London Bridge

by Louis-Ferdinand Celine

  Our spirits perked back up. Virginia didn’t feel queasy any more. We just kept sitting there for a spell, chatting about this and that, taking in the panorama, quite a view, you get a pretty good look, through the picture window, the tiny box houses, the facing docks, the lock, the bridge, the hill… Immediately after comes the ruins of his former pub, the Dingby, the one that blew up. Nothing left but sections of beam, rubble, a heap of rubbish. He hadn’t cleared anything out yet. It’d gone down like a ship, collapsed into the mud and the drink. The Thames is a good three or four hundred yards deep in that spot. A splendid stretch of water! I feel like I’m off on another round, yapping yet again about this sumptuous spectacle out on the river, the port traffic, the steamers, the cargo ships toiling, spewing their mists, huff-puffing their way upriver, right alongside the banks, dodging the beacons, grazing the buoys, spiffy monsters, all decked out, circling with birds, seagulls and curlews, spinning out their souls, diving here, there, petals from the sky in the lapping wake. And the whole swarm of boats, the toiling small fry, dories, skiffs, officers’ dinghies, marine floats, pulling hard on the oars, sails hauling on, fancy-dancing, tossed from one eddy to another, butts slapping the water, charging to the moorings, the locks, rowing like mad, hopping, doing polkas, pirouetting! Dropping anchor and whirling, sparrows of the surf! The raw life of rivers! From my story you’ll guess that I’m not talking about some fragile little spell but awesome water-faring magic… And don’t go thinking in any way – how low it’d be – that I want to hex you, to blow pixie dust in your eyes, razzle-dazzle you in order to pull some double-cross… cook up some treacherous dizzy spell… hoodwink you… dimwit of the deeps… with visions of you floating down towards the sandy shores… whisking way out there, all bloated, on the Southend jetties… where dawn breaks… and the sea unfurls its waves… its long green hills… roars, swells, swoons… and sweeps everything away!

  O memories too poignant by half! All the grandeur, misery, cargos of the open sea! Dundee schooners! Cutters in the sea spray! The trade winds are dead! Dead, the magic! Into thin air the cavalry of surf! The carpet of tall, roaring waves! Farewell, rich pitch-coated Cardiffs, coal shovels boring through the foam! Farewell, mad jibs and spanker sails! Farewell, free wind-whipped wandering!… Let’s wail at the sea! Curl up! Ludicrous predicament! Crippled word-dog! Back to sleep! Back to your room! Everything’s fine this way! Each to his own riff-raff! Let’s wail over our hand compasses! Over the Sham Island quay, over the lost pub, where the fleet moors, over the deserted ships being refitted, over the rusty lock gates, one-eyed semaphores, downed masts! The race is run! Our predicaments, dead! Dead, the captain! Let’s kiss our service papers goodbye! Registered ghosts! Dockmaster of the port, at your service! Seagull, carry those roving souls off into the sky! Clouds, blot them out!…

  Ah! I’m off the deep end! Ah! I’m going to the dogs! Ah! I quiver-quake at the memories! Narcissus and those tendencies of his! Cast a longing gaze, you louse! Touch! Touch! Speak your heart! Making the most of the silence!

  Now where were we… the streetwalkers’ turf, our red-light pages…

  As I was saying – in a sort of mixed-up kind of way I’ll admit – we weren’t exactly hitting it off with Prospero…

  He thought I was a troublemaker with my plans, my crazy idea about picking up and sailing away! With the family! Without papers! Or a penny to my name! Plus an underage kid to boot!

  “Ah! You know what? You’re talking crime here!”

  His big conclusion.

  “Aren’t you the least little bit aware of that?”

  True, it was damn brave of me.

  “You mean you don’t see anything wrong?”

  Tough! Just tough! I kept hammering away. Finally he saw it my way all the same…

  “Well, look, if you had thirty-forty pounds… I’d tell you to go on over and see the Skipper… Jovil… on Cannon Street… sometimes he’s got a small transport… but not with your measly handful of change! Gramps and baby! What a chump! You’re not well! Don’t tell me you’re leaving granny behind?”

  I keep my cool. I’m not going to start bickering. We’ve all got to emigrate together. That was our agreement, end of story… Swear, cross our hearts, a deal. Sosthène stood behind me one hundred per cent. It suited him just great for us to beat it the hell out of here as far away as we could go.

  He wasn’t anxious to see the Colonel again… nor the workshop… nor the masks… It was just he wasn’t for slinking off like a pair of crooks. He wanted us to stop by Scotland Yard… polite and proper to the last… He wanted us to report to the summons. A real sucker’s idea. I make no secret of what I think, the suggestion’s outrageous. While I raked him over the coals, he acted dumb as a bunny, kept blinking his eyes.

  “You’ve got a screwy way of looking at things, sweetie!”

  Fact is his eyes were all gummed up… The daylight hurt him, that’s for sure… He wanted to eat more tripe, another helping, a plate with cabbage…

  The whole trip long, Virginia was the one having the best time. She had almost started to look herself again, laughing hard over the way we kept getting our signals crossed.

  “Ferdinand is awfully darling! He wants a boat for a penny!”

  I wanted a boat for a penny! A golliwog crew! That’s what sense she’d made out of this rigmarole!

  Rrrrreeee! Right that second! Sirens on the docks! A break! Three thirty! Come and get it! Ten, twelve, twenty more sirens ripping across both banks… screaming! Come and get it! Here they are in a flash! The mob! Charging! Chugging… youngsters out in front… oldsters grousing… hobbling… hacking… spitting… a mad rush… Chinamen first… Then Malaysians… passing through the door, piling in seats… British dockworkers in bowler hats… nonchalant sorts… blackened with coal dust… hairy torsos… tattooed hulks up from the mines, spitting in the open wind… First come first served… the huge stew pot! Three men shouldering it in on poles, hoist it onto the counter. Pieces from the bottom all rich succulent! Dig around! In no time, the huge joint is slurping gurgling from wall to wall, men sloshing back soup, choking with hunger. The young bucks holler out for more… The geezers grumble through their coughs, surly, spitting out curses…

  “Damned Prospero! Rascal! Dog! Man-eater! Thief!”

  He didn’t want to bring on the chow. All for a penny, complete with tea and every comfort. It didn’t take much. The slightest little thing lit their fuses, not just their ferocious appetites, who gets seconds first, but any reason at all, you name it. The least little ray of sunshine, the least little patch of blue was like the end of the world, firing their thoughts with visions of crime. Since normally they never got a good look at each other deep down in their fogs of coal dust, all of a sudden each man could see his buddy’s face… in the raw daylight… and saw a hideous, ugly mug… the sight made them yell square in each other’s noses.

  “Oh yeah! Look at your face! Christ! What a mess you got!”

  They found each other incredibly gross and grungy. They couldn’t stand each other in the sunlight… After two seconds, fists flew, blood spilled…

  “Man-eater! Man-eater! Cash! The bill! Greedy!” The whistle exploding from every direction! Sirens! Back to work! Everybody down in the holds! Mad hustle! Charging back! Rally to the winches! Boom! Bottleneck at the door! The mob gives way, oozes out, mashed between the flaps! The hard-luck cases, the oldest old-timers collapse… roll around, lie at the bottom of the ballast tank… snaking across the floor… puking up their grub… can’t get away with that in the ranks! The boatswain has his eye on you… and to the last straggler:

  “Shilling! Out! Move it! Lard-ass! Off the rosters!”

  Wasn’t fun and games as careers go. Sosthène had his own opinion.

  “I could never endure it! I couldn’t be a docker! I couldn’t get shoved around!”

  But then if you think for a second about the cops the other day, they treated him a whole lot worse. He’s just putting on airs.<
br />
  Prospero pops back in from the kitchen.

  “Tho then, everything OK?”

  “How much?”

  “One and thix!”

  He points to the waiter: “For him!”

  From us he doesn’t accept a penny. He sits down, we have a chat. The waiter leaves. The joint’s deserted. Right away I bring up the Dingby again, talk about the build-up to the big Ka-Boom! That unforgettable night! Of the fire! How had it exploded? I recalled the details. Boro hadn’t messed around! Just tossed it in, wham! How we’d all hotfooted it out of there! Ah! What a fast getaway! And Carmen, the old gal! The way she howled! The knife in her ass! Prospero had a laugh, or rather he forced one out. Didn’t dig my joke.

  “So it didn’t work out well?”

  I meant the insurance.

  “Did too! Did too! Just shut your face!…”

  I was being an ass on purpose… wouldn’t give up… the whole rigmarole… the build-up… the mad dash into the streets… Ah! He didn’t think I was funny!… Come on, laugh hard! Ah! He’ll open up a little, the stinking louse!… Where’d the men hole up? More questions… Jim Tickett the bookie?… Who got injured if I recall… and Gorgeous Jérôme, Mr Accordion?… And Slim Cossack? Where’d they all fly to? “Ah! those odd birds, my old boy! Ah! Galloping gunpowder! they wouldn’t run any faster over there with three hundred thousand Krauts on their asses! Take it from me! The truth! The war, Prospero! The war!”

  I was lording it over him. I wanted to push him over the edge. He’d refused to give me any hot leads, now I’d make him sweat his guts out. Sosthène opened his trap. He didn’t have a clue. And here I’d already filled him in about the Dingby business, the explosion, the bomb… over and over again!… But he didn’t believe a single word I said. He took me for a bullshit artist!… Now he stood there with his jaw on the floor because it was an absolute fact. If he’d known Claben, Delphine, the magical cigarettes, the catastrophe in his shop, well then, he would have felt like a real jerk, he would have got some small idea of what a real-life hex is all about, a real scary whammy, a genuine out-of-this-world event! Nothing to do with Goa grimaces, his Hindubious Brahman shimmy-twist. We weren’t all that far from Greenwich, about a mile or so down the river. I say river in English! The way other Frenchmen throw around their English yous!… It’s classier… I say you to you… It all ends in flames anyway, tu, vous, you, one day or another, it ends in ash or air, for you and thee, for he and we… when the evil whammy sweeps us all off, down the hatch, into the drink, into the fire… That’s the way the script was written, no getting away from it!

  I explained this all to Prospero. Sosthène lent an ear too. I told them both about the way magic works. A big boom!… Blow-up! And everything goes flying! That’s all that matters! The slightest excuse! Ba-boom!… Everything explodes! Lightning! The skies are loaded with it! Black magic is at work! I’d seen Prospero explode! I’d seen Claben explode! And there was more on the way! There’d be others! Still in full swing! Flanders was exploding like crazy! And a zillion skillion times harder! So that’s the whole story! Prospero’s joint, the Dingby, blew sky-high with the counter, all four walls! Because of a small little grenade, an egg! The entire dump had been totalled…

  “Ah! Geez, talk about funny! Don’t tell me you didn’t buy a new Pleyel?”

  I didn’t see any piano.

  “Have you seen Borokom again?”

  “Oh! I’m not looking for that guy!”

  It was his business after all… It was his joint Boro had totalled.

  In short, he clammed up.

  “Well!” I wrap up… “Shall we be on our way? You are going to let us leave?”

  “As you like…”

  Yet he was in the know… At least two men from the Leicester had shipped out thanks to him… stowaways… Before he joined up Victor had vouched for it himself… on a Greek freighter… Greek freighters were his special line… sailing boats too… La Plata… depending on the season… But for us it was no-go… he was dead set against! He even arranged leave-now-pay-later deals to America, I had the word – he advanced the thirty-five pounds and you refunded him the sum once you got on your feet, plus his piece of the action, 150 guineas… Never got stiffed even once, he was always paid back pronto… Meaning that he knew how to pick his people. But we didn’t interest him. A personal mental block, that’s all. We rubbed him the wrong way…

  “So you really don’t know of anything?”

  I took another shot, I wanted him to clue me in, was it yes or no, damn it! Let’s get this over with…

  “For all three of you, you mean?”

  “Of course!”

  “Right off the street, with no dough? No passport? You’re crazy, Ferdy!”

  “Looks to me you got the jitters!”

  “You cracked?”

  He points to my head…

  “Don’t you have any idea? Not even the tiniest little hint?”

  “Drop it!… Just drop it!… You’re a big baby, that’s what this is all about! You’re scared of the police!”

  Ah! The police…

  “Me, scared of the police?”

  What a cheap shot!

  “You little lamebrain! Show-off! War hero my balls! Zat’z wight! Zat’z wight!”

  He was starting to lisp… he was losing it…

  “Nyah! Nyah! Nyah!…”

  “You won’t make it past Tilbury! Not even Tilbury! Take zat from me! They scour everywhere! Zat’z wight! Everywhere! The hold! The upper deck! Dinghies! You won’t ethcape! The compath! The shitholthz! Get me? They even check out the rats!”

  I was keen on the idea anyway. I couldn’t care less about his excuses. “We’ve got to leave, I’m telling you! We’ve got to! You’ve got to give us a name!…”

  “Ah! Forget it! Eeeyouu! Eeeyouu clown!”

  He looks at the clock.

  “Jesus Christ! Jesus Christ! The patrol! Five o’clock! The patrol!”

  He snaps to… A distraction.

  “Don’t eeeyouuu know I’ve got to fermer! Go on, everybody, get the hell out of here!”

  “Ah! hey now, you call this polite! Now you’re insulting young ladies! Some manners!”

  “Shit! Shit! Shit!” he replies. Hopped up, at the boiling point!

  “Tough,” I go…

  We sit back down.

  But Virginia was motioning to me. She didn’t like arguments. Sosthène didn’t know how to act… I sat riveted to the spot… I took it all calmly.

  “We’re not leaving! Tra-la-la! We’re not leaving… You’re going to tell us where to find that pretty boat! Ho ho! Where your fine friends are loading their ship! Me! Me! Me!”

  Just like that, dumb as they come! Thick as a brick!

  “Shit! That’s my answer! Shit! Eeeyouuu get me, snotnose! Bum! Bed-wetter…”

  “We’re still not going anywhere! Not! Not! Not!”

  I bounce up and down on my butt, having a blast, bumping the bench, I won’t budge!… I pat myself on the back! Nyah! Nyah! I go…

  “Your patrol won’t eat us!”

  He saw I meant business.

  He sizes up the situation. Looks at us, then at the waterway out past the window panes… flowing along… the broad Thames… he looks at each of us in turn… distrustful… wondering whether he’ll be first to blink. He looks at the floor!… And then at my fists… he’s a squeaky customer, I’m on guard.

  My hands go to my pockets… feeling around… I act like I’m fishing for something… a charade…

  “Watch out for the bomb!” I shout…

  Horsing around!

  He jumps back… he’s nuts!

  “Fer… Fer… Ferdinand!” he stammers…

  Eyes as big as saucers… frozen to the spot… choking on his words… I open my fists for him… empty…

  “In your seat, sucker…”

  Everybody laughs. I set his mind at rest… He makes an effort…

  “Get the hell out!…”

&nbs
p; He sits down, his legs turned to putty! Such a fit! The idiot! Shit-scared real bad! Over nothing!

  “OK, OK!” I go. “We’ll clear out! Just tell us which ship… and we’ll beat it!…”

  I’m being a sport about it.

  If he says nothing I’ll start up again, concoct some new trick, I’ll turn his life into a living hell!…

  “Knock off the mule act! The name of a ship! You know plenty, damn it! So out with it!”

  He hems and haws! He nods!

  “Come on! Open up! Don’t play with yourself!… Talk! It’s five o’clock!”

  “Out! Out! You bastards!”

  He’s throwing us out the door again.

  “No! No! Prospero! Don’t be mean! I’ll throw a real bomb! It doesn’t do you any good!”

  I pretend to search myself again.

  He’s beside himself.

  “Out! Out!”

  “Slip us a name! And we’ll disappear!… We’ll never set eyes on you again! So there, a deal?”

  He splutters… sniffles… doesn’t know what to do…

  “But you don’t have a red cent! Where you going?”

  “America!”

  “Just like that?”

  “You said it!”

  Nothing’s stopping us.

  “Didn’t Jujube leave just like that? And Lulu Puce? And Villemombe? So don’t go saying it’s impossible! Monsieur Prospero! You’re completely in the know! It’s just that you don’t want to cough up! Signor Prospero! You’re holding out on us!”

  I work him over like Matthew, I give him the third degree. He’s all confused. He gets up… plops back down… splutters some crap… clams up… suddenly snaps to! Frantic! Then he cuts the cheese… an enormous fart… reverberating… echoing… he just sits there like a dumb jerk… out of it… on the bench… staring at all of us… hard…

  I’m embarrassed in front of Virginia… the filthy pig…

  Sosthène busts out laughing. Weird reaction!