Death on Credit

by Louis-Ferdinand Celine

  I can still hear des Pereires telling me about all the trouble that ensued… The incomprehension of the competent authorities… their abject partiality… How painful, rotten, sickening it all was… All the libels he had received. Threats… Challenges… A thousand threatening letters… Summonses… How he’d been obliged to lock himself in, barricade himself in his apartment!… He’d been living on the Rue Monge at the time… Then, more and more harassed, he’d fled to Montretout from the rage of all those insatiable, vicious peeping toms, disappointed by telescopy… The mess had gone on for six months… and it still wasn’t over!… Some of those angry stargazers, even peskier than the rest, would take advantage of their Sunday off… They’d come out to Montretout, they’d bring the whole family, to kick the boss in the arse… He hadn’t been able to receive any visitors in almost a year… This “photo-sidereal” business was only a small example among many others of how the masses were capable of reacting the minute you tried to educate them, to uplift them, to wise them up…

  “I can tell you, Ferdinand, that I’ve suffered for science… Worse than Flammarion, that’s certain! Worse than Raspail! Worse even than Montgolfier!* On a small scale, of course! I’ve done everything! And then some!” He used to repeat that often… I didn’t answer… He gave me a sidelong look… suspicious… he wanted to see the impression he was making… Then he’d dive right into the chaos… looking for his file… He’d locate it by instinct under the enormous mound… He’d pat the dust off it… He’d change his mind… He’d cautiously open it up in front of me…

  “When I think it over, I’m sorry… Maybe I too have become a trifle bitter, carried away by memories!… Perhaps I’m a little unjust… Good Lord! I’ve reason enough!… I ask you! In the course of time I’ve forgotten… that was very wrong of me… not intentionally, to be sure! Not intentionally!… the most touching, perhaps the most sincere, the most precious testimonials… Ah! They haven’t all failed to appreciate me!… The whole human race isn’t so absolutely depraved! No! A few noble souls here and there in the world… have been able to recognize my absolute good faith! Here! Here! And still another!” He pulled out letters and memoranda at random from his collection… “I’ll read you one among many!:

  “Dear Courtial, honoured master and revered precursor! It is as­suredly thanks to you, to your admirable and so scrupulous telescope (for the family) that yesterday at two o’clock on my own balcony I was able to view the whole moon, in its complete totality, with its mountains, its rivers, and even, I believe, a forest… Perhaps even a lake! I hope to see Saturn too with my children in the course of the coming week, as it is indicated (in italics) on your “sidereal calendar” and also Bellegophorus a little later, in the last days of the autumn, as you yourself have written on page 242… Yours, dear, gracious, and benevolent master, yours in heart, body, and spirit, here below and in the stars.

  “One who has been transformed.”

  He kept all these admiring letters in his mauve-and-lavender portfolio. As for the others, unfavourable, menacing, draconic, vicious, he burned them on the spot. In this connection at least, he kept a certain amount of order… “The poison’s going up in smoke,” he told me every time he touched a match to one of those monstrosities… “How much evil would be eliminated if everybody did the same!” My idea is that he wrote the favourable ones himself… He showed them to visitors… He never actually admitted it to me… Now and then I smiled… There was a certain restraint in my approval… He half-suspected that I smelt a rat. Then he’d scowl at me… I’d go up to feed the pigeons or I’d go down to the Enthusiast…

  By now I was laying his bets for him at the Insurrection on the corner of the Passage Radziwill. He preferred for me to do it on account of the customers, it could have been bad for business… On Cartouche and Lysistrata in the Vincennes gallops… and giddyup and away we go!…

  “You’ll tell them it’s your own sugar!…” He owed all the bookies money. He had no desire at all to show his face… The character that took most of our bets between the saucers had a funny name, he was called Formerly… He had a way of stuttering, of garbling the names of the winners… He did it on purpose, I think, to give you a wrong steer… Afterwards he’d deny everything… He’d want to skip the number… I always made him write it down… we lost anyway.

  I’d bring back the Turf Echo or Racing Luck… If he’d lost heavily, he had the crust to give me hell… He sent all the inventors away… He threw them all out with their models and diagrams… “Go wipe your arses, the whole lot of you! Those blueprints stink!… You got a headache?… They smell of axle grease, margarine! You call that ideas? Innovations? Hell, I can piss better ideas than that, a whole potful, three times a day!… Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? Don’t you realize?… It’s a disaster! You have the gall to bring that stuff here? To me? When I’m up to my neck in crap already! Get out of here! Christ! You lounge lizards! You loafers in body and soul!…”

  The guy would leave all right, he’d run for the door, he’d fly with his roll of plans. Courtial was fed up with them! He wanted to think of something else… I was the scapegoat, he started on me… any old guff would do… “You, naturally, you suspect nothing! You have time to listen to everything! You’ve got nothing to do, is that it?… But I’m not exactly in that position… I can’t look at things that way!… I have preoccupations… metaphysical preoccupations!… Permanent! Ineluctable! That’s right! They leave me no rest! Never! Even when I don’t show it! When I’m talking to you about one thing and another, I’m haunted… harassed… tormented by riddles!… Well, there you have it! You didn’t know! It comes as a surprise to you? You never suspected it?”

  He stared at me again as if he hadn’t ever really placed me… He straightened out his moustaches, he dusted off the dandruff… He went for a rag to pass over his shoes… All the while telling me what he thought of me…

  “You just drift along, don’t you! What can it matter to you? You don’t give a good goddamn about the universal consequences that can flow from our most trifling acts, our most unforeseen thoughts!… It’s no skin off your arse!… You’re caulked!… Hermetically sealed!… Well strapped to the core of your very substance… Nothing means anything to you… Am I right? Nothing. Eat! Drink! Sleep! Up there as cosy as you please… All warm and comfy on my couch!… You’ve got everything you want… You wallow in well-being… the earth rolls on… How? Why? A staggering miracle! How it moves… the profound mystery of it… towards an infinite unforeseeable goal… in a sky all scintillating with comets… all unknown… from one rotation to the next… Each second is the culmination and also the prelude of an eternity of other miracles… of impenetrable wonders, thousands of them!… Ferdinand! Millions! Billions of trillions of years… And you? What are you doing in the midst of this cosmological whirl? This vast sidereal wonder? Just tell me that! You eat! You fill your belly! You sleep! You don’t give a damn!… That’s right! Salad! Swiss cheese! Sapience! Turnips! Everything! You wallow in your own muck! You loll around, befouled! Glutted! Satisfied! You don’t ask for anything more! You pass through the stars… as if they were raindrops in May!… God, you amaze me, Ferdinand! Do you really think this can go on for ever?…”

  I didn’t say a word… I had no set opinion about the stars or the moon, but I had one about him, the bastard!… And the stinker knew it!…

  “Take a look some time in the little cabinet upstairs. Put them all together. I’ve received at least a hundred such letters. I wouldn’t want them to be stolen!… There’s an idea, why don’t you file them?… You like order so much!… You’ll get a kick out of it!…” I saw through him… He was handing me a line!… “You’ll find the key on top of the gas meter… I’m going out for a while… you can close up…” He changed his mind… “No, you’d better stick around in case somebody comes in. Tell them I’ve gone away… far away!… Far far away!… On an expedition!… Tell them I’ve gone to Senegal!… P
ernambuco!… Mexico!… Any place you like!… Christ, I’ve had enough for today!… It turns my stomach to see them coming in from the gardens… I’ll puke if I see one more of them!… Hell, I don’t care!… Tell them anything you please… Tell them I’ve gone to the moon!… That it’s no use waiting… And now open up the cellar! Hold the lid properly! Don’t let it fall back on my head the way you did last time!… I bet you did it on purpose!…”

  To those words I made no reply… He stepped into the hole. He went down two, three rungs… He waited a moment, then he said…

  “You’re not a bad kid, Ferdinand… your father’s mistaken about you. You’re not bad… You’re unformed! Unformed, that’s it!… Pro-to-plas-mic! What month are you, Ferdinand? What month were you born in, I mean!… February? September? March?”

  “February, master!…”

  “I’d have bet five francs on it! February! Saturn! What’s going to become of you! Poor devil! Why, it’s insane! Well, anyway, lower the trap! When I’m all the way down! All the way, see? Not before! And have me break both my legs! This ladder’s a wreck! It sags in the middle!… I should have repaired it long ago!… Let her go!…” He went on shouting from deep down in the cellar… “Whatever happens, don’t let anybody in! No pests! No drunks! You hear me, I’m not here for anybody! I want privacy! Absolute privacy!… Maybe I’ll be gone two hours… maybe two days!… But I don’t want to be disturbed! Don’t worry about me! Maybe I’ll never come up! If they ask you, you don’t know a thing!… I’m going into meditation!… You understand?”

  “Yes, master!”

  “Total, exhaustive meditation, Ferdinand! Exhaustive retirement!…”

  “Yes, master…”

  I let the thing slam full force in a volcano of dust! It thundered like a cannon… I pushed the newspapers over the trapdoor, it was completely camouflaged… you couldn’t see the opening… I went up to feed the pigeons… I stayed quite a while… If he was still in his hole when I came back down, I began to wonder if anything was wrong!… I waited a while longer… half an hour… three quarters of an hour… then I began to think the nonsense had been going on long enough… I lifted the trap a little and looked in… If I didn’t see him, I made a racket!… I banged the trapdoor… He had to answer… It brought him out of his nirvana… Nearly always he was sawing wood under the transom in the folds of the Enthusiast, in the rolling billows of silk… It took some doing to get him to move… Finally he’d surface… He’d reappear… rubbing his eyes… He’d brush off his frock coat… Back in the shop he’d be all befuddled…

  “I’m dazzled, Ferdinand! How beautiful it is… beautiful… like fairyland!”

  He looked pasty, the talk had gone out of him, he had calmed down… He went “Bdia! Bdia! Bdia!” with his tongue… He went out… teetering from his nap. He walked slantwise like a crab… Port of call: the Pavillon de la Régence!… The café that looked like a china birdcage, with pretty piers… in those days it was still in the middle of a mouldering flower bed… He slumped down the first place he found… at the table by the door… I had a good view of him from the shop… He started off with his usual absinthe… It was easy to see him… We still had our nifty telescope in the window… the one left from the big show… Maybe you couldn’t see Saturn through it, but you could see des Pereires sugaring his pea soup.* Then he had an anisette and after that a vermouth… The colours were easy to make out… and just before taking off for his train a good stiff grog “for the road”.

  * * *

  After his terrible accident Courtial had taken a solemn vow that he’d never again, at any price, take the wheel in a race… That was all over! Finished! He’d kept his promise… And even now, twenty years later, he had to be begged before he’d drive on some quiet excursion… or in an occasional harmless demonstration. He felt much safer out in the wind in his balloon…

  His studies of mechanics were all contained in his books… Year in year out he published two treatises (with diagrams) on the development of motors and two handbooks with plates.

  One of these little works had stirred up bitter controversies and even a certain amount of scandal! Actually it wasn’t even his fault! It was all on account of some low-down sharpers who travestied his ideas in an idiotic money-making scheme! It wasn’t at all in his style! Anyway here’s the title:

  An Automobile Made to Order for 322 Francs 25. Complete Instructions for Home Manufacture. Four Permanent Seats, Two Folding Seats, Wicker Body, 12 mph, 7 Speeds, 2 Reverse Gears. Done entirely with spare parts that could be picked up anywhere! Assembled to the customer’s taste! To suit his personality! According to the style and the season of the year! This little book was all the rage… from 1902 to 1905… It contained – which was a step forward – not only diagrams, but actual blueprints on a scale of one to two hundred thousand! Photographs, cross-references, cross-sections… all flawless and guaranteed.

  His idea was to combat the rising peril of mass production… There wasn’t a moment to be lost… Despite his resolute belief in progress, des Pereires had always detested standardization… From the very start he was bitterly opposed to it… He foresaw that the death of craftsmanship would inevitably shrink the human personality…

  At the time of this battle for the “made to measure” automobile Courtial was practically famous in the world of innovators for his original and extremely daring studies on the “All-Purpose Cottage”, the flexible, extensible dwelling, adaptable to families of every kind in all climates!… “Your own house”, absolutely detachable, tippable (that is, transportable), shrinkable, instantly reducible by one or more rooms at will, to fit permanent or passing needs, children, guests, alterable at a moment’s notice… to meet the requirements, the tastes of every individual… “An old house is a house that doesn’t move!… Buy young! Be flexible! Don’t build! Assemble! To build is death! Only tombs can be built properly! Buy a living house! Live in a living house! The ‘All-Purpose Cottage’ keeps pace with life!…”

  Such was the tone, the style of the manifesto written by Courtial himself just before the “Future of Architecture” exhibition held in June ’98 at the Gallery of Machines. Almost immediately his little book on home-building created an enormous furore among men about to be pensioned, heads of families with insignificant incomes, homeless young couples and colonial civil servants… He was bombarded with enquiries from all over France, from abroad, from the Dominions… His cottage, all set up with movable roof, 2,492 nails, three doors, twenty-four sections, five windows, forty-two hinges, wood or muslin partitions according to the season, won a special prize, hors concours, unbeatable… It could be assembled in the desired dimensions with the help of two workmen, on any kind of ground, in seventeen minutes and four seconds!… The wear and tear was minimal… it would last for ever!… “Only resistance is ruinous! A house in its entirety must have play, it has to adapt itself like a living organism! It has to give! It has to dodge the whirling winds! The gales and tempests, the paroxysms of nature! The moment you oppose – what utter folly! – the unleashed elements, disaster ensues!… Can a building… the most massive… the most galvanic… the most firmly cemented… be expected to defy the elements? Pure madness! One day or another, inevitably, it will be overturned, annihilated! If you wish to be convinced, you have only to pass through one of our beautiful, fertile areas of countryside! Isn’t our magnificent country interspersed from north to south with melancholy ruins? Once proud habitations! Haughty manors! Ornaments of our soil, what has become of you? Dust!

  “The ‘All-Purpose Cottage’, on the other hand, is flexible, it adapts itself, it expands, it contracts according to necessity, according to the laws, the living forces of nature!

  “It bends enormously, but it never breaks…”

  The day his stand was inaugurated, after President Félix Faure had come through, after all the powwow and congratulations, the crowd broke through the barriers! The guards were
swept away! The populace burst in so frantically between the walls of the cottage that the little marvel was instantly torn apart, washed away, swallowed up! The mob was so feverish, so avid, that it combusted all the materials!… You couldn’t say this one and only model was destroyed, it was sucked up, absorbed, digested on the spot… The evening the exhibition closed there wasn’t a trace left of it, not a crumb, not a nail, not a shred of muslin… The amazing edifice had been absorbed like a pimple! As Courtial told me about all this fifteen years later, he was still in a daze…

  “Of course I could have started again… In that field, I can say without flattering myself, my ability was remarkable. When it came to drawing up a precise, a meticulous estimate for on-the-spot assembly, I had no rival… But other, more grandiose projects carried me away, kept me absorbed… I’ve never found the time to resume my calculations of the ‘indices of resistance’… And after all, in spite of the final disaster, I had proved what I set out to!… By my boldness I had enabled certain schools, certain young enthusiasts, to step forward!… To shout their opinions from the rooftops!… To find their way… That and nothing else was my mission! I desired nothing more! My honour was intact! I asked for nothing, Ferdinand! Coveted nothing! Demanded nothing of the authorities! I went back to my studies… I didn’t scheme or intrigue! And now listen! Some months later… Guess what I get? Practically one right after the other? The Nichan, and a week later the Academic Palms!… I was really offended! Whom did they take me for all of a sudden? Why not a tobacco-counter? I wanted to send all that flimflam back to the minister! I told Flammarion about it: ‘Don’t do it!’ he said. ‘Don’t do anything of the kind! Accept! Accept! I’ve got them too!’ Well, in that case I was in the clear! But even so they’d swindled me outrageously!… Oh, the skunks! My plans had been plagiarized, pirated, copied – do you hear? – in a thousand revolting ways! And incompetently what’s more… by so many swollen-headed, unprincipled, shameless official architects that I wrote to Flammarion… If they wanted to make amends, they owed me at least the Legion of Honour!… If they’d wanted to butter me up with honours, I mean!… He thought I was perfectly right, but he advised me to keep quiet and not make any more of a stink… it would even get him in trouble… to be patient… that the time wasn’t quite ripe… that after all I was his disciple and I shouldn’t forget it… Oh, I don’t feel any bitterness, get me straight! Yes, those little things still make me feel sad! But nothing more! Absolutely not!… A melancholy lesson… That’s all… I think of it now and then…”