Death on the Installment Plan

by Louis-Ferdinand Celine

  “I’m dazzled, Ferdinand! How beautiful it is! Beautiful, like fairyland!”

  He looked pasty, the talk had gone out of him, he had calmed down … He went “bdia, bdia, bdia” with his tongue … He went out … teetering from his nap … He walked slantwise like a crab … Port of call: the Pavillon de la Régence! The café that looked like a china birdcage, with pretty piers … in those days it was still in the middle of a moldering flowerbed … He slumped down the first place he found … at the table by the door … I had a good view of him from the shop … He started off with his usual absinthe … It was easy to see him … We still had our nifty telescope in the window … the one left from the big show … Maybe you couldn’t see Saturn through it, but you could see des Pereires sugaring his pea soup * … Then he had an “anisette” and after that a vermouth … The colors were easy to make out … and just before taking off for his train a good stiff grog for the road.

  After his terrible accident Courtial had taken a solemn vow that he’d never again, at any price, take the wheel in a race … That was all over … finished … He’d kept his promise … And even now, twenty years later, he had to be begged before he’d drive on some quiet excursion, or in an occasional harmless demonstration. He felt much safer out in the wind in his balloon …

  His studies of mechanics were all contained in his books … Year in year out he published two treatises (with diagrams) on the development of motors and two handbooks with plates.

  One of these little works had stirred up bitter controversies and even a certain amount of scandal. Actually it wasn’t even his fault … It was all on account of some lowdown sharpers who travestied his ideas in an idiotic money-making scheme … It wasn’t at all in his style. Anyway here’s the title:

  An Automobile Made to Order for 322 Francs 25. Complete instructions for home manufacture. Four permanent seats, two folding seats, wicker body, 12 m.p.h., 7 speeds, 2 reverse gears. Done entirely with spare parts that could be picked up anywhere! assembled to the customer’s taste … to suit his personality! according to the style and the season of the year! This little book was all the rage … from 1902 to 1905 … It contained … which was a step forward … not only diagrams, but actual blueprints on a scale of one to two hundred thousand. Photographs, cross-references, cross sections … all flawless and guaranteed.

  His idea was to combat the rising peril of mass production … There wasn’t a moment to be lost … Despite his resolute belief in progress, des Pereires had always detested standardization … From the very start he was bitterly opposed to it … He foresaw that the death of craftsmanship would inevitably shrink the human personality …

  At the time of this battle for the “made to measure” automobile Courtial was practically famous in the world of innovators for his original and extremely daring studies on the “All-Purpose Cottage,” the flexible, extensible dwelling, adaptable to families of every kind in all climates! … “Your own house,” absolutely detachable, tippable (that is, transportable), shrinkable, instantly reducible by one or more rooms at will, to fit permanent or passing needs, children, guests, alterable at a moment’s notice … to meet the requirements, the tastes of every individual … “An old house is a house that doesn”t move! … Buy young! Be flexible! Don’t build. Assemble! To build is death! Only tombs can be built properly. Buy a living house! Live in a living house! The ‘All-Purpose Cottage’ keeps pace with life! …”

  Such was the tone, the style of the manifesto written by Courtial himself just before the “Future of Architecture” exhibition held in June, ‘98, at the Gallery of Machines. Almost immediately his little book on home building created an enormous furore among men about to be pensioned, heads of families with insignificant incomes, homeless young couples, and colonial civil servants … He was bombarded with inquiries from all over France, from abroad, from the Dominions … His cottage, all set up with movable roof. 2,492 nails, 3 doors, 24 sections, 5 windows, 42 hinges, wood or muslin partitions according to the season, won a special prize, “hors concours,” unbeatable … It could be assembled in the desired dimensions with the help of two workmen, on any kind of ground, in seventeen minutes and four seconds! … The wear and tear was minimal … it would last forever! … “Only resistance is ruinous. A house in its entirety must have play, it has to adapt itself like a living organism! it has to give … it has to dodge the whirling winds! the gales and tempests, the paroxysms of nature! The moment you oppose … what utter folly! … the unleashed elements, disaster ensues! … Can a building … the most massive … the most galvanic … the most firmly cemented … be expected to defy the elements? Pure madness! One day or another, inevitably, it will be overturned, annihilated! If you wish to be convinced, you have only to pass through one of our beautiful, our fertile countrysides! Isn’t our magnificent country interspersed from north to south with melancholy ruins? Once proud habitations! Haughty manors! Ornaments of our soil, what has become of you? Dust!”

  “The ‘All-Purpose Cottage,’ on the other hand, is flexible, it adapts itself, it expands, it contracts according to necessity, according to the laws, the living forces of nature!”

  “It bends enormously, but it never breaks …” The day his stand was inaugurated, after President Félix Faure had come through, after all the powwow and congratulations, the crowd broke through the barriers! the guards were swept away! The populace burst in so frantically between the walls of the cottage that the little marvel was instantly torn apart, washed away, swallowed up! The mob was so feverish, so avid, that it combusted all the materials … You couldn’t say this one and only model was destroyed … it was sucked up, absorbed, digested on the spot … The evening the exhibition closed there wasn’t a trace left of it, not a crumb, not a nail, not a shred of muslin … The amazing edifice had been absorbed like a pimple … As Courtial told me about all this fifteen years later, he was still in a daze …

  “Of course I could have started in again … In that field, I can say without flattering myself, my ability was remarkable … When it came to drawing up a precise, a meticulous estimate for on-the-spot assembly, I had no rival … But other, more grandiose projects carried me away, kept me absorbed … I’ve never found the time to resume my calculations of the ‘indices of resistance’ … And after all, in spite of the final disaster, I had proved what I set out to … By my boldness I had enabled certain schools, certain young enthusiasts, to step forward … to shout their opinions from the rooftops … to find their way … That and nothing else was my mission! I desired nothing more! My honor was intact! I asked for nothing, Ferdinand! Coveted nothing! Demanded nothing of the authorities! I went back to my studies … I didn’t scheme or intrigue! … And now listen … Guess what I get … Practically one right after the other? The Nicham, and a week later the Academic Palms! … I was really offended! Whom did they take me for all of a sudden? Why not a tobacco counter? I wanted to send all that flimflam back to the minister! I told Flammarion about it: ‘Don’t do it,’ he said, ‘don’t do anything of the kind. I’ve got them too!’ Well, in that case I was in the clear. But even so they’d swindled me outrageously! … Oh, the skunks! My plans had been plagiarized, pirated, copied, do you hear, in a thousand revolting ways … and incompetently what’s more … by so many swelled-headed, unprincipled, shameless official architects that I wrote to Flammarion … If they wanted to make amends, they owed me at least the Legion of Honor … if they’d wanted to butter me up with honors, I mean … He thought I was perfectly right, but he advised me to keep quiet and not make any more of a stink … it would even get him in trouble … to be patient … that the time wasn’t quite ripe … that after all I was his disciple and I shouldn’t forget it … Oh, I don’t feel any bitterness, get me straight! Yes, those little things still make me feel sad … But nothing more! Absolutely not! … A melancholy lesson … That’s all … I think of it now and then …”

  I could tell when the architectural blues came over him … It usually happened i
n the country … and when he was getting ready to go up in his balloon … when he was climbing into the basket … His memories came back to him … Maybe he was a little scared and that was what made him talk … He looked at the country in the distance … Out there in the suburbs, especially at the housing lots, the shacks and shanties … He was overcome with emotion … it brought the tears to his eyes … Those shacks, all lopsided and crosseyed, all cracked and rickety, rotting away in the muck, sinking into the slush, at the edge of the fields … beyond the highway … “You see all that,” he’d say to me, “you see that stinking mess?” He’d make a sweeping gesture, embracing the horizon … The whole crawling swarm of shanties, the church and the chicken coops, the washhouse and the schools … The ramshackle tumbledown huts, gray, mauve, and mignonette … all the plaster thingamajigs …

  “It’s bad, eh? It’s pretty crummy? … Well, it’s a good deal my fault … I’m responsible! You can put the blame on me … All that is mine, do you hear me? … Mine! …”

  “Ah?” I said as though flabbergasted. I knew he was going into his routine … He threw his leg over the edge … He jumped into the wicker basket … If the wind wasn’t too strong, he kept his panama on … he was much happier that way … but he tied it under his chin with a broad ribbon … I’d wear his cap … “Let her go!” She’d rise inch by inch, very slowly at first … and then a little faster … He’d have to get a move on to clear the roofs … He couldn’t make up his mind to throw off ballast … But he had to rise somehow … We never inflated her completely … The stuff cost thirteen francs a bottle …

  Some time after the adventure with the “Homemade Cottage” that the insane crowd had torn to pieces, Courtial des Pereires suddenly decided to change his whole tactics … “Capital first!” That’s what he said … That was his new motto. “No more risks. Cold cash! …” He had mapped out a program based entirely on these principles … And fundamental reforms … all absolutely judicious and pertinent …

  First of all he decided that come hell or high water the conditions of inventors had to be improved … He started from the premise that in this racket there’d never be any shortage of ideas … that they were actually too plentiful! But that capital, on the other hand, is disgustingly evasive! pusillanimous! retiring! … That all the misfortunes of the human race and his own in particular came from lack of funds … the distrustfulness of money … the hideous rarity of credit … But all that could be straightened out … All it would take to remedy this state of affairs was action … an ingenious idea … So one two three, right there on the Galerie Montpensier, behind the “Tunisian office,” between the kitchen and the corridor, he founded an “Investors’ Corner” … a very special little nook, furnished very simply: a table, a cupboard, a filing cabinet, two chairs, and to preside over deliberations, a fine bust of de Lesseps on the top shelf, between folders and more folders …

  On the strength of the new statutes, any inventor willing to invest fifty-two francs (total payable in advance) could run an ad in our paper for three successive issues … saying anything he pleased about all his projects, even the wildest nonsense, the dizziest phantasmagorias, the most shameless impostures … Not bad! It filled up two full columns in the Genitron and we’d throw in a ten minutes’ private consultation with Courtial, the director … And finally, to make the deal even more attractive, an oleographed diploma, certifying him as a “member in good standing of the Eureka Research Center for the financing, study, equilibration, and immediate exploitation of discoveries conducive to the advancement of all the sciences and of industry …”

  It wasn’t so easy to get them to cough up the fifty smackers … That was always slow going … Even giving them the song and dance … talking himself blue in the face … when it came to paying up, they nearly always balked … even the screwiest of them got to feeling worried … even in their delirium, they smelled a rat … they realized that this was dough they’d never be seeing again … “Registration fees” was the name we dreamed up for our gimmick …

  The understanding was that from that moment on Courtial would take all the necessary steps, put out feelers, attend to all the calling and contacting, the interviews … the documentation … the meetings … the premonitory discussions, the arguments, in short everything that was needed to attract, propitiate, arouse, and reassure a consortium … All this, it went without saying, at the opportune moment … On that point we were adamant … Haste makes waste … easy does it … that was our way … Impatience can only mess everything up! Precipitation wrecks the best-laid plans! The most fruitful undertakings are those that ripen slowly! … We were radically opposed, implacably hostile, to all premature bungling … to all hysteria … “Your investor escapes on the wings of the swallow, he’s a tortoise when it comes to forking up.”

  To interfere as little as possible with the negotiations, always so delicate, the inventor was advised to leave the field perfectly clear … to go straight home … to smoke his pipe and wait … and not worry about a thing. He’d be duly notified, summoned, acquainted with every detail as soon as things began to shape up … But it wasn’t often that he’d stay home and mind his business … Hardly a week would pass before he came running … asking for news … bringing us new models … complementary projects … more blueprints … spare parts … we could yell ourselves blue in the face, he’d keep coming, he’d come more and more often … like shooting pains, worried, dispirited … As soon as he began to see the light, he’d start bellowing … kicking up a ruckus of varying proportions … And after that you’d never see him again. There were some … but not very many … who weren’t so dumb, who threatened to raise hell, legal proceedings, to register a complaint with the police if we didn’t return their dough … Courtial knew them all. He cleared out when he saw them coming. He recognized them a mile away … It’s incredible what a piercing eye he had for spotting a rabid customer … They seldom caught him … He’d disappear into the back room and do a little turn with the dumbbells, but mostly he went down in the cellar … There it was even safer … He wasn’t in … The oldtimer who wanted his money back could split a gut, it didn’t get him anywhere …

  “Hold him, Ferdinand. Just hold him,”’ the stinker would say. “Hold him while I think things over … I know that gasbag only too well! That drooling ape! Every time he comes here for an interview he stays two hours at least … He’s made me lose the thread of my deductions a dozen times. It’s shameful! It’s scandalous! He’s a plague! Kill him, I beseech you, Ferdinand! Don’t let him contaminate the world anymore! Burn him! … Slaughter him! Scatter his ashes! I don’t care what you do! But for God’s sake, at any price, do you hear me, don’t bring him to me. Tell him I’m in Singapore! in Colombo! in the Hesperides! Tell him I’m making elastic banks for the Isthmus of Suez and Panama. That’s an idea! … Tell him anything! Anything will do, so long as I don’t have to see him! … I beg you, Ferdinand, I beg you!”

  So it was I that had to bear the brunt of the whole tempest sure as shit … I had my system, I admit … I was like the “Do-it-yourself Cottage,” my approach was flexible … I put up no resistance … I bent in the direction of his fury … I went even further … I amazed the lunatic by the virulence of my hatred for the loathsome Pereires … I took him every time in nothing flat … with my hair-raising insults … In that province I was supreme … I flayed him! I stigmatized him!

  I covered him with garbage, with pus! That abject villain! That mountain of shit! twenty times worse! a hundred times! a thousand times worse than the customer had ever thought on his own! …

  For his private delectation I turned Courtial … shouting at the top of my lungs … into a heap of soft, slimy, inconceivably sickening turds … How unbelievably loathsome he was! … He was in a class by himself! I went at it hammer and tongs! … I stamped on the trapdoor right over the cellar, in chorus with the nut … I outdid them all in violence … thanks to the intensity of my revolt! my sincerity! my destructive en
thusiasm! my implacable tetanism! … my frenzy! … my anathematic writhing! … It was unbelievable what a paroxysm I could work myself up into in my total fury … I got all that from my dad … and the performances I’d been through … For temper tantrums I had no equal … The worst lunatics, the most delirious interpretive screwballs didn’t stand a chance if I decided to take a fling, if I really wanted to bestir myself … Young as I was … they all left with their asses dragging … absolutely bewildered by the intensity of my hatred … my indomitable fury, the eternal thirst for vengeance that I harbored in my flanks … With tears in their eyes they entrusted me with the task of crushing that turd … that execrable Courtial … that sink of iniquity … of covering him with new and unpredictable kinds of excrement, slimier than the bottom of the shithouse! … a mass of unconscionable purulence! … of making a cake out of him, the most fetid that could ever be imagined … of cutting him up into balls … flattening him out into sheets, plastering the whole bottom of the crapper with him, all the way from the bowl to the sump … and wedging him in there once and for all … to be shat on for all eternity …

  As soon as our friend was gone … as soon as he was far enough away … Courtial would come back to the trapdoor … He’d lift it up a little … He’d take a gander … Then he’d surface …