Death on Credit

by Louis-Ferdinand Celine

  And through the holes in the roof

  The sun shone down upon us…

  Auguste, my father, read La Patrie. He sat down beside my crib. She came over and kissed him. His storm was subsiding… He stood up and went to the window. He pretended to be looking for something down in the court. He let off a resounding fart. The tension was down.

  She let off a little fart in sympathy and fled kittenishly into the kitchen.

  Later they closed their door… the door to their bedroom… I slept in the dining room. The missionaries’ hymn came in over the walls… And in the whole Rue Babylone there was only a walking horse… clop clop… that late cab…

  * * *

  To raise me my father was always taking on extra jobs. Lempreinte, his boss, humiliated him in every possible way. I knew Lempreinte, he was a redhead who had gone pale, with long golden hairs, just a few of them, instead of a beard. My father had style, elegance came natural to him. That vexed Lempreinte. He avenged himself for thirty years. He made him do nearly all his letters over again.

  When I was still smaller, at Puteaux where they’d put me out to nurse, my parents used to come and see me on Sunday. There was plenty of fresh air. They always paid in advance. Never a cent owing. Not even when things were at their worst. But in Courbevoie, what with worrying and doing without all sorts of things, my mother began to cough. After that she never stopped. It was slug syrup and later on the Raspail method* that saved her.

  On account of my father’s style Monsieur Lempreinte suspected him of fancy ambitions.

  From the garden of the nurse’s place in Puteaux you could look down over the whole of Paris. When Papa came to see me, the wind ruffled his moustache. That’s my earliest memory.

  After the fashion shop in Courbevoie went bankrupt, my parents had to work twice as hard, they really ran themselves ragged, she as my grandmother’s saleswoman, he doing all the overtime he could at La Coccinelle. But the more he exhibited his high-class style, the more Lempreinte detested him. To keep from getting bitter, he took up watercolours. He used to paint at night after supper. They brought me back to Paris. I’d see him in the evening drawing, mostly boats, ships at sea, three-masters in a heavy breeze, black and white or in colour. He had it in his blood… Later on, memories of his days in the artillery, batteries galloping into position… or he’d do bishops… at the request of his customers… because of the bright robes… And dancing girls with hefty legs… My mother would offer a selection of his watercolours to the peddlers at lunch hour… She did all she could to keep me alive, I just shouldn’t have been born.

  At Grandma’s on the Rue Montorgueil she sometimes spat blood in the morning while arranging the pavement display. She’d hide her handkerchiefs. Grandma came out… “Wipe your eyes, Clémence!… Crying won’t help matters!…” To get there early enough, we’d get up at daybreak and cross the Tuileries as soon as the housework was done; Papa would turn the mattresses.

  The days were no joke. It was exceptional if I didn’t cry a good part of the afternoon. In that shop I came in for more slaps than smiles. I apologized for everything I did, I was always apologizing.

  We had to be on the lookout for theft and breakage. Junk is fragile. I ruined tons of the stuff, never on purpose. The thought of antiques still makes me sick, but that was our bread and butter. The scrapings of time are sad… lousy, sickening. We sold the stuff over the customer’s dead body. We’d wear him down. We’d drown his wits in floods of hokum… incredible bargains… we were merciless… He couldn’t win… If he had any wits to begin with, we demolished them… He’d walk out stunned with the Louis XIII cup in his pocket, the openwork fan with cat and shepherdess wrapped in tissue paper. You can’t imagine how they revolted me, grown-ups taking such crap home with them…

  During working hours Grandma Caroline ensconced herself behind the Prodigal Son, an enormous tapestried screen. Caroline had an eye for light fingers. Customers are low characters, especially the women. The fancier they dress, the worse crooks they are. A little piece of Chantilly slips like a breeze into a practised muff.

  The shop was hardly a blaze of light… And in the winter it’s especially treacherous on account of the ruffles… velvet, furs, canopies big enough to enfold three bosoms… not to mention the long-range boas of all kinds starting from the shoulders, the waves of diaphanous chiffon… Birds of overwhelming sorrow… The lady struts, ploughing through piles of bric-a-brac, clucks, retraces her steps… scatters things all over the place… pecking, cackling… finding fault for the hell of it. We were goggle-eyed trying to find something that would appeal to her, there was plenty to choose from… Grandma was always out rustling… looking for white elephants at the auction rooms… she brought back everything, oil paintings, amethysts, whole forests of candelabras, cascades of embroidered tulle, cabochons, pyxes, stuffed animals, armour, parasols, gilded monstrosities from Japan, alabaster bowls and worse, gimcracks without a name, and objects nobody had ever heard of.

  The lady gushes and burbles in this treasure house of shards. The heap settles back into place behind her. She overturns, she jingles, she twists and turns. She’s just come in to look. It’s raining, she’s come in to seek shelter. When she’s had enough, she leaves, promising to come again. Then we have to gather up the rubbish in a hurry. We crawl around on our knees, scraping under the furniture. If nothing’s missing, if every handkerchief… knick-knack… piece of cut glass… every gewgaw is accounted for, we heave a great sigh of relief.

  Mother slumps down, massaging her leg cramped from standing, speechless with exhaustion. And then just before closing time, the furtive customer steps in out of the darkness. He slips in softly, explains his business in a whisper, he has a small object to sell, a family keepsake, he undoes the newspaper wrapping. We don’t think much of it. We’ll wash his treasure in the kitchen sink, we’ll pay him in the morning. He leaves with a mumbled goodbye… The Panthéon-Courcelles bus races past, almost grazing the shop.

  My father comes in from his office. He keeps looking at his watch. He’s on edge. We’ve got to make it fast.

  He puts down his hat. He takes his cap from the nail.

  We still have to eat our noodles and make our deliveries.

  * * *

  We’d put the light out in the shop. My mother was no cook, but she managed to work up some sort of mess. When it wasn’t egg panade it was sure to be macaroni. No mercy. After the noodles we sat still for a moment, a little meditation is good for the stomach. My mother tried to entertain us, to dilute our embarrassment. If I didn’t answer her questions, she’d keep on trying… “There’s butter in them, you know,” she would say gently. The light came from a naked gas jet behind the screen. The plates were in darkness. Stoically my mother helped herself to some more noodles to encourage us… It took a good swig of red wine to keep them down.

  The alcove where we ate was also used for the washing and for storing the junk… There were heaps of it, mounds… The stuff that couldn’t be patched up, that couldn’t be sold, that wasn’t fit to be shown, the worst monstrosities. From the transom draperies hung down into the soup. There was also, for some reason or other, a big coal range with an enormous hood that took up half the room. In the end we’d turn over our plates for a smidgen of jam.

  It was like living in a filthy museum.

  After we moved away from Courbevoie, Grandma and my father stopped talking to each other. Mama kept talking the whole time to keep them from throwing things at each other. Once we had downed our noodles and enjoyed our sampling of jam, we hit the road. The sold article would be wrapped in a big canvas. Usually it was some piece of drawing-room furniture, a “kidney”, or occasionally a make-up table. Papa hoisted it up on his shoulders and we’d start for the Place de la Concorde. After the splashing fountains I’d be kind of scared. As we headed up the Champs-Élysées, the darkness was immense. He sped along like a thief. I had trouble
keeping up. It seemed like he was trying to ditch me.

  I’d have liked him to talk to me, all he did was grunt insults at strangers. By the time we reached the Étoile, he was in a sweat. We took a little rest. When we got to the customer’s house, we had to look for the service entrance.

  When we delivered in Auteuil, my father was in a better humour. He didn’t take out his watch so often. I’d climb up on the parapet and he’d tell me all about tugboats… the green lights… the whistle signals between the strings of barges. “She’ll be down at the Point-du-Jour in no time.” We’d admire the wheezing old tub and wish her a happy journey…

  It was when we were going to the Ternes district that he really got into a foul mood, especially if it was a dame… He couldn’t stand them. He’d be in a temper before we even got started. I remember one time we were going to the Rue Demours. Outside the church he gives me a clout and a vicious kick to make me shake a leg crossing the street. When we got to the customer’s house, I couldn’t keep from crying. “You little bastard,” he shouts at me, “I’ll give you something to cry about!…” He climbed up the stairs behind me with his little tea table on his neck. We rang at the wrong door. All the maids looked out… I was squealing like a stuck pig… On purpose… to get his goat! What a ruckus! At last we find the right bell. The maid lets us in. She sympathizes with me. The lady of the house swishes in. “My, what a naughty little boy! He’s made his papa angry!” He didn’t know which way to look. He would have liked to crawl into a drawer. The lady tries to comfort me. She pours my father a glass of cognac. Then she says: “Polish it up, my good man! I fear the rain will leave spots…” The maid gives him a rag. He gets to work. The lady gives me a sweet. I follow her into the bedroom. The maid comes in too. The lady lies down in a mess of lace. All of a sudden she hikes up her dressing gown and shows me her fat legs, her behind and her clump of hair, the beast! She goes poking around inside with her fingers…

  “Come, little darling!… Come, little love!… Come, suck me in there!…” Her voice was ever so soft and tender… no one had ever spoken to me like that before. She opens it out. Oozing.

  The maid was doubled up with laughter. That’s what held me back. I ran off to the kitchen. I wasn’t crying any more. They gave my father a tip. He didn’t dare to put it in his pocket, he just looked at it. The maid was laughing again. “So you don’t want it?” she asked him. He ran out to the stairs. He forgot all about me, I had to race after him in the street. I called him all the way down the avenue. “Papa! Papa!” I caught up with him on the Place des Ternes. We sat down. It wasn’t very often that he kissed me. He squeezed my hand.

  “Yes, my boy!… Yes, my boy!…” he kept repeating as if to himself… looking off into space… He had feelings deep down. I had feelings too. Life has nothing to do with feelings. We went straight back to the Rue de Babylone.

  * * *

  My father distrusted his imagination. He talked to himself in corners. He was afraid of being carried away… He must have been steaming inside…

  He was born in Le Havre. He knew all about boats. A name that kept coming back to him was that of Captain Dirouane, who had been in command of the City of Troy. He’d seen his boat putting out to sea, moving out of the basin. She never came back. She had been lost with all on board off the coast of Florida. “A fine three-mast bark!”

  Another, the Gondriolan, a Norwegian, overloaded, had crashed into the locks… Bad handling. He told me all about it. Twenty years later the incident still filled him with horror and indignation… And then he’d go back into his corner. And mull things over some more.

  His brother Antoine was something else again. With real heroism he had crushed every impulse to wander. He too had been born right near the Great Semaphore… When their father died, a French teacher, he’d gone straight into the Bureau of Weights and Measures, a steady job. To play it absolutely safe he’d married a young lady in the Statistics Division. But a yearning for far-off places kept plaguing him… He still had adventure in his bones, he never felt buried enough, he kept digging in deeper and deeper.

  He and his wife would come to see us on New Year’s Day. They were so thrifty, they ate so miserably and never spoke to a soul, that the day they conked out nobody in the neighbourhood remembered them. Everybody was surprised. They died in secret, he of cancer, she of abstinence. They found Blanche, his wife, on the Buttes-Chaumont.

  That was where they used to spend their vacations. Just the same, it took them forty years, always together, to commit suicide.

  My father’s sister, Hélène, was a different story. She had wind in her sails. She ended up in Russia. She got to be a whore in St Petersburg. For a while she had everything, a carriage, three sleighs, a village all her own, with her name on them. She came to see us at the Passage twice in a row, done up like a princess, stunning and happy and all. She came to a tragic end, shot by an officer. She had no willpower. She was all flesh, desire, music. It made my father puke just to think of her. When she heard of her death, my mother said: “What a terrible end! But it’s a fit end for an egotist!”

  Then there was Uncle Arthur. He was no model either! The flesh was too much for him too. My father had a certain liking for him, a kind of weakness. He lived like a regular bohemian, on the fringe of society, in a shanty, shacked up with a housemaid. She worked at the restaurant outside the École Militaire. Thanks to her, there’s no denying it, he managed to eat very well. He was a dandy, with a goatee, corduroy trousers, pointed shoes and a long slender pipe. Nothing ever got him down. Female conquests was his main occupation. He was sick a good deal, seriously so when the rent came due. He’d stay in bed for a week or more at some girlfriend’s house. When we went to see him on Sundays, he didn’t behave very well, especially with my mother. He’d take little liberties with her. That made my old man see red. When we left, he’d swear by eighty thousand devils that we’d never go back.

  “Really, that Arthur! His manners are disgusting!…” But we’d go back all the same.

  He would draw boats on his big drawing board, under the skylight; yachts cutting through the foam, that was his style, with gulls all around… Now and then he’d do some work for a catalogue, but he had so many debts he always felt discouraged. He was cheerful when doing nothing.

  From the cavalry barracks next door you could hear all the bugle calls. Arthur knew all the words that went with them by heart. He’d start in again at every refrain. He made up some smutty ones. My mother and the housemaid went: “Oh! Oh!” Papa was furious because of my tender years.

  But the screwiest member of the family was certainly Uncle Rodolphe, he was really off his rocker. He would titter quietly when you spoke to him. He answered his own questions. That could go on for hours. He insisted on living in the open air. He never consented to have anything to do with a store or an office, not even as a watchman, not even at night. He preferred to take his meals outdoors, on a bench. He distrusted the insides of houses. When he was really too hungry, he’d come to see us. He’d turn up in the evening. That meant things were pretty rough.

  He made his living carrying baggage in the railway stations. It was a job that took stamina and he kept at it for more than twenty years. He had an in with the “Urban Express”. He ran like a rabbit after cabs and baggage as long as he was able to. His high season was when people were coming back from vacation. His job made him hungry, and always thirsty. The coachmen liked him. He was screwy at the table. He’d stand up with glass in hand, clink it all around, and strike up a song… He’d stop in the middle… burst out laughing without rhyme or reason, and drool all over his napkin…

  We’d take him home. He’d still be laughing. He lived on the Rue Lepic at the Rendez-vous du Puy-de-Dôme, a shack on the court. He kept his belongings on the floor, there wasn’t a single chair or a table. At the time of the Exhibition he became a “troubadour”. He’d stand outside the papier-mâché grottoes along the S
eine, drumming up trade for “Old Paris”. His coat was a patchwork of rags of every colour. He’d keep warm by bellowing and stamping his feet. In the evening, when he came to dinner in his carnival rig, my mother made him a hot-water bottle. His feet were always cold. To make matters worse, he took up with a “wench”. She was a spieler too. She stood in a painted cardboard grotto at the other entrance. Poor thing, she’d already begun to cough her lungs out. She didn’t last three months. She died right there in his room at the Rendez-vous. He didn’t want them to take her away. He bolted his door. He came home every night and lay down beside her. It was the smell that put them wise. Then he went raving mad. He didn’t understand that things die. They buried her by force. He wanted to carry her all the way to Pantin himself, on a hod.

  Finally he went back to work by the Esplanade. My mother was horrified. “Dressed like a scarecrow, in this cold. It’s a crime.” What upset her most was that he wouldn’t wear his overcoat. He had one of Papa’s. They sent me to have a look. I was underage, so I could get through the gate without paying.

  He was there behind the fence, dressed like a troubadour. All smiles again. “Hello,” he said. “Hello, son… D’you see her? D’you see my Rosine?…” He pointed a finger across the Seine… the plain, a point in the mist… “You see her, my Rosine, huh?” I said yes. I never crossed him. I told my parents he was all right. Pure spirit, that was Rodolphe!

  Late in 1913 he went away with a circus. We could never find out what had become of him. We never saw him again.

  * * *

  We left the Rue de Babylone to open another shop, to try our luck again. This time it was in the Passage des Bérésinas, between the Stock Exchange and the Boulevards. Our living quarters were over the shop, three rooms connected by a spiral staircase. My mother was always limping up and down those stairs. Tip-tap-plunk, tip-tap-plunk! She’d hold on to the banister. The sound gave my father the creeps. He was always in a temper anyway, because the time wouldn’t pass. He kept looking at his watch. With Mama and her leg in addition, it didn’t take much to start him off.