Death on Credit

by Louis-Ferdinand Celine

  “Well then, is everything all right in the freight car?… You’ve attended to everything?… You’re satisfied?”

  I made a very glum face, I wasn’t the least bit satisfied… I didn’t say a word…

  “Then it’s not all right?… Is something wrong?…”

  “It’s the last time!…” I said. I didn’t mince words. I was very dry and firm…

  “What’s that? Why is it the last time? You’re joking? What do you mean?…”

  “The thing can’t be repaired any more… And I’m not joking at all!…”

  A real silence fell… No more applause and sausage. You could hear the wheels… the creaking of the carriage… the glass of the lamp jiggling up top… He tried in the dim light to make out what I was thinking… if I wasn’t kidding a little. But I didn’t bat an eyelash!… I kept my long face… I stuck to my guns…

  “You really think so, Ferdinand? You’re not exaggerating?”

  “If I say it, I mean it!… I know what I’m talking about.”

  I’d got to be an expert on holes, I refused to be contradicted… He sat back gloomily in his corner… That was the end of our conference!… We didn’t say another word…

  All the others, on their benches, wondered what was going on… Clankety-clank! Clankety-clank! – from one jolt to the next. And the oil dripping from the top of the lamp… All the heads nodding… then drooping.

  * * *

  If there’s one thing in the world that needs to be handled with care, it’s perpetual motion!… Don’t touch it or you’ll get your fingers burnt…

  Inventors in general can be classified according to their bugs… There are whole categories that are practically harmless… The ones who go in for mysterious radiations, “tellurism”, for instance, or the “centripetals”… They’re easy to handle, they’d eat breakfast out of your hand… the palm… The little household gadgeteers aren’t very rough either… the “cheese-graters”… the “Sino-Finnish kettles”… the “two-handled spoons”… well, everything that’s useful in the kitchen… Those boys like to eat… they know how to live… The ones who want to improve the metro?… Ah, there you’d better begin to watch your step! But the real nutcases, the wild men, the vitriol throwers, are mostly all of them in “perpetual”… Those characters will go to any length to demonstrate the value of their discoveries!… They’ll turn your gizzard inside out if you express the slightest doubt… They’re no good to fool with…

  One of the boys I met at Courtial’s, an attendant at the public baths, was a fanatic… He never talked about anything but his “pendulum”, and then only in a whisper… with murder in his eyes… Another one who came to see us was a deputy public prosecutor in the provinces… He came all the way from the south-west just to bring us his cylinder… an enormous ebonite tube with a centrifugal valve and an electric starter… It was easy to spot him in the street, even from far away, he always walked slantwise, like a crab, along the shopfronts… That was his way of neutralizing the influence of Mercury and the “ionic” radiations of the sun that pass through the clouds… And he never took off the enormous muffler he wore around his shoulders, day and night, made of braided asbestos, lisle and silk… That was his ray detector… When he walked into “interference”… right away he began to shiver… bubbles came out of his nose…

  Courtial had known them all for ages!… He knew what to expect of them… He called a number of them by their first names. We were on pretty good terms with them… But one day he got the idea of organizing a contest for them!… That was sheer lunacy! Right away I sounded the alarm!… I let out a howl… Anything but that!… He wouldn’t listen!… He needed money bad, ready cash… It was perfectly true that we were having a hell of a time finishing out the month… that we owed at least six issues of the Génitron to Taponier, the printer… So we had plenty of extenuating circumstances… Besides, the balloon flights weren’t paying off so well any more… Aeroplanes were already breaking our backs… By 1910 the yokels were all hopped up… they wanted to see flying machines… We were still writing letters like mad… incessantly… We defended every inch of ground… We pestered all the hicks… the archbishops… the prefects… the postmistresses… the druggists… and the horticulture societies… In the spring of 1909 alone we had more than ten thousand circulars printed… we fought to the last ditch… But I also have to admit that Courtial was playing the races again. He’d gone back to the Insurrection… He must have paid his debts to Formerly… Anyway, they were on speaking terms again… I’d seen them together… At one throw my boss had won six hundred francs at Enghien on Carrot… and then two hundred and fifty on Célimène at Chantilly… It had gone to his head… He began raising his bets…

  The next morning he comes into the shop all steamed up… He starts in right off the bat…

  “Aha, Ferdinand! My luck’s turned! This is it! I’m in luck!… Do you hear me, after ten years!… After losing almost uninterruptedly for ten long years!… That’s all over!… My luck is running!… And I’m holding on!… Take a look!…” He shows me the Dingbat, a new racing sheet… he had it all marked up in blue, red, green and yellow! I said my piece right away…

  “Watch out, Monsieur des Pereires! It’s the twenty-fourth already… We’ve got fourteen francs in the till!… Taponier has been very nice… very patient, I’ve got to admit, but even so, he says he won’t print the rag any more!… I might as well tell you right now! He’s been biting my head off for the last three months every time I show my face on the Rue Rambuteau… Don’t count on me to go around there any more! Not even with the pushcart!”

  “Don’t bother me, Ferdinand! Don’t bother me… You’re driving me crazy! You depress me with your sordid gossip… I can feel it! I can feel it in my bones! Tomorrow we’ll be out of the woods!… This is no time to be quibbling! Go back and tell Taponier… Tell him from me… from me, do you understand! That bastard, when I think of it! He’s grown fat at my expense!… For twenty years I’ve been feeding him! He’s piled up a fortune! Several fortunes… on my paper!… I’ve decided to do the stinker one last favour! Tell him! Tell him, do you hear me, to put his whole plant – his machines! His equipment! His apartment! His daughter’s dowry! His new car! Everything! His insurance policy! Tell him not to forget anything! His son’s bicycle! Everything! Remember! Everything! – on Bragamance to win! To win, I say!… Not to place! Not to come in third! At Maisons, on Thursday!… That’s it! That’s the long and the short of it, son!… I can see the finish! And 1,800 francs for five! Do you hear me, 1,887 to be exact… In your pocket!… Remember that! With what’s left of my winnings… that will be 53,498 francs for the two of us! Net!… Bragamance!… Maisons!… Bragamance!… Maisons!…”

  He went on jabbering… He didn’t hear my answers… He went out through the corridor… He was like a sleepwalker…

  The next day I waited for him all afternoon… to show up with the fifty-three grand… It was after five o’clock… Finally he turns up… I can see him across the garden… He doesn’t look at anybody in the shop… He comes straight up to me… he grabs me by the shoulders… The hot air has all gone out of him… He’s sobbing… “Ferdinand! Ferdinand! I’m a viper! A despicable scoundrel… Talk of depravity!… I’ve lost everything, Ferdinand! Our month’s earnings! Mine! Yours! My debts! Your debts! The gas bill! Everything!… I still owe Formerly what I put on that horse!… I owe the binder eighteen hundred francs… I borrowed thirty francs more from the concierge in the theatre… I owe another hundred francs to the gatekeeper in Montretout!… I’ll be running into him this evening!… You see the morass I’m stuck in!… Ah, Ferdinand, you were right! I’m sinking into my own muck!…”

  He disintegrated completely… He flayed himself… He added up the sum… He added it up again… How much did he actually owe?… It came to more each time… He unearthed so many debts I think he made some of them up… He went for a pencil… H
e was going to start all over again… I stopped him. I was firm.

  “See here, Monsieur Courtial!” I said. “Calm down! You’re making a spectacle of yourself! Suppose some customers came in! What would they think? Better take a rest!…”

  “Oh, Ferdinand! How right you are! You’re wiser than your master, Ferdinand! The stinking old fool! A wave of madness, Ferdinand! A wave of madness!…”

  He was holding his noggin with both hands…

  “It’s unbelievable! Unbelievable!…” After a moment’s prostration he opened the trapdoor… He vanished all alone… I knew his act!… It was always the same routine!… When he’d made an arse of himself… first he’d lay on the apple sauce, then came meditation… But what about eating, friend? I’d have to lay hands on some dough somehow!… Nobody gave me any credit!… Neither the butcher… nor the grocer… The bastard was counting on my having a little nest egg put by… He’d suspected that I’d take my little precautions… that I had some sense!… I was the guy with foresight… I was the shrewd accountant!… With the scrapings from the drawers I held out a whole month… And we didn’t eat so badly… No air bubbles with salt!… We had real meat!… Plenty of French fries… and jam made out of pure sugar… That was my way of doing things…

  He didn’t want to put the bite on his wife… She didn’t know a thing out there in Montretout.

  * * *

  Uncle Édouard came by one Saturday night… He’d been out of town, we hadn’t seen him in a long time… He brought news from home, from my parents… Their luck was still running bad!… In spite of all his efforts, my father hadn’t been able to leave La Coccinelle… And that was his only hope… Even after he knew how to type, they hadn’t wanted him at Connivance Fire Insurance… They thought he was too old for an underling’s job… and that he seemed too bashful to deal with the public… So he’d had to give it up… and stick to the old grind… and butter up Lempreinte… It was a terrible blow… he wasn’t sleeping at all any more.

  Baron Méfaize, the head of “Litigation-Life”, had got wind of my father’s moves… he’d detested him from way back, he was always torturing him… He’d make him climb five flights of stairs on the other side of the yard to tell him what an arse he was… that he got all the addresses wrong… which was absolutely untrue…

  While talking with me Uncle Édouard began wondering… he thought maybe it would give my folks pleasure to see me again for a minute… I could make up with my father… He’d had trouble enough, he’d suffered enough… It came from a good heart… But just thinking about it, the gall started coming up… I had vomit in my throat… I wasn’t going to try again!…

  “OK! OK! OK, Uncle! I’m sorry for them and all that… But if I went back to the Passage, I can tell you right now, I wouldn’t last ten minutes!… I’d set the whole place on fire!…”

  There was no use trying!…

  “All right! All right!” he said. “I can see how you feel!…”

  He dropped the subject… He probably told them what I’d said… Anyway, his happy-homecoming gambit never came up again.

  With Courtial, I’ve got to admit… I can’t deny it… it was one holy mess from morning to night… a perpetual rat race… He played some rotten tricks on me… he was as sneaky as thirty-six bedbugs. It was only at night that I had any peace… Once he was gone I did what I felt like… I made my own plans!… Until ten in the morning when he came back from Montretout I was the boss… And that’s a good deal! Once I’d fed my pigeons, I was absolutely free… I always took a little rake-off on the sales of the Génitron… We had a racket with the returns… some of it was for yours truly… I put it aside… and I got something out of the balloon flights too… It was never more than twenty, twenty-five francs… but to me, for pocket money, it was a fortune!…

  The old crocodile would have been glad to know where I stashed my dough away!… My cute little nest egg!… He could look till doomsday! I was very careful… I’d learnt a thing or two… My little treasure never left my pocket, actually it was a special pocket, carefully pinned, inside my shirt front… You couldn’t say we trusted each other very much… I knew all his hiding places… he had three… One was under the floor… another behind the gas meter (a loose brick)… and a third right there in Hippocrates’s head!… I dipped into them all… He never counted… In the end he began to have his suspicions… But he had no call to complain… He never gave me a penny in wages… And what’s more, I fed him!… Supposedly out of “general” funds… The stuff wasn’t too bad… and plenty of it… He realized that he couldn’t say anything…

  In the evening I didn’t cook, I went all by myself to the Automatic on the corner of the Rue de Rivoli… I took a bite standing up… I’ve always liked that best… it only took a minute… Then I went roaming around… I had my little circuit… Rue Montmartre… the post office… Rue Étienne-Marcel… I’d stop by the statue on the Place des Victoires and smoke a cigarette… It was a majestic square… I liked it fine… A quiet place to think things over… I’ve never been so happy as in those days on the Génitron… I made no plans for the future… But the present didn’t seem too rotten… I’d be back by nine o’clock…

  I still had plenty of work… There was always patching on the Enthusiast… bundles that were late in getting off… and letters for the provinces… So then about eleven o’clock I’d go out under the arcades again… That was the interesting time… Our neighbourhood was full of whores… They did it for five francs… or even less… Every three or four columns there was one with one or two customers… They knew me well from seeing me all the time… Sometimes they were good company… I took them up in our office when there was a raid… They hid in between the files, eating up the dust… waiting for the cops to go away… We had some hot sessions in the “Investor’s Corner”… I was entitled to all the arse I wanted… completely for free, because I watched all the approaches from my mezzanine, at the critical hour… When I saw the cops coming… they all piled in through the little side door… I was the gang’s lookout! What people don’t know won’t hurt them!… We expected the cops a little before midnight… Sometimes I had ten or twelve of these girls in the shambles on the second floor… We doused the candle… You couldn’t make a sound… We heard their size tens passing on the flags and doubling back… The girls were scared stiff… They were like rats skulking in the corner… Later on we relaxed… The best part of it was the stories… They knew all about the Galeries… everything that went on… under the arches… in the attics… in the back rooms… I found out all about the business people in the neighbourhood… all the ones who had themselves buggered… all the miscarriages… all the cuckolds… between eleven o’clock and midnight… I heard all about des Pereires, how the low-down swine would get flagellated at the Etruscan Urns at number 216 in the alley across the way… near the exit of the Comédie Française… he liked a good shellacking… you could hear him bellowing behind the velvet curtains… and it cost him twenty-five francs a throw… cash on the line, naturally!… And he seldom went a week without getting himself whipped three times in a row!…

  It made me good and sore too to hear such stories!… I was beginning to see why we never had a penny in the till… what with the knout and the ponies, no wonder we couldn’t make ends meet!…

  The one who told the best stories was Violette. She wasn’t young any more, she came from the north, she never wore a hat, she had a triple bun like a flight of stairs, and long “butterfly” pins. She was a redhead, she must have been forty… Always in a tight-fitting black skirt, a tiny pink apron and high-laced white shoes with “spool” heels… She had a weakness for me… We all died laughing listening to her… she was a wonderful mimic… She had new ones every time… She wanted me to bugger her… She called me her “ferryboat” because of the way I bucked her… She was always talking about “her” Rouen! She’d been there for twelve years in the same house, hardly ever g
oing out… When we went down in the cellar, I lit the candle for her… She sewed on my buttons… that was a job I hated!… I tore off a good many… because of my struggles pushing that handcart around… I could sew anything at all… but not a button… never!… I couldn’t stand them… She wanted to buy me socks… she wanted me to look nice… I hadn’t worn any in a long time… Des Pereires didn’t either, to tell the truth… When she left the Palais-Royal, she hiked up to La Villette… the whole way on foot… for the five-o’clock trade… She’d do pretty well up there too… She didn’t want to be shut up in a house any more… From time to time, though, she’d spend a month in the hospice… She’d send me a postcard… She’d hurry back! I knew her way of tapping on the window panes… We were good friends for almost two years… until we left the Galeries… Towards the end she was jealous, she had hot flashes… she was hard to get along with…

  * * *

  When vegetables were in season, we piled them in… I did them up in mixtures with chopped bacon… He brought in salads… beans by the basket… from Montretout!… Bunches and bunches of carrots and turnips, and even peas…

  Courtial went in for sauces. I’d learnt all that from his cookbook… I could make any kind of stew, I knew all about browning and simmering… It’s a very convenient method… You can dish it out all week. We had a powerful Sulfridor gas heater, slightly explosive, in the back room-gymnasium… In the winter I made pot-au-feu… It was me that bought the meat, the margarine and the cheese… We took turns bringing home the liquid refreshments…

  Violette liked to take a snack around midnight… She liked cold veal on bread… But all that ran into money… On top of our wild expenses!

  I argued against it… I predicted the most dire disaster… it was no use. We had to have a try at his perpetual-motion contest. It was a rushed scheme… We expected quick results. The situation was desperate!… The admission fee was twenty-five francs… The first prize was twelve thousand smackers, the winner to be selected by a “grand jury of the world’s foremost authorities”, and in addition there was a second, consolation prize… 4,350 francs… This was no stingy competition!…