Death on Credit

by Louis-Ferdinand Celine

  * * *

  We started delivering again. We saw the big monumental gate going up at the corner of the Place de la Concorde. It was so delicate, so fancy, so full of frills and gingerbread from top to bottom, it made you think of a mountain in bridal dress. Every time we passed by, we saw something new being done to it.

  Finally they took the scaffolding away. Everything was in readiness for the public… At first my father pooh-poohed the whole thing, and then he went after all, all alone one Saturday afternoon.

  To everybody’s surprise he was delighted… Pleased, happy, like a kid who’s been to fairyland…

  All our neighbours, except Mme Méhon of course, came running over to hear him tell about it. At ten that night he still had them spellbound. In less than an hour on the grounds, he had seen everything, been everywhere, understood it all and a lot more, from the Pavilion of Black Snakes to the Gallery of Machines, and from the North Pole to the Cannibals…

  Visios, the sailor who had been all over the world, said the whole thing was marvellous. He’d never have believed it… and he knew a thing or two. My uncle Rodolphe, who had been working in the sideshow done up as a troubadour ever since the World Fair opened, was nonexistent as a storyteller. He was there in the shop with the rest of them. Draped in his finery, he’d grin for no reason, he’d make paper birds and wait for supper to be served.

  Mme Méhon was at her window, worried sick to see all the neighbours coming over our way. For her money, it was sure to end in some plot. Grandma stayed away a whole week. Papa’s bumptiousness gave her a pain. And every night he started his lecture all over again, adding new touches. Rodolphe got hold of some free tickets. So one Sunday the three of us dove into the crowd.

  At the Place de la Concorde the mob got hold of us and really pumped us in. We came to, breathless and half-unconscious, in the Gallery of Machines, frighteningly hanging in mid-air in a transparent cathedral with little panes of glass that went way up to the sky. The racket was so awful we couldn’t hear my father, and he was shouting his lungs out. Steam gushed and spurted on all sides. There were giant kettles as big as three houses, gleaming pistons that came charging at us out of the bottom of hell… In the end we couldn’t stand it, we were scared, we beat it… We passed the Ferris wheel… but what we liked best was the bank of the Seine.

  It was weird the way they had rigged up the Esplanade… terrific… Two rows of enormous cakes, fantastic cream puffs, full of balconies crammed with gypsies swathed in flags, music and millions of little light bulbs that were still lit in broad daylight. That was wasteful. Grandma was right. We moved on, crushed worse and worse. I was right near all the feet, the dust was so thick I couldn’t see where I was going. I swallowed whole mouthfuls and spat cement… Finally we got to the “North Pole”… An explorer, really friendly, was explaining the show, but so confidentially, so softly, all wrapped up in his furs, you could hardly hear a thing. My father told us what was what. Then the seals came out for their dinner. They bellowed so loud there was nothing else in the world. So we beat it again.

  In the big Refreshment Palace lovely orangeade was being dished out in a long line at a little moving counter absolutely free of charge… Between us and it a riot was going on… A seething mob struggling to get at the glasses. Thirst has no mercy. If we’d attempted it, there wouldn’t have been anything left of us. We fled through another door. We went to see the natives…

  We only saw one, behind a fence, he was boiling himself an egg. He wasn’t looking at us, he had his back turned. It was quiet there, so my father started gabbing again with lots of animation, trying to enlighten us about the curious customs of tropical countries. He wasn’t able to finish, the Negro was fed up too. He spat in our direction and disappeared into his cabin… As for me, I couldn’t see straight or open my mouth. I had breathed in so much dust all my passages were blocked. From one eddy to the next we made it to the exit. Even after we’d passed the Invalides I was still being jostled and trampled. We were so shaken, so shattered by fatigue and excitement we hardly recognized each other. We took the shortest way home… by way of the Marché Saint-Honoré. Then we went straight upstairs and drank all the water in the kitchen.

  Our neighbours, with Visios, our sailor, in the lead, the perfume dealer from Number 27, Mme Gratat from the glove shop, Dorival the pastry cook and Monsieur Pérouquière, popped right over to hear about it, they wanted us to tell them all about it… and then some… Had we been to see all the exhibits?… Hadn’t they lost me?… How much had we spent?… What! At every turnstile?…

  Papa told them the whole story with thousands of details… some of them true… and others not so accurate… My mother was happy, it had been worth it… for once Auguste was being really appreciated… She was mighty proud for his sake… He puffed himself up… he laid it on thick… She knew he was telling fairy tales… but that’s what it is to be an educated man… She hadn’t suffered for nothing… The man she had given herself to was somebody… A thinker… There was no denying it. All those poor bastards sat there with their tongues hanging out… Pure admiration.

  Papa made it all up as he went along, without the slightest effort… There was magic in our shop… with the gas turned off. All by himself he put on a show a hundred times more amazing than four dozen World Fairs… But he didn’t want the gas!… Just candles!… Our shopkeeper friends brought their own glims, dug out of their storerooms. They came back night after night to listen to Papa and kept asking for more…

  His prestige was enormous… They could think of nothing better. In the end, I guess, Mme Méhon must have taken sick over there in her hovel, haunted by bitter thoughts… They’d told her everything, down to the last syllable…

  About two weeks later she couldn’t stand it any more… One night she came down all alone and crossed the Passage… She looked like a ghost… She was in her nightgown. She banged on our window… We all turned round. She didn’t breathe a word. She stuck a piece of paper on the glass. The inscription was brief, in big capital letters: liar…

  Everybody burst out laughing. The charm was broken. They all went home… Papa had nothing more to say…

  * * *

  The pride of our shop was the coffee table in the middle, Louis XV, the only piece we were really sure about. People were always making us offers, we didn’t try very hard to sell it. We couldn’t have replaced it.

  The Brétontés, our fancy customers from the Faubourg Saint-Germain, had noticed it a long time ago… They asked us to lend it to them for a play they were putting on, a comedy, with some other society people in their private house. The Pinaises were in it, and the Courmanches, the Doranges, whose daughters were so cross-eyed, and a lot of others who were customers more or less. The Girondets, the Camadours, the de Lambistes, who were related to the ambassadors… The cream of the cream!… It was going to be put on one Sunday afternoon. Mme Brétonté was sure their play would be a howling success.

  She came back more than ten times, always to pester us about that table. We couldn’t refuse, it was for charity.

  To make sure nothing would happen to it, we took a cab and delivered it ourselves in the morning, wrapped in three blankets. Then in the afternoon we came back just in time to take our seats, three stools near the door.

  The curtain hadn’t gone up yet, but already it was marvellous. The ladies, dressed fit to kill, all burbling and sashaying. They smelt so good you almost fainted… Looking round, my mother recognized all the best pieces from her shop. Her boleros, her neckbands, her Chantilly lace. She even remembered the prices. And hadn’t they had them made up nicely! Lace could be so lovely!… And wasn’t it becoming to them!… She was in seventh heaven.

  Before we left the shop, I had been warned that if I gave off any smells, I’d be thrown out pronto. I had given myself such a wiping the toilet was all stuffed up. Even my feet were clean in my dress shoes…

  Finally the peo
ple took their seats. Somebody called for silence. The curtain rolled up… Our coffee table appeared… plunk in the middle of the stage… same as in our shop… That set our minds at rest… A few bars on the piano and the actors are saying their lines… Oh, how beautifully they speak!… All the characters coming and going and posturing in the bright light… They’re marvellous… They start bickering and arguing… they get madder and madder… but it makes them more charming than ever… I’m carried away… I wanted them to start all over again. I don’t quite get it all… But I was captivated, body and soul… Everything they touch… their slightest gestures… the most commonplace words are enchanted… The people around us applaud, my parents and I don’t dare…

  On the stage I recognize Mme Pinaise, she’s absolutely divine… There are her legs again and those throbbing tits… She’s lying on a deep silk divan… sheathed in an airy negligee… She’s desperate, she’s sobbing… All on account of Dorange, another of our customers… He’s bawling the hell out of her, she has no one to turn to… The heartless blackguard slips around behind her and takes advantage… she’s bent over our coffee table, bawling… he steals a kiss… and starts to bill and coo… It’s nothing like home… Finally her resistance breaks down… She sinks back gracefully on the couch… He gives her another buss, square on the lips… She swoons, she passes out… Nice work!… And him waggling his arse…

  I really caught on… the polite passion… the deep luscious melody… All those visions to jerk off to…

  Our coffee table, I’ve got to admit, looked mighty good there!… The hands, the elbows, the bellies of the plot, all rubbed against it… La Pinaise clutched it so hard you could hear it crack all the way across the room, but the worst was when handsome young Dorange, in a very tragic moment, made as if to sit down on it… Mama’s heart jumped in her throat… Luckily he bounced up again… almost instantly… During the intermission she kept worrying… what if he did it again?… My father understood the whole play… But he was too far gone to talk about it just then.

  It did something to me too. I didn’t touch the soft drinks or even the cakes that the society people passed around… Those socialites are used to mixing grub with magical emotions… They’re pigs! It’s all one to them as long as they’re chewing… They gulp it all down at one sitting, the rose and the crap it grows in…

  We went back to our seats… The second act passed like a dream… Then the miracle was over… We were back again among plain ordinary things and people.

  We waited, all three of us on our stools, we didn’t dare let out a peep… We waited patiently for the crowd to drift out, so we could take our table… Then a lady came in and asked us to wait just a little while… We agreed… The curtain went up again. We saw all the actors, all the people in the play, who were all sitting round our table… all playing cards together. The Pinaises, the Coulomanches, the Brétontés, the Doranges and Kroing, the old banker… They all sat there facing each other…

  Kroing was a funny little old man, he often came to my grandmother’s shop on the Rue Montorgueil, always very friendly and polite and completely shrivelled up. He used violet perfume, it stank up the whole shop. He collected only one thing, it was his only interest in life: Empire bell pulls.

  The game on our table started quite amicably. They gave each other cards as politely as can be. Then things went kind of sour, they began to speak sharply, not at all like in the play… They weren’t talking for the fun of it any more. They shouted numbers at each other. The trumps resounded like somebody getting a licking. Behind their father the Dorange girls were squinting something awful. The mothers and wives were left strictly to themselves, sitting with their chairs against the wall, all tensed up and scared to breathe. A command rang out. The players exchanged places. On the table the dough was piling up… Heaps and mounds of it… Old man Kroing was pounding the tabletop with both hands… In front of the Pinaises the pile kept growing and swelling… like an animal… They were red in the face with excitement… With the Brétontés it was the exact opposite… They were losing their dough… They were as pale as ghosts… They didn’t have a penny left in front of them… My father went pale too. I wondered what he was going to do! We’d been waiting at least two hours for the game to end… They’d forgotten us…

  Suddenly the Brétontés stood up… They offered to stake… their castle in Normandy! They announced it solemnly… on three cards!… And little Kroing won… He didn’t seem happy about it… Brétonté stood up again… “I’m staking the house!…” he muttered. “The house we live in!…”

  My mother was thunderstruck… She jumped up like a spring. My father couldn’t hold her back…

  She climbed up on the stage with her limp… in a voice still shaken with emotion she addressed those big gamblers: “Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve got to take our little boy home… he ought to have been in bed long ago… We’re going to take our table…” Nobody raised any objection. They all acted as if they’d been hit on the head… They were staring into the void… We picked up our table and whisked it out fast… We were afraid they’d call us back…

  When we got to the Pont Solférino, we stopped a moment… We took a deep breath…

  Years later my father was still telling that story… with priceless gestures… My mother didn’t care for it… It stirred up too much emotion in her… He always pointed out the exact place in the middle of the table where we plain people had seen millions and millions vanish in a few minutes, and all a family’s honour and all its castles go up in smoke.

  * * *

  I didn’t learn very quickly with Grandma Caroline. Even so, the day came when I could count up to a hundred and read better than she could. I was ready to take up addition. It was time for me to go to school. They chose the primary school on the Rue des Jeûneurs, right near the shop, the dark door on the other side of the Carrefour des Francs-Bourgeois.

  You went down a long corridor and there was the classroom. It looked out on a little court, and on the other side there was a wall so high that the blue sky was blotted out. To keep us from looking up, there was also the big tin shed that covered part of the yard. We were expected to concentrate on our lessons and not to bother the teacher. I hardly got to know him, all I remember is his spectacles, his big stick and his cuffs on the desk.

  It was Grandma who took me to school for eight days, on the ninth I fell sick. In the middle of the afternoon the matron brought me home…

  Once I got to the shop, I couldn’t stop puking. Such waves of fever ran through my entire body… a heat so dense that I thought I had turned into somebody else. It was kind of fun if I only hadn’t had to throw up so much. My mother was suspicious at first, she thought I had eaten too much nougat… It wasn’t my way… She begged me to control myself, to make an effort not to vomit so much. The shop was full of people. When she took me to the can, she was afraid somebody’d swipe her lace. I was feeling worse than ever. I threw up a whole basinful. My head began to boil. I couldn’t hide my joy… All sorts of funny things were going on in my head.

  I’d always had a big noggin, a good deal bigger than other children. I could never wear their berets. Suddenly, as I was puking, my mother remembered this monstrous deformity of mine… She was worried sick.

  “Auguste, do you suppose he’s coming down with meningitis on us? That would be just our luck!… It’s all we needed!… That would really be the end!…” I finally stopped vomiting… I was baked in heat… I was terribly interested… I’d never suspected so much stuff could fit inside my noodle… fantasies… weird sensations. At first everything looked red… Like a cloud all swollen with blood… Right in the middle of the sky… Then it disintegrated… and took the form of a customer… And enormous to boot!… Gigantic proportions!… She began to order us about… up there in the sky… She was waiting for us… hanging in mid-air… She commanded us to get busy… She made signs… to get a move on, the whole lot o
f us!… To clear out of the Passage… p.d.q.!… Every last one of us!… There wasn’t a moment to lose!

  And then she came down, she came towards us under the glass roof… She filled the whole Passage… an enormous strutting figure… She didn’t want a single shopkeeper left in his shop… not one of our neighbours was allowed to stay put… Even Mme Méhon came along. She had grown three hands and four gloves… I could see we were going out for a good time. Words danced around us like around actors… Impassioned cadences, surprise effects… magnificent, irresistible inflections…

  The gigantic customer had stuffed her sleeves full of our lace… She cleared out the showcase… right out in the open… She wrapped herself in point lace, whole mantillas, enough chasubles to cover twenty priests… And amid the frills and finery she grew and grew…

  All the little good-for-nothings in the Passage… the umbrella vendors… Visios and his tobacco pouches… the girls from the pastry shop… They were waiting… The tragic and glamorous Mme Cortilène was there beside us… Her revolver slung on a strap… It was full of perfume and she was spraying the whole place… Mme Gounouyou with the veils, the one who’d been shut up indoors for years on account of her runny eyes, and the caretaker in his cocked hat… they were all in a huddle as though getting ready for some shindig, all in their Sunday best, and even little Gaston, one of the bookbinder’s kids that had died, he had come back for the occasion, his mother was just nursing him. He was sitting on her lap good as gold, waiting to be taken for a walk. She was holding his hoop for him.

  Old Aunt Armide drove in from the cemetery in Thiais; she drew up in a brougham at the end of the Passage. She had just come for the drive… She had grown so old since the previous winter that she had no face at all, only a lump of soft dough in its place… I recognized her anyway by the smell… She gave my mama her arm. My father Auguste was all ready, slightly ahead of time as usual. His watch hung from his neck, as big as an alarm clock. His rig was something very special, morning coat, straw hat, hard-rubber bicycle, cock in evidence, stockings moulded by his calves. All spiffed up like that, with a flower in his buttonhole, he got on my nerves worse than ever. My poor mother, overcome with embarrassment, returned his compliments… Mme Méhon, the old battleaxe, was carrying Tom balanced on her hat in among the feathers… She made him bite everybody who came by.