Death on the Installment Plan

by Louis-Ferdinand Celine

  All this restored my mother’s confidence … a good omen … She was particularly fond of flannel vests … they indicated solidity of character, she’d never gone wrong. After fond farewells, she gradually started on her way … For the first time in her life and mine I think she was a little less worried about my future and my fate.

  It was perfectly true that I threw myself into my work. From morning to night I had no chance to loaf … In addition to my cargoes of printed matter, I had the Enthusiast in the cellar, the endless mending, and our pigeons that I had to look after two or three times a day … Those critters lived all week in the maid’s room on the seventh floor, under the eaves … They cooed like, mad … They never felt gloomy. Their working day was Sunday, they’d be taken out in a basket for a ride in the balloon … At six or eight hundred feet Courtial would raise the lid … They’d be released … with messages … They’d all fly straight home … to the Palais-Royal! … The window’d be left open for them … They never dawdled on the way, they didn’t care for the country, they didn’t like to bum around … They flew back automatically … They loved their attic and their roo-coo-crooing. That’s all they wanted. It never stopped … They were always home before us. I’ve never known pigeons less enthusiastic about traveling, so enamored of peace and quiet … And I left their windows wide open … It never occcurred to them to take a turn around the garden … to go calling on the sparrows … or the fat gray cooers gallivanting on the lawns … around the fountains … and once in a while on the statues … on Desmoulins * … or old Vick * … dropping their beauty marks … Not at all … they kept to themselves … they were perfectly happy in their attic, they left it only under duress, when they were tossed into their basket … They were pretty expensive though, on account of the grain … It takes quantities, pigeons eat a lot … They’re pigs … you wouldn’t expect them to eat so much … it’s on account of their high body temperature, normally 107 and a few tenths … I swept up their droppings carefully … I made several little piles along the wall and I let them dry … That made up some for their food … It was excellent fertilizer … When I had a whole sack full, about twice a month, Courtial took it away, he used it in his garden … in Montretout on the hill … where he had his tony villa and his experimental garden … there’s no better manure …

  I got along fine with the pigeons, they reminded me a little of Jongkind … I taught them tricks … Naturally after they got to know me, they ate out of my hand … But I did a lot better than that, I got them to perch on a broomstick, all twelve of them at once … I even managed to carry them down to the shop … and back up again without their moving, without a single one of them deciding to fly away … They were really sedentary. When it came time to throw them in the basket and push off, they got terribly sad. They didn’t coo at all. They hid their heads in their feathers. They hated it.

  Two more months passed … Little by little Courtial gained confidence in me. He was convinced that we were made to get along … I had a lot of advantages, I wasn’t very particular about food or pay or working hours … I never complained … As long as I was free in the evening, as long as nobody bothered me after seven o’clock, I felt I was well off …

  From the moment he lit out for his train, I was the one and only boss of the shop and paper … I got rid of the inventors … I soft-soaped them … then I started out on a cruise, often heading for the shipping office on the rue Rambuteau, pulling the cart loaded with copies of the rag. At the beginning of the week I had to bring back proofs, the typos and plates and engravings. What with the pigeons, the Enthusiast, and a million other odds and ends, there was never a letup … He dropped everything and pushed off for the sticks … He had urgent work out there, so he said. Hm! Neo-agriculture … he said it with a straight face … but I was convinced it was hokum … Sometimes he forgot to come back, he’d stay out for two or three days … that didn’t worry me … I’d take a little rest, I needed it … I’d feed the pigeons up in the attic, then I’d paste up a sign in the middle of the shopwindow: “Closed for the day” … I’d go take it easy on a bench, under the trees nearby … From there I watched the joint, the people coming and going … I saw them in the distance, always the same gang of dopes, the same lunatics, the same haggard faces, the old crowd of bellyachers, the disgruntled subscribers … They bunked into the sign, they massacred the door handle, they beat it … That was fine with me.

  When his nibs came back from his spree, he had a screwy look … He eyed me curiously to see if I suspected anything …

  “I was detained,” he said. “The experiment wasn’t quite perfected … I thought I’d never be through.”

  “That’s too bad,” I said. “I hope you made out all right in the end …”

  Little by little he filled me in, he told me a little more each day, he gave me all the details about the beginnings of his racket … There were some pretty wild stories, gimmicks that could end you in the cemetery. How it had started, the ups and downs, the risky dodges, the shady little deals … He told me the whole story, which was pretty strange when you think of his rotten character, his innumerable suspicions, and all his calamities and hard luck … He wasn’t the complaining kind … But the troubles and messes he’d been through were unbelievable … It was no rest cure monkeying around with inventors … Don’t get the wrong slant … Oh no. Some of those boys were real savages, absolutely diabolical … they’d go off like dynamite if they felt they’d been taken … And naturally you can’t hope to please everybody … the devil and his brother-in-law! That would be too sweet. I knew something about that myself … In that connection he gave me an example of malice that was really hair-raising … The lengths people will go to … In 1884 he’d got an order from Beaupoil and Brandon on the Quai des Ursulines, the publishers of Epoch, for a textbook intended for the second program of the Preliminary Schools … A concise work, of course, but carefully executed, elementary but compact. Specially condensed … The Home Astronomer, the little book was entitled, with the subtitle: Gravitation, explained to the whole family. So he goes to work … He dives right in … he might have contented himself with delivering a brief work on the specified date, a hurry-up job full of inept borrowings from foreign periodicals … slapdash, corrupt, garbled quotations, and in three shakes of a lamb’s tail constructed a new cosmogony a thousand times lousier than all the other miniature handbooks, full of mistakes and absolutely senseless! … Utterly useless! … As everyone knew, that wasn’t Courtial’s way of doing things. He was conscientious. His chief concern when he sat down to a piece of work was to get tangible results … He wanted his reader to form his own ideas in person, by his own observations … about the most essential aspects of the work … the stars and gravitation … to discover the laws for himself … He wanted to force the always indolent reader to do real laboratory work and not just cajole him with flattering flimflam … He’d appended a little set of instructions: how to build a “family telescope” … A few squares of cardboard provided the darkroom … a few cheap mirrors … an ordinary lens … a few lengths of pliable wire … a cardboard packing tube … By strictly following the instructions you could do it for seventeen francs, seventy-two (reckoned to the centime) … for that price (in addition to the exciting and instructive work) you could obtain in your own home, not only a direct view of the principal constellations, but also photographs of most of the large stars of our zenith … “All sidereal observations made available to the family” … that was his formula … As soon as the booklet came out, more than twenty-five thousand readers started without a moment’s delay to build the thing, the marvelous miniature photosidercal device…

  I can still hear des Pereires telling me about all the trouble that ensued … The incomprehension of the competent authorities … their abject partiality … How painful, rotten, sickening it all was … All the libels he had received. Threats … Challenges … A thousand threatening letters … Summonses … How he’d been obliged to lock himself in, ba
rricade himself in his apartment! … He’d been living on the rue Monge at the time … Then, more and more harassed, he’d fled to Montretout from the rage of all those insatiable, vicious peeping toms, disappointed by telescopy … The mess had gone on for six months … and it still wasn’t over! Some of those angry stargazers, even pestier than the rest, would take advantage of their Sunday off … They’d come out to Montretout, they’d bring the whole family, to kick the boss in the ass … He hadn’t been able to receive any visitors in almost a year … This “photo-sidereal” business was only a small example among many others of how the masses were capable of reacting the minute you tried to educate them, to uplift them, to wise them up …

  “I can tell you, Ferdinand, that I’ve suffered for science … Worse than Flammarion, that’s certain! worse than Raspail! worse even than Mongolfier! * On a small scale, of course … I’ve done everything! And then some!” He used to repeat that often … I didn’t answer … He gave me a sidelong look … suspicious … he wanted to see the impression he was making … Then he’d dive right into the chaos … looking for his file … He’d locate it by instinct under the enormous mound … He’d pat the dust off it … He’d change his mind … He’d cautiously open it up in front of me …

  “When I think it over, I’m sorry … Maybe I too have become a trifle bitter, carried away by memories … Perhaps I’m a little unjust … Good Lord. I’ve reason enough … I ask you! In the course of time I’ve forgotten … that was very wrong of me … not intentionally, to be sure! not intentionally! … the most touching, perhaps the most sincere, the most precious testimonials … Ah! They haven’t all failed to appreciate me! … The whole human race isn’t so absolutely depraved … No! A few noble souls here and there in the world … have been able to recognize my absolute good faith. Here! Here! And still another!” He pulled out letters and memoranda at random from his collection … “I’ll read you one among many”:

  Dear Courtial, honored master and revered precursor: It is assuredly thanks to you, to your admirable and so scrupulous telescope (for the family) that yesterday at two o’clock on my own balcony I was able to view the whole moon, in its complete totality, with its mountains, its rivers, and even I believe, a forest … Perhaps even a lake! I hope to see Saturn too with my children in the course of the coming week, as it is indicated (in italics) on your “sidereal calendar” and also Bellegophorus a little later, in the last days of the autumn, as you yourself have written on page 242 … Yours, dear, gracious, and benevolent master, yours in heart, body, and spirit, here below and in the stars.

  One who has been transformed.

  He kept all these admiring letters in his mauve and lavender portfolio. As for the others, unfavorable, menacing, draconic, vicious, he burned them on the spot. In this connection at least, he kept a certain amount of order … “The poison’s going up in smoke.” he told me every time he touched a match to one of those monstrosities … How much evil would be eliminated if everybody did the same. My idea is that he wrote the favorable ones himself … He showed them to visitors … He never actually admitted it to me … Now and then I smiled … There was a certain restraint in my approval … He half-suspected that I smelled a rat. Then he’d scowl at me … I’d go up to feed the pigeons or I’d go down to the Enthusiast …

  By now I was laying his bets for him at the Insurrection on the corner of the Passage Radziwill. He preferred for me to do it on account of the customers, it could have been bad for business … On Cartouche and Lysistrata in the Vincennes gallops … and giddyup and away we go!

  “You’ll tell them it’s your own sugar.” … He owed all the bookies money. He had no desire at all to show his face … The character that took most of our bets between the saucers had a funny name, he was called Formerly … He had a way of stuttering, of garbling the names of the winners … He did it on purpose, I think, to give you a wrong steer … Afterwards he’d deny everything … He’d want to skip the number … I always made him write it down … we lost anyway.

  I’d bring back the Turf Echo or Racing Luck … If he’d lost heavily, he had the crust to give me hell … He sent all the inventors away … He threw them all out with their models and diagrams … “Go wipe your ass, the whole lot of you. Those blueprints stink … You got a headache? … They smell of axle grease, margarine … You call that ideas? Innovations? Hell, I can piss better ideas than that … a whole potful! … three times a day … Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? Don’t you realize? … It’s a disaster! You have the gall to bring that stuff here? To me? When I’m up to my neck in crap already … Get out of here! Christ! You lounge lizards! You loafers in body and soul! …”

  The guy would leave all right, he’d run for the door, he’d fly with his roll of plans. Courtial was fed up with them. He wanted to think of something else … I was the scapegoat, he started in on me … any old baloney would do … “You, naturally, you suspect nothing! You have time to listen to everything! You’ve got nothing to do, is that it? … But I’m not exactly in that position … I can’t look at things that way … I have preoccupations … metaphysical preoccupations! … Permanent! Ineluctable! That’s right! They leave me no rest! Never! Even when I don’t show it! When I’m talking to you about one thing and another, I’m haunted … harassed … tormented by riddles! … Well, there you have it! You didn’t know! It comes as a surprise to you? You never suspected it?”

  He stared at me again as if he hadn’t ever really placed me … He straightened out his moustaches, he dusted off the dandruff … He went for a rag to pass over his shoes … All the while telling me what he thought of me …

  “What can it matter to you? You just drift along. You don’t give a good goddamn about the universal consequences that can flow from our most trifling acts, our most unforeseen thoughts … It’s no skin off your ass … You’re caulked … hermetically sealed … Nothing means anything to you … Am I right? Nothing. Eat! Drink! Sleep! Up there as cozy as you please … All warm and comfy on my couch … You’ve got everything you want … You wallow in well-being … the earth rolls on … How? Why? A staggering miracle … how it moves … the profound mystery of it … toward an infinite unforeseeable goal … in a sky all scintillating with comets … all unknown … from one rotation to the next … Each second is the culmination and also the prelude of an eternity of other miracles … of impenetrable wonders, thousands of them, Ferdinand! Millions! billions of trillions of years! … And you? What are you doing in the midst of this cosmologonic whirl? this vast sidereal wonder? Just tell me that! You eat! You fill your belly! You sleep! You don’t give a damn … That’s right! Salad! Swiss cheese! Sapience! Turnips! Everything! You wallow in your own muck! You loll around, befouled! Glutted! Satisfied! You don’t ask for anything more! You pass through the stars … as if they were raindrops in May! … God, you amaze me, Ferdinand! Do you really think this can go on forever? …”

  I didn’t say a word … I had no set opinion about the stars or the moon, but I had one about him, the bastard. And the stinker knew it.

  “Take a look some time in the little cabinet upstairs. Put them all together. I’ve received at least a hundred such letters. I wouldn’t want them to be stolen … There’s an idea, why don’t you file them? … You like order so much … you’ll get a kick out of it …” I saw through him … He was handing me a line … “You’ll find the key on top of the gas meter … I’m going out for a while … you can close up …” He changed his mind. “No, you’d better stick around in case somebody comes in. Tell them I’ve gone away … far away! far far away! on an expedition … Tell them I’ve gone to Senegal! Pernambuco! Mexico! … any place you like … Christ, I’ve had enough for today! … It turns my stomach to see them coming in from the gardens … I’ll puke if I see one more of them … Hell, I don’t care … Tell them anything you please … Tell them I’ve gone to the moon … that it’s no use waiting … And now open up the cellar … Hold the lid properly! Don’t let it fall back on my
head the way you did last time … I bet you did it on purpose …”

  To those words I made no reply … He stepped into the hole. He went down two three rungs … He waited a moment. Then he said …

  “You’re not a bad kid, Ferdinand … your father’s mistaken about you. You’re not bad … You’re unformed, that’s it … pro-to-plas-mic! What month are you, Ferdinand? What month were you born in, I mean! February? September? March?”

  “February, maître!”

  “I’d have bet five francs on it. February! Saturn! What’s going to become of you! Poor devil! Why, it’s insane! Well, anyway, lower the trap. When I’m all the way down. All the way, see? Not before! And have me break both my legs. This ladder’s a wreck! it sags in the middle! … I should have repaired it long ago … Let her go! …” He went on shouting from deep down in the cellar … “Whatever happens, don’t let anybody in! No pests! No drunks! You hear me, I’m not here for anybody! I want privacy! Absolute privacy! … Maybe I’ll be gone two hours … maybe two days … But I don’t want to be disturbed. Don’t worry about me. Maybe I’ll never come up! If they ask you, you don’t know a thing … I’m going into meditation … You understand?”

  “Yes, maître!”

  “Total, exhaustive meditation, Ferdinand! Exhaustive retirement! …”

  “Yes, maître …”

  I let the thing slam full force in a volcano of dust. It thundered like a cannon … I pushed the newspapers over the trapdoor, it was completely camouflaged … you couldn’t see the opening … I went up to feed the pigeons … I stayed quite a while … If he was still in his hole when I came back down, I began to wonder if anything was wrong … I waited a while longer … half an hour … three quarters of an hour … then I began to think the monkeyshines had been going on long enough … I lifted the trap a little and looked in … If I didn’t see him, I made a racket … I banged the trapdoor … He had to answer … It brought him out of his nirvana … Nearly always he was sawing wood under the transom in the folds of the Enthusiast, in the rolling billows of silk … It took some doing to get him to move … Finally he’d surface … He’d reappear … rubbing his eyes … He’d brush off his frock coat … Back in the shop he’d be all befuddled …