Guignol's Band

by Louis-Ferdinand Celine

  “Bah!… It’s red wine!” he declares… “Bah! It’s good too!”… He’s joking besides!… But not her!… The grandmother closes her eyes… She’s wagging her head… She’s lulled by the thundering!… By the storms rocking us… Largot yells out to me again…

  “It’s red wine! Hey, ambulance! It’s red wine! Say! Macadam!”

  That’s what he calls me. In spite of our being in a catastrophe I’m irritated by him… I don’t like familiarity… All those drunken carcasses around sicken me… I feel some funny ideas myself… I’m not drunk!… I never drink anything… It’s my reason tottering… under the shocks of the circumstances! Just that! Events that are just too much!… And Zoom! It starts again worse!…

  It’s coming back bad, a horrible din!… A fantastic combustion!… Three torpedoes together, a bouquet! Enough to shatter sky and earth! You don’t recognize the elements! Enough to blow the top of your head off!… And then your mind and eyeballs! And it shoots horribly through your lungs!… Stabbed from front to back!… Nailed to the shutter like an owl!… And that backfire!… The thousand motors at it again… attacking the ramp!… The mad racket’s closing in!… The jerking!… Smashing mob!… And the howling of the trampled! Of those skinned by the wild column!… Those crushed beneath the transports!… And the caterpillar with the hundred and twenty thousand grinding teeth!… To bite the echo… a rent calvary!… Under its three hundred thousand chains stuffed with dangling steel… with guts of twirling hoops… cockeyed under its crown… with its whole big cannon head to flatten you from way off!… Sees you from way off, watches you! Crazy you, tearing up the road!… Fleeing in a daze the God-awful sight of that monstrous hotchpotch!… Ah! That tank, the “Bite-Me-Awful”!… Tell me about it! Nostradamus Model!… That there’s really no surviving the hopeless racket!… Under the mechanical poxing, the oil-bearing tribulations!… But the world shake-up’s musical… no stopping the dance!… It’s the Damn-it-all Ball!… And the string of the hundred thousand dead, of the thousand squeaking birds flying around cheeping, weaving their calls…

  And then there’s another garland with two accents and heavy blunderbusses… It’s coming from way back… from the hills… Artillery’s rolling in the echoes… You can’t cut capers you’re so crushed by your body loaded with damned frozen lead!… But the rhythm gets you again… the bottom of the bridge full of grenades is fidgeting for you… Got to prance the same way over the wreckage of people and animals… quartered by the dragging… then shrivelled tight big as an egg depending on the bursts of panic… Ah! The case of rebellion crops up in those dazed whirls… There’s Brigitte, the wife of Sacagne the District Attorney, she suddenly ups and gets out of her car, tears away from the anguished pleas, lifts her skirt up once and for all and jumps on the parapet, from there overlooking the mob, yelling insults through the torment!…

  “Brigitte!… Brigitte!… I beg you! Please come back to me!… Your kind husband! Keep your head!… I beseech you! I summon you!”

  “Shit! Shit! You don’t exist!”

  “Gentlemen, ladies, my wife’s crazy!… She’s pregnant! It’s the excitement! I’m District Attorney Sacagne of Montargis from the Côte-d’Or!”

  “Shit! Hey, Chinaman, you’re a pain in the arse! The hell with your bitch! The slob!”

  That’s what the crowd calls her… That’s what made things bitter! He collapses on the world! Just then everything becomes fire, thunder and lightning again! A ripping from the sky inside and about… A blast crushes, pulverizes the wall… Ah! It was time!… Scatters the whole panic, the people, arches, cars, the boiling river’s steaming… Hell’s right here!… The flames envelop us, we’re whirled about in space!… I’m carried off with a cartload of plums, the little terrier that’s stopped barking, a sewing machine and, I think, a cast-iron tank trap hooked with barbed wire! As far as I could see!… We split off in mid-air! The molten iron squirted towards the right, towards the locks, the whole works and the slugs! Me, the little terrier and the cart bore towards the left… in another volley of grenades… towards the poplars… the Warehouse… at a good height and full of drive… I saw higher than the clouds… and bleeding drop by drop… a pale white hand and all about clouds of birds… all red… flitting about sprung from the wounds… the fingers all studded with stars… strewn on the margins of space… in long gentle veils… light and graceful… lulling the Worlds… and grazing you… and your pretty eyes… caressingly… everything carries you off… everything drifts dreamwards… everything yields… to the fêtes of the Palace of Nights…

  * * *

  Very well said!… Very well! You tell it well! Told in vain! Done in vain! The obsession’s there, grey, lingering, oppressive, stumbles at every step with fresh doubt… Nothing stands out, nothing shines… A big mass of horror and shadow!…

  Is that all?

  Lots of fuss! Going through hell just to get a little thirstier!

  A somersault!

  Like a drunken brute in early June

  With madness in August wandering

  Under a cannon

  Emerges into delirium mid-September!

  Right in a bistro.

  Murders a Fritz playing billiards.

  Revenge of the Flemish!

  Right away everything breaks out again.

  The war’s got to start all over.

  You’re here again all jittery.

  Whinnying, eager for the whirl.

  Under the flood of artifice.

  Prancing at the challenges! And Tally-ho!

  In splendid health!

  Torch in hand!

  Death’s hokum is waiting for you again.

  You’ve drunk a charm!

  You’ve been cooked and damned again!

  Ah! That awful predicament!

  Ah! The carrionish philtre!

  The stars are dunghills for the Century!

  All the almanacs are for sale!

  Not a single honest occultist left!

  It’s high time for me to get down to it! Damn it!

  I have terrible doubts about Joan of Arc since the mass in Orléans!…

  It was a nasty chime…

  There’s an aftertaste in everything you touch…

  I saw St Geneviève in Paris…

  I was at Mass in Reynaud…

  The chapel was full of Jews…

  And I never talk unless I know…

  Are they going after the Freemasons?

  Good! Nice to begin with…

  But suppose they touch our cronies?

  What if they lay hands on the manes of the Temple?

  The joking’ll be over!…

  They’re going to discover a powder in a diabolical pyrette!…*

  I predict it, and not without anxiety…

  I’m warning! I’m warning! I’m blowing the siren!

  Hell doesn’t boil over in a day…

  You need oil and knowledge.

  Who knows?

  You need collaboration…

  You saw everything on the road…

  The whole world in a rush!…

  And what wild, furious, crucifying, fantastic gatherings!

  Insatiable for martyrdom!

  Did you see those vehicles!

  The esoteric decoration?

  Once you’ve been initiated you don’t stand there dawdling over the abyss… To get yourself sublimated alive, to go up in smoke, fragile toys in the wind! By God! By God! The hell with the timid! Death to illusions! It’s the moment for stout deeds! For sublime, bitter Trafalgars! The faith that saves! Anyone giving in is murdered on the spot! Hashed! Bled! All white with shame!

  When the valiant come forward, the pure, the tough, the uncompromising, the lynx-hearted, then you can say it’s getting hot! That there’s a pungent sizzle in the fire! That everything’s
chucked in! Except shreds of love, lily-of-the-valley, base doubts! As is! Torn away from the spell! No mercy! One after the other in the sulphurous regions to appear in line… That’s the test!… The scowling and the sorry… into memory… The mumblers and cowards… terrible in their swathes of lies!…

  I know all about it!

  Proud brazen sneaks… arrogant or base or speechless… one after the other… all baleful and stinking whose throats should be slit under moon-gall torture and cursed oaths! Poisons, dark messages… Martyred calves!…

  Let everyone blame the demon! Go for him, lock him away, slay him, revolt, find in his heart the song, withered… the gracious secret of the fairies… or else let him die a thousand deaths and then come to with a thousand pangs! With frightful choking, a thousand playful flayings and green contortions of wounds, boiling wax that sticks, torn apart, muscles in mincemeat, floundering around that way a whole day and three months, a week in the bottom of a greasy hot pot, hissing snakes mixed with swollen toads, with leprosy, juicy, yellow with venom, sucked by greedy salamanders, loathsome vampires on the bodies of the damned, jigglers in your guts to stir your pain, shreds of sore flesh, munched with tongues of flame, and so from one millennium to another, slaking your thirst once in a while with a skinful of vinegar, of vitriol so hot that your tongue peels, puffs, bursts! And then to death from suffering howling from hell all slashed up! Day after day! And so on through eternal time…

  You’ve got to see the thing is serious.

  * * *

  You started in life with your parents’ advice. Life was too much for them. You got into messes, one more horrible than the other. You got out of the awful catastrophes as best you could, more or less sideways, a slobbering crab, backwards, missing a couple of paws. You had some good times, to be fair, even with all the crap, but always anxious, lest the dirty business start all over… And it always did… Let’s bear that in mind! They talk about illusions, that they ruin youth. We lost it without illusions!… More trouble!…

  As I say… It happened from the beginning. You were little, a born dope, with two strikes on you.

  If you’d been born the son of a rich planter in Cuba, Havana for example, everything would’ve gone off smoothly, but you came from small fry, who lived where it was nasty and slummy, then had to suffer on account of caste and it’s the injustice that crushes you, the sickness of the drooling worm that makes poor people go bragging after their blunders, their pettiness, their purulent blemishes, which makes you vomit just listening to them, they’re so vile and tenacious! Month after month, it’s his nature, the poor slob expiates, on the “Pro Deo”* rack, his infamous birth, tied up tight with his service certificate, his voting card, his bloated face. Sometimes it’s War! It’s Peace! It’s Re-war! It’s Victory! It’s the Big Disaster! At bottom, nothing’s changed! In the end he’s always a fall guy. He’s the punching bag of the Universe… Wouldn’t change places with anyone… He wiggles only for the hangmen… Always available for all the dunghills of the planet! Everyone walks over his rags, gets worked up over his troubles, he’s spoilt. I’ve seen all the tornadoes of the compass swoop down on our miseries, blowing in on our catastrophes, in on the kill, the Chinese, Moldors, Smyrnians, Botriacs, Marsupians, the glacial Swiss, the Mascagats, the Big Berbers, the Vanutedians, the Blacks of this World, the Jews of Lourdes, all happy, having a great time, gleaming like lunatics! Doing us dirt and nothing to defend us. Cute François, imp of the liquor bottle, stuffed dotard, mushy enough in speech to shake the Rights of Man, in the torrent of Oblivion, hide and soul driven crazy and disgusting with obedience, letting his patrimony be shaken, his sweet little savings, his darling, his dream flower, never any use for him to go pondering anything, more honest to become carrion and lazy enough to piss in bed, it’s always even Stephen, he’s always a sucker in any deal, he’s not in the running, he’s always doomed to be a wash-up. Besides, the world’s got him so down that he’s got surprise itself puzzled, the world’s tired of pulling him apart, of destroying him even more, he’s pushed around on all sides! The Stinker of the Universe! Hail! A little more injustice, he loathes himself, pukes out his lot… Awful protests.

  Revolution in their hearts… Got to know a little about his disappointments. Everyone’s made an easy punching bag out of him. The whole Universe has had a fine time with Dopey-François-huh-huh-jerk until he cracks up and comes apart at the foundation! Then he’s the supreme infection, and the most eager run away… He stays there gaping on the counter… decomposing, green in shreds, can’t look at him… He gives off such a smell that the most disgusting think it over, twist around to finish him off!

  There’re things you don’t see! And yet which are essential! Boy! Just wait! Hidden in the bottom of the rot itself! Holes in the body! Bowel philtres! Would you suspect? Only the initiated whisper to each other with their eyes closed… the Mass isn’t over!… Still more to say!… Lots more!… As for the tainted, they’re still around, they’re not going to let us leisurely rot that way on the heap!… We’re still full of pus and lots of flashy gangrenes, vested in elegant, bloody brocades!… Very slight scrapes… before brisking up for the dance, free, light diaphanous minuets! Not weighing a thing in the waves, evaporated, a whirl of wings, most delightful, here, there, springish, voguish! All roguish and furtive and joys! Secretly graceful to the world, everything magically reborn! A clip of flowers and moss!… Fluttering even lighter… amidst a wind of roses! All cares wreathed in music… scattered off to the sport of air! Zephyrs!

  * * *

  Naturally I’m not going to tell you everything. They were too vile with me. It would be doing them too much of a favour! I want them to taste a little more… It’s not vengeance or soreness, it’s just a feeling of prudence, an esoteric precaution. You don’t play around with omens. It costs your life if you’re indiscreet! I’m giving them just a small idea, that’ll do! I’m making a bit of an effort, all right, I’m not exhausting my charm. I’m staying on good terms with the music, little animals, the harmony of dreams, the cat, its purring. That way it’s perfect. A pleasure, no more, otherwise I fiddle around, sell myself, get worked up, I show off, I lose out boasting, it’s over! To hell with the glamour! I get down to the pebbles, I stumble all over, I flop, I proclaim myself Emperor, the Prosecutor’s after me, finds me, there I am like a dope, everyone’s picking on me, cutting me to pieces, it’s the third degree, Napoleon style.

  And I’m not alluding to anyone! If the shoe fits, wear it! Wasn’t born under a lucky star! “Quarantine’s” my baptismal name, I know the oracles as I call them! I don’t go far wrong in my dreams, but on the mystifying condition that I keep my ear right to the ground and my guts full of suspicion! All right then…

  Let me wobble and break down to the depths! Ah! A sorry conviction!… “Don’t let yourself be tempted!” Boy, have I seen witches!… On moors! Meadows and shores! And a lot of other places too!… On rocks! In abysses!… With their brooms and owl! The owl’s what I understand best… He always says to me, “Watch out, pal! You’re going to talk too much…” That’s right, in a way. My good nature excites me and works me up, makes me talk without rhyme or reason. A sorry excuse! Here comes cop’s meat… With an immediate comeback! Jeering, razzing, ferocities, demonic dirty deals, pouring out torrents of droppings for me to die haggard, swamped, beneath the disgrace, the repulsion of the righteous, of extortionists, legionnaires! Infamy! Consummate cabal! I can’t open my pen any more. Whether in court, under the blows of wild “evidence” or in the waiting rooms of the big shots, I’m crushed on the spot, scraped, shrivelled-up slimy in the rank of stinking grubs, in spite of good intentions, loathed, beaten within an inch of my life, something absolutely unspeakable, squashed surreptitiously between saltpetre and hot ashes, and the fact that proves it is that even the people on my side, who are in a way in the same sort of boat, are shy about my case, they’ve got scruples about discussing it, it chaps their faces a little,
they’d rather keep quiet… It would be a pity for them to compromise themselves because I’m a pain in the arse to them too… So that way we’ve agreed… We understand each other without getting together… without the slightest consultation.