Rigadoon

by Louis-Ferdinand Celine

  “All three? … alle drei?”

  He’s in command of the flatcar …

  “Nein! … nur uns zwei! only us two!”

  I point at Lili and myself … he looks again … the stamp, the eagle, the swastika …

  “Gut!”

  We should climb on! … he gives us permission, but on the other side … there are already three characters on the other side, must be “special cases” too … heave-ho! … we climb up, all five! … come what may! … we’re all set! practically! … thanks to my initiative! … and the armband! … and the stamp! … must be a noncom, the one that can read … no visible stripes, all smeared with grease and soot like the others … only natural, all the smoke comes down on them! … well, they took us on. We made it … the rest of them … bitte! bitte! they’d be getting their fingers smashed for a long time to come! … they’d never get on! … the ones in the cars, same story, they must have got caught in the doors or the broken windows, or been crushed against the roadbed … somebody must have taken their shoes at some station … or are they dead? … anyway they don’t move … this train has six wooden cars plus the flatcars, fifth class, that’s for sure … taken from the boneyard … and put back on wheels … I ask the others where it’s come from … Berlin, direct! … evacuating the wounded from the last air raids! … sure, some of them die on the way, they drop some off at every station … hell of a time getting them out … that’s why the train looks so funny, all bristling with naked legs, dead heads, and arms … and guns wedged into the windows and doors … all bound for Rostock! … they’ve got everything there, so it seems … especially for surgery … this train is more than full already, it won’t stop anywhere after this … Rostock direct! … what they don’t know! … that hospital … I didn’t exactly believe it … a way of getting rid of them … sending them someplace else to rot … the German system … no nurses, no doctors … being I was there with my armband, maybe I could help a little? … ach, kein sum! ° oh, it’s no use! … that sergeant was in a position to know it was no use! … the gun crew had smashed at least a hundred hands … go to it, boys! … more and more hanging on! … at every station … with their mine stakes … one car had been taken off someplace, hit, gutted, ripped apart … a pile of live people had fallen out … they’d been lying under the others, under the magma … the sergeant tells me the train is full of phony stiffs, stowaways of both sexes, who’d jumped at the chance … to get out of Berlin! … they’d see when they got to Rostock! … they’d straighten them out in Rostock! … all right with me, but why aren’t we moving? taking on coke, that’s it! … filling up the tender! … and water! … no more Stationmaster, no more workers … the engineer has to do it all himself … what’s the news? … the Russians? … the sergeant doesn’t know … all he knows is that the telegraph isn’t working or the telephone or the turntable … the whole town’s deserted, so it seems … the Russians? nobody’d seen them … all he knows is nonstop to Rostock! … as long as the cars are full and there’s certainly no room for any more, might as well skip the seven eight stations … full speed ahead … manner of speaking, fifteen m.p.h… . when we get there we’d see about the ones that can move … the rest? … we’d do the best we could … seems they’ve got nurses up there and stretcher bearers … running slow, operating the turntables and the signals by hand, it would take us five hours … best you can do with coke … not much snow, though it’s November, just a bit of powder … funny winter … it’s cold, maybe about 25, but not so bad … they say it’ll come on all of a sudden … ah, the engineer is motioning to us … he’s got his coke! … we’re ready too! nobody’s been able to climb on except those three, the ones that were ahead of us … come to think of it, the other flatcar, the one right after the tender, wasn’t as smoky as ours … the tail end of the train gets most of the soot … but too late to change now! the ones who haven’t made it are still weeping, sighing, imploring … their troubles aren’t over! … they’ll wait for the next train … choo! choo! we’re pulling out! …

  “So long, Le Vig! don’t go anywhere! … if we can get through, we’ll be back! right away!”

  Watching us leave, he bursts into tears, he doesn’t trust us … we’re crying too … hell, he knows I’m sincere, I wouldn’t do anything unreasonable, I’m not selling him a bill of goods! … we just want to see about the crossing … a slight chance? … animals are better off, they know right away what’s possible and what isn’t … we humans hesitate, we fuddle and stumble, natural drunks … we live pretty near seven cat’s lives … the result? we’re seven times more idiotic … getting that rattler to Rostock … the main thing was not to goof at the switches … and end up in the middle of the woods … the sergeant was worried too … choo! choo! especially with all that smoke … thick! you’d have thought you were in a tunnel … but they had to get the direction right! no time for mistakes! … Rostock was north-northeast … the sergeant had a compass … so did I … first he looks at his … with his torch … then at mine … right! right! hurrah! north-northeast! … the engine driver hasn’t gone wrong … he’s a champ! he’s doing it all by himself, coke, water, turntables, signals … lucky they don’t ask us to get out and push … wouldn’t surprise me … and the smoke that’s coming down on us! not just smoke … live coals … enough to set fire to every haystack for miles around … and the sky all full of R.A.F… . if they don’t bomb us, it’s sheer contempt … we’ll get there by midnight, if we don’t jump the track … if the R.A.F. clobbered us, there wouldn’t be much loss … cars, guns, engine, we wouldn’t bring a hundred francs at the junkyard … it takes special conditions, really unusual … to make a train like that run … through thick and thin! … you can say that again! … now it’s dark … the gunners are all huddled around their gun … the stowaways that got on before we did are off to one side, they’re not talking, we’re chugging along … choo! choo! … we skip a few stations … luck at the switches, our needles are steady … north-northeast … but the smoke we’re getting! looks like they’re doing it on purpose … clank clank, it’s been about four hours now … bam! … guess some of these tracks have been cut! … and new ones put in! … ah! … the sergeant points at a light … way ahead … on the left, a red light… he must have been expecting it … we slow down … I ask him where we’re at … Rostock? … no! but we’re going to stop! … they’re going to open the cars and take everybody out … he asks me if I can help … glad to! … Lili too! … and those three over there that aren’t talking! … oh, there’s a crowd already! … in the middle of the fields … funny idea, making us stop here … who gave us that signal anyway? … I ask the sergeant… him over there! … can’t you see him? … I couldn’t see “him” very well … he comes over to our platform … I bend down …

  “Doktor Erbert Haupt!”

  He introduces himself … not so easy in the darkness … he repeats …

  “Oberarzt Haupt! … Rostock! …”

  Chief medical officer of Rostock … it can’t be far … but out here in the fields … in the pitch-darkness … it’s not warm … not so very cold, but enough … I show him my paper, the signatures, the bevoll stamp … he looks it over with his torch … he can make his torch red … or white … a railroad torch … why this stop in the middle of the night? … I can’t see him, but he points … I understand his German …

  “Those men are going to clear the train …”

  “Wo … where?”

  I ask him … there are teams … special workers … here in the plain … medics? … I can’t make out…

  “We’ll see tomorrow!”

  He explains …

  “Tomorrow! … the day after! … well see! … the ones that can move! … the ones that are dead!”

  I get it, it’s simple! … he doesn’t want us to help …

  “Ach! nein! … nein!”

  He’s going to take us to a hotel … fine! … anything he likes! … let’s go! good-bye to the four gunners an
d the three stowaways … here we are on the roadbed … we follow the Oberarzt! he knows the way! … fast walker … I struggle to keep up … this hotel can’t be very far … we pass a switch and a long shack … no light, no switchmen … guess they’ve beat it too … better keep my thoughts to myself! … ah, a street! … we’ve left the tracks …

  “Here’s your hotel!”

  Sure enough, there it was … a real hotel … still standing … Rostock must have been hit, but not this place, not yet … I look at my watch … two a.m… . still snowing some, light powder … I’m thinking about those people in the train … dragging all those bodies out of the cars … we might have been doing it too … but where did all those people come from in the first place? … evacuees from Berlin, I know … but how many? … we never found out … the ones that are dragging them out of the cars are in teams, men and women I think … at certain times, when conditions are too rough, you don’t pay much attention whether it’s men or women … especially when they’re all in rags … At last he’s going to show me his face, this Oberarzt Haupt … there’s a light bulb … one for the whole lobby …

  About my age, but very sure of himself … not the smiling type … khaki uniform … gold braid, boots, swastika armband … he hardly looks at us …

  “Papier!”

  He wants to see our papers again … here you are! … he asks us where we’re bound for …

  “Wo wollen sie?”

  “Warnemünde!”

  Good! … All right with him! … but we’ll have to wait … he has to notify Warnemünde … “How many days?”

  “One day!”

  “Gut! fine! … tomorrow morning! … Stadthaus! Town hall!”

  He wants to see us again … okay, we’ll report to his town hall! … he leaves us … he must have reserved a room for us … I see that this hotel is no crumbling ruin like the Zenith in Berlin … but nobody around … just an old woman at the cash desk, in a wig, I think … she has us fill out our blanks … neither friendly nor hostile … “good night!” … colleague Haupt leaves us … some words don’t mean a thing: “good night!” … in solitary, the guard that locks you up … double lock … also treats you to his good night! … god nat! … the lady from the desk takes us up to the second floor … our room … two very hard beds and a very thin blanket … well, we can’t complain … the sergeant had wanted to put us to work on the train … unloading … this Haupt doesn’t seem very affable, but he’s not too vicious, not the dyed-in-the-wool anti-franzose type … we’ll be seeing him again tomorrow, ten o’clock … I say to Lili: “We’d better stay just as we are …” keep our clothes on, I mean … the sirens are still at it … far away … but they can come closer any minute! … we know all about sirens … I’m half asleep … I talk about Bébert … and Le Vig … wonder what they’re doing right now … Lili answers … something vague … I’ve got to keep mumbling … no intention of sleeping! … we’ve got to be ready in case of an alert! … especially here, in a place we don’t know … wonder if Rostock is badly beat up? … we’ll see tomorrow …

  Knock knock!

  On the door … somebody there … very softly … good I kept my clothes on … I open just a crack …

  “Forgive me, my dear colleague! … at this time of night! … but I’ve got to see you, warn you! I may not be here tomorrow … you never can tell …”

  This dear colleague is whispering … he has an accent … but not a Kraut accent… where’s he from? I’ll ask him …

  “Wait, I’ve got a candle!”

  That’s a fact … actually I’ve got several … and matches … I strike one … there we are! I invite the stranger to come in …

  “So sorry! … we were lying down, that’s all … we were expecting an alert …”

  He tells me …

  ‘There’ve been only two alerts since I’ve been here …”

  He’d been there for six months …

  “A lot of bombs?”

  “No! … three raids! four loads of bombs! … but they’ll be back! … I haven’t introduced myself! … do forgive me … Proseïdon … Greek … professor at the Montpellier Medical School! … Proseïdon!”

  “Delighted, my dear colleague!”

  “My wife is a doctor too! … from Montpellier … I don’t know where she is right now … probably trying to join me … we escaped from Russia … me through Poland … she across the Rumanian border …”

  He tells us their story … he and his wife had gone to Soviet Russia … political conviction … but they didn’t get along with the Russians … not for a single day! they lived and worked with them! … ten years! … but never joined the Party! … they refused … only in the hospitals …

  “I’m a pathologist, you see, my wife helped me … laboratory work … they assigned me to leprosy … I’ve been in all the republics … a good deal of leprosy in Mongolia … five and a half years in Outer Mongolia … one year on plague in Arabidjan … they wanted us to join the party … they don’t all join the party … eight percent … eight percent … no more … we had to get out … the future is theirs … all Europe … all Asia … did you realize? …”

  I listen to him … he talks in an undertone … he doesn’t move … standing up …

  I ask him:

  “Well? What about here?”

  “Here they’re crazy! As crazy as the Russians, but the Russians have more power, tremendous … they can do what they please … here their myth is race, soil, blood—small-family stuff … village snobbery … the Russians don’t need it … they want everything and they’ll take everything! … unless …”

  A slight reservation …

  “… unless Hitler holds out for a year … two years! … but I don’t think so … he’s losing too many men!”

  “So where does that leave us?”

  “Exactly! … I wanted to warn you … you don’t mind?”

  “Only too grateful, colleague!”

  “Just so you know where you are …”

  Looks like he knows the score … this stop in the fields? … in the middle of the night? …

  “He didn’t tell you? it’s the Nietzschean technique … Oberarzt Haupt is a Nietzschean … natural selection! … survival of the fittest! the cold, the snow, stark naked, it invigorates them, especially the wounded! … the weak die and get buried … Oberarzt Haupt’s technique … they clear the cars, they put the bodies out in the field … and leave them there … two days … three days … in the cold, in the snow, stark naked … the ones that are able to get up are invigorated … you can see them, even on one leg … they start for Rostock … then they sort them out … some go to the hospital for surgery … the rest are put to work … digging pits for the dead: the ones that don’t move after two three days …”

  Proseïdon had been the doctor … assigned to the field, the mass graves …

  “Maybe they’ll take you on?”

  Now I understood that enormous work force, why I’d seen all those people in rags around the cars … not so dumb, his method … but what interested me was Denmark! … not Nietzschean selection … I had an aim! … not listening to him talk about Haupt and his crazy ideas … especially if he’d let us go look at the sea …

  “Yes! … but only once! … for twelve hours … only twelve hours! … that’s the most he can do! Warnemünde isn’t in his jurisdiction … Warnemünde is the Admiralty … the beach, the defenses, the coast …”

  Then he tells me that all they wanted in Berlin was to get people out of their hospitals … send them anywhere! … Hanover … Wiesbaden … Rostock … Lübeck … the only trouble, it was the same all over … not a bed! … they couldn’t take anybody … and a crazy detail: the lepers in Berlin … the Red Cross Commission had rounded up twelve … a dozen lepers wandering around the ruins … seemed to be refugees from the East … they’d sent them to Rostock … to Proseïdon, the specialist … a dozen ampules of chaulmo-gras … and then nothing … the hospital here had
turned them away! … no solution but to mix them in with the others, the work crew in the field … unloading the cars, digging graves … it went off all right … not another word about lepers or leprosy … Oberarzt Haupt didn’t ask any questions … as long as the cars were empty and the dead six feet under! … his passion was Nietzsche … I could expect him to question me … he’d judge me according to Nietzsche … speaking of Nietzsche, Proseïdon, usually so cautious, had put his foot in it … given him his frank opinion, that Nietzsche was a romantic smart aleck, full of quibbles and hot air … since then they hadn’t exchanged a word … hardly …

  “I beg your pardon, madame! … I talk so much! … so indiscreet! … I could talk all night! … out there, you know, I didn’t talk to a soul for years … ten years! … neither to my colleagues nor to the patients …”

  “Think nothing of it … we’re delighted!”

  “You’ve got to sleep! … we still have …”

  He looks at his watch …

  “It’s three o’clock! … I’m going! … once again … your pardon! …”

  This colleague is mighty polite … and certainly very frugal … he lives on black bread, never any butter … I think about him … nothing else to do, lying there with my clothes on … genuine Greek profile! … of course there are other kinds of beauty, but not many are so perfect … so definitive … I think of myself, my big head … I make myself laugh …

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I’m thinking about my head!”

  “You’d better get some sleep instead!”

  Sleep, that’s easily said! … I don’t lose consciousness … and besides, that wailing in the east … faint … but even so … we’ll see the dawn through the little window … what time is it anyway? … the torch … my watch … first four o’clock … then five … half asleep … no it’s six … seven o’clock, rise and shine! … got to find some water to wash with and maybe some kind of coffee … Proseïdon’s at the door … munching his chunk of black bread, still the same one, it looks like … we tell each other good morning … he asks me how I’ve slept … “splendidly, dear colleague!” … he tells me there are no more maids or waiters … or cooks … all cleared out a month ago … every last one, nobody knows where! … naturally there’s no more coffee! … or coffee substitute … he lives on black bread … gets it with his coupons … that’s all he eats … one more thing, he knows where to get coupons! … do I want some? … definitely! … but right away he gets us what we need! a loaf of army bread and a pitcher of water … but since I’m going to see the Oberarzt I’d like a bit of hot water to wash with … that coat of sludge from the platform won’t come off in cold water … my colleague says he’ll get us some hot water! at the hospital … we should wait … we wait! … he isn’t gone long … here’s the hot water … we wash off the grime … now we’ll go see … it’s right next door … I see plenty! … nothing much to pretty up for! sure thing! the minute we hit the stairs! … maybe Oberarzt Haupt was a gold-medal Nietzschean, but that didn’t clean the rooms! … or the corridors! … dressings all over the place … hadn’t been swept for months … adhesive tape, bandages, diarrhea … of course he needed help! but how could he operate in such a place? … the Greek had told me: he eliminates a lot of them! … I wondered how … but where was he? his office? I look around … ah, an old woman, a patient! … she’s coming down, step by step … clutching the banister … “upstairs” … she says … “upstairs” … I climb … I see a door … no name, but a red cross … is this it? … I knock … somebody answers … but he doesn’t open …