Death on Credit

by Louis-Ferdinand Celine

  She made up her mind on the spot… She sent Hortense to the Bazar Vivienne… for the ideal change purse… Good and solid, hand-stitched, with plenty of compartments, indestructible… In addition she made me a present of four fifty-centime pieces… But I wasn’t to spend them!… ever!… Those were my savings… to give me a taste for thrift! She put in my address too, in case of an accident in the street… It gave her pleasure. I raised no objection.

  I quickly drank up the little nest egg in ten-centime half-pints… The summer of 1910 was abominably hot. Luckily it was easy to wet your whistle around the Temple… It was cheap on the stands all along the street, whole pavements full of drinks, and the little bars in the street fairs…

  I transferred my efforts to the jewel-setters. That’s a real trade after all and I knew something about it… I went back to the Marais… It was unbearable on the Boulevards! The people were packed like a parade in front of the Café du Nègre and the Porte Saint-Denis! Like being crowded into a furnace… With the loafers on the Square des Arts it was even worse!… There was no use sitting down, the whole place was a dust bowl… just trying to breathe made you choke!… All the peddlers from miles around collected there with their boxes and bundles… and the dumb kid that pushes their pushcarts… They all slumped down by the railing, waiting for it to be time to go up and face the boss… They were sad sacks!… Business was so slow that summer they weren’t selling anything at all… Even with ninety days’ credit nobody wanted their stuff anywhere!… They looked dazed… They were suffocating in the clouds of sand… They’d never get a single order before 15th October… That didn’t encourage me very much… They could close their order books! Their misery paralysed me…

  I’d asked people right and left if they didn’t know of a job, I’d pestered everybody, I’d looked at every nameplate in town, analysed all the directories and telephone books. I went back to the Rue Vieille-du-Temple… For at least a week I roamed along the Canal Saint-Martin, looking at the barges… the quiet movement of the locks… I went back to the Rue Elzévir. I was so worried I woke up with a start in the middle of the night… I had an obsession that got stronger and stronger… It squeezed my head like a vice… I wanted to go back to Gorloge’s… All of a sudden I felt a terrible pang of remorse, an irresistible sense of shame, a curse… I was getting ideas like a poor bastard, absolutely screwy… I wanted to go up to Gorloge’s and frankly confess, accuse myself… in front of everybody… “It was me who stole!” I’d say… “It was me who took the beautiful pin! The pure-gold Sakya-Muni!… It was me! Absolutely positively!…” I worked myself up! Hell! Once I get it over with, I said to myself, my bad luck will leave me… I was under a spell… every fibre in my brain! The idea gave me such horrors I was always shivering… It got to be irresistible… Christ!… Well, in the end I actually went back to the house… in spite of the sizzling heat I had the cold shivers… I was already in a panic!… I catch sight of the concierge… She takes a good look at me, she recognizes me from far away… So I try to remember, to figure out why I’m guilty… I start for her den… First I’ll tell her all about it!… Shit!… No, I can’t do it… I’ve got the jitters… I about-face quick… I get out of there fast… I run down towards the Boulevards… What in hell’s the matter with me?… I was acting like an arse! I was going nuts… all sorts of crazy crummy ideas… I stopped going home for lunch… I took bread and cheese with me… I was sleepy in the afternoon from sleeping so badly at night… Always being woken up by dreams… I had to keep walking the whole time or I’d fall asleep on a bench… I kept on batting my brains out… trying to figure out what I was guilty of. There must have been some reason… some damn good reason… I wasn’t educated enough to puzzle it out… I covered so much ground I found another place to rest in the afternoon. At Notre-Dame-des-Victoires, by the little chapels on the left as you go in… you couldn’t have found a cooler place… I felt cruelly persecuted by my stinking luck… You feel better in the dark… The flags are soothing on the feet… Nothing could be more refreshing… I’d calmly remove my shoes… I’d stay there a long time… The candles are nice… like fragile bushes… the way they quiver in the deep velvet of the vaulting… They hypnotized me… Little by little they put me to sleep… I woke up to the sound of little bells. Naturally it never closes… It’s the best place.

  * * *

  I kept finding excuses for coming home later and later… Once it was almost nine o’clock… I’d applied for a job way out in Antony… in a wallpaper factory. They were looking for salesmen in the centre of town… It was just the thing for my aptitudes… I went back two or three times… Their factory wasn’t ready!… They hadn’t finished building it… Anyway a lot of rot!

  I was scared shitless when I got back to the Passage… I’d spent all my tram-fare money on beer… So I walked more and more… It was a really unusual summer!… It hadn’t rained in two months!…

  My father was twisting and turning like a tiger in front of his typewriter… In my bed right next door it was impossible to sleep, he cursed so much at the keyboard… At the beginning of September he developed a whole raft of boils, first on his arms, then on the back of his neck a really enormous one that turned into a carbuncle right away. In his case boils were really serious, they knocked him out completely… He went to the office anyway… But people looked at him in the street, all wound up in cotton. They turned round… He took quantities of brewer’s yeast, but it didn’t help.

  My mother was terribly worried to see him all broken out like that… Her abscess was doing a little better, what with lying still and putting on compresses. It festered a good deal, but the swelling had gone down. It drained a little more… And then she got back on her feet, she wouldn’t wait for the wound to heal, right away she got busy around the place, hobbling around the chairs and things… She tried to keep an eye on Hortense, she climbed the stairs, she wouldn’t let us carry her any more. She clutched the banister to climb the steps all by herself, she hoisted herself from one floor to the next while we were busy… She wanted to clean the house, to straighten out the shop, put the knick-knacks where they belonged…

  My father was so wrapped up in bandages he couldn’t turn his head, he was suffocating in his boils, but that didn’t prevent him from hearing my mother downstairs, bustling from room to room with her leg dragging behind her… That made him madder than anything else… He banged on his machine… He was in such a dither he scraped the skin off his fists. He yelled at her to watch what she was doing…

  “Jumping Jesus, Clémence! You can hear me all right. Holy suffering catfish, will you lie down, goddamn it! You think we haven’t trouble enough? Christ, what a stinking life!…”

  “Come, come, Auguste! Can’t you leave me be… Let me attend to my business!… Don’t worry!… I’m feeling fine!”

  She’d put on her angelic tone…

  “It’s easy to talk!” he yelled. “It’s easy to talk! Goddamn it to lousy stinking hell! Will you finally sit down?”

  * * *

  In the morning I notified my mother…

  “Say, Mama, I won’t be home for lunch today… I’m going out to Les Lilas again… see about that factory…”

  “All right, Ferdinand,” she says. “In that case, listen to me. I’ve been thinking… This evening I’d like Hortense to do the kitchen thoroughly… It’s been in a disgusting state for the last two months at least, the pots, the sink and all the brass… Since I’ve been sick, I haven’t been able to attend to it… You can smell the grease all the way upstairs… If I send her shopping, she’ll start dawdling again, she’ll be out for hours, she’s such a chatterbox!… She hangs around the vegetable store… gabble gabble… You’ll be near the Place de la République… so drop in at Carquois’s and bring me seventy centimes’ worth of their best ham for your father… the very best… you know the kind I mean?… Absolutely fresh and not too fat… Take a good look at it before you buy
it… There are some noodles left over for the two of us, we’ll boil them up again… And at the same time you can bring me three portions of cream cheese and if you can remember a head of lettuce, not too wide open… That way I won’t have to cook for dinner… You’ll remember all that, won’t you? We’ve got beer… Hortense will get some yeast… With your father and his boils I think salad is the best thing for the blood… Before you go, take a five-franc piece out of my purse on the mantelpiece in our room. Don’t forget to count the change!… And be sure to get back before dinner!… Do you want me to write it all down? With this heat I’m afraid to give your father eggs… his digestion hasn’t been right… or strawberries, for that matter… They give me a rash… so with his nerves!… We’d better be careful…”

  I’d had enough instructions, I was all set to go… I took the five francs… I left the Passage… I sat for a while in the Square Louvois, beside the fountain… thinking things over, on a bench… Lilas, my arse! But I had a little tip about a jobber, a fellow that made showcase accessories at home, velvet pads, little wooden plaques. Somebody had told me about him… It was on the Rue Greneta, at Number 8… just to have a clear conscience!… It must have been about nine o’clock… It wasn’t too hot yet… So I go there, very slowly… I come to the door… I climb up to the fifth floor… I ring, they open the door a crack… The job was taken! OK, no point arguing… That was a load off my chest! I went down maybe two flights… There on the third-floor landing I sit down for a minute, I take off my collar… I do a little more thinking… After quite some thought it came to me that I still had another address, a dealer in deluxe leather goods way down at the end of the Rue Meslay… There was no hurry about that either… I look around, I take in the setting. The place was really sumptuous… the floors were all worn down, it smelt terrible, of mould and toilets… but what generous proportions, really magnificent… must have belonged to some gravy-train riders in the seventeenth century… You could tell that by the decorations, the mouldings, the wrought-iron railings, the marble and porphyry steps… Nothing phoney about it!… all handmade!… I knew about style!… Hell!… It was really magnificent!… Not a single fixture was imitation!… It was like an enormous drawing room, where people would never stop again… They dashed straight through into the hovels, to their lousy jobs. I’d contemplated enough… I myself was a memory!… A putrid smell…

  There, right beside the water faucet I could see the whole landing, I was nice and comfortable… That’s all I wanted… Even the panes of glass dated from the period… Little tiny ones, different-coloured squares, violet, bottle-green, pink… So there I was, perfectly at peace, the people paid no attention to me… They were going to work… I pondered how I was going to spend the day… Hey! Suddenly I see an old friend coming up!… A big six-footer with a goatee… holding on to the banister and panting… He was a salesman, not a bad guy… a real joker. I hadn’t seen him since I was at Gorloge’s… He sold watch chains and such… He recognizes me on the landing… He shouts up to me from one banister to the next… He tells me all about himself and asks me what I’ve been doing for the last year… I give him all the details… He didn’t have time to listen, he was just leaving for his vacation… early in the afternoon… He was all pepped up with the prospect… So he leaves me pretty quick… He took the stairs four at a time… He ran in to see his boss and drop his sample case… He barely had time to dash to the Gare d’Orsay and take the train for Dordogne… He was going to be away for eight days. He wished me plenty of luck… I told him to have a good time…

  But that big lout had got me down with his line about the country… Just like that, he’d punctured me completely. Hell! I wouldn’t do a damn thing all day! That was a safe bet!… I couldn’t think of anything but skylarking, the open spaces, the country… Hell! He’d demoralized me… I was suddenly frantic to see greenery, trees, flower beds… I couldn’t control myself… I was wild! Damn it to hell!… I say to myself: “I’ll do my shopping for supper right away!…” That was my idea… “Then I’ll go out to the Buttes-Chaumont… First we’ll get that out of the way! I won’t go home until seven… I’ll be free all afternoon!” Not bad!…

  I run to the nearest place… Ramponneau’s… I make it fast… on the corner of the Rue Étienne-Marcel… a model delicatessen store… even better than Carquois’s… Really luxurious for those days and clean… I buy the seventy centimes’ worth of ham… The kind my father liked best, hardly a speck of fat… I bought the head of lettuce at Les Halles across the street… The cream cheese too… They even lend me a container.

  So I start moseying down the Boulevard Sébastopol, then the Rue de Rivoli… I’ve kind of lost track… It’s so stifling you can hardly move… I drag myself through the arcades… along the shopfronts… “How about the Bois de Boulogne!” I says to myself… I kept on walking quite a while… But it was getting to be unbearable… unbearable… When I see the gates of the Tuileries, I turn off… across the street and into the gardens… There was a hell of a crowd already… It wasn’t easy to find a place on the grass… Especially in the shade… It was full up…

  I get pushed around a bit, I slide down an embankment near the big basin… It was nice and cool, really pleasant… But just then a red-faced mob appears on the scene, a compact mass, griping and greasy, pouring out of all fourteen adjoining quarters… Whole buildings disgorging their inhabitants on the spacious lawns, every last tenant and janitor, driven out by the heat, the bedbugs, the itch… They swept on in a sea of wisecracks, the gags burst like rockets… More hordes were on their way from the Invalides, you could hear their awful rumbling…

  They tried to close the gates, to rescue the rhododendrons, the bed of daisies… The horde broke down the gates, bending the bars, tearing them up by the roots, they ruptured the whole wall… It was worse than a landslide, a cavalry charge over ruins… They howled bestially to make the storm burst at last over the Concorde… But not a drop of rain fell, so they rushed into the basins… rolling and wallowing, whole battalions of them, naked, in their underdrawers… They made it overflow, they drank up the last drop…

  I was flat on my arse on the grassy bank, I really had nothing to complain about… I was safe… I had my provisions to the left of me, within easy reach… I could hear the stampeding herds trampling the flower beds… More were coming from all directions… The numberless legions of thirst… They were battling to lick the bottom of the pond… sucking mud, worms, slime… They’d ploughed up the whole place, disembowelled the earth, dug deep crevices. There wasn’t a single blade of grass left in the whole park… Only delirium, a chopped-up crater for three miles around, rumbling with disaster and drunks…

  At the bottom of the crater, in the red-hot oven of hell, thousands of families were looking around for their pieces… Sides of meat, chunks of rump, kidneys gushing and spurting as far as the Rue Royale and up into the clouds… The stink was merciless, tripe in urine, whiffs of corpse, decomposed liver patty… You got a mouthful with every breath… You couldn’t get away from it… The terraces were inaccessible, blocked off by three impregnable bulwarks… Baby carriages piled as high as a six-storey building…

  But as the purple dusk fell, strains of song were wafted through the putrid breezes… Slumped on top of the martyrs, the monster with a hundred thousand cocks stirs up music in his guts… I had a couple of beers, swiped free of charge… and two more… and two more… which makes twelve… Why not?… I’d spent my five francs… I hadn’t a red cent left… I snagged a quart of white wine… Nothing to it!… and a whole bottle of mousseux… Why wouldn’t I do a little trading with that family on the bench?… Sure… I swap my cream cheese for a real live Camembert… Better watch out!… I change my sliced ham for a quart of red ink… There’s no other word for it… Just then the mounted police attack… they’re brutal… Some nerve!… The damn fools… They can’t get anybody to move… In half a second they’re toppled off their horses, disgraced�
�� jerked off… beheaded… put to flight before you can count to three!… They run for it, they scatter behind the statues!… The masses are in revolt!… A storm… that’s what they’re demanding… The crater rumbles, grumbles, thunders… Spewing empty bottles as far as the Étoile!

  I break my salad in two, we eat it just like that, raw… I kid around with the young ladies… I sit there, drinking whatever I find on the corner of the bench. No more beer!… it doesn’t quench your thirst… It actually heats up your mouth… Everything is scorching, the air, the girls’ tits. You’d throw up if you moved, if you tried to get up… it’s a fact, you can’t move at all… My eyelids are drooping… my eyes are closing… Just then a sweet refrain passes through the air… “I know you’re lovely…”

  Bing! Rat-tat-tat! That’s the street lamp, the big white globe breaking into smithereens. A vicious stone. A slingshot! They give a jump. They screech something awful. It’s those toughs over there in the corner on the other side of the ditch, wise guys, bastards… They want it to be pitch dark!… The lousy little heels!… I sprawl over on the guy next to me… He’s a fat son of a bitch!… He’s snoring! It’s terrible… Cut it out!… I’m comfortable, though!… His hullabaloo is putting me to sleep!… A lullaby!… I thought it was Camembert I had… It’s cream cheese… I can see that!… I’ve still got some in my breast pocket… I shouldn’t have left any in the box!… In the box… Here we are… here we stay!… Seems like a breeze is coming up… The cream cheese is sleeping… It must be very late!… Or even later!… Like the cheese!… Absolutely.

  * * *

  I was sleeping nicely… I wasn’t bothering anybody… I’d slipped deep down into the ditch… I was wedged against the wall… Then some fool comes stumbling around in the darkness… He bumps into my neighbour. He falls back on me, he knocks me over… He feels me up… I half-open my eyes… I give a ferocious grunt… I look at the horizon… way in the distance… I see the dial… The one over the Gare d’Orsay… those great big clocks… It’s one o’clock in the morning! Christ! Hell and damnation! Stinking mess! I start up! I disentangle myself… I’ve got two floozies crushing me, one on each side… I roll them over… All around me they’re sawing wood and wheezing… Got to get up… Got to beat it home… I pick up my good jacket… But I can’t find my collar… To hell with it! I was supposed to be home for dinner! Hell! My lousy luck! It was the heat too! Besides, I was in a daze, I wasn’t all there! I was scared and I was drunk!… I was still completely befuddled!… Christ, was I drunk! Hell!