Death on Credit

by Louis-Ferdinand Celine

  “For my part, though I can’t claim to be absolutely certain, I might at a pinch accept one of the numerous hypotheses advanced at the time to explain that fire, that incredible explosion… it’s possible that imperceptibly, little by little, one of our ‘long fuses’ shook loose… When you come to think of it, it would suffice for one of those thin minium rods, shaken by thousands of bumps and jolts, to come into contact for only a second… for a tenth of a second… with the petrol nipples… The whole shebang would explode instantly!… Like melinite! Like a shell!… Yes, my boy, the mechanism was mighty precarious in those days. I went back to the place a long time after the disaster… There was still a charred smell!… At that critical stage in the development of the automobile, I might add, a number of these fantastic explosions were reported… almost as powerful! Everything pulverized! Horribly scattered in all directions! Propelled through the air for miles!… If pressed for a comparison, the only thing I can think of is certain sudden explosions of liquid air… And even there I have my reservations!… Those things are commonplace! Perfectly easy to explain… from start to finish! Beyond the shadow of a doubt! No mystery at all! Whereas my tragedy remains an almost complete mystery!… We may as well admit it in all modesty! But what importance has that today? None whatever!… Fuses haven’t been used in ages! Such speculation only impedes progress!… Other problems demand our attention… a thousand times more interesting! Ah, my boy, that was a long time ago! Nobody uses minium any more!… Nobody!”

  Courtial hadn’t, like myself, adopted the celluloid collar… He had his own method of making ordinary cloth collars wear-proof, dirt-proof, waterproof… It was a kind of varnish that you put on in two or three coats… It lasted at least six months… offering protection against the dirt in the air, finger marks and perspiration. It was a first-class product with a pure cellulose base. He’d been wearing the same collar for the last two years. Out of sheer coquetry he’d touch it up once a month! Just a stroke of the brush! That gave it the patina, the tone, you could even say the orient, of old ivory. The same with his shirt front. But contrary to what it said in the prospectus, the fingers left distinct marks on the glazed collar… big spots one on top of the other! The result was a regular Bertillon* collection, the process wasn’t quite perfected. He himself admitted it occasionally. Besides, he didn’t have a name yet for this wonder product. He said he’d get around to it when the time was ripe.

  When it came to height, Courtial wasn’t too well fixed! He hadn’t a quarter of an inch to spare… He wore very high heels… altogether, he was particular about his shoes… tan cloth uppers and little mother-of-pearl buttons… Only he was like me, his feet stank something awful… By Saturday afternoon the smell was rough… He’d wash on Sunday morning, he told me so. During the week he didn’t have time. I knew all those things… I’d never seen his wife, he told me all about her. They lived in Montretout… He wasn’t the only one that had smelly feet… they were the curse of the period… When the inventors came around all in a sweat, usually from far away, it was hard to listen till they were through, even with the door wide open on the big gardens of the Palais-Royal… The smells that came your way at times were inconceivable… They made me feel disgusted with my own dogs.

  The disorder in the offices of the Génitron was something monstrous, in a class by itself… the place was a junk shop, absolute chaos… From the door of the shop to the ceiling of the first floor, every step of the stairs, every ledge, every piece of furniture, the chairs, the cupboards, were buried under papers, pamphlets, piles of returns, all topsy-turvy, a desperate hotchpotch, creviced and lacerated, the complete works of Courtial helter-skelter, in pyramids, a fallow field… In that loathsome muddle it was impossible to lay hands on the dictionary, the historical maps, the oleographed dissertations. You’d dig in at random, groping your way… sinking into garbage, a leaking bilge… a teetering cliff… Suddenly it would cave in! You were caught in a cataract!… A landslide of blueprints and diagrams! Ten tons of printed matter would fall on your face!… That would start new avalanches, the frightful collision of a frothing torrent of paper with a dust storm… a volcano of stinking filth… Every time we sold five francs’ worth of merchandise the dykes threatened to burst!…

  But that didn’t bother him… He didn’t even see anything wrong with it, he felt no desire to change things, to modify his methods… Not at all… He felt perfectly at home in the dizzy chaos… He never had to look very long for the book he was after… He’d reach in and there it was… He’d dive into any old pile… The tatters would go flying, he’d burrow vigorously into the heap and drill to the exact spot where the book was concealed… The miracle happened every time… He seldom went wrong… He had a feeling for disorder… He was sorry for anybody who didn’t… Order is entirely in our ideas! In matter there’s no trace of it!… When I ventured to remark that it was absolutely impossible for me to find my way in that chaos, that bedlam, he’d get mean, he’d blast me… He didn’t even give me time to breathe… He’d attack instantly… “I’m not asking the impossible of you, Ferdinand! You’ve never had the instinct, the essential curiosity, the desire to learn… After all, you can’t claim to be deprived of books around here!… Did you ever wonder, my poor young friend, what the human brain looks like?… The mechanism that makes you think? Did you? No! Of course not! That doesn’t interest you one bit!… You’d rather look at girls? So of course you don’t know! Because the first honest glance would convince you that disorder, yes, my boy, disorder, is the quintessence of your very life! Of your whole physical and metaphysical being! Why, it’s your very soul, Ferdinand! Millions, trillions of intricate folds… plunging deep down into the grey matter, complex, underlying, evasive… limitless! That’s Harmony, Ferdinand! All nature! A flight into the imponderable! And nothing else! Put your wretched thoughts in order, Ferdinand! That’s where to begin! Not with grotesque, material, negative, obscene substitutions, but with the essential, that’s what I’m getting at! Are you going to assault the brain, correct it, scrape it, mutilate it, force it to comply with an assortment of stupid rules? Carve it up geometrically? Recompose it according to the rules of your excruciating idiocy?… Arrange it in slices? Like an Epiphany cake? With a prize in the middle! Tell me that. I’m asking you. Frankly? Would that be any good? Would it make sense? Heaven help us! There’s no doubt about it, Ferdinand, your soul is overwhelmed by errors! It makes you, like so many others, a unanimous nonentity! Great instinctive disorder is the father of fertile thoughts! It’s the beginning of everything!… Once the propitious moment has passed, there’s no hope!… You, I’m afraid, will spend your whole life in the rubbish bin of reason! So much the worse for you! You’re a numbskull, Ferdinand, a short-sighted, blind, preposterous, deaf, one-armed dolt!… Befouling my magnificent disorder with your vicious reflections… In Harmony, Ferdinand, resides the world’s only joy! The only deliverance! The only truth!… Harmony! Find Harmony, that’s the ticket!… This shop is in Har-mo-ny!… Do you hear me, Ferdinand? Like a brain, neither more nor less! Order! Pah! Order! Rid me of that word, that thing! Accustom yourself to Harmony and Harmony will reward you! You’ll find everything you’ve been looking for so long on the highways of the world… And far more! Many other things, Ferdinand! A brain, Ferdinand, that’s what the whole lot of you will find! Yes! The Génitron is a brain! Have I made myself clear? That’s not what you’re after? You and your kind?… An inane ambush of pigeonholes! A barricade of brochures! A vast house of the dead! A Chartist necropolis! No, never! Here everything is in movement! Swarming with life! You’re not satisfied? It stirs, it quivers! Just touch it! Put out your little finger! Everything comes to life! Everything trembles instantly! Asking only to surge up! To blossom! To shine! I don’t live by destroying! I take life as it comes! Do you take me for a cannibal, Ferdinand? Never!… Bent on reducing it to my bullshit concepts? Pah! Everything shakes? Everything topples? Splendid! I have no desire to count stars, one! Two! Three
! Four! And five! I’m not the kind that thinks he’s entitled to do anything he pleases. The right to shrink! Rectify! Corrupt! Prune! Transplant!… No! Where would I get it? From the Infinite? From life itself? It’s not natural, my boy! It’s not natural! It’s infamous meddling!… I prefer to keep on good terms with the Universe! I take it as I find it!… I’ll never rectify it! No!… The Universe is master of its own house! I understand it! It understands me! It gives me a hand when I ask it! When I’m through with it, I drop it! That’s the long and the short of it!… It’s a cosmogonic question! I have no orders to give! You have no orders! He has no orders!… Bah! Bah! Bah!…”

  He got sore as hell, like somebody who’s definitely in the wrong…

  * * *

  Courtial’s little handbooks were translated into a good many languages, they were sold even in Africa. One of his correspondents was a real Negro, the chief of a sultanate in Upper Ubangi-Shari-Chad. That boy was wild about lifts of every kind. They were his dream, his mania!… We’d sent him all the literature… He’d never actually seen one. About 1893 Courtial had published a regular treatise, On Vertical Traction. He knew all the details, the many varieties, hydraulic, ballistic, “electro-recuperative”… It was an excellent work, absolutely irrefutable, but it constituted only a slight and modest fraction of his opus as a whole. His knowledge definitely embraced every possible field.

  The official world disapproved of him, looked down its nose at him, but the crustiest pedant couldn’t very well do without his handbooks. In a good many schools they were actually a part of the curriculum. You couldn’t imagine anything handier, simpler, easier to assimilate, all predigested! You could remember it, you could forget it, without the slightest effort. We reckoned by and large that in France alone, at least one family out of four owned a copy of his Family Astronomy, Economy Without Usury and How to Make Ions… At least one in twelve had his Colour Poetry, his Roof Gardening, his Poultry Raising at Home. So far I’ve been speaking only of his practical works… But he had to his credit a whole series of other volumes (in numerous fascicles) that were real classics. Hindustani Revelation, The Story of Polar Voyages from Maupertuis to Charcot. Ponderous tomes! Reading matter for several winters, kilos and kilos of stories…

  Everybody had commented, examined, copied, paraphrased, ridiculed, and looted his famous Be Your Own Doctor, his True Language of Herbs and his Electricity without a Bulb… All of them brilliant, attractive, definitive popularizations of sciences which in their pure form are exceedingly difficult, complex and hazardous, and which without Courtial would have remained beyond the reach of the general public, in other words, highfalutin, hermetic and, to sum up without undue flattery, as good as useless…

  * * *

  Little by little, what with living in the closest intimacy with Courtial, I really got to know his character… Way down deep it wasn’t so hot. The fact is he was pretty mean, petty, envious and sneaky… Still, to be fair, I’ve got to admit that the work he did was a nightmare, struggling desperately, year in year out, to hold his own against that gang of raving maniacs, the Génitron’s subscribers…

  He spent ghastly, absolutely devastating hours… in a hotbed of asininity… And he had to bear up, to defend himself, to return blow for blow, to sweep away all resistance, to make a good impression on them, so they’d all go away happy and want to come back…

  At first Courtial was reluctant to take me on. He didn’t go for the idea… He thought me a little too tall, a little too broad-shouldered, a little too husky for his shop. Even without me, you couldn’t move in all that mess… And yet I wasn’t expensive. I was being offered without pay, just for board and lodging… My parents were perfectly satisfied. I didn’t need money, they kept telling my uncle… I’d only put it to bad use… It was much more important that I shouldn’t live with them any more… That was the unanimous opinion of the whole family, of the neighbours too and of all our acquaintances… That I be given something to do, no matter what! That I be kept busy at any price! No matter where, no matter how! As long as I wasn’t left idle! And kept away… From one day to the next, to judge by the way I had started out, I might set the Passage on fire! That was the general sentiment…

  Of course there was always the army… My father asked nothing better… Only I still wasn’t old enough… I lacked at least eighteen months… So des Pereires and his valiant Génitron came in really handy, they were a gift from Heaven!…

  But Courtial hesitated and shilly-shallied a good deal… He asked his wife what she thought about it. She raised no objection… Actually she didn’t give a hoot in hell, she never came to the Galerie, she stayed out in Montretout in her cottage. Before he made up his mind, I’d been to see him at least ten times all by myself… He talked abundantly… always and incessantly… I was a very good listener… My father!… England!… Everywhere I’d listened… By that time I was in the habit!… It didn’t bother me in the least! I didn’t need to answer. That was how I won him over… By keeping my trap shut… Finally one evening he said:

  “Well, my boy! I’ve kept you waiting quite a while, but now I’ve thought things over thoroughly. I’m going to keep you here with me! I think we’ll get along… But you mustn’t make any demands on me… Oh no! Not a sou! Not a centime! It can’t be done! I should say not! Don’t expect anything! Never expect anything! I’m already having a hell of a time making ends meet in these unpredictable times! Covering the costs of the magazine, keeping the printer quiet! I’m harassed, crippled, exhausted! You understand? They dun me day and night! And surprises with the photographic plates! Unforeseen expenses! At the moment? It’s out of the question!… This isn’t an industry! A business! Some cushy monopoly! Far from it! It’s a frail skiff sailing before the wind of the spirit!… And what storms, my boy, what storms!… You want to join us? Good. I take you! I welcome you! Fine! Come aboard! But I’m telling you in advance! You won’t find a single doubloon in the hold! Empty hands! Little in your pocket! No bitterness! No rancour!… You’ll prepare lunch! You’ll sleep on the mezzanine, I used to sleep there myself… in the Tunisian office… you’ll make up the couch… It’s perfectly comfortable… you’ll be marvellously at peace! Lucky boy!… Wait and see, in the evening, how pleasant, how peaceful it is! After nine o’clock the Palais-Royal is all yours!… You’ll be happy, Ferdinand!… Just think of me, rain, thunder or tempest, I still have to traipse out to Montretout! It’s abject slavery! I’m expected! Ah, let me tell you, it’s awful some days! When I see the locomotive, I’m so exasperated I could fling myself under the wheels!… Ah! I restrain myself! For my wife’s sake! And a little for my experiments! My radiotelluric garden! Well, all in all, I’ve no business complaining! She’s been through a good deal! And she is charming! You’ll see Mme des Pereires one of these days! She gets so much pleasure out of her garden!… It’s all hers! And she hasn’t much in her life! That and her house! And myself too, a little! I’d forgotten myself! Ha! Ha! That’s a good one! Well, we’ve joked enough! It’s settled! Splendid! Shake on it! Then we understand each other? As man to man! Fine! In the daytime you’ll run errands. You’ll have plenty of them! But don’t worry, Ferdinand, I mean to take you in hand too, to guide you, equip you, raise you to the heights of knowledge… No salary! Of course not! Not in cash, that is! But spiritual fare! Ah, Ferdinand, you don’t realize what you stand to gain! No! No! No! You’ll leave me some day, Ferdinand… inevitably…” Already there was sadness in his voice. “You’ll leave me… You’ll be rich! Yes, rich! I’m telling you!…”

  He had me flabbergasted, I stood there open-mouthed.

  “You understand me, Ferdinand… Everything isn’t in a wallet!… No! There’s nothing in a wallet! Nothing!…”

  I was of the same opinion…

  “Well, as a starter, here’s an idea! How about giving you a title? A raison d’être! It’s indispensable in our line of business! An official label!… I’m going to put you on our
stationery, on all our paper! ‘Secretary in Charge of Stock’. What do you think of it? It sounds good to me… Is it all right with you? Not too pretentious? Not too vague?… OK?”

  It was all right with me… Everything was all right with me… But there wasn’t anything honorary about that title… the stock was real and it was hard work!… He set me straight right away… My job was to do all the delivering with a pushcart… all the hauling to the printer’s and back… In addition I was responsible for every tear in the big balloon… I had to keep tabs on all the hardware he left lying around, the barometers, the ropes, all the little gadgets… I had to mend the rips and the big bag… I had to patch things up with cord and glue… I had to attend to all the knots in the cables and guy ropes… all the tackle that broke in mid-air… The Enthusiast was a venerable old balloon, even down there in the cellar sprinkled with moth flakes, it was eminently given to decay… thousands of grubs feasted in the folds… luckily the rubber repelled the rats… there were only tiny little mice that nibbled at the silk. I’d locate the tears in the Enthusiast, the tiniest holes, and patch them like a pair of pants… with oversewing, hems, pleats, depending on the nature of the tear… It was in pretty bad shape all over, I mended for hours on end, after a while I got really absorbed…

  At least in that cubbyhole of a gymnasium there was a little more elbow room… And besides, the customers in the shop weren’t supposed to see me…