Guignol's Band

by Louis-Ferdinand Celine

  For he’s a jolly good fellow!…

  It was starting again… the whole bacchanal… and then a big pull for the war, the popular refrain, the song of the day that was all the rage at the Empire…

  Hide your trouble! Hide your bag!

  And sing! Sing! Sing!…

  Even Cascade barked out “Sing! Sing! Sing!” to beat the band! At just that moment along came Boro, who’d been in the back, playing cards. He came up to us.

  “Where are you coming from, Fatso, eh?” Cascade shoots at him.

  “I’m coming from bed, boss! Here’s to your health! At your service! I’m not coming from jail like a lot of other guys,” he adds… discreet allusion.

  “But you’ve been there, let’s be honest, Monsieur Boro!”

  “And no less than fourteen times for my honour! Monsieur Cascade!… Forrr my ideas!… I’d like you to know! And I’m prrroud of it! I expect to again if necessary!”

  A terrible accent and thundering rrr!

  “Go on! Go on! Don’t boast!”

  “Never do, Monsieur Cascade! I never do! You hear me! For peemping!”

  Telling him off!

  “No one’s asking for your opinions, Monsieur Borokrrrom! Since you’re so distinguished, it’s your papers we’d like to see!”

  “Why here they are, Monsieur Cascade!”

  He rummages around deep down in his pockets, he digs out a whole litter, booklets, wallets, bits of passports, all patched up, full of grease spots…

  Cascade examines them, returns them.

  “Oh! Oh! you’re not difficult, my fine bandit! All that record’s yours? Pretty bad, Boro! Pretty bad!… And what about yours, Monsieur Jinx?”

  He’s talking to me.

  “Let me have a look at your sweet little papers! May I?”

  I take mine out… He unfolds them, hands them back to me… He frowns…

  “But you’re not in velvet either, Monsieur Jinx! They came looking for you, too!… All right… Let me explain!… They want you at the Consulate!… Sure! Sure!… You can see why!”

  “Have you seen the posters?… You who read all the Mirrors… That’s all they’re talking about at Berlemont’s… All men in the class of 1912… They’re all being called back!… Rejected or not!… And what about you, my dear Clodovitz? Dear doctor! Dear scientist!”

  He spots him.

  “Let me have a look at your rags!… Ah! I’ve already seen them, of course! Ah! But so long ago that’s all!… I miss them! I miss them!… They were so funny two years ago!… Do you still have them with you? Fine! You’re hatching them, so to speak!… They’ve made little ones! Clodovitz!”

  Clodovitz dives down, his linings were full of them, some a bit genuine… some all fake!… Erasures everywhere… his passports were a scream! Flimflams! Jokes! He himself admitted it!

  “They’re too scratched up, that’s all!”

  He explained the reason…

  “Well, fatheads! You’re getting along all right! You’re going to be taught another tune! Artists! That’s a fact! But as for the fake papers!… Ah! Mother of God! My arse could do better!… Some people think that’s going some! Proof? Clients! Amateurs and serious ones!… Take Matthew, he wants you! There’s the amateur! He’s been asking for you everywhere!… He’s all worked up about your fake papers! He came back to see me the day before yesterday!… On purpose!… Just for that! I welcomed him in! ‘Inspector!’ I said to him just like that… I’m not shy… ‘You look preoccupied!’ I took the liberty of saying… I know he’s as phoney as a rat… and when he comes in good humour it’s even worse!… It’s a trap!… I go straight to the point… I take out the Calva… He sips it… he sits down… That’s all!… Still not a word… I want him to warm up!… I take out the cognac… and then the big glasses!… It’s coming along!… I see his head!… He says ‘Myum! Myum!’ He sucks his tongue!… Hell, I’m in a hurry!… I look as if I’m trying to find the corkscrew!… The little one in my pocket… I rummage around!… I search in my pockets!… All just an act!… I take out a handful of pound notes… bang! Like that! On the table!… I get up… I start going… ‘I’m going to take a leak!’ I say… I come back… they’re not there!… The conversation gets easier right away!… It loosens up!… There’s confidence… A lot more ease!… Ah! I’d done the right thing! He had a thing or two to tell me!… I might have thought he wanted to bluff me!… But he shows me his warrants… It was a serious matter… It concerns you, and in detail!… Better get a load of what I say!… You, Jinx, he wants to see you again… The Consulate’s asking for your certificate… right away!… And fast!… It’s getting hot!… And you, Clodo, it’s the Home Service, they’re fed up with your mug… And that makes two!… You’ve got to go back to Folkestone!… To the Polack quarantine!… That’s where you belong and not elsewhere!… And you, Monsieur du Boro, who are so delicate! It’s the ‘Scots’ who want you… and the Yard besides and right away!… They’re disgusted the way you act up!… That’s the way they talk! You’ve got to get your junk and beat it within five days!… They don’t want to see you again!… If not, you’ll get it in the balls… and overalls with a number on them!… Maybe a touch of the cat too!… That’s the news!”

  I hoped that Cascade was stringing us along, that he was handing us a line like that just to throw a scare into us… just to give us an idea of his connections; all the same it wasn’t just talk!… There must have been some danger… no doubt the cops were nervous, and greedy and shrewd… Ah! But we mustn’t let ourselves be taken in!… Both of us started getting excited too!… We squawked about violating our rights!… Unheard-of injustice!… That you could see the streets of London full of worse-looking bums than us… much more suspicious and dirty! Hoodlums!… Terrors!… Out-and-out apaches!… That there was no name for such downright unjust dishonesty!

  And then we had to stomach the fact that probably he was the one who was squealing to the cops… that he was getting rid of us treacherously!… We weren’t feeling so hilarious!… It’s true that he looked pleased, as if he were wiping his hands of us!… Ah! It was fishy!

  “You’re jealous, that’s all! Admit it!”

  That’s what we said… and then his whole pack of nonsense! That he seemed to be getting a kick out of the jam we were in! That he seemed to be damned cynical! That he didn’t have much honour!

  Oh! My, oh my! The way he shot back!

  “Me! You fags! Me listen to that?”

  He was choking.

  “They’d have been whipped to death! Croaked in jail! Sausage meat! If I hadn’t greased Matthew only yesterday! They keep ruining me!… And I keep saving their lives!… They’re meat for the police and in cahoots! That’s the way they treat me!”

  More indignation, he takes out a package of pounds sterling, and tens… only big notes, a whole fortune! He crumples them in his fist… wipes the whole table with them! On purpose in disgust!… Just to show us! He sponges up everything! The liquor spots!

  “There! you rats!… Is that what you want?”

  He throws them at us like a dish mop… like a red rag…

  “Are you satisfied?”

  He’s humiliating us.

  “No, Cascade… No!… Look… Just think about it!”

  “It’s all thought about, Goddamn it! Your papers are toilet paper! They’re recruiting you, they’re locking you up! It’s only natural! It’s all thought out! And they damned well mean it!… There’s a war on!… Ought to hear the way they talk!… I’m not the only one, you know, who gets ’em sore… Everything’s getting their goat!… Even dough!… You can shove it down their throats! Just like that!… They’re back again. They show their teeth again!… It’s crazy, there’re no more limits!… ‘There’s a war on!’ all they can blurt out!… The war!… A fat lot of good it does you! Just a lot of crap! Cop or not!… Pimp or jerk!… God-damned
craziness! Those who can stay out of it don’t stay out! You get rough with them? they’re not satisfied! They don’t know what they want!… Shit!… No more good manners! Lousiness by the yard!”

  Ah! All the same he was just kidding!… You could see he was teasing… that he was stringing us along… A bogeyman! A natural-born rascal!

  In spite of everything, I wasn’t sure… I only had a semi-hard-on!… Boro was grinning green around the gills… Clodo couldn’t find his eyes the way he was goggling behind his glasses! He was so jittery that his glass kept jumping out of his hands!… All because of the terror of being kicked out of London! Damn it all! It wasn’t a dream!… We all had good reasons for staying in London! Serious and personal ones!… It made Boro stammer!

  “You?… You?… Think so, Cascade?”

  “I don’t think so… It’s as if I were there!”

  It was a horrible kind of joke…

  Around us the customers weren’t a bit worried… They were taking advantage of the windfall, they were having a free drink! Cascade was treating!… They didn’t understand the reasons, why we were getting so excited!… Why we were so worked up about the posters! About cops’ gossip!… Why we were on pins and needles!… You couldn’t explain it to them… we kept repeating that there was a war on. The war, that didn’t bother them! They’d never have signed up… They were only good for the docks! The rest of it was none of their business…

  Load… unload!… that was all! Full stop! And that’s that!… Dockers! Dockers! That was all!… Commercial or war goods… No other job! That was what their destiny was like!… They wouldn’t have changed it for anything in the world!… They seemed like vagrants, pigs, drunks, pitiful, dazed, in rags, yet we were the real bums after all! The real outcasts of circumstance! Suckers and cannon fodder! Nobody was asking the English guys for anything… The army? Out of the question!… All they had to do was continue sordid and comfortable, lugging their load! And that was all! Gentlemen, to the hold! No one asked them for anything. Us, that was a horse of a different colour! We were on the “French-frog” lists marked riff-raff everywhere! Men of original sin! Born for battle! Numbered clowns the whole carcass! Donkeys, scrap iron! Pretty bad! Bad I say!… A fellow’s only five litres of blood!… You realize that much too late!… You don’t get the difference at first glance! The earth’s just a roulette wheel!… Good… bad numbers!… Everything’s out of joint!… Those born cooked!… Those born lucky! At first it’s all the same!… All the lice in the same bunch! But go fuck yourself! And not at all!… Day and night!… In the worst classes of poverty a world’s spinning round! The best and the worst!… It’s like mountains seen from the clouds, from way up, from an aeroplane, it’s all sinister, dark and evil, but from close up, below, ring-a-ring-o’-roses! It’s all full of charming spots, of rich shade, of pretty chalets!… Got to go through it to know… you don’t learn that in school.

  That makes the lucky numbers nice and optimistic!… Let the others rush to the slaughter!… The guys in clover sing well together in chorus!… It’s music to your ears, especially when there’s lots of trimmings!… Jaunty pals like Cascade!…

  Another round!… And another!… The Maharajah on a spree!… The whole pack of banknotes on the table!… He didn’t want them any more!… Let ’em go!… All down the hatch!… They were cheering him to the rafters! For he’s a jolly good fellow!

  They were roaring out in chorus, so loud that it resounded all through the joint, it made the walls shake!… The gas chandelier was rocking, waltzing over our heads… The whole works was swaying, the whole room, the whole pier… Prospero started the refrain again… I think he was yelling loudest of all! For he’s a jolly good fellow!

  Waang! The door booming! A package comes in from the street!… In a heap! Waang! in the middle of the pub! She threw herself in!… She didn’t see… There were three steps!… She trips!… Tumbles! Sprawls! It’s Joconde! In a package!… In her cotton… her bandages!… She gets up, she screams, she’s awful!… Starts blaming right away!… There it goes… she hoists herself up, clings to the bar!… A fury! She’s choking with effort… she’s suffocating… she ran through the whole neighbourhood… looking for us! She’s green beneath the chandelier… a panic!… She looks all around! She shrieks… Isn’t he there?

  “Where are you, Loulou? Where are you? My precious peeggy!”

  “Here, m’love! Here, you pain in the arse!”

  Cascade answers her right off.

  “Come on, catastrophe! Come on!”

  What an effect!… The tables! Boy how the guys howled! Some family scene! Right in the nick of time!… He’s sure sore!… Ah! It’s the doctor who’s going to get it!…

  “Look at that!… Just take a look at that!… Dr Clodovitz! I entrust an injured person to you! I put her into your hands!… Thinking she’s going to keep quiet!… I pay for the hospital! I pay for everything! I load you with dough, my fine doctor! And that’s the thanks I get! Say, tell me something!… They can leave your place whenever they like! They go out for a stroll, they run around, they raise hell! What do I look like? I’m asking you! Your joint’s a plain cathouse! Your London Hospital! Monsieur Clodovitz!… It’s worse than the Charing Cross from what I can see! It’s a regular circus! Like your papers, Doctor! just plain garbage! Incapable of watching your lunatics! The bed-wetter! Take a look at the bitch!”

  She was standing there doing nothing. She was pulling at her dressings, she was chucking them all around, all over the floor, cotton, bandages, shreds… Boy, what laughing in the joint!… Some ovation! Clodovitz didn’t know what was what!… He was circling around the trollop… He wanted to arrange her bandages! She didn’t want him to! She was defending herself!… They were each pulling at an end!… The whole crowd was roaring so that the floors shook! The walls! The windows!

  “Go back Joconde!…” Clodo was pleading, begging on his knees… “Go back! It’s not a wise thing to do! Your wound’ll open again!”

  Her whole bandage in clots, she was tearing it off! Loosening it from her skin! The blood was pissing out again… it was dripping all over the floor!… Ah! She wouldn’t obey!…

  “Keep quiet, you bum! You murderer!”

  She was the one raising the riot… all foul-mouthed…

  Then they started yelling, in the pub. The dockers didn’t know what it was all about… their minds were fuzzy… they thought we were being mean to the broad!… They suddenly got sore at us… A sudden tempest, just like that… Taking her side, the poor little thing! Now they were rooting for her!… At least a dozen giants who wanted to rip Cascade’s guts out!… Then and there!… Terrible arms! There’d be hell to pay!… Tattoos… muscles like a gorilla’s…

  Ah! When she sees danger threatening… that they’re going to jump on her darling, she’s the one who protects him!… With her whole body! She rushes up in front of him!… She covers him up!… She rages at the peril! The lioness roars!… All her dressings unwind… she gets caught in them, she’s all tangled up… she yells louder than the whole mob… “Grrr! Grrr!”

  “Darling prrrreciouz! Make a little zmile for your baby!”

  But the big guys are boiling!… Got to beat up Cascade! Now in a raging fury!… There they go grabbing bottles, siphons, chairs! And whang! It starts ringing! Squirting! Bouncing all over! Bang! A-bing! A-boom! Over the mirrors!… The door!… An awful riot!… Cascade wiggles out!… Jumps back!… The battle’s at its height!… Tables upside down!… Barricades and zoom!… They dive for shelter! He and Prospero!… The cash register, the cupboard, the coat rack… And zoom! Everything goes flying!… Whirling!… Down comes a bombardment of chairs!… Crashes, rocks!… The dockers, all red, come tearing down! They buck into the pile… Assault! Massacre! Yelling on all sides!… Zoom! Zing! Boom! It’s the mechanical organ, the big one in the back, suddenly starting to play!… It started going! Taraza! Zoom! The monster with the trumpets! Flute
s! Drums! Should have heard it pounding! Whacking out its waltz! Boro who started the machine going! God-damned instrument! It’s a storm! I see him fiddling around in the back… He sees me!… He signals to me… “Get the hell out!…” Broad gesture! I don’t get him, like a dope! He’s yelling to me! He’s screaming!…

  “What’s the matter?” I mumble…

  No time! Wrraang!… thunder! The joint’s exploding! Boy that was something! And the flames!… Damn it! I saw! Damn it! It’s him!… In the flames there… In the leaping fire! He threw the gadget! Sure was something!… TNT!… It burst!… There under the table!… Wang! Bang!… Another one! Right there!… He threw the contraption!… A grenade, I know them! Ah! The skunk!… The gorilla!… A spray of sparks!… A hail!… The blockhead!… He’s pulling us!… Oh! Panic! The way they’re beating it!… Three guys laid out flat! I jump over them! The ceiling’s collapsing!… Everything’s caving in behind us… falling to pieces!… The plasterwork!… The tiles!… An avalanche!… Cascade’s safe!… He’s running ahead!… So’s Prospero and Joconde! It’s curtains!… She’s running behind!… She’s chugging away, she’s yowling… She wants them to wait for her!… It’s hurting her!… And what insults! She’s calling us cowards! Boro’s on his way too!… Any old thing!… Not at all shy!… He’s running after us! His paunch doesn’t keep him from running!… All shaken up, he’s chugging along! And pretty pleased!… No shame!… He’s laughing! His hands are bleeding! He stumbles! He picks himself up! The hell with the old gal behind him who’s running after us… her with her gimpy leg!… Wah! Wah!… She’s squealing that we’re killing her!… But she’s tearing along, anyway!… We don’t go back through the same alleys… We dash through Lambeth Highway… and slow up at Grave Lane… Ruysdale… then zigzags… we’re covering our tracks!… Threading our way… Cascade’s in the lead!… The doll hooks on to Boro… She’s holding him by the sleeve… Cascade won’t bother with her!… Doesn’t ever want to see her again!…