North

by Louis-Ferdinand Celine

  “Cousteau! Cousteau! you’re going too far!”

  All this just to amuse you, little asides … the story of our mishaps may strike you as monotonous … when you have so many things to do, or just sit down with a drink at your TV … movie stars, grunt-and-groan, heart surgery, tits, twats, two-headed dogs, the Abbé and his homicidal spasms, whiskey and long life, the joys of the accelerator, the, boudoir of the Grand Duchess toppler of thrones … and then me coming along asking you to buy my handiwork! … too much to expect! oh well, well see … let’s get on!

  We hit the hay … Le Vig in his basement cell … me and Lili in our quarter tower … Le Vig comes up from his hole … few things to talk about … the old bag with her piano and her rugs and her inheritance … for my money she’d have looked sweet hung from her window by the ankles … that blasted countess! … I’d have hung the Landrat with her … and Harras on the other side when he gets back … wouldn’t want anybody to feel neglected! … plus Inge and her cripple …

  “How right you are, Ferdie! the whole lot by the feet! … but what about us? where’ll we go now … and how?”

  Right! I told you in the last book, once your neck is marked for the rope … you only make things worse by complaining, finding fault with the knot …

  I tell them … but hell! something else!

  “Look here, pal! we’d forgotten! did you remember, Lili?”

  Surprise!

  “That dinner! … we were invited to the farm! … to the cripple’s!”

  They fall from the clouds!

  “Never mind … crossing that park at night! it’s just as well we forgot! … these parks are funny!”

  I can see what he means … that alarm at Grünwald, yes, it’s a fact, we damn near … but this is different … we’re expected … it’s true that everything’s trembling … the walls, the stairs … same impression too from Marie-Thérèse’s window … that Berlin had turned into a volcano … a perpetual rumbling … Grünwald must be a lake of fire, the ladies in the basement, the telegrams! … and the Finnish bath in the crater … and my pineapple! … Harras wasn’t crazy! I couldn’t see him hurrying back to look after us … with these fireworks overhead strings of torpedoes and phosphorus, bombs, it wouldn’t be long before our plain was burning the same way … talking of cataclysms, this was the real thing! … you say they’ll do better next time … not so sure and not for long! … they’ll finish each other off with knives … anyway for once Le Vig was talking sense … risk our noses outside? … with what we could see and what we couldn’t see … lunacy! we’d go to the farm next day, first thing in the morning … meanwhile, as long as we were alone, nobody around, we could talk things over … sure, the place stank … not one reason, ten! a hundred! … Harras had pulled a fast one … this restful spot! … the beadle drumming … out in the park! he never stepped! he’d gone outside … rrr! rrr! … it didn’t prevent me from thinking … I had a little ideal … I kept it to myself … ideas that you air go bad … our candles gave just enough light to see our faces … a mellow darkness in our tower … plus the “Le Nain” ° effect … the three of us … picture of misery … the candle is implacable … I speak up! time for a treat! a fancy souper! … we had a loaf of bread, I’d paid a hundred marks for it, and the grocer lady’s ersatz honey … this is the time, before they come and snag it … one pretext or another… through the window slit I jee the glow over Berlin … phosphorus fires … jonquil yellow …

  “Le Vig, your knife!”

  Still has his big switchblade … he cuts into the bread … can’t deny it, that bread was heavy, soggy and filling … They can reduce Berlin to powder and the Obergesund and Pretorius with his rare flowers, and Adolf and his Chancellery and the Steinbock and everything else we’ve seen … I make them a present! … and Alsace and Lorraine! … and my place in Saint-Malo … I’ll trade the whole kabunkus for some real jam, “Dundee” marmalade … the kind that kept me alive, that’s right, half a century ago in my youth on Bedford Square, London, Mile End Road, and up and down the waterfront!… curses! … and now it’s the SS big wheels, the Titans of the Ruhr and the Krupp Konzern, the Commissars of the Kremlin that get the “Dundee” … I call your attention … same posteriors, same appetites! Commissars, Archbishops, Magnates … don’t look at their insignia, crosses, ribbons, armbands … waste of time … star-gazing! it’s their turds that count! their turds if you please! … the biggest asses, the biggest bellies, the most imposing bowel movements … there’s the authority! … and the mystique! double triple jowls! we there with our little jokes were epicures too in our way! a loaf of bread! … another! … the hundred-mark item from the grocery store plus the handout from the Tanzhalle! … we could wait it out … damn, it comes back to me! … my duffel coat! … I must have another loaf of black bread! … my duffel coat under the tick … I was sure they hadn’t seen it… I look for it under the covers … something moving! …

  “Pass the candle …”

  Three rats come out … walking … not running … to the nearest exit … we’ve disturbed them … medium-sized customers, I’d seen much bigger in my days as a ship’s doctor, especially on the Baltic … Danzig, Gdynia … there you see champions! … impressive beasts! … these must have come from the silos … the rats can tell you if a place is rich … the silos here are medium-sized … anyway time for Bébert to get on the job …

  Take him out of the bag!”

  One jump! He’s out! Bébert knows! … okay! it’s quiet now! … we could try to sleep … I never sleep much, or very deeply … I just stretch out … straight and stiff … I think about what’s happened … a lot has happened and a lot to come …

  Le Vig pushes off with his candle … down to his basement … ‘

  “Goodnight!”

  I hear him on the steps … hesitation … two steps up, two steps down … can’t hear him any more … must have gone to his room … another minute … steps … I call him …

  “Le Vig!”

  “Yeah! Open up!”

  “Well?”

  “Iago!”

  “Iago?”

  “He’s lying across the corridor!”

  “So what?”

  “Come with me …”

  “No!… you stay here!”

  No intention of going down to the cellar and leaving Lili alone … he can stretch out too … plenty of hay … but his candle!

  “Blow it out!”

  We’ve got extra blankets … I recognize one of those blankets, German cavalry, 1914 … ours were frankly blue, theirs were pistachio, a pretty color … ah, memories! … Mademoiselle Jacob ° wasn’t born yet, neither was Cousteau, when I was bringing enemy horses … lost on patrol … back through our lines …

  All these people I see around that make so much noise … right, center, or left … were still in limbo … they hatched! … reason died in 1914, November 1914 … after that everybody began to rave …

  Le Vig hesitates, he won’t blow out his candle …

  “What’s the matter? seen a ghost?”

  “No! … but the rats! they’re waiting in line!”

  Hand me that glim!”

  I snuff it between my fingers … he stretches out, he’s sawing wood … if I’d been that quick a sleeper we’d have burned alive! … you got to be very leery, day and night, or you’ll end up in flames …

  Stupid, don’t you hear the cannon?”

  A brute, a sack!

  “Don’t you hear the drum?”

  Not a thing…

  “Don’t you feel the place shaking?”

  Zero! … sound asleep …

  I was thinking about our old bag, our musical fortunetelling heiress countess … Lili had made a friend … she’d predicted oodles of flames and a bare-naked man …

  What are you laughing about?”

  Ha, he’s heard me laughing!

  Nothing! … about how lovey-dovey they’re going to be …”

  Who?”

  The
cripple and his wife …”

  A faint sound … Bébert nibbling … must be finishing the hunchback’s bleaks … they were in the big jar … he must have upset the whole thing … day and night doesn’t mean a thing to him! … they could be pulling out any minute, that’s what he thinks … with cats it’s not our words that count, it’s their own feeling … he must be thinking that this won’t last … I’ve got the same hunch …

  To sleep you need optimism, plus a certain comfort … pish! talking about myself again! … it’s not nice to talk about oneself, memeism is detestable, it exasperates the reader …

  “That’s all you do!”

  Yes, but even so, from time to time a certain amount of “me” is necessary … the sum of experience, so to speak … to show you what I mean, take sleep for instance … I can say without exaggeration that since November 1914 I’ve slept only for moments at a time … I adapt myself to the sound in my ears … I hear it turning into trombones, a full orchestra, a shunting yard … it’s kind of a game … if you stir from your mattress … show the slightest sign of impatience, you’re lost, you go mad … if you lie there stretched out stiff, you arrive after a few hours at a brief moment of somnolence, you recharge your run-down battery and next morning you’re almost fit for work … don’t ask for more! … if you were rich, of course, it would be a different-colored horse … nobody’d expect you to do anything but go get a haircut, drop in at the bank or the pedicure’s, go see Coccinelle ° … but in precarious, really difficult conditions, the thing to do is lie stiff and still and wait for all the trains to bump, crash! boom! … switch … whistle … and finally clear out! then maybe you’ll get a few minutes to recharge your life batteries … so you can earn your lousy stinking living next day … I’d say I had a right to talk about myself now and then, because I’m the one that suffers, not somebody else! I’ve lost all the hair on one side of my head from driving my skull into the pillow or the straw or the floor, according … I was saying that to sleep you need a certain amount of comfort plus a certain optimism … for me and people in my condition, the trains never stop whistling!

  I’ve received a letter: “the writer is a priest!” … followed by six pages of moral reflections …

  What a way to write … my way! … I ought to be ashamed! …

  “Dumb bastard! How’s your locomotive?”

  I haven’t always achieved my brief moment of somnolence, but wherever I’ve been I’ve tried … in common bedrooms, in cells, in wog huts, or in igloos, I’ve always done my best … since November 1914 … docile, never saying a word … waiting patiently for my trains to get going … it was almost funny at the infirmary, the “violent section of the dead room, that special ward lit up all night, where the bozo next to me kept banging his thigh under the covers with pitcher shards, screaming and yelling … I didn’t say a word … absolutely quiet and well-behaved, waiting for my trains to get going and that other damned soul to sever his femoral and pass on …

  “But you could be operated for your ear …”

  You might say …

  “With all these advances in medicine!”

  I’ll let you in on something … advances! … they’re like governments … they appear, people talk them up, they fall apart … before you can get a good look at them, they’ve gone out of existence …

  My dear young friend, one of my woman patients suffers from the same ailment as yourself, intense buzzing in the ears and dizzy spells. She owns a large park, every night she has her gamewarden fire both barrels of his shotgun twelve to fifteen times … that seemed to relieve her… now she has given up … she can’t stand it any more … believe me, do as she does, stop moving!

  Lermoyez was right … with the years, the decades, amid all these events, I’ve learned how to harmonize every conceivable ruckus … my dizzy spells too … by day and night! … I tell myself that all this will end … my senile rambling, my auditory nerve, my chimes, my little mental gifts … all that will have had its momentary utility like Lermoyez, like Gallimard and his contracts, like our troubles in Moorsburg …

  Even the Landrat, that ferocious clown, was very useful to us, I’ll tell you about it…

  Now I’ve taken you for a ride again! So here I am in the hay, I haven’t moved yet … but I’ve heard Lili … I open one eye … I see her … it’s almost dark … she’s looking out through the slit … I go over … movements … glowing coals high over the trees … tongues of flame! … Berlin brazier … we’d been there! … what could they still be burning? the house fronts? … they were just having fun … I presume our Harras got out on time … he must have taken the last plane … what would he bring back from Lisbon? more absurdities! but he’ll have a very good time … when he gets back he can turn over the ashes of his bunker in Grünwald! … looking for the young ladies … in the daylight we can see that th planes have changed their tactics … they’re not skimming the rooftops any more … they’re diving straight down from high up … a long train of fluff … and boom! … they let go! boom! … straight into the crater! Lili is much more interested in a little scene between the titmice … they’re coming out of a hollow stump, through a tiny hole … there are “shes” and “hes” … but I think “she” is the boss … she’s the housekeeper … as angry, crest a-bristle, as a busy housewife … the whole brood is on the branch outside, downcast, beaks at half-mast … she’s tossing straw and droppings out of the nest and giving them a piece of her mind, queek! queek! where do they pick up all this filth? … motionless on their twig, hanging their beaks, nothing to say for themselves … these, scoldings among birds aren’t just a matter of sentiment, if s a matter of housekeeping too, cleanliness in the home, the tree trunks where they live …

  Just because Berlin is going up in smoke is no reason to leave the home trunk full of straw! that filthy nest! as for our housekeeping, the best way is to let Lili attend to it … if all three of us start in, we’ll collide … too cramped … anyway, Le Vig and me, we’ve got to get over to the farm and apologize …

  “What for?”

  ” ‘Cause we were supposed to go there last night … didn’t you know?”

  “Oh yes, little Cillie told me …”

  Of all the vexations of exile, maybe the worst is. having to apologize … for this! … that … and the other! you’re always begging somebody’s pardon … always and everywhere you’re in the way … even when the tragedy’s over and the curtain’s fallen, you’re still a pest … take the literary scene … that I should still be around, watching the others! Pontificating, shooting the shit …

  Anyway we had to go to the farm …

  “Okay, Le Vig, what do you say?”

  Lili would go calling on the heiress … Marie-Thérèse in the other wing … the old girl had offered her piano, drawing room, and scores … kind of sudden this friendship, it seemed , to me, and so intense! … well we’d see … now it was the cripple and his wife … we’d apologize for politeness’ sake, but we’d had good reason not to cross that park at night … the Armadas, of Fortresses, the torpedoes erupting in Berlin, chickenfeed! … the real danger for us, it seemed to me, was the dense thickets … in Grünwald they’d pretty near got us … you couldn’t have pinned it on anybody … rat-tat-tat! … Lili’d already had a narrow squeak in the park of Sartrouville Health Center … German patrol across the river … in Maison Lafitte … rat-tat-tat! the day-before we hit the road with the town records, the fire engine, and the ambulance … that memorable “victory-in-reverse” marathon that nobody mentions any more … Sartrouville to Saint-Jean d’Angély … and not just us! the whole of Frogland, army, towns and villages, all with their pants down …

  This Zornhof park, laid out by Mansard, was just the place for a little burst of gunfire … even in the daytime! … those thickets, those tunnels under the trees! … not to mention the bibelforschers … the slits in their isba … and up there at the end … that big thick hedge … you could expect anything … “You look right
… I’ll look left!” … I say to Le Vig … in our situation that tangle of ashes, oaks, and blue pines was no place to get into … when the whole world is hostile and the airwaves having an epileptic fit … clamoring to chop and quarter you … you’d better be suspicious of the slightest pile of pebbles … and what about that wheelbarrow? …

  Nothing as far as the road … only four … five … six bibelforschers who don’t even look up to watch us pass … too busy stripping ash logs for another isba … galley slaves were big talkers, so it seems … not these characters … really silent … I’ve seen horses, oxen, and ants at work … Americans on the assembly line, blacks in the muck of the jungle, you’d hear soft sighs, little thank-you sounds … these guys, nothing … we cross the road … and the big farmyard … from the barn beside the silos the two Frenchmen, the so-called free workers, motion us to come over … they want to stay where they are … okay, we go … there’s some kind of gathering on the other side of the yard … I ask the Frenchman what’s up … big news! the pastor’s been snagged at the airfield … the guy we hadn’t been able to find … Hjalmar Spikehat, the beadle … his name was Hjalmar … is holding him, he’d put the handcuff on him … one, not two … he only had one … the paddy wagon was coming for him this afternoon, to take him to Berlin … not so sure, considering the state of the sky and the roads … how’d the pastor get himself nabbed? … we’re curious … seems he’d been chasing a swarm of bees … an air force sergeant had stopped him and handed him over to the beadle … Hjalmar Spikehat … and now the cage was coming … chasing the bees in the fuselage, a serious offense … that’s what they were all talking about over there … Hjalmar with his pastor, chain and handcuff, and naturally the Russian servant girls and the village housewives, even our Kolonialwaren, and a lot of soldiers in French, Polish, and Kraut uniform … this thing with the pastor getting nabbed and the paddy wagon coming made them talkative … pros and cons … “If I were German Justice!” … that’s what these two tell us, Léonard and what’s-his-name … they fill us in … Hjalmar Spikehat only wears his saber on Sunday … okay … we look at the crowd over there … they must have come for coffee! … hot coffee at the kitchen door … I ask Léonard and Joseph what they think …