Death on Credit

by Louis-Ferdinand Celine

  I could tell when the architectural blues came over him… It usually happened in the country… and when he was getting ready to go up in his balloon… when he was climbing into the basket… His memories came back to him… Maybe he was a little scared and that was what made him talk… He looked at the country in the distance… Out there in the suburbs, especially at the housing lots, the shacks and shanties! He was overcome with emotion… it brought the tears to his eyes… Those shacks, all lopsided and cross-eyed, all cracked and rickety, rotting away in the muck, sinking into the slush, at the edge of the fields… beyond the highway… “You see all that,” he’d say to me, “you see that stinking mess?” He’d make a sweeping gesture, embracing the horizon… The whole crawling swarm of shanties, the church and the chicken coops, the wash house and the schools… The ramshackle tumbledown huts, grey, mauve and mignonette… all the plaster thingamajigs…

  “It’s bad, eh? It’s pretty crummy?… Well, it’s a good deal my fault! I’m responsible! You can put the blame on me! All that is mine, Ferdinand, do you hear me?… Mine!…”

  “Ah?” I said, as though flabbergasted. I knew he was going into his routine… He threw his leg over the edge. He jumped into the wicker basket… If the wind wasn’t too strong, he kept his panama on… he was much happier that way… but he tied it under his chin with a broad ribbon… I’d wear his cap… “Let her go!” She’d rise inch by inch, very slowly at first… and then a little faster… He’d have to get a move on to clear the roofs… He couldn’t make up his mind to throw off ballast… But he had to rise somehow… We never inflated her completely… The stuff cost thirteen francs a bottle…

  * * *

  Some time after the adventure with the “Home-made Cottage” that the insane crowd had torn to pieces, Courtial des Pereires suddenly decided to change his whole tactics… “Capital first!” That’s what he said… That was his new motto. “No more risks! Cold cash!” He had mapped out a programme based entirely on these principles… And fundamental reforms!… All absolutely judicious and pertinent…

  First of all he decided that come hell or high water the conditions of inventors had to be improved… Ah! He started from the premise that in this racket there’d never be any shortage of ideas! That they were actually too plentiful! But that capital, on the other hand, is disgustingly evasive! Pusillanimous! Retiring!… That all the misfortunes of the human race and his own in particular came from lack of funds… the distrustfulness of money… the hideous rarity of credit!… But all that could be straightened out!… All it would take to remedy this state of affairs was action, an ingenious idea… So one two three, right there on the Galerie Montpensier, behind the Tunisian office, between the kitchen and the corridor, he founded an “Investors’ Corner”… a very special little nook, furnished very simply: a table, a cupboard, a filing cabinet, two chairs and, to preside over deliberations, a fine bust of de Lesseps* on the top shelf, between folders and more folders…

  On the strength of the new statutes, any inventor willing to invest fifty-two francs (total payable in advance) could run an ad in our paper for three successive issues, saying anything he pleased about all his projects, even the wildest nonsense, the dizziest phantasmagorias, the most shameless impostures… Not bad! It filled up two full columns in the Génitron and we’d throw in ten minutes’ private consultation with Courtial, the director… And finally, to make the deal even more attractive, an oleographed diploma, certifying him as a “member in good standing of the Eureka Research Centre for the financing, study, equilibration and immediate exploitation of discoveries conducive to the advancement of all the sciences and of industry…”

  It wasn’t so easy to get them to cough up the fifty smackers!… That was always slow-going… Even giving them the song and dance… talking himself blue in the face… when it came to paying up, they nearly always baulked, even the screwiest of them got to feeling worried… even in their delirium, they smelt a rat… they realized that this was dough they’d never be seeing again… “Registration fees” was the name we dreamt up for our gimmick…

  The understanding was that from that moment on Courtial would take all the necessary steps, put out feelers, attend to all the calling and contacting, the interviews… the documentation… the meetings… the premonitory discussions, the arguments, in short everything that was needed to attract, propitiate, arouse and reassure a consortium… All this, it went without saying, at the opportune moment!… On that point we were adamant!… Haste makes waste!… Easy does it!… That was our way… Impatience can only mess everything up! Precipitation wrecks the best-laid plans!… The most fruitful undertakings are those that ripen slowly!… We were radically opposed, implacably hostile, to all premature bungling… to all hysteria!… “Your investor escapes on the wings of the swallow, he’s a tortoise when it comes to forking up.”

  To interfere as little as possible with the negotiations, always so delicate, the inventor was advised to leave the field perfectly clear… to go straight home… to smoke his pipe and wait… and not worry about a thing… He’d be duly notified, summoned, acquainted with every detail as soon as things began to shape up… But it wasn’t often that he’d stay at home and mind his business!… Hardly a week would pass before he came running… asking for news… bringing us new models… complementary projects… more blueprints… spare parts… We could yell ourselves blue in the face, he’d keep coming, he’d come more and more often… like shooting pains, worried, dispirited… As soon as he began to see the light, he’d start bellowing… kicking up a ruckus of varying proportions… And after that you’d never see him again… There were some… but not very many… who weren’t so dumb, who threatened to raise hell, legal proceedings, to register a complaint with the police if we didn’t return their dough… Courtial knew them all. He cleared out when he saw them coming. He recognized them a mile away, from the other side of the arcades… It’s incredible what a piercing eye he had for spotting a rabid customer… They seldom caught him… He’d disappear into the back room and do a little turn with the dumb-bells, but mostly he went down in the cellar… There it was even safer… He wasn’t in… The old-timer who wanted his money back could split a gut, it didn’t get him anywhere…

  “Hold him, Ferdinand! Just hold him!” the stinker would say. “Hold him while I think things over!… I know that gasbag only too well! That drooling ape! Every time he comes here for an interview he stays two hours at least!… He’s made me lose the thread of my deductions a dozen times! It’s shameful! It’s scandalous! He’s a plague! Kill him, I beseech you, Ferdinand! Don’t let him contaminate the world any more!… Burn him! Slaughter him! Scatter his ashes! I don’t care what you do! But for God’s sake, at any price, do you hear me, don’t bring him to me! Tell him I’m in Singapore! In Colombo! In the Hesperides! Tell him I’m making elastic banks for the Isthmus of Suez and Panama. That’s an idea!… Tell him anything! Anything will do, so long as I don’t have to see him!… I beg you, Ferdinand, I beg you!”

  So it was me who had to bear the brunt of the whole tempest, sure as shit… I had my system, I admit… I was like the “Home-made Cottage”, my approach was flexible… I put up no resistance… I bent in the direction of his fury… I went even further… I amazed the lunatic by the virulence of my hatred for the loathsome Pereires… I took him every time in nothing flat… with my hair-raising insults!… In that province I was supreme!… I flayed him! I stigmatized him! I covered him with garbage, with pus!… That abject villain! That mountain of shit! Twenty times worse! A hundred times! A thousand times worse than the customer had ever thought on his own!…

  For his private delectation I turned Courtial, shouting at the top of my lungs, into a heap of soft, slimy, inconceivably sickening turds… How unbelievably loathsome he was!… He was in a class by himself! I went at it hammer and tongs… I stamped on the trapdoor right over the cellar, in chorus with the nut… I outdid them all in violence… tha
nks to the intensity of my revolt, my sincerity, my destructive enthusiasm! My implacable tetanism… my frenzy… my anathematic writhing… It was unbelievable what a paroxysm I could work myself up into in my total fury… I got all that from my dad… and the performances I’d been through… For temper tantrums I had no equal!… The worst lunatics, the most delirious interpretative nutcases didn’t stand a chance if I decided to take a fling, if I really wanted to bestir myself… young as I was… They all left with their arses dragging… absolutely bewildered by the intensity of my hatred… my indomitable fury, the eternal thirst for vengeance that I harboured in my flanks… With tears in their eyes they entrusted me with the task of crushing that turd… that execrable Courtial… that sink of iniquity… of covering him with new and unpredictable kinds of excrement, slimier than the bottom of the shithouse! A mass of unconscionable purulence!… Of making a cake out of him, the most fetid that could ever be imagined… of cutting him up into balls… flattening him out into sheets, plastering the whole bottom of the crapper with him, all the way from the bowl to the sump… and wedging him in there once and for all… to be shat on for all eternity!…

  As soon as our friend was gone, as soon as he was far enough away… Courtial would come back to the trapdoor… He’d lift it up a little… He’d take a gander… Then he’d surface…

  “Ferdinand! You’ve just saved my life… Ah, yes! My life!… It’s the truth! I heard it all! Ah! It’s just as I feared! That ape would have torn me apart! Right then and there! Did you realize that?” Then he’d stop and think. He began to feel worried about what I’d been shouting… my little session with the visitor…

  “But I do hope, Ferdinand, tell me now, that I haven’t fallen as low as all that in your esteem? You’d tell me, wouldn’t you? You wouldn’t hide it from me, would you? I’ll explain my position if you want me to. Go ahead!… I do hope these little acts you put on have no effect on your feeling for me! That would be too dreadful! Your affection for me is unchanged? You can count on me to the hilt, you know that! I’m a man of my word! You do understand me? You’re beginning to understand me, aren’t you? Tell me you understand me!”

  “Yes, yes! Of course… I think… I think I’m beginning…”

  “Then listen to me, my dear Ferdinand!… While that lunatic was raving… I was thinking of thousands of things… while he was turning our stomachs… mouthing his delirium… I was saying to myself: my poor Courtial! All these noises, these scenes, this ranting, this infamous uproar is lacerating your existence abominably… without furthering your cause any! When I say cause, you understand, I don’t mean money! I’m speaking of the great intangible treasure! Immaterial wealth! The great Decision! The eternal theme, the infinite acquisition! The idea that is worthy of our enthusiasm… You’ve got to understand me, Ferdinand… Quicker! Quicker! Time is passing! A minute! An hour! At my age, Ferdinand, that’s eternity! You’ll see! It’s all one, Ferdinand, all one!” His eyes moistened… “Listen to me, Ferdinand! I hope you’ll understand me fully one day… yes!… That you’ll really appreciate me! When I’m not here to defend myself!… Then it’s you, Ferdinand, who will possess the truth!… You who will refute the calumnies!… It’s you, I’m counting on you, Ferdinand! I’m counting on you!… If people come to you… from all four quarters of the world… and say: ‘Courtial was nothing but a skunk, the crummiest bastard of them all! A swindler! There was never another like him…’ What will you say, Ferdinand?… Just this… You hear me? ‘Courtial made only one mistake. But that mistake was fundamental! He thought the world was waiting for the spirit to help it change… The world has changed… That’s a fact!… But the spirit hasn’t come to it!…’ That’s all you’ll say! Absolutely! Not another word! You will add nothing!… The order of magnitudes, Ferdinand! The order of magnitudes! Maybe the infinitesimal can be inserted in the immense… But how are we to reduce the immense to the infinitesimal? Eh? Our misfortunes have no other source, Ferdinand! No other source! All our misfortunes!…”

  When he’d had a big scare as he had that afternoon, he felt a touching solicitude for me. He didn’t want to see me sulking…

  “Go on out, Ferdinand!” he’d say… “Go for a walk! Go to the Louvre! It’ll do you a world of good! Go up to the Boulevards! You like Max Linder!* Our joint still stinks of that mammoth! Let’s go, Ferdinand! Let’s clear out! Shut up the shop! Hang out the sign! Join me at the Three Musketoons! It’s on me! Take some money out of the drawer on the left… I won’t leave with you!… I’ll sneak out through the hall… Take a look in at the Insurrection… You’ll see Formerly!… Ask him if there’s anything new… You’ve placed a bet on Scheherazade, I hope? And did you put your winnings on Violoncelle? You’re still betting for yourself, eh? You don’t even know where I am!… Understand?”

  * * *

  He began to dish out his Great Decision routine more and more often… He’d disappear into the cellar, supposedly to meditate, for hours on end… He’d take a big fat book with him and his big candle… He must have owed every bookie in the neighbourhood money, and not just Kid Formerly at the Insurrection, but at the Musketoons, and even the Brasserie Vigogne on the Rue des Blancs-Manteaux… That was a real dive… He gave orders that he wasn’t to be disturbed… I wasn’t always very happy about it… his shenanigans made it my business to deal with all our daily nutcases… our discontented subscribers, the harmless little characters with stupid questions, the thoroughbred maniacs… whole broadsides of them swept over me… I had them all on my neck… bellyachers of every description… the repulsive mob of deep thinkers… the fanatics of gadgetry… They kept pouring in… coming and going… The bell was having fits… It rang the whole time… They were preventing me from repairing my Enthusiast… Courtial was cluttering up the cellar with his clowning… And that was my main job after all!… I was responsible, I’d be to blame if he broke his neck… which was touch and go every time!… In other words, his act was for the birds… In the end I told him, on this count and several others, that this couldn’t go on… that I was fed up!… That I washed my hands of it… that we were heading for trouble!… It was plain as day… But he hardly listened! It left him cold… He disappeared more and more. When he was in the cellar, he wouldn’t let anybody disturb him!… Even his candle bothered him… Sometimes he put it out so it wouldn’t interfere with his meditations.

  Finally I gave it to him straight… I was so griped that I couldn’t control myself… I told him to try the sewer! That was the ideal place to look for his Decision!… That did it! He blasts me:

  “Ferdinand!” he shrieks. “What’s that? Is that a way to talk to me? You, Ferdinand? To me? Stop right there! Merciful Heavens, I beg you! Have pity! Call me whatever you please! Liar! Boa! Vampire! Skunk! If the words I utter are not the strict expression of the ineffable truth! You wanted to do away with your father, didn’t you? So young! Heavens above! That’s the truth! Is it a delusion? A phantasmagoria? No, it’s the unbelievable, deplorable reality!… Whole centuries won’t wipe out the shame of it! That’s a fact! It’s God’s own truth! You don’t deny it? I’m not making it up? Well then? And now what? Will you kindly tell me what you’re after? To kill me in my turn? Why, it’s obvious! It’s plain as day! Taking advantage! Biding your time!… Waiting for the propitious moment!… When I’m relaxed… Unsuspecting… And do me in!… Abolish me!… Annihilate me!… That’s your programme!… Where have I been keeping my wits? Ah, Ferdinand, Heavens above! Your nature, your destiny are darker than the darkest Erebus!… Oh, you’re sinister, Ferdinand! Though you don’t look it! Your waters are troubled! What monsters there are, Ferdinand, in the crannies of your soul! Slithering, evasive! I don’t know them all!… They pass!… They sweep everything away!… Death!… Yes! To me! To whom you owe a thousand times more than life! More than bread! More than air! Than the sun itself! The power of thought! Ah, reptile, is that what you’re up to? Am I right? Relentless! Crawling!… Mercurial… Cham
eleon-like! Unpredictable!… Violence… Tenderness… Passion… Strength… I heard you the other day!… You’re capable of anything, Ferdinand! Everything! Only the outer coating is human! But I see the monster within! Finally! Do you know where you’re headed? Was I warned? Yes, I had plenty of warning!… Guile!… Affection!… And then suddenly, every syllable a revelation… homicidal frenzy! Yes, frenzy!… A cataract of base instincts! Ah yes, that’s the sign, my friend! The mark of the criminal! The lightning that denounces the murderer, the congenital, innate pervert!… That’s you, right here in front of me! So be it! My friend! So be it! You’re not dealing with a coward, the weakling you may have been expecting to terrorize! You’ve got another thing coming! I stand up to my destiny! I asked for it! I’ll see it through to the bitter end! All right, kill me if you can!… Go ahead! I’m waiting! Undaunted! What are you afraid of? I’m right here! I defy you, Ferdinand! You exasperate me! Do you hear? You’re driving me out of my wits! I’m nobody’s fool! I’m wide awake! Are you afraid to look a man in the whites of his eyes? I measured the risks… the day I took you on! Let’s call it my last act of daring! Go ahead! Strike! I defy my assassin! Hurry!…”