Death on Credit

by Louis-Ferdinand Celine

  Gorloge was sick of explaining… He was disgusted again, fed up… He made a last effort… He put his feet on the table… He let out a deep sigh… He was wearing embroidered slippers, I can still see them… with kittens running around on them…

  “Well, Ferdinand, better go on home!… Give your mother my best regards!… On your way out would you tell the concierge to run over to the café at Number 26 and make a phone call for me… Tell her to call the Three Admirals Hotel and see if Antoine is sick?… he’s plumb crazy… to find out if anything has happened to him… He hasn’t been in for two days now… She can yell up to me from the court… Tell her to look it up in the phone book… The Three Admirals… Tell her to send up some milk… The old lady isn’t feeling very well… Tell her to send up the paper… any old paper… Well, maybe the Sports News…”

  * * *

  It wasn’t next day, but the day after that I finally got to see the collection… Gorloge had understated… Fifteen kilos!… It weighed at least twice that much… He had vaguely suggested certain “sales techniques”… but nothing very definite… He wasn’t really sold on any of them. I could do exactly as I pleased… He relied on my initiative… I expected horrors, but I’ve got to admit I had a sinking feeling when I saw that mess close up… It was unbelievable… Never had I seen such a lot of such disgusting monstrosities all at once… A challenge… A pocket inferno…

  Everything we opened was horrible… nothing but gargoyles and bottle imps… made out of lead, turned and tortured, fussed and finicked… it turned your stomach… The whole symbolist orgy… Chunks of nightmare… A putty “Samothrace”… more “Victories” in the shape of little clocks… Necklaces made out of Medusas, coils of snakes… More chimeras!… Hundreds of allegorical rings, one crappier than the next… My work was cut out for me… All those things were supposed to be put on fingers, on belts, or stuck in ties. Or hung on somebody’s ears… It was unbelievable!… Somebody was expected to buy them! Who? Great God, who? No form of dragon, demon, hobgoblin or vampire was missing… A complete collection of nightmares… A whole world of sleepless nights… The manias of a whole insane asylum served up as trinkets… I was going from tacky to horrible… Even in my grandmother’s store on the Rue Montorgueil the most moth-eaten white elephants were things of beauty by comparison…

  I’d never be able to make a living with such garbage. I was beginning to see the point about the ten saps before me. They must have been floored… These nightmares weren’t being sold any more… Since the last of the Romantics people had tucked them away in terror… Maybe people were still passing them around in families… when somebody died… but taking plenty of precautions… It wouldn’t be safe to show such loony stuff to people who hadn’t been warned… They might feel offended!… Even Gorloge was afraid to do it… in person, that is! He’d given up buffeting the tide of fashion!… The heroism was for me!… I was the last salesman!… Nobody had stuck it out for more than three weeks…

  He himself did nothing but prospect for small repair jobs… to keep the shop going until fashions should change… He had kept up a few connections in the trade… Friends from better days who wouldn’t have wanted to let him starve. They sent jobs his way… settings and patchwork… disgusting toil… but he never touched a finger to it himself… He passed it all on to our Antoine. Gorloge was an engraver… He wasn’t going to ruin his touch doing menial work, he wasn’t going to lose his standing and reputation for a few sous. No, sir. On that score he was adamant.

  At nine o’clock sharp I climbed the stairs on the Rue Elzévir, I didn’t wait for him to come down… I flung myself on Paris right away, armed with my zeal and my “kilos” of samples… Seeing as I was the outside man, they gave me a good outing!… I was used to it. From the Bastille to the Madeleine… Miles and miles… All the boulevards… every single jewellery store, one by one… Not to mention the little side streets… There was no room in my heart for discouragement… To revive the customers’ taste for engraved articles I’d have cut the moon into little pieces. I’d have eaten my dragons. Pretty soon I myself was executing all their grimaces as I walked… Frantically conscientious, I’d wait my turn on the salesmen’s bench outside the buyers’ room.

  I ended up believing in the renaissance of the jewel engraver’s art! I had the faith of a crusader! I didn’t even see my competitors. They went into gales of laughter whenever they heard my name called. When it was my turn at the window, I’d put on my most winning smile, all sweetness and light. Quietly, from behind my back, I’d produce my little jewel case containing the least loathsome items… and put it on the counter… The beast didn’t even bother to say anything… He just made a gesture meaning to clear out… that I was a dirty-minded brat…

  I hurried on… farther and farther. A fanatic doesn’t calculate. Dripping wet in my shell or consumed with thirst, according to the season, I tried the most insignificant little shops, the grimiest little watchmakers, cowering in their suburbs between lamp and globe…

  From La Chapelle to Les Moulineaux, I did them all. I found a gleam of interest in a junk dealer in Pierrefitte and a ragpicker in Saint-Maur. I tried the shopkeepers who’ve been dozing all around the Palais-Royal ever since the days of Camille Desmoulins,* under the Arcades Montpensier… the stalls in the Galeries des Pas-Perdus… shopkeepers who’ve lost all hope… grown stiff and sallow behind the counter… They don’t want to live and they don’t want to die. I galloped over to the Odéon… to the last of the Parnassian jewellers in the arcades around the theatre. They weren’t even starving any more, they digested dust. They had their models too, all of lead, almost identical with mine, enough for a thousand coffins and a whole raft of mythological necklaces… And mounds of amulets, a mass so dense that the counters were sinking into the ground… They were shoulder-deep in the rubbish… they were disappearing, turning into Egyptians… They didn’t even answer when I spoke. Those guys really gave me a scare…

  I went back to the suburbs… When I had ventured too far in my hunt for enthusiasm, when I was caught by nightfall and felt kind of lost, I’d hurry up and take a bus so as not to get home too late. My parents left me fifteen francs out of my monthly thirty-five… It melted away in fares. Without meaning to, by the sheer force of circumstances, I was getting pretty extravagant… Of course I should have walked… but then it goes out in shoe leather!…

  * * *

  Monsieur Gorloge even got around to the Rue de la Paix looking for repair work. The ladies who ran the fashionable shops might have taken a shine to him, the only thing that prevented him from really making a hit was that he wasn’t very clean. On account of his beard. It was always full of scabs… his “sycosis”, as he called it…

  I’d often catch sight of him in a doorway, scratching… furiously. Then he’d walk away happy as a lark… He always had a few rings in his pocket to alter, to change the size. A brooch to weld… the one that never stays closed. A watch chain to shorten… some trinket or other… enough to keep his business running… He wasn’t very demanding.

  It was Antoine, his one assistant, who did all these little jobs. Gorloge never touched them. As I was going down the Boulevards, I’d run into him, I’d recognize him in the distance… He didn’t walk like other people… He took an interest in the crowd… He looked in all directions… I could see his hat turning on its hinges. He also attracted attention by the polka dots on his vest… and his hearty manner… he made you think of a musketeer…

  “Well, Ferdinand, how you doing?… Still going strong? Still in there fighting? Everything all right? Everything OK?…”

  “I’m fine, Monsieur Gorloge! Really fine!…”

  I’d stand up straight to answer him despite the crushing weight of my saddlebags… My enthusiasm was undiminished. Except that what with making nothing, selling nothing, and hiking all day with that heavy collection, I was getting thinner and thinner… Except for my biceps of course. My fe
et were still growing. My soul was growing… and everything else… I was getting to be sublime…

  * * *

  When I got back from my selling tour, I’d run a few more errands for the shop. To some artisan’s. To the wholesaler’s for jewel cases. All that was in the same street.

  Little Robert, the apprentice, was better off tinkering with little settings, filing openwork, or even sweeping out the joint. There was never much harmony in the Gorloge household. They yelled at each other at the top of their lungs, even louder than in our house. Especially between Antoine and the boss, there were terrible brawls. No more respect, especially on Saturday evening when they settled accounts. Antoine was never satisfied… Whether they figured by the piece, by the hour, by the week, regardless of the system, he always complained. And yet he was his own boss, there were no other helpers… “Your lousy joint… you can stick it up your arse! How many times do I have to tell you?…”

  That was the tone they took with each other. You should have seen Gorloge’s face. He scratched his beard… he was so upset he’d nibble at the scales.

  Some days Antoine got so mad about money that he threatened to smash the glass globe on his head… Every time I expected him to leave… But not at all!… It was getting to be a regular habit, like with us at home…

  But Mme Gorloge didn’t get upset like Mama… The roaring and bellowing didn’t interfere with her knitting. Whenever things began to look desperate, little Robert would crawl under the workbench… There he was safe… but he wouldn’t miss a second of the corrida. He’d eat a slice of bread and butter…

  When there wasn’t a sou in the place to pay Antoine on Saturday, we’d always, at the last minute, find a few coins in the bottom of a drawer to round up the sum… There was always something… We even had our emergency fund in the big kitchen closet… our cargo of cameos… our stock of delirium!… Our mythological treasure!… That was our last resort!… It was no time for hesitation…

  In the leanest weeks I’d unload them by weight, somewhere… anywhere!… At the Village Suisse, across the street at the Temple… on the pavement at the Porte Kremlin… They’d always bring in five francs or so…

  Never since engraving had gone out had a single gram of gold spent more than three days at Gorloge’s. What repair work we picked up we’d deliver in a hurry, the same week. Nobody was very trusting… Three or four times, on Saturdays, I took care of the deliveries, to the Place des Vosges, the Rue Royale, as usual on the run! In those days nobody talked about hardship. It wasn’t until much later that people began to realize how lousy rotten it was to be a worker. The suspicion was just dawning. About seven in the evening, in the middle of the summer, it wasn’t cool on the Boulevard Poissonnière on my way back from my cross-country efforts. I remember that we’d stop at the fountain, under the trees by the Théâtre de l’Ambigu… and toss off two or three cups of water, we even had to wait in line… We’d sit down on the steps of the theatre and rest a minute. There were stragglers from all over, still trying to get their breath… It was a perfect place for collectors of cigarette butts, sandwich men, pickpockets, bookmakers on the prowl, small-time pimps and bums of every description, by the tens and dozens… You’d hear talk about hard times, about little bets you could make… horses that were sure to place… and news of the velodrome… We’d pass La Patrie from hand to hand for the races and the wanted ads…

  The song hit at the time was ‘Maxixe’*… Everybody’d whistle it while sauntering around the kiosk… waiting to take a leak… And then we’d cross the street and start off again… The dust was thickest on the Rue du Temple, where the street was being ripped up… They were digging for the metro… Then came the square with the trees on it, a lot of alleys, the Rue Greneta, the Rue Beaubourg… The Rue Elzévir is a long way… around seven in the evening. It’s way at the other end of the district.

  * * *

  Little Robert the apprentice… his mother lived in Épernon, he sent her all his pay, twelve francs a week, plus his board… he slept under the workbench on a mattress that he rolled up himself in the morning. I watched my step with the kid! I was very careful, I didn’t tell any stories, I’d decided to keep my nose clean…

  Antoine, our skilled assistant, was awfully strict, he’d smack him for nothing at all. But he liked the job all the same, because after seven nobody bothered him. He could have fun on the stairs. The court was full of cats, he’d bring them scraps. On his way back upstairs he’d look through all the keyholes… That was his main amusement.

  When we got to know each other better, he told me all about it. He showed me his system of looking into the can to see the women pissing, right on our landing, two holes in the door. He’d put little plugs in them when he was finished. He’d seen them all, Mme Gorloge too, she was the biggest slut of the lot, he could tell by the way she picked up her skirts…

  He was a peeping Tom by instinct. It seemed she had thighs like monuments, enormous pillars, and so much hair on her pussy, the fur went up so high it covered her belly button… Robert had seen her right in the middle of her monthlies… It splattered up the whole shithouse, her whole bush was dripping with it… She had the most amazing arse, you can’t imagine… He promised to show me. And something even worse, another hole he had bored… something really terrific… in the bedroom wall, right next to the bed. And there was still another way… If you climbed up on the stove… in the corner of the kitchen, you could look down through the transom… and see the whole bed.

  Little Robert would get up at night just for that. Lots of times he’d watched the Gorloges fucking. The next day he told me all about it, except he could hardly stand up from jerking off so much…

  Little Robert worked mostly with filigree… the rough polishing… He had a file no thicker than a hair that he stuck into the tiniest openings… He’d also put patina on the finished pieces… It was close work, those things were as fine as cobwebs… He’d squint at them until his eyes hurt… Then he’d stop and sprinkle the floor.

  Antoine never let him get away with anything, he always had it in for him… He couldn’t stand my guts either. We wanted to catch him laying Mme Gorloge. Apparently he did… Robert said so, but he wasn’t really sure… Maybe it was a red herring. At the table during meals Antoine was insufferable, you had to watch your step. At the slightest word he’d fly off the handle and start packing up his tools. They’d promise him a raise… ten francs… maybe only five… “Go shit in your hat!” he’d say. Right to Gorloge’s face. “You give me a good pain in the arse… How can you make promises when you haven’t got a pair of shoes to your name!… Bullshit!”

  “Don’t get excited, Antoine! I assure you that things are going to pick up!… One of these days!… I’m positive!… Soon!… Sooner than you think!…”

  “Balls! They’ll pick up when I’m an archbishop!…”

  That was the way they spoke to each other. The sky was the limit… The boss would stand for anything… he was so scared Antoine would pick up and leave. He didn’t want to do anything by himself… he didn’t want to ruin his hands. While waiting for the renaissance… his main pleasure in life was his cup of coffee and looking out the window smoking his pipe… The neighbourhood panorama… He didn’t like anybody to talk to him… You could do anything you pleased as long as you didn’t bother him. He told us so perfectly frankly: “Just pretend I’m not here!”

  * * *

  I still wasn’t finding any takers, neither wholesale nor retail… I still had every one of my bats and chimeras on my hands… And yet I hadn’t left a stone unturned… From the Madeleine to Belleville… I’d been everywhere, I’d tried everything… From the Bastille to Saint-Cloud there wasn’t a single door that I didn’t open sooner or later… Every junk dealer, every watchmaker from the Rue de Rivoli to the cemetery of Bagneux… Every little Yid knew me… every punk… every goldsmith… All I got was the brush-off… They didn’t want a
nything… This couldn’t go on for ever… Even bad luck gets tired…

  Finally one day it happened. A miracle… on the corner of the Rue Saint-Lazare… I’d been passing the place every day!… And I’d never stopped… They sold Chinese bric-a-brac… Not a hundred yards from La Trinité. Funny I hadn’t noticed before that they went in for grotesques too, and not little ones, great big ones! Whole windows full of them! And they weren’t just kidding, they were real horrors! Pretty much like mine… Every bit as ugly… But they went in more for salamanders, flying dragons… Buddhas with enormous bellies… all gilded… furiously rolling their eyes… Smoke was coming up from behind the pedestal… like an opium dream… And rows of harquebuses and halberds all the way up the ceiling… with fringes and sparkling glass beads. Real fun. Lots of snakes too, spitting fire… twined around columns… wriggling down towards the floor… And along the walls a hundred flaming parasols and next to the door a devil, life size, surrounded by toads with wide-open eyes lit by thousands of lanterns…

  Since they sold that kind of truck, the idea came to me… a real inspiration… that they might like my little things.

  I screw up my courage, I push through the door… with my saddlebags… I unpack… of course I stammer a little at first… then finally the patter begins to flow.

  The guy was a little character with slanting eyes and a voice like an old woman, as sly as they come… he was wearing a silk dress with a flower design, and clogs… in short he looked like a Chinese goblin except for his soft hat… At first he didn’t say much… But I could see I was making an impression with my large selection of charms… my mandrakes… my knots of Medusas… my Samothrace brooches… For a Chinaman it was hot stuff!… You had to have come a long way to appreciate my collection…