London Bridge

by Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Ministerrr! Ah! Careful! Look out!

  Look outteee! Careful!…

  Complete nonsense… Even so we had to find it funny!… Ah! Don’t look for trouble!… Don’t rub him the wrong way!… Ah! Careful!… Laugh, and from the belly while you’re at it!… Sosthène had to force himself!… Explode in his big guffaw… anything less and the Colonel would be miffed. Ah! Right away he’d put on a face… And then it was celery time… “Celery, my first… I crunch into my second, etc.” Finally, by way of wrap-up, he’d turn serious: spread wide the big pages of his Times and start reading… muttering over the articles… skimming over the hard news… didn’t really interest him, he jumped right to the ads… Sports… Holiday rentals… he read them in his low grumble… didn’t press the matter… while working himself up… the highlight of the event was the Obituary… When he reached this section, he’d adopt a new voice and tone… turned solemn… the notices in their black borders… deaths… he reviewed the list… the long columns labelled “Military Deaths…” “Death in Action…” he announced gravely.

  “Major John W. Wallory! 214th Rifles Brigade!”

  He runs through his mind, comes up blank…

  “Don’t know him!”

  Sharp salute, heels click under the table.

  “Captain Dan Charles Lescot! King’s Own Artillery… Don’t know him!…”

  Salute. Heels.

  “Lieutenant Lawrence M. Burck, Gibraltar Pioneer DCO. Oh! Knew his father at Sandhurst! No! Nigeria! Good man! Good man!…”

  And so on right down the columns… the names of the dead going on and on… all his former friends, their sons, cousins… everybody he’d known… And all those he didn’t… scattered in every corner of the globe… from Ascot to posts in the middle of nowhere!… From the backwaters of the Bermudas to the Hebrides!… Everywhere in the service and stripes of the Seventh Royal Engineers.

  When it was all over and done with, when he’d run through the whole tragic list… he proposed a toast to the King… So everybody up on your feet and join in, the kid too! Raise your glasses!…

  “Gentlemen! Ladies! Long live the King! And our gracious Queen Mary! And long live our General Haig! And long live your Joffre! Long live France! Rule Britannia!…”

  Glasses filled all around… Talk about an entente cordiale!…

  We finished up with actors… another big toast for that crowd!… To the glory of the glories of the theatre world!… To his personal memories!

  “Long live our Ellen Terry! Our glorious Keats!* Bravo for Sarah Bernhardt! Long live the Lady of the Camellias!…”

  Then we were free to go.

  *

  I didn’t act very curious. I asked next to nothing about how the experiments were going… like whether the masks were working smoothly? Or whether everything had been patched up?… Or whether they were sniffing correctly?… At any rate they’d stopped cursing each other out!… That was already a big improvement!… I didn’t hear them hollering at each other any more!… Just a lot of awful hammering… and streams of pressurized gas that came shooting out above the lawns, often all the way into the street… they had their breakfasts brought up to the lab… everything they put in their mouths was laced with Ferocious!… So they wouldn’t need to lose a single minute by coming down! They were in the full throes of creation, that’s how I sized up the situation… but I didn’t ask for any details! Any secrets!… The days went by, period!… I snored away the nights… or pretended to…

  I didn’t want Sosthène to talk to me… when he’d come back down after midnight… not a peep… or a single sigh… I was absolutely determined… my way of buying time!… That was the only thing on my mind!… I’d had enough of wacky projects… I wanted to make it to the end of the war without getting hanged or arrested!… That was my supreme ambition!… I didn’t even look at Virginia any more… not even when we were both at the table… I kept looking straight ahead… I’d just peek a little out the window… whenever she’d be walking through the gardens… She couldn’t see me… As it was I had a hell of a time with my buzzing ears, my throbbing arm, not to mention Matthew! And Claben! And the Leicester!… And my one-track mind about that crowd!… Plus my obsession with not sleeping ever again, and the Consulate, and Ten-Paw! I wasn’t going to let some all-consuming love do me in a second time!… Ah! No way, just hold on one second! If I dragged that poor little girl into some wild and crazy scrapes… other calamities would be sure to follow! My dick had got me into enough jams like this one!… These days I was scared of my shadow!… Nobody ever died of a broken heart!… But if you fuck up you’ve got hell to pay!… Horrendous consequences… kidnapping a young girl… etc.

  In England they’d throw you right behind bars!

  Buy some time… that was my one and only obsession!… To make it to the end of the war without getting hanged or arrested… just a few days’ time… one more!… One less!… I was counting them!… To escape from this hellhole!… Everything else will fall right in place by itself!… No more mushiness!… No more recklessness!… Keep my nose clean, act sensible… No more complications in my life!… I was really sucked dry… Kidnapping that innocent girl again… getting the Colonel on my ass, high morals, the courts!… The birdies out in the garden who lost their little girlfriend… I couldn’t get away from it!… Sure bet this was all plotted out beforehand… Was I falling back into the trap?… Ah! No way, uh-uh! Older and wiser! overnight!… Especially since my bout of delirium… that night at the Tweet-Tweet Club… It all came back to me something God-awful! The mere thought! Spooked the hell out of me… The memory gave me the shakes! I could flip out all over again… You bet the others were keeping their eyes on me… the old geezer and Sosthène… they were dying to catch me red-handed… That’s just the way this place operated… Ah! I was more and more suspicious!… Had to be I was funny in the head… inside, I mean, my notions, my grey matter… Ah! I knew the score… I saw blurry, and such pain… The hospital crew must have been gawking during my operation… must have left something inside… a small splinter… a metal sliver… right behind my ear… that’s where it hurt worst!… I could feel the splinter whenever I laid my head down to sleep… if I concentrated hard… It whistled and ached like hell!… My mind wasn’t playing tricks, this was real, excruciating agony, I’m telling it to you straight… got nothing to do with being excitable!… All you need is a little bitty taste to find out just what great joy it is to be some poor son of a bitch, a wanted man, battered by his own body, without a soul alive who gives a damn about you… including my idol, Virginia, with all her lovey-dovey ways, basically she just had one thing on her brain, her pussy, getting her jollies, wasn’t her fault!… Wasn’t anybody’s, all of us crazy to live life to the fullest, give it everything we got, and today not tomorrow, nobody has a single second to waste, on your feet or on your back, that’s the law of the world… There’s no room for lame ducks… can’t let them be a drag on our delights!… They’re just left with their imaginations, with beating their meat for all they’re worth, hunkering down, keeping a low profile…

  I was flat on my back, wide awake, my mind spinning… And here comes Sosthène barging in! It must have been just about midnight! He shakes me… wants to have a talk!… I play deaf!… dead!… He rocks my mattress, insists. “Tweet!” he goes to me… “Your ears working? Tweet!”

  He pinches my nose… my butt…

  Goddamn him!…

  “You asleep?” he asks…

  “You can see for yourself, idiot!”

  He flicks on the lights.

  In a total dither.

  “You’ve got to listen to me!… You’ve just got to!… This can’t go on!…”

  “What can’t go on, what?…”

  “You’ve got to help me!… You’ve got to!…”

  “What’s got into you?”

  “So you don’t want the Vegas any more?”

  “The Vegas?”

  Slipped my mind!…

  “You woke
me up for that?…”

  “But the Vegas are a matter of life and death! Mr Devil-May-Care! Including your own measly little life!… If that doesn’t matter to you!… There’s nothing more serious than the Vegas!… It’s worth being woken up over!…”

  “Oh, come on, you’re exaggerating!”

  “Exaggerating my ass! Do you understand that we go up against the competition on the fifteenth of this month? In two weeks?… Two weeks!… That’s all!… Do you feel ready?…”

  “Ready for what?”

  “Ready for the gases, for Christ’s sake!… Not for an audience with the Pope! Not to go butterfly-catching!…”

  “Ah! So you’re back to that, are you, Sosthène?”

  Ah! That jolts me awake! The brass of the guy!…

  “That’s your business!… I’ve got nothing to do with any gas!… So you just hold your horses!…”

  I baulk at the suggestion!…

  “Of course! Got it! Mr Not-My-Problem! Mr Hard-on! Mr Sweet-Nothings…”

  “Hard-on! Hard-on!… But not for you!”

  “Mr Homewrecker!… Mr Bewitches-Young-Virgins!”

  “Me!… Me!… Ah! I can’t believe this!… What nerve!”

  That bastard was infuriating me! All hell was going to break loose again any second now!…

  “That’s right! Mr Scumbag!” That’s what he called me… “You don’t even have the guts!…”

  Ah! Now that got under my skin!… What was he really driving at anyway?… “What’re you after, Sosthène?”

  “I want to find the flower!…”

  “Whose flower?”

  He comes up close… whispers: “You know which one, the Tara-Tohé…”

  Ah! He’d lost me there… this flower he’s mentioned… oh yeah, Tibet!… Slipped my mind!…

  “The Tara-Tohé?” Ah! I shouted out… “You wake me up over that, you faggot?”

  “I’ve got the right to defend myself!”

  “So go and look for it… and don’t be a pain in the ass to anybody!”

  I had as much as I could take of his silly crap!…

  He bursts into tears.

  “My old pal!…” He breaks down sobbing… “Don’t let me down, old pal!… I’ll never make it all alone!… If I don’t get that magic charm I’m a dead man!… You won’t do this to me!… You won’t!… Think about my wife! Think about Pépé! I care for her, you know!… You know her!… She’s a good old gal!… She loves me too!… Doesn’t treat me like shit!… How ungrateful you are at your age!…”

  “But what do you want?”

  “I don’t want to drop dead like some fly! I want to defend myself! You understand? I want to defend myself!… I believe in the Tara-Tohé!”

  “What do you believe?”

  “Just what I said, for crying out loud!… What you read!… Come on, damn it, you read it along with me!… Don’t you remember anything at all?… Your poor head!… Of course you’re in foreign territory!… But give me a break! Didn’t you look at the book? The pictures!… You’re just being stubborn, right?… No, hostile!… So you don’t want to help me? I can see you’re hostile!… You hid the book from me, didn’t you?… Where’d you hide it now? Where’d you stash it?…”

  Right away he starts getting wild ideas… spouting his crap! Picking a fight. He’s back to his old song and dance…

  “I believe in it, I do!… You hear me?… I’m a believer in the Tara-Tohé…” He was professing his faith to me!… His eyes whirling like mad in his sockets!…

  “I believe in it!… Where’d you stash the book?”

  His damn Vega was right under the bed!… My memory was still working! Way at the other end of the carpet… I had to cram my whole body under the bed… and yank the book out… more fucking bullshit!

  “Do you want it real bad?…” I ask him… “Huh, do you?”

  “Ah! You want to know whether I want it badly? Ah! How about that! Ah! Whether I want it badly?…”

  I was stark naked!… I’m busting my butt, groping around, crawling, I’ve got it!… What a huge monster this book is!… Thick as two-three telephone directories at least!… I lug the tome up… on top of the bed we crack it open… to the page with the incantations… presto it starts dancing before my eyes!… Swarming with colours!… People!… Too many!… Too bright!… My head’s in a whirl!… I rub my eyes!… I start feeling sleepy!… Shit!… I want to take a snooze!… To hell with his book!… I stretch out!… Ah! He’ll have none of that! He badgers me!…

  “Let’s go now! Where’d you put the drumsticks? Come on! Forget already?…”

  He wants me back on the job right away!… He can’t hold still…

  “Let’s go! Back to our dance, and I mean now!…”

  Ah! He’s possessed!… He’s making my head spin!…

  “Ah! What do you want? Shit! I’m sleeping!…”

  Can’t hear me… The birdbrain’s fixated on his plan!…

  “I’m telling you you’re going to start playing and right now!…”

  On top of everything else he’s bossing me around.

  He meant I should pick up my table setting… fork and knife… the ones I drummed with during our last go-around… like this: tap! tap! tap! Against my bed, the copper posts… my part… I’d stashed them in the closet… so the maid wouldn’t spot them…

  He doesn’t have a second to waste… he strips… stands stark naked… just like that, ready for dancing!… His whole body matted with red hair, especially his belly…

  “Aren’t you wearing a few strands on your head?” I joke.

  He was in fact as bald as an egg… Simple observation…

  “You’re not funny, Mr Kiss-and-Run! Not just anybody can go bald!… To go bald you need to have ideas!… Ah! And that excludes you!…”

  He flipped through the pages… looking for an example of his dance… “Ah! Here’s the Sohukool! All laid out for us!…”

  He cries out… happy as could be… filling me in!…

  “Sohukool’s the caged demon… the one obsessed with travelling around… the ‘cooped-up demon’, that’s just what we need!… We’re going to have to break him out!… That’s the task before us, my young lad!”

  I got a good look at his caged demon… huddled up behind the bars… that’s exactly what the illustration depicted… Sohukool was one ugly sucker… nicely drawn… gaudily coloured… one bored-to-death devil… splashed yellow, green and blue, with a tail that stuck way out… an enormous blue-and-yellow tail… reaching to the other side of the page… to really emphasize the gloominess!… A horrible scowl!… His mouth pushed up into his eyes… twisted all out of shape… contorted!… Because of his supreme ennui!… Sosthène underscored the point for me!… Nobody could suffer from boredom worse than the caged demon, Sohukool!… So read the caption… and we were supposed to break him loose with our incantations… shimmying around… a dance frenzy the book called it… And then afterwards from that moment on, in gratitude the demon would be our servant for life!… The demon Sohukool!… He’d travel with us everywhere… at our beck and call!… He’d fight for us to the end of time!… He’d fuck up all the other devils… all those who’d come to bust our balls on the magic route to Tibet!… Who’d want to snatch away the flower! The Tara-Tohé… all the devils for starters, then all the bandits!… And the high plateaux of Tibet were teeming with bandits!… The Himalayas are number one when it comes to thugs!… In the foothills… It was just like that!… No huts about it!… Sosthène was firmly convinced!… And the proof of his conviction was that he’d woken me up… and that he really meant business!…

  “So, OK now, let’s rehearse!…”

  Had to make every minute count!

  “He’s caged up!… Do you get the full picture? Surrounded by bandits!… Bandits and demons!… By now you’ve been concentrating!… Sheer determination!… Exerting yourself to the fullest… The emanation’s already flowing into you… You’re about to burst… Your mind’s on what you�
�re going to do!… The battle you’re about to wage! Right off you recognize Sohukool… The one with the yellow tuft!… Look!…”

  He had to stick my nose up close!… Into the drawing… In short I had to work myself up into a hallucination!… And make sure not to mix up tufts!… Oh, look out, hell to pay if I bopped Sohukool unconscious instead of some other devil!…

  “Ah! You be careful! Make sure you recognize him!… And make sure it’s him! And nobody else!… He’s got seven fingers on his left hand… the other devils just got five like everybody else!…”

  Simple as that, it’d be a real snap for me now!… Let’s hit it, on with the music!…

  “You see! Sharp raps!…”

  He showed me how with the fork, click click clack!… Like that on the copper frame…

  “A syncopated beat, got me? Syncopated!… Don’t start playing any old way! You’re in a crouch!… Then you rise to your feet!… First you bow! You salute me!… Every twenty click-clacks!… You’re doing me homage!… That’s what it’s called… homage!…”

  At the same time he’s looking at the picture, so we’ll both understand!…

  “You see? I do a right twist, follow with my neck, my head! Blink two, three times!… Are you catching on? Click! Click! Clack!… Both together!… I fire myself up! Get all hot and bothered! And then I launch into the adagio!… On point, theoretically… And you rap out the beat!… Clack! Clack! Click!… I do a few tumbles… a few more!… You see me coming!… Around the would-be cage… the demon… inside… Sohukool… I’ve got to hold my arms like this…”

  He showed me how the arms were in the illustration… crooked in half-circles… above his head… very graceful…

  “That’s the way I do my tumbles… Let’s rehearse!…”

  He starts going through the motions… stops short.

  “Ah! Pépé! My friend!… If you could have seen her on point!… Ah! For sheer charm, nobody else could even compare… A fairy dancing on point… a sylphid! Ah! I can’t hold a candle to her!… What ambience! Let’s go, my friend. Clack! Clack! Clack!…”

  Memories…

  I start rap-tapping… rap-tapping away… drumming hard the way he wants! Along the entire copper frame!… From top to bottom… He quivers, wiggles… but in the same spot… A far cry from the drawing… Ah! A far cry from its fiery passion!…