic … still far away, lots of smoke … choo! … must be the Berlin-Rostock … been expected for a week … but the tickets? I ask around … no more tickets, no more ticket windows, you just get in … you pay later, so they say … but how do you get in? … now we see this streamliner … all wood … five six cars … bristling with all the stuff that’s sticking out the windows … caterpillars bristle like that … now you can see what’s sticking out … a hundred arms, a hundred legs … and heads! … and guns! … I’ve seen jampacked Métro trains, cars so full you couldn’t get a finger in, but that train was so crammed, so bristling with legs, arms, and heads you couldn’t help laughing … all that stuff sticking out the windows … it pulls in … choo! choo! but that’s not all! … right after the engine, a flatcar, a gun, and artillerymen …

  “Le Vig, my word of honor! wait for us! you’ve got Bébert!”

  Choo! Choo! the train’s stopped … be pulling out soon … I’ve said it was full … not just arms and legs … heads, I told you that too … another … another … looks like they were asleep … one with its eyes wide-open, staring … this train must have been riddled, from the air, I guess … lots of griping and groaning from somewhere inside … not just heads, boots too … must be soldiers … civilians too … no room at all … maybe we could try the tender, I’d seen it was empty … we see … two Fritzes, engineers … I show them our pass to Rostock … trouble is they’ve got to load their tender, six tons of coke … they show us another flatcar at the tail end, just been hooked on … antiaircraft it looks like … maybe they’d take us aboard … we run … there are five guys on the flatcar, five Luftwaffe gunners … hundreds of women, children, and soldiers clutching the edges, the wheels … all waving stamped papers … and bottles and babies … some of those people have seen four trains pull out, a month on the platform, had their fingers smashed a dozen times … never even tried to get into a passenger car … too jampacked with everything, wounded, passengers, corpses, impossible to pry apart, too amalgamated … the five air gunners are defending their flatcar … with mine stakes … bam! and wham! … on all the clutching hands … ouch! do they yell! … the crew is in a good position! … high up! wham! the attackers plead! … bitte! … bitte! … Luftwaffe hier! I’m air corps! … Red Cross armband … Bezons, passive defense … I yell, I show them … armband, stamp, paper … Reichsbevoll … those brutes can’t read! … yes! one of them can! da! … da! … I insist … I make him look at it … I shove it under his nose, the eagle … he sees … it’s no ordinary pass … he asks me …