Journey to the End of the Night

by Louis-Ferdinand Celine

  To change the subject a bit, as we roamed around the room, I started talking about women. He didn’t think much of women.

  “You know,” he said, “I can get along fine without women, their big asses, their fat thighs, their rosebud lips, their bellies that always have something growing in them, if it’s not a brat it’s a disease … Their smiles won’t pay your rent for you! Take me in my pad; if I had a woman, it wouldn’t do me a bit of good to show the landlord her ass on the fifteenth of the month, he wouldn’t reduce the rent! …”

  Robinson had a thing about independence. He said so himself. But Martrodin was getting sick of our private conversation, our little plots in the corner.

  “Robinson, dammit, the glasses!” he sings out. “Do you expect me to wash them for you?”

  Robinson starts up.

  “You see,” he informs me. “I’m filling in here.”

  It was carnival time all right. Martrodin was having a hard time counting up the take, it was getting on his nerves. The Arabs left except for the two who were still dozing by the door. “What are they waiting for?”

  “The barmaid,” says Martrodin.

  “How’s business?” I asked to be saying something.

  “Pretty fair … But it’s not easy! See, doctor, I bought this place for sixty thousand before the crash. I’d need to get at least two hundred out of it … See what I mean? … It’s true, the place is full, but it’s mostly Arabs … And those people don’t drink … They haven’t caught the habit yet … Poles is what I need … Take it from me, doctor, the Poles are drinkers … In the Ardennes where I was before, I had Poles, they worked in the enameling ovens, get the idea? … Those ovens really heated them up! … That’s what we need here! … Thirst! … On Saturdays they spent everything they had! … Christ! That was something! Their whole pay! Bing! … These greasers here aren’t interested in drinking, they’re more interested in buggering each other … It seems drinking’s prohibited by their religion and buggery isn’t …” Martrodin had it in for the Arabs. “A bunch of perverts! It seems they even do it to my barmaid! … They’re fanatics! … Crazy way to behave! Doctor, I ask you …”

  With his stubby fingers Martrodin squeezed the little serous pouches he had under his eyes. “How are your kidneys doing?” I asked him when I saw him doing that. I was treating him for his kidneys. “I hope you’ve cut out the salt at least.”

  “There’s still some albumen, doctor. I had the pharmacist analyze it only the other day … Oh, I don’t care if I conk out, from albumen or something else, what bugs me is working the way I do … for practically nothing …”

  The barmaid had finished washing her dishes, but her bandage had got so greasy I had to change it … She held out a five-franc note. I didn’t want to accept her five francs, but she insisted. Her name was Severine.

  “Why, Séverine,” I observed. “You’ve had your hair cut.”

  “Had to,” she says. “It’s the style. And besides, with the cooking in this place, long hair picks up all the smells …”

  “Your ass smells a damn sight worse!” Martrodin breaks in. Our chatter was interfering with his accounts. “And it doesn’t keep your customers away …”

  “Yes, but it’s not the same thing,” says Séverine, who was good and mad. “Every part has its own smell … And look here, boss, you want me to tell you what you smell like … Not just one part, all over?”

  Severine was really worked up. Matrodin didn’t want to hear the rest. He just grumbled and went back to his wretched accounts.

  Séverine’s feet were so swollen from the day’s work that she couldn’t manage to get out of her felt slippers and into her shoes. She prepared to leave in her slippers.

  “I’ll sleep all right with them on,” she finally said aloud.

  “Go put the light out in back!” Martrodin ordered her. “Anybody could guess that you don’t pay the light bills.”

  “I’ll sleep all right,” Severine repeated with a sigh, as she was getting up.

  Martrodin was still at his accounts. To reckon better he’d taken off his apron, then his vest. He was sweating blood. From the invisible depths of the bar we could hear a clatter of saucers, that was Robinson and the other dishwasher at work. Martrodin was tracing his big childish numbers with a blue pencil squeezed between his thick murderer’s fingers. In front of us the barmaid was dozing, sprawled all over her chair. Now and then she’d regain a spark of consciousness in her sleep.

  “Oh, my feet! Oh, my feet!” she’d say and fall back into her dose.

  But then Martrodin woke her with a yell.

  “Hey, Séverine! Get your greasers out of here! I’m sick of them! … Clear out, the whole lot of you, Christ almighty! It’s time!”

  The Arabs didn’t seem to be in any hurry at all in spite of the hour. Severine finally woke up. “It’s true I gotta go,” she finally agreed. “Thanks, boss.” She took both greasers along with her. They had joined forces to pay her.

  “I’ll do them both tonight,” she told me as she was leaving. “ ’Cause next Sunday I won’t be able to on account of I’m going to Achères to see my kid. ’Cause next Saturday is visiting day.”

  The Arabs got up and followed her. They didn’t seem the least bit insolent. Still, Severine looked at them kind of dubiously because she was so tired. “I don’t agree with the boss,” she says. “I like greasers better. Arabs aren’t brutal like Poles, but they’re perverts … Boy, are they perverts! … Well, let ’em do what they please, I don’t think that’ll keep me from sleeping!”—“All right, boys!” she called them. “Let’s go!”

  Off they go, all three, she a step or two ahead of them. We saw them cross the square, littered with the wreckage of the carnival, the last gas lamp at the end whitened their group for an instant, and then the night took them in. We heard their voices for a while and then nothing at all. There was nothing left.

  I left the bistrot without talking to Robinson again. Martrodin bade me a polite good night. A policeman was pacing the boulevard. In passing each other we stirred up the silence. Here and there the sound startled a shopkeeper bogmired in his aggressive figuring, like a dog gnawing a bone. A family on a bender filled the whole street, yelling on the corner of the Place Jean-Jaures. They weren’t getting ahead at all, they stood at the end of an alley, hesitating to go in, like a fishing fleet in a gale. The father went stumbling from one side of the street to the other and couldn’t seem to stop urinating.

  The night had come home.

  I remember another night about that time because of what happened. First, shortly after dinnertime, I heard an enormous sound of garbage cans being moved. People often made a racket with the garbage cans in my stairway. Then a woman moaning, sighing. I opened my door a crack, but I didn’t move.

  If I came out after an accident without being called, they’d probably think of me as a helpful neighbor, and my medical assistance wouldn’t have to be paid for. If they wanted me, they’d just have to send for me officially, and then it would cost them twenty francs. Poor people persecute altruism implacably, meticulously, and the kindest impulses are punished without mercy. So I waited for someone to ring my bell, but no one came. For reasons of economy no doubt.

  I had almost stopped waiting when a little girl appeared at my door, trying to read the names on the bells. As it turned out, she was looking for me. Madame Henrouille had sent her. “Who’s sick?” I asked.

  “A gentleman. He’s hurt himself …”

  “A gentleman?” I thought of Henrouille himself.”

  “The husband? … Monsieur Henrouille?”

  “No … A friend, but he’s in their house …”

  “Somebody you know?”

  No, she’d never seen this friend.

  It was cold out, the child ran, I walked fast.

  “How did it happen?”

  “I don’t know.”

  We skirted a small park, the remains of an old fores
t, where at night the long, slow winter mists would catch between the trees. One little street after another. We soon came to the house. The child didn’t say good-bye to me, she was afraid to go nearer. Madame Henrouille, the daughter-in-law, was standing on the front steps under the awning, waiting for me. Her oil lamp was flickering in the wind.

  “This way, doctor … This way …” she called out.

  “Has your husband hurt himself?” I asked her.

  “Go right in!” she said rather brusquely, without even giving me time to think. I ran smack into the old woman, who began to yap and light into me while I was still in the hallway. A broadside.

  “Oh, the monsters! The bandits! Doctor! They tried to kill me!”

  So they’d come a cropper.

  “Kill you?” I said with an air of surprise. “Why would they want to do that?”

  “Because I was taking too long to die! Use your brains, dammit! Naturally I don’t want to die!”

  “Mother! Mother!” the daughter-in-law broke in. “You’ve taken leave of your wits! How can you say such awful things to the doctor!”

  “Awful things, is it? Well, you slut, you’ve got an all-fired nerve! Taken leave of my wits, have I? I’ve got wits enough to see the whole lot of you hanged! Believe you me!”

  “But who’s hurt? Where is he?”

  “You’ll see who!” the old woman puts in. “The murderer! He’s upstairs on their bed! A fine mess he’s made of your bed, you hussy! Got his no-good blood all over your mattress! His blood, not mine! What filthy rotten blood that must be! You won’t wash that out in a hurry! Take it from me, that murderer’s blood will stink for a long time to come! Some people go to the theater for excitement! Not us, we’ve got a theater right here! It’s upstairs, doctor! Real theater, no make-believe. Don’t miss it! Hurry hurry! Maybe the dirty dog will be dead before you get there! And then you won’t see a thing!”

  The daughter-in-law tried to hush her up, for fear she’d be heard on the street. In spite of the situation, the daughter-in-law didn’t seem terribly upset, only put out that their scheme had misfired, but her opinions were unchanged. In fact she was dead sure she’d been right.

  “Oh doctor, listen to her! Isn’t it shameful! When I’ve always tried so hard to make her life pleasant! You know that! Didn’t I keep urging her to go and stay with the Sisters …”

  Hearing about the Sisters again was too much for the old woman.

  “To Paradise! Yes, you slut, that’s where you all wanted to send me! Oh, you bandits! That devil upstairs! That’s why you and your husband brought him here! To kill me, that’s right, not to send me to any Sisters! He botched it, the man’s all thumbs if you ask me! Go on, doctor, go and see what that bastard upstairs has done to himself, oh yes, him and nobody else! … I hope he croaks! Go on, doctor! Go see him before it’s too late!”

  If the daughter-in-law didn’t seem dejected, the old woman was even less so. The plot had almost wiped her out, but she wasn’t as indignant as she put on. It was all an act. Actually that bungled murder had revived her, raised her up from the creeping tomb she’d been shut up in all those years at the back of the moldering garden. Late in life an indestructible vitality had come back and was running through her veins. She was indecently relishing not only her victory but also the prospect of having something to torment her mean-hearted daughter-in-law with for the rest of her life. She had her where she wanted her now. She was bent on my knowing every detail of the miscarried plot and how it had all happened.

  “And do you know where I met that murderer?” she went on in the same exalted register, especially for my benefit. “In your waiting room! … That’s right, doctor, and I didn’t trust him! … I didn’t trust him this far! … Do you know what he first suggested to me? He wanted to bump you off, you bitch! That’s right, you slut! And cheap too! I assure you! He has the same propositions for everybody! It’s common knowledge! … So you see, you hussy, I know how he makes his living! I know all about him! His name is Robinson! … Deny it if you dare! … Tell me that’s not his name! … As soon as I saw him whispering in corners with you two, I had my suspicions … And a good thing too! … If I hadn’t been suspicious, where’d I be now?”

  Over and over again the old woman told me how it had all happened. The rabbit had moved while he was fastening the fireworks to the door of the hutch. Meanwhile she had been watching him from her shack, she’d had a “ringside seat,” as she put it. The contraption was loaded with buckshot … it had gone off in his face while he was connecting it up, right in his eyes. “A man’s not easy in his mind when he’s plotting murder,” she concluded. “What would you expect?”

  Anyway, for butter-fingered incompetence, it took the cake.

  “That’s what they’ve done to men lately,” the old woman went on. “That’s right! Matter of habit! They have to kill to eat! They’re not satisfied anymore to steal their daily bread! … Or kill their grandmothers! … Nobody’s ever seen anything like it! … Never! … It’s the end of the world! … Wickedness is all they’re good for! And you now! Up to your necks in it! … And him gone blind! You’ll have him on your hands for the rest of your days! …What do you think of that? … Him and his slimy tricks! …”

  The daughter-in-law didn’t say a word, but she must have worked out her plan. She was a really concentrated villain. While we were busy with our reflections, the old woman went looking through the rooms for her son.

  “And you know, doctor, I have a son! Where’s he got to? What’s he up to now?”

  She staggered down the corridor, shaken by nonstop laughter.

  Old people don’t usually laugh so hard except in the bughouse. When you hear a thing like that, you wonder what the world’s coming to. She was bent on finding her son. He’d escaped into the street. “All right, let him hide! He can live forever for all I care! Now he’ll have to live with that scum upstairs, serves him right, live with the two of them, including our friend who’ll never see again! And support him! Hee hee! Square in the face! I saw it! I saw it from start to finish! Boom boom! I saw it all right! And it wasn’t a rabbit, I assure you! Damn it all, doctor, where’s my son? Haven’t you seen him? There’s another dirty dog, always been even deeper than her, but now finally the viciousness of his crummy character has come out, oh yes, it’s come out all right. It takes, a long time for a low character like his to come out! But when it does, it’s rotten to the core! You can’t deny it, doctor! Something worth seeing!” She was having a fine time. She wanted to impress me with her superiority to the situation and to confound us all, to humiliate us, so to speak.

  She had hit on a good role and was working it for all it was worth. An emotional binge. Which is always a pleasure. There’s no limit to our happiness as long as we’re capable of playing a part. She was sick of old folks’ jeremiads, the only part she’d been given in the last twenty years. She’d never let go of this new, virulent, unhoped-for role that had come her way. Old age means not having a passionate role to play anymore, seeing your theater fold up on you, so there’s nothing but death to look forward to! All of a sudden the old woman’s zest had come back to her with her new and ardent role: the avenger. She didn’t want to die anymore, not in the least. She radiated the desire to live, the affirmation of life. In melodrama she had found new fires, real fire.

  She was warming herself, she had no desire to leave the new fire, to leave us. For a long while she had almost ceased to believe there was any fire. She hadn’t known what to do to stop herself from dying at the back of her dim-witted garden. And then suddenly this tempest of hard hot reality had hit her.

  “My death!” Grandma Henrouille was shrieking now. “That’s something I want to see! Do you hear! I’ve still got my two eyes! I want to get a good look at it!”

  She never wanted to die! Never! That was definite! She had stopped believing in her death.

  Everybody knows that such situations are hard to manage and that managing them is
always very expensive. In the first place we didn’t even know where to put Robinson. In the hospital? Obviously that would make for loose tongues, all sorts of gossip … Send him back to his pad? … Unthinkable, with his face in that condition. Like it or not, the Henrouilles had to keep him.

  He lay in bed upstairs, in a pitiful state. He was terrified of being thrown out and prosecuted. Not hard to see why. It was one of those things that you really can’t tell anyone about. We kept the blinds in his room carefully drawn, but people, the neighbors, started passing through that street more often than usual, just to look up at the shutters and ask for news of the injured man. We gave them news all right, we told them fairy stories. But how were we to stop them from smelling a rat? From gossiping? Besides, they embroidered on what we told them. How could we stop them from speculating? Luckily nobody had gone to the law. That was something. As far as his face was concerned, I was doing all right. The wound was very jagged and a lot of dirt had got into it, but no infection had set in. As for his eyes, I foresaw scars in the corneas, through which light would pass with difficulty, if at all.

  We’d manage to patch up some sort of eyesight if there was anything left to patch. For the moment we’d concentrate on what was most urgent, above all we’d have to prevent the old woman from getting us all into trouble with her horrible yapping in front of the neighbors. True, most of them thought she was mad, but that doesn’t always account for everything.

  If the police really started prying, God knew where it would lead us. Preventing the old woman from making a spectacle of herself in her little yard had become a ticklish business. We all took turns trying to calm her down. It was no good if she thought we were browbeating her, but gentleness didn’t always work very well either. In a frenzy of vindictiveness, she was blackmailing us, neither more nor less.