Death on Credit

by Louis-Ferdinand Celine

  The business with the lousy boleros had been the last straw… and the typewriter was driving him crazy, he’d never be able to work it!… He spent hours making copies… He banged it like he was deaf… he ruined whole pages… Either he’d hit too hard or not hard enough… The little bell was ringing all the time… From my bed… I was right near him… I saw him struggling… missing the keys… getting tangled up in the connecting rods… He wasn’t cut out for it… He’d get up all in a sweat… He’d reel off the most terrible blasphemies… At the office Monsieur Lempreinte was still rubbing it in, persecuting him from morning to night. Obviously he was just looking for a pretext!… “Those downstrokes! Those curlicues! They take you all day! Ah, my poor friend! Take a look at your colleagues! They were done hours ago! You’re a calligrapher, monsieur! You ought to set yourself up in business!…” They really had it in for him… He began to look for another job… He saw he was on the skids… He went to see former associates… He knew an assistant cashier in a rival company… The Connivance Fire Insurance Company. They’d as good as promised him a try-out in January… But there he’d have to type… He went at it every night after his deliveries.

  It was an antique contraption, absolutely unbreakable, specially made for rental, the bell rang at every comma. He’d hammer away frantically under the transom from supper time to midnight.

  My mother came up for a moment after she’d done the washing-up, she propped up her leg on a chair and put on compresses… She couldn’t chat, it bothered my father… We were dying of the heat… The beginning of summer was torrid that year.

  * * *

  It was a bad time to be looking for a job… Business was quiet just before the slack season. We put out a few feelers… We made enquiries here and there… with some agents we knew… They had no prospects to offer. There wouldn’t be much doing until after the summer holidays… not even in the foreign shops.

  In a way it was lucky I had nothing to do, because I hadn’t any clothes… they’d definitely have to outfit me before I could start making my rounds… But it wasn’t going to be easy!… The main trouble was lack of money!… I’d simply have to wait till September for the shoes and the overcoat!… I was mighty glad of the reprieve… It gave me time to breathe before trotting out my English!… There’d be hell to pay when they began to catch on… Well, it wouldn’t be right away!… I had only one shirt to my name… I wore one of my father’s… They decided they’d order a jacket and two pairs of trousers all at once… But not until next month… At the moment it couldn’t be done… There was barely enough for grub and even that was touch and go… The rent came due on the eighth and they were behind with the gas! Not to mention taxes and Papa’s typewriter!… We were really in the soup!… There were writs all over the place! All over the furniture, violet ones, red ones and blue ones…

  So I had a little respite! I couldn’t go calling on prospective bosses in a threadbare suit, patched, frayed, with the sleeves only halfway down my arm… It was out of the question! Especially in novelties and haberdashery, where they all dress up like fashion plates.

  My father was so preoccupied with his typing exercises and his dread of being fired from Coccinelle that even at supper he was deep in thought! He’d lost interest in me. He’d made up his mind about me once and for all… the idea was firmly anchored in his dome that I was villainy incarnate! A hopeless blockhead! And that was that!… That I had no part in the worries, the anxieties of noble individuals… I wasn’t the kind that would carry my suffering around with me in my flesh like a knife! And keep turning it as long as I lived? Far from it! And jerk the handle! And stick it in deeper! To heighten the pain!… And bellow and broadcast every new step forward in my suffering! Of course not! And turn into a fakir in the Passage! Side by side with them! For ever!… Sure, something miraculous, something people could worship! Something more and more perfect! That’s it! A thousand times more anxious, more harassed, more miserable!… The saint engendered by hard work and family thrift!… Sure, why not? More muddleheaded! Sure! A hundred times thriftier! Glory be! Something that had never been seen in the Passage or anywhere else! In the whole world!… Christ! The child marvel! The marvel of all France! The wonder of wonders! But nothing like that could be expected of me! I had a depraved nature… It was inexplicable!… There wasn’t a speck or straw of honour in me… I was rotten through and through! Repulsive, degenerate! I was unfeeling, I had no future… I was as dry as a salt herring! I was a hard-hearted debauchee! A dungheap… full of sullen rancour… I was life’s disillusionment! I was grief itself. And I ate my lunch and supper there, not to mention my morning coffee… They did their duty! I was their cross on earth! I’d never have a conscience!… I was nothing but a bundle of debased instincts and a hollow that devoured my family’s sorry pittance and all their sacrifices. In a way I was a vampire… It was no use thinking about it…

  * * *

  In the Passage des Bérésinas, in all the shop windows, a lot of changes had taken place while I was gone… They were going in for the “modern style” with lilac and orange tints… Convolvulus and iris were all the rage… They climbed up the windows… done up into carved moulding… Two perfume stores and a gramophone shop opened… There were still the same pictures outside our theatre, the Plush Barn… the same posters in the stage entrance… They were still playing Miss Helyett and still with the same tenor – Pitaluga… He had a heavenly voice, every Sunday he bowled over his female admirers in the Elevation at Notre-Dame-des-Victoires… For twelve months every shop in the Passage was talking about the way this Pitaluga sang ‘Minuit Chrétien’ at Saint-Eustache on Christmas!… Every year he was more swooning, more wonderful, more supernatural…

  There was talk of installing electricity in all the shops in the Passage! Then they’d get rid of the gas that started whistling at four o’clock in the afternoon from three hundred and twenty jets… it stank so bad in that confined space (added to the urine from the dogs, which were getting to be more and more plentiful…) that at about seven o’clock some of the lady customers began to feel faint… There was even talk of tearing us down completely, of dismantling the whole gallery! Of removing our big glass roof and building a street eighty feet wide right where we were living… My oh my! But the rumours weren’t very serious, actually it was poppycock, prison gossip. We were prisoners in a glass cage and prisoners we’d always be! For ever and regardless! No getting around it!… The law of the jungle!…

  Once in a while the poor bastards got crazy ideas… fantastic fairy tales passed from mouth to mouth as they were standing outside their shops, especially in hot weather… Like bubbles oozing out of their brains… before the September storms… They’d dreamt up hare-brained schemes, monumental rackets, all they could think of was big deals, wild swindles… Nightmares… they saw themselves expropriated, persecuted by the State! They worked themselves up, they went completely off their rockers, they were absolutely crackers, maddened with hokum… Ordinarily so pale, they went crimson…

  Before going to bed, they’d pass around fantastic estimates, wild memoranda showing the staggering, but absolutely indispensable sums they’d demand if anybody mentioned moving! My oh my! By God, the authorities were in for a little trouble if they tried to turn them out!… The Council of State didn’t know what resistance meant!… Don’t you worry! And the chancellery and the whole damn government!… They’d shit in their pants! They’d see who they were talking to! Oh ho! And the Hall of Writs and Records!… The whole rotten gang and then some! By my grandmother’s crabs! The sparks would fly! It wasn’t going to be any pushover, hell no!… Over their dead bodies… they’d lock themselves up in their rooms! In the end they’d have to disembowel the whole Bank of France to build them new shops! Exactly the same! To the milligram! To two decimals! That’s what we’re asking, or the deal is off! We won’t budge! Now you know the score! That’s our last word!… Well, in a pinch they’d accept a settlement… A
big one… They wouldn’t say no… They might agree… But it’s got to be on the level! An income for life! A nice juicy one, guaranteed to the hilt by the Bank of France, to be spent any way they pleased! They’d go fishing! For ninety years if they felt like it! And nightclubs day and night! And that wouldn’t be the end of it! They’d have royalties and claims and country houses and other indemnities besides… astronomical… incalculable!

  Well then? It was all a question of guts! The whole thing was perfectly simple, no use arguing! Stand up for your rights, don’t weaken! That was their point of view… It was the heat, the terrible atmosphere, the electricity in the air… That way at least they weren’t shouting at each other… They all got together on their “claims”… Everybody was in agreement… They were all hypnotized on the future… Everybody was hoping to be evicted.

  * * *

  All the neighbours in the Passage were flabbergasted at the dimensions I had assumed… I was getting to be a big bruiser. I’d almost doubled in bulk… That would cost even more when we went to the Deserving Classes for my outfit… I tried on my father’s clothes. They burst at the shoulders, I couldn’t even get into his trousers. I needed everything new. I’d just have to wait…

  On her way home from her errands Mme Béruse, the glove-maker, dropped in just to see how I looked: “His mother can be proud of him!” she finally concluded. “His stay abroad has done him good!” She repeated that wherever she went. The others came in too to form an opinion of their own. The old caretaker of the Passage, Gaston the hunchback, who picked up all the gossip, found me changed, but in his opinion I was thinner! They couldn’t really agree, everybody had his own idea. In addition, they wanted to know all about England. They asked me for details about how the Engleesh lived over there… I spent all my time in the shop, waiting for them to clothe me. Visios, the sailor, the one with the pipes, Charonne, the gilder, Mme Isard from the dry-cleaning shop, they all wanted to know what we ate at my school in Rochester. Especially about the vegetables. Was it really true they ate them raw, or hardly cooked? And the beer and the water? If I’d had whisky? If the women had big teeth? Kind of like horses? And what about their feet? A lot of nonsense! And their tits? Did they have any? All this with a lot of snide remarks and scandalized looks.

  But what they really wanted was for me to say something in English… They were just dying to hear me, they didn’t care if they understood or not… the effect was what they wanted… to hear me talk a little… My mother didn’t make too much of a fuss, but all the same it would have made her mighty proud to have me display my talents… put all those busybodies in their place…

  All I knew was: river… water… no trouble… no fear, and maybe two or three more things… It really didn’t amount to much… Anyway I didn’t feel like it… I wasn’t in the mood… It made my mother miserable to see I was just as stubborn as ever. I wasn’t worthy of all their sacrifices! The neighbours were vexed too, they began to make long faces, they thought I was acting like a pig-headed mule… “He hasn’t changed a bit!” said Gaston, the hunchback. “He’ll never change!… He’s still the same as when he used to piss on my gates!… I could never make him stop!”

  He’d never been able to stomach me… “It’s lucky his father isn’t here!” my mother consoled herself. “He’d feel so badly! He’d be beside himself, poor man! To see you so ungracious! So boorish! So antagonistic! So unfriendly! So horrid to everybody! How do you expect to get ahead? Especially nowadays, the way things are in business! With all the competition? You think you’re the only one that’s looking for a job? Only yesterday he was saying: ‘Good Lord, if only he lands on his feet! We’re on the brink of disaster!…’”

  Just then Uncle Édouard turned up… he saved my life… He was in high good humour… He gave everybody in general a good hearty greeting… He’d just put on his beautiful checked suit for the first time, the new summer style, from England as a matter of fact, with a mauve derby, the latest thing, fastened to his buttonhole with a thin ribbon. He seized both my hands, he shook them heartily, a real knock-down, drag-out “shake-hands”! He was wild about England… He’d always wanted to take a little trip over there… He kept putting it off because he wanted to learn the names for the things in his business first… pump, and so on. He was counting on me to teach him the language… My mother was still snivelling about my attitude, my repulsive, hostile ways… Far from siding with her he took my part right away… In two words he told all those insignificant cockroaches that they were dense, that they didn’t know a thing about foreign influences… especially England… When you come from over there, it changes you completely! It makes you more laconic, more reserved, it gives you a certain aloofness, in a word, distinction… And it’s a good thing!… Why, of course! In high-class business nowadays, especially when you’re selling, the main thing is to hold your tongue! It’s a sign of breeding! That’s what counts in a salesman today!… That’s right!… The old style is dead, through, washed up! Your slobbering, obsequious, voluble salesman! People are sick of them! That’s all right for punks out in the sticks, for small-town jokers! In Paris you can’t get away with it! If you try that stuff in the Sentier quarter, they’ll throw you out! It makes a crawling, servile impression! Got to keep up with the times!… According to him I was dead right… That was the line he gave them…

  His patter was a great comfort to my mother… it set her mind at rest… she heaved big sighs… she was really relieved… But the rest of them, the lousy stool pigeons, were still hostile… They had their ideas… and nobody could make them change their mind… They griped in accompaniment… I’d never get ahead with those kind of manners! It was out of the question!

  Uncle Édouard did his best, he racked his brains and talked himself blue in the face… They stuck to their guns… They were more stubborn than mules, they kept repeating that anywhere in the world… if you want to earn an honest living, you’ve got to be friendly and courteous… that’s the first requirement.

  * * *

  Days and days passed and we hardly saw any more customers. It was midsummer and they’d all gone to the country. My mother finally decided that in spite of her bad leg and the doctor’s orders, she’d go out to Chatou and try to sell a little something. I’d keep the shop while she was gone… We had no alternative… we had to bring in some money! First to buy me a new suit and two pairs of shoes, and then to paint our whole shopfront in attractive colours before the new season started.

  Our windows looked heartbreaking beside the others… They were pearl-grey and greenish, while next door there was Vertune’s dry-cleaning shop, all brand new, a fancy yellow and sky-blue, and on the other side the Gomeuse stationery store, an immaculate white, decorated with scrolls and jiggers and a sweet little pattern of little birds on branches… All that meant a big outlay… And we’d have to do it.

  She didn’t say a word to my father, she just took the train with an enormous bundle weighing at least twenty kilos.

  Out in Chatou she got started right away… She scrounged a stand from behind the Town Hall and set herself up behind the station, a good location. She handed out all her cards to let people know about the shop. In the afternoon she began traipsing around again, loaded like a mule, all over town, looking for villas where some customers might be hiding… When she came home to the Passage in the evening, she was so done in she could hardly stand up, her leg was so tied up with cramps she could have screamed, her knee was swollen, and the worst of all was her dislocated ankle… She stretched out in my room while waiting for my father to come home… She put on soothing lotion… good cold compresses.

  On her suburban tours she sold her stuff any old place dirt-cheap, so as to bring in a little cash… We needed it so badly… “So as not to haul it back home!” she explained… Only two or three people came to the shop all the time she was gone… So it made more sense to close up completely… that way I could go with her to the suburbs and to
te her biggest bundles… We didn’t have Mme Divonne any more to hold the shop down when we were absent. We hung out a sign saying: “Returning immediately.” We took the door handle with us.

  Uncle Édouard really loved his sister, no fooling, it got him down to see her so miserable, wasting away, getting more and more run-down from all her work and troubles… He was worried about her health and her morale… He thought of her all the time. The day after a trip to Chatou she couldn’t stand up, her face was ravaged with the pain in her leg. She whined like a dog and lay all twisted on the linoleum… She’d flop on the floor as soon as my father went out. She said it was cooler than the bed. If he caught her like that when he came home from the office, wan and dishevelled, massaging her leg in the dishpan, her skirts hiked up to her chin, he beat it upstairs, he pretended he hadn’t seen her, he raced past, he was gone in a flash. He’d plunge into his typewriting or his watercolours… We always sold a few, especially his Sailing Boats, we had a whole collection of them, and the Councils of Cardinals… They had the liveliest colours!… Really striking… Those things always look good in a room. And it was high time he got a wiggle on… It was getting on for the end of the month… To make up for closing in the daytime during our wanderings through Chatou, we stayed open pretty late… People would go for a stroll after dinner… Especially if a storm came up… If a customer came in, my mother, quick as lightning, hid the basin and all her wads of cotton under the couch in the middle of the room… She’d pull herself up with a smile… She’d start her spiel… Around her neck, I remember well, she’d tie a big muslin cabbage bow… They were all the rage at the time… It made her head look very big.