Death on Credit

by Louis-Ferdinand Celine

  I let him drool… I looked away… at the trees… at the gardens in the distance… the lawns… the nursemaids… the sparrows hopping around the benches… the fountain bobbing in the breeze… That was better than answering!… Or even turning around to look at him… He’d hit the nail on the head without knowing it… For two cents I’d hit him over the head with the paperweight… the big greaser, Hippocrates… My hand was itching… it weighed at least three kilos… I had a rough time… I controlled myself… It was heroic of me… The bastard kept right on:

  “The younger generation nowadays have murder in their bones! That kind of thing, take it from me, Ferdinand, will land you in La Santé! With a hood over your eyes! That’s right, a hood! Merciful Heavens! And I’ll have been to blame!…”

  I had a tongue in my head too… I felt the mustard rising… Enough was enough!… “Master! Master!” I said right then and there. “Go shit in your hat! And make it quick! Get away from me! I’m not going to kill you! I’m going to take your pants down! I’m going to tattoo your arse! Till it looks like thirty-six bunches of peonies… I’m going to bust open your arsehole, stink and all! That’s what’s going to happen to you if I hear one more fucking word out of you!”

  I was going to grab him for real… The stinker was quick, though… He beat it into the back room… He saw I meant business, that I’d put up with as much as I was going to… He stayed right there in his hole… fiddling with the parallel bars… He let me alone for a while… He’d gone far enough… A little later he came out… He passed through the shop… He took the corridor on the left… he went out… He didn’t go up to his office… At last I could work without being bothered.

  It was no rest cure to sew and darn and patch that rotten balloon cover, to fasten together the pieces that were coming apart… It was an awful chore… Especially because I used the carbide lamp to see what I was doing… which was pretty risky down there in the cellar… with all those adhesives… which are always lousy with benzine… It was trickling around all over the place… I could see myself a living torch!… The cover of the Enthusiast was a ticklish business, in a good many places it was a regular sieve… More rips! More tears! And worse every time he went up, every time he landed! From dragging through ploughed fields!… From catching on the eaves… on whole rows of roofs, especially on days when the wind was from the north!… She left big patches and little shreds in the forests, on the branches, between steeples… on the ramparts… She picked up tin chimneys, roofs, tiles by the ton, weather vanes on every trip! But the worst disembowlment, the most terrible rips were when she got impaled on a telegraph pole!… Half the time she’d split in two… To give the devil his due, you’ve got to admit that des Pereires took some pretty bad risks on his aerial tours. The ascent was wild enough… it was a wonder he made it with the thing only half-inflated… for reasons of economy!… But what was really awful was bringing his moth-eaten contraption down… Luckily he had plenty of experience! He knew his business. All by himself, at the time when I met him, he had chalked up 1,422 balloon flights! Not counting captive balloons… That was an impressive total! He had all the medals, all the diplomas, all the licences… He knew all the tricks, but what always dazzled me was his landings… It was marvellous the way he always landed on his feet! The second the end of the rope scraped over the ground, the second the thing slowed down… he rolled himself up in a ball at the bottom of the basket… when the wicker touched the muck… and the whole mess was about to bounce up again… he had a feeling for the exact moment… He shot up like a jack-in-the-box… he unwound like a spool… he fell like a regular jockey… In his tight-fitting frock coat, he seldom hurt himself… He didn’t lose a button… He didn’t waste a second… He ran straight ahead… He sped over the furrows… He didn’t turn round… He chased after the Enthusiast, at the same time blowing the little bugle he had slung over his shoulder… He made his own music… what a guy! His cross-country race went on a long time, until the whole balloon settled… I can still see him sprinting… It was a beautiful sight, in his frock coat and panama… To tell the honest truth, my autoplastic sutures weren’t so hot… but he wouldn’t have done it himself… He wouldn’t have had the patience… he’d only have messed things up even worse… After all, that patching was an art! Despite my infinite stratagems and vast ingenuity, I often despaired of that beastly gasbag… She was thoroughly fed up… After being taken out for sixteen years regardless of conditions… in cloudbursts and tornadoes… she only held together by patches and weird darns… Every time we blew her up was a catastrophe!… After she’d come down and dragged along the ground, it was worse… When a whole strip was missing, I’d borrow a piece of the Archimedes’s old hide… She was all in pieces, a lot of rags, piled up every which way in the cellar… That was the balloon of his beginnings, a bright-red captive, an enormous bag. She’d done the fairs for twenty years!… I was mighty careful, infinitely meticulous, about pasting the whole thing together… I got some curious effects… When at the cry of “Let her go” the Enthusiast rose over the crowd, I could recognize my patches in the air… I could see them wobbling and shrivelling… It didn’t make me laugh.

  But in addition there were the preparations, the preliminaries… The balloon racket was no rest cure!… Don’t get that idea… You had to get ready, make arrangements, palaver for months in advance… We had to send out leaflets, photographs… saturate the whole of France with prospectuses!… Get in touch with the local big shots!… Put up with the insults of the festival committees, all terrible tightwads… So in addition to the inventors, we had these mountains of mail in connection with the Enthusiast!

  Courtial had taught me to write letters in the official style. I didn’t make out too badly… After a while I didn’t make too many mistakes… We had special stationery for the balloon racket with a natty letterhead: “Paris Section of the Friends of the Dirigible Balloon”…

  At the end of winter we’d start sweet-talking the municipal au­thorities! The programmes for the season were drawn up in the spring!… In principle we expected to have all our Sundays booked up shortly before All Saints… We’d needle committee presidents over the phone. It was my job again, going to the post office. I’d go during rush hours… I tried to get away without paying! They’d catch me at the door…

  We applied for every fair, convention and carnival in all France! No town was too small! Anything was down our alley! But naturally if we had any choice, we tried not to go any farther than Seine-et-Oise… or Seine-et-Marne at the worst! It was shipping our equipment that ruined us, the sacks, the bottles of gas, the gear, all our crazy gadgets. For the game to be worth the candle, we had to be back at the Palais-Royal that same night. Otherwise it would run into money! Courtial cut his prices as low as possible! They were absolutely reasonable: 220 francs… plus the cost of the gas, and pigeons released for two francs a piece!… We made no mention of altitude… Our most famous rival, maybe the most immediate threat, was Captain Guy de Roziers, he asked a good deal more! He performed hazardous feats with his balloon, the Intrepid!… He’d take his horse up with him and sit in the saddle in mid-air! At an altitude of four hundred metres guaranteed!… His price was 525 francs, return fare payable by the township. But the ones who beat us to the draw even more often than the equestrian were the Italian and his daughter, “Calogoni and Petita”… We ran into them wherever we went! They were immensely popular, especially in garrison towns! They were very expensive, they did all sorts of tricks up in the sky… Besides, they threw down bouquets, little parachutes and cockades from a height of 620 metres! They asked 835 francs and a contract for two seasons!… They really cornered the market…

  Courtial didn’t go for the showy stuff, that wasn’t his style! No theatrics! Certainly not! His show was definitely scientific: an edifying demonstration. He explained everything in a neat little preparatory chat and wound up with the pigeons, which he released ever so gracefully… He himself serve
d notice in his brief introductory patter: “Ladies and gentlemen… if I’m still flying a balloon at my age, it’s not out of vain bravado! You can take my word for that! Out of any desire to impress the crowd!… Take a look at my chest! You see before you all the best known, most highly prized, most envied medals for merit and courage! If I take to the air, ladies and gentlemen, it is for purposes of popular education! That is my lifelong aim! Everything in my power to enlighten the masses! We are not appealing to any morbid passion, to sadistic instincts, to emotional perversity!… I appeal to your intelligence! Your intelligence alone!”

  He said it again for my benefit, he wanted me to get it straight: “Ferdinand, never forget that we must preserve the character of our performances at any price! The mark of the Génitron… They must never degenerate into buffoonery! Masquerades! Aerial tomfoolery! Empty-headed tricks! No, no and again no! We must preserve the tone, the spirit of Physics! Of course we have to entertain! Never forget it! That’s what we’re paid for! It’s only right and proper! But better still, if possible, we must fire the minds of these rustics with a desire for exact knowledge, for genuine enlightenment! Of course we have to go up. But we must also elevate those yokels you see standing around with their mouths open! Ah! it’s not easy, Ferdinand!…”

  It’s perfectly true that he would never have left the ground without first explaining all the details, the principles of aerostatics, in a cosy little talk. To command his audience, he balanced himself on the edge of the basket, resplendently decorated, in frock coat, panama and cuffs, with one arm passed through the rigging… He explained the working of the valves, the guy rope, the barometers, the laws of weight and ballast. Then, carried away by his subject, he embarked on other fields, expatiating, ad-libbing without order or plan, about meteorology, mirages, the winds, cyclones… He touched on the planets, the stars… Everything was grist for his mill: the zodiac, Gemini… Saturn… Jupiter… Arcturus and its contours… the moon… Bellegophorus and its relief… He pulled measurements out of his hat… About Mars he could talk at length… He knew it well… It was his favourite planet… He described all the canals, their shape and itinerary! Their flora! As if he’d gone swimming in them! He was on the friendliest terms with the heavenly bodies! He was a big success!

  While he was perched up there shooting the shit, spellbinding the masses, I took up a little collection… That was my little private racket. I took advantage of the circumstances, the excitement… I slipped into the crowd. I peddled the Génitron at two sous a dozen… returns… little autographed handbooks… commemorative medallions with a tiny balloon engraved on them… and for the ones I could spot that looked dirty-minded… whose hands went roaming in the crush… I had a little selection of funny, entertaining, spicy pictures, and transparents you could slide back and forth… It was a bad day when I didn’t unload the lot… All in all, with a little luck, it brought in twenty-five smackers! That was good money in those days! When my stock was gone and I’d finished collecting, I’d give the master the high sign… He’d shut off steam… He’d turn off the blarney and climb down into his basket… He’d straighten his panama… batten down the hatches, unfurl the last sheet… and slowly push off. I only had to hold the last rope… It was I who sang out “Let her go”… He’d answer me with a blast from his bugle… With the guy rope dragging, the Enthusiast rose into the air!… I never saw her go straight up… She was limp from the start. For a number of reasons we were very careful about blowing her up… As a result, she rose crooked… She careered over the roofs. With her coloured patches she looked like a fat harlequin… She bobbed up and down in the air, waiting for a decent breeze, she could only puff out in a real wind… She was pathetic like an old petticoat on a clothes line… even the most rustic yokels caught on… The whole crowd laughed to see her teetering over the roofs… I was a good deal less cheerful… I foresaw the horrible, decisive, disastrous rip! The final smash-up… I made all kinds of motions to him… he should drop the sand right away!… He was never in much of a hurry… He was afraid he’d go up too high… There wasn’t much to fear!… Considering the state of the fabric, there wasn’t a chance!… My worry was that he’d flop in the middle of the village… that would have been the end… It was always a narrow squeak… Or that he’d collide with the schoolhouse… or take the weathercock off the church… or get caught in the eaves!… Or settle on the Town Hall!… Or founder in the little clump of woods. He’d be doing all right if he got her up to fifty or sixty metres… I figured roughly… that was the maximum… Courtial’s dream, in view of the state of his equipment, was never to go any higher than the first floor… That was fairly safe… Higher was madness… In the first place we could never have pumped the bag full… With one or two bottles more it would have split for sure, from top to bottom… exploded like a bombshell from valve to valve!… When he’d passed the last house, cleared the last fences, he’d throw out his sand… He’d make up his mind and unload the lot of it… When the ballast was all gone, he took a little hop… a leap of about thirty feet… Then it was time for the pigeons… He quickly opened their basket… They shot out like arrows… Then it was time for me to shake a leg… It was the signal for his descent!… Believe me, I ran like hell… I had to stage a tragedy to get the yokels interested!… To make them run after the balloon… and help us to fold up quick… the enormous ragbag… and tote the whole mess back to the station… to hoist her up on the derrick… We weren’t finished yet! We had to do something to prevent our audience from clearing out, the whole lot of them at once… Our best dodge was the disaster act… It worked every time… without it we were sunk… We’d have had to pay them to do any work… We’d have lost money!… It was that simple…

  I began to scream and yell! I lit out like a stuck pig! I legged it through the muck in the direction of the catastrophe… I heard his bugle… “Fire!… Fire!…” I yelled. “Look! Look at the flame!… He’s going to set the whole place on fire! She’s over the trees!…” The mob got moving… They came on the gallop… They followed me! As soon as Courtial saw me with the peasantry at my heels, he opened all the valves… He disembowelled the whole contraption from top to bottom!… She collapsed in her rags… She lay down in the muck, crippled, exhausted, done in!… Courtial popped out of the basket… He landed on his feet… He blew another blast on the bugle to rally the pack… And he started another speech! The hicks were scared shitless, they expected the whole thing to burst into flames and set their haystacks on fire… They threw themselves on the bag to keep it from billowing… They folded her up… But she was a disgusting wreck… from catching on every branch in sight!… She’d lost so much material there was nothing left but heartbreaking rags… She’d brought back whole bushes between the bag and the net… The rescuers were delighted, overjoyed, jumping up and down with excitement; they hoisted Courtial on their shoulders like a hero and carried him off in triumph… They took him to the taproom to celebrate… They drank plenty! All the work was left for me, the rottenest lousiest chore… Collecting all our junk out of the swamp before nightfall… from the fields and furrows… Recovering all our tackle, anchors, pulleys and chains, all the wandering hardware… The two kilometres of guy rope… the log, the cleats, scattered far and wide in oats and pasture, the barometer, the aneroid pressure gauge… a little Morocco-leather case… the nickel gewgaws that are so expensive… A picnic, take it from me!… Keeping those repulsive beggars happy with wisecracks and promises… And telling smutty jokes to make them handle those seven hundred kilos of exhausting junk all for nothing! The gasbag that looked like a massacred shirt, the remains of the hideous catafalque! Getting them to toss the whole junk pile in the last freight car just as the train was pulling out! Hell! Believe me, it took some doing! When I finally squeezed through the corridors and found Courtial, the train was under way. I found my zebra in the third class! Calm as you make them, talking, showing off, handing his audience a brilliant lecture… The conclusions to be drawn from
his adventure!… So attentive to the brunette on the opposite bench… considerate of youthful ears… watching his language… but the life of the party even so… drunk as a lord, throwing his chest and his medals around… And still drinking, the stinker! Jollity! High spirits! A slug of the red stuff all around! Hold out your glasses, everybody!… He was stuffing his face full of bread and butter… Why worry… He didn’t ask about me!… Take it from me, I was fed up!… I put a crimp in his merriment!

  “Ah, so it’s you, Ferdinand? It’s you?”

  “Yes, my dear Jules Verne!…”

  “Sit down, boy! Tell me all about it!… My secretary… My secre­tary!…”

  He introduced me…