North

by Louis-Ferdinand Celine

  Coffee? … no sign … we look at the garden, leeks … potatoes … apple trees …

  “Are the bees far?”

  “Yes! … yes … ja! ja! … far! …”

  If you ask me, this pastor won’t be back for a while … what we want is a little something hot … especially for Lili … we say goodbye to the chicks … their heads are all done up the same way … handkerchiefs knotted under the chin … jolly little girls!

  Right after the shed there’s a big sign … Tanzhalle! Dance hall … the Tanzhalle is closed … but inside they’re hammering! loud! … and sawing! … and the pom! … pom! … of a motor … that must be their workshop … somebody from inside must have seen us … a door opens … a bibelforscher comes out … a convict in denims with red and yellow stripes, same as out there at the isba … they’re not supposed to speak to anybody … this one makes no bones … what do we want?

  “We’re looking for a place to eat! … wirtschaft! wirtschaft!”

  He motions me to wait, for the boss I suppose … here he is … same guy as over there at the isba, we’d just spoken to him… he’d been in command over there too … Zomhof isn’t big, hadn’t taken him long to make the rounds… he welcomes us …

  “But teufel … the devil! no more coffee! come and see!”

  We go into the Tanzhalle … he shows us his barracks … the floor and the straw, he and his thirty-five “objectors” sleep right on the floor … pretty good thickness of straw … we’ve slept on less, not one day but years … coffee? ah, too late, too late, he shows me the pot … we talk about this and that … fleas for instance … they haven’t got any …

  “Verboten!”

  Spiders? plenty … so have we …

  “Nicht verboten!” spiders not prohibited!

  Next door we see the carpenter’s bench … benches … plenty of tools … this is where the sound of the motor came from … where they turn out the logs … they’re not lying down on the job … piles of logs all over the road … these “objectors” earn their soup … we look at their kitchen … next to the sleeping quarters … three big kettles simmering … got to taste this … Le Vig too … a company-sized ladle … more than vegetables in there… two geese! … we worm it out of the SS-man … how big? … five six pounds! I see where the convicts get their tummies … where do they find them? … in the, fields! … anyway it’s a lot better than the Kretzer soup … I think of Lili and Bébert … not bad, our little excursion … we’ve got ourselves thrown out of the farm but we’ve battened on the ladle … selfish bastards! a cupful for Lili and Bébert? I don’t dare … I really don’t dare … no, but I think of it… so does Le Vig … We’re not really pals yet with this SS slave driver … but that’ll come … really nutritive fare! … oh, they haven’t got it soft, they work like robots, but they eat … they’re better off than they’d be at the front, and better off than us. We take the road back, we see one thing and another, I’ll tell you later … I’ve told you, thatched huts on both sides. A nobody looking at us … the young men are at the front and the women in the fields … with the kids … all we get to see is geese and ducks … the duck ponds spread out over the road, we’re wading … there must be a bar in this place … there are limits! … maybe we’ve passed it? no! … on one of the roofs, a sign … Wirtschaft … hm! … green … we’re in luck! … we go in … a big farm room, benches all around … nice and warm … tile stove in the middle … I see they’re burning peat … a fable in back, I hadn’t seen it, and a bar … farm hands standing around … I count them, six … talking French … they start whispering and giving us the once-over … they know what we are … they start right in: “Collabos! stinkers!” Zornhof or Montmartre, or Meudon thirty years later, that’s fame! … it’d be kind of amusing with money, but no lettuce it’s a damn nuisance … oh well, let’s see about some coffee … I step up to the counter … they nudge each other … I look them over … they all look the same, maybe the one that called us Krauts is a little more brassy, more insolent, he must be the head of the local “Resistance” … anyway there he is, white bread, plenty of butter … they’re doing all right! … Fräulein!… I dive right in … a Frieda with braids … the boss? maybe? … she’d disappeared when she saw us … she comes back … nichts! nichts! … nothing for us! cute little burg! as friendly as the Eighteenth! ° … lovely spot our Oberführer had picked! quiet, out-of-the-way …

  Which reminds me … Harras … where’s he gone? to one of his Lisbons probably, chasing epidemics, piling it in up to here, caviar, port wine, strawberries and cream … he didn’t give a shit about typhus! … or the curtain coming down on the way and its frenzied combatants! … the epidemic would come to us! no need to travel so far! it wouldn’t skip Zornhof! we’d see the young ladies’ gizzards bursting with microbes! … Right! … but meanwhile we were going home empty-handed! … we’d even been threatened! tell Lili? … hell, no! … some more empty houses … suddenly a bugle blast! … two blasts! … up ahead … I say to Le Vig: it’s the beadle, well go in and ask him … where can he be? in a blind alley between two barns … he pays no attention to us … he’s blowing … a kind of cornet that seems to have only three notes, but that’ll do for a warning … you can hear it pretty far in the daytime … even at night … they must notify him from someplace … with the telephone out? … I guess he blows as a matter of principle … he doesn’t look as if he knew anything … it’s his function, he does what he’s supposed to … this alley, that alley … he’s rigged out like a “territorial” … spiked helmet, pre-1914 … standard Boche … a broad patent-leather shoulder strap for his drum … but no jacket … out-at-elbows denim jacket, pants in tatters … they haven’t pampered him! … wooden shoes, or so it seems, all I can see is clods of caked mud where-his feet are supposed to be … his legs look like boots … we’re pretty much in the local style ourselves, we can show ourselves in Zornhof … we look at him … he’s tired, he’s leaning against the wall, he’s stopped playing … his spiked helmet has slumped down over his forehead … he’s sucking the ends of his moustache … yellow and white …

  “Tell us! Tell-us, Herr Landwehr! ° the grocery store! Kolonialwaren?”

  He must know … I only hope he hasn’t forgotten! … but now he’s got a question for us …

  “Where do you live?”

  “At the Rittmeister’s! Up there!”

  We point …

  “Ach! ja! … ja! … franzosen!”

  He knows … not unfriendly! … not in the least! … he’ll show us … up ahead! … our direction … after the second third house! … he counts on his fingers … two … three … four … five … he won’t go with us … we can’t go wrong … we shake hands … I say to Le Vig:

  “Careful now … if anybody’s there, forget it! … we’ll try again later … if it’s like at the bar …”

  “You want to heist the joint?”

  “Oh no! … well do it with charm! … your department! … your eyes! … go on! I bet it’s a woman!”

  I’d guessed right … a blowsy blonde, not bad … her store was a big thatched house like the others, but inside it was all shelves … all around the walls … I’ve seen them like that in Canada, in Saint-Pierre and Miquelon … and in Cameroun in 1918, the trading-post effect … I’m not trying to impress you … the intrepid traveler, the “Madon of the Sleeping Cars” ° … not these days when a round-trip to the Cape is a weekend jaunt! … and New York via the stratosphere more boring than a trip to the suburbs …

  Speaking of trading posts, I had one like that myself, a straw hut, strings of shelves all around … that was in ‘17, with the Maféas in Bikomimbo … quite an edifice, three stories, built entirely by myself and the village carpenters … cannibals, it seems … I never saw them eating dinner … but bandits, I’m sure of that … looters as bad as my Fifis on rue Girardon and tomorrow the Chinese right here… I had everything, not like Zornhof! cassoulet, rice, cod fillets, loincloths … no water thoug
h! … that bog water is fatal … applesauce bowels for the rest of your life … At the first tornado everything flies away … shelves, merchandise, liana rigging, rice, kegs of tobacco! … everything I’d ordered from John Holdt & Co… don’t talk to me about tropic nights! nothing left but scorpions, snakes, and chiggers … everything else had taken off, absolutely … like my pad on rue Girardon … it’s habit-forming … take Copenhagen, Denmark, same routine … I won’t live long enough to see the next act … but it’ll be the same … “Forgetful youth” … me … my youth … doesn’t forget a thing … don’t I make my living by it? … telling you this and that and not having it do you any good … except for cocktail parties and vacation chit-chat! we hadn’t gone there to dream … I saw a shelf full of bread … “coupons?” she asks me … I’m sure it was agreed between the Kretzers, the von Leidens, the Landrat and SS Kracht, and all the kittens at the Dienstelle, that we’d never see our food cards again … twenty housewives were wrangling at the counter … clamoring for their jar of mustard, their quarter pound of ersatz camembert … exactly the same as rue Girardon, Montmartre, and later on up there in Denmark

  The good housewife’s dream is to cheat the grocer out of coupons … the thought of forking them over, they see red … All of a sudden they see us, they see we’re looking … panic! komm! komm! they gather up their baskets and kids … komm! komm! tracks! Harras out there looking for plagues and poxes to end the war … it seems to me, when it comes to terrorizing and making a clean sweep, the three of us were in a class by ourselves … one look at us and this “Kolonialwaren” setup, housewives, snot-noses, didn’t last three seconds … everybody out! thin air! … to give you an idea of our devastating power! If Harras had exhibited us on the Eastern Front, the war would have stopped dead, the armies would have faded! … just to get us but of their sight! … the rout of the housewives, head over heels, skirts over heads, for fear somebody would recognize them …

  Yes, I grant you … Montmartre would have been a lot worse, the same women with the Bibici conniptions would have rushed us, cut us up small and fought over our kidneys … a bit of liver … carried us away in their shopping bags … oh, that could happen here too! … sure to, in fact! … matter of weeks … Zornhof … Montmartre … alignment of epilepsies … why, even today I get letters full of horrible threats, twenty years later, from people who hadn’t been born yet … all in the day’s work, I’m used to it … I might add that the most virulent letters are never signed … the letters on-the other side, ardent admirers, all carry names and addresses … amiable autograph hunters! … the funny part, I have an idea it’s the same people who inform you’that they’re coming to cut you to pieces and then next week in a different handwriting they think you’re an incomparable genius and they’re inconsolable, weeping night and day at the thought of the way abject humanity has been treating you … worse than the dyedest-in-the-wool parricides … it takes all kinds to make a world and more to make one man … don’t try to make head or tail!… there anyway, one good thing, we were alone with the grocery woman … I say to Le Vig …

  “This is when!”

  Looks like it… I attack with a hundred mark note, I hold it out …

  “For the bread! brot!”

  A hundred marks neatly folded … there!… it’s a deal!… she hands me the loaf … we understand each other …

  “Have you any honey?”

  I see the jars …

  “Kunsthonig … artificial honey … but coupons!”

  “Moorsburg?

  Hell! … another hundred marks! … okay, one jar … she warns me …

  “It’s no good! … you’ll find the genuine article at the pastor’s … Rieder!”

  We know … he’s at the hives … not home!”

  She knows too … I doubt if the housewives of Zornhof are very openhanded … my two hundred marks have done wonders … she thinks I’m rich and no penny-pincher … so then she tells me about the pastor …

  “He’s running after the swarms … he owns all the beehives in Zornhof … the women are afraid of bees … he’s got the church and the bees … but you can find him in the evening and on Sunday … after eight p.m… .”

  Fine! … good thing to know! … I mention coffee … another hundred marks! okay, I’ve got it ready! … but she honestly hasn’t got any … only toasted oats … Maybe tonight, after eight … maybe … if I care to come back … bread too … I should tap on the blind … four times … she shows me … so shell know who it is … and at the same time: franzose … she’ll know …

  We haven’t come out for nothing … a loaf of bread … a jar of honey … true, we’ve attracted a bit-of attention … oh well! … Le Vig didn’t have to play up,to the grocery lady … the hundred mark notes did it … and it was my own money … not the Pope’s or Adolfs or Juanovid’s, the wages of my headaches … to think that I’m still here trying to amuse you! … a lot of very staunch Europeans couldn’t say the same … under such affronts, such torrents of insults, they’d just pass away …

  But after all, we’re bringing back a little something … we can hold up our heads! … yes, we could have brought back more! … another messkit from the Tanzhalle … maybe the SS-man would have given us something too for a hundred marks? … perfectly possible! … maybe we should have risked it … or a pack of Navy Cut? the cupboard was there and I had the key … Harras wouldn’t be back for a while and anyway he’d understand … sure he was a two-timing dog, but reasonable … this was an emergency … dig in! that’s what he said … I’ll explain … ah, our park again! … the majestic walk … the peristyle … ah, here’s something new … over to the west another isba … they’ve worked fast! … I look at the time … the church … no slouches those carpenters! … there wasn’t anything there when we left … why this new building? I’ll go ask them … but they’re not allowed to talk to anybody, the SS-man told me, not even to each other! … they don’t even look at us! … why should we be so curious with our funny honey and our bread? … better move along! … Lili must be worried … the steps, four by four! … in a manner of speaking … anyway here we are … our big door … our round tower … Lili’s not alone … a reception! … First thing I see … a little candle, very little, in a tall candlestick … they’re laying out cards … how many people? all women … three … four in addition to Lili … I gradually make out the faces … one of the faces is speaking … slightly singsong French … to me …

  “Doctor, I’ve taken the liberty … Madame Céline was alone … I am Marie-Thérèse von Leiden … your humble servant … and your friend … the sister of that man downstairs, you know him … Count Hermann von Leiden … the freak! and the aunt of the one over there … at the farm … the cripple! that disposes of the introductions. I’ve been telling Madame Céline that I’m not as impossible as my nephew over there and my brother downstairs! … or my niece, really a horror, Inge by no means as sick and insane as those people who hate me may have tried to make you think … and that fat Harras as well, I trust! … he’s jealous! … and mean! jealous of my French! … yes, indeed! … imagine, Doctor! … I was brought up in Lausanne! as if that meant anything!”

  This spinster Marie-Thérèse looked to be about sixty … I was beginning to see her better … the eye adapts … the other woman was Frau Krerzer … she hadn’t wanted to leave Lili alone either … women always find some pretext to go looking for gossip … Kretzer had come about our ration cards, to tell us they weren’t in Moorsburg any more, we’d get new ones from Berlin … but that could take a While … not so dumb to strike out on our own! … I’d got this bread and this funny honey … and I’d get more! … ah, two more women in the shadow … now I see their faces … two of the office secretaries … they’d come about the food cards too … one was our little hunchback with the fish … she shows me a bottle full of little bleaks, alive and frisky, her father had fished them out of the Spree with a net … he poaches … in a rowboat … they live in a bunker
shaped like a dungeon, extra-thick, reinforced concrete … they’ve been given a cell down there … a privilege … because she’s lost five brothers and two uncles … two on the Western Front, four in Russia … this bunker is so super-reinforced, absolutely impregnable, that the bombs just ricochet, not a dent … on the way out of Berlin I’d seen those tall, potbellied concretions, they didn’t look so good to me, once you go into one of those things you can be sure you’ll never be seen again … the little hunchback and her mother had tried to live there, they couldn’t sock it … talking about ricochets, this whole concrete castle rolled and pitched under the torpedoes, worse than a ship in a storm … too much for them … they hadn’t said anything, nobody says anything, nobody stays in those things except a few bandits, robbers, and pirates … or lunatics … I’ve known more than one … dozens … later on in prison, Fritzes, Russians, Frenchmen, Polacks, they told me about their way of helping those people when they were frantic, especially mothers and kids, squeezing out through the little doors … carrying their suitcases for them … and bam! now you see me now you don’t, thin air in the night! oh, of course if you were caught red … things could go wrong … handed you’d be shot on the spot! … but how many made fortunes, bought up nice businesses with this little suitcase racket! … me for instance, my moving men on Montmartre are all “Commanders” now … which goes to show that crust in the right place is better than roulette or baccarat … anyway, when they saw what it was like, all the families of dead heroes except the bandits moved out of those impregnable shelters … from noon to five in the morning hundreds of RAF Fortresses passed over Berlin, they’d stopped bothering about bombing any particular neighborhood, they just dumped their bombs on the bunkers … convenient landmarks … the privileged families that had on staying came out without eyes or ears, their brains were running out their noses … out for the count … after that they went any old place to live, doorways, subways … but not those dungeons! … the Apocalypse that character wanted me to write about was right under, his nose! … from midnight to five in the morning, for sorely tried families with priority, at least three sons killed at the front … Anyway this little hunchback was very nice about Bébert, so was her father who went fishing at the risk of his life! … bleaks, roaches, gudgeon, and then some … Believe me, Bébert could see her coming with her bottle! … when you know something about cats, so unresponsive, so suspicious, it was a pleasure to see him, he was crazy about her with her hump … and not just policy, I think, but also because she thought of him, he knew … Still another face … a profile … a little girl … very pale … a very delicate profile … pretty … eleven or twelve … that must be Cillie, Inge von Leiden’s daughter …