Death on Credit

by Louis-Ferdinand Celine

  Lots of tenants have come and gone, bachelors and spinsters, whole families, generations… They’ve gone on making holes, and so have the rats, the little mice, the crickets and woodlice… No one has plugged them in ages… Uncle Édouard inherited the houses. They’ve taken so much punishment they’ve got to be regular sieves… No one paid his rent any more… The tenants had grown old, they were tired of arguing… So was my uncle… They were even sick of fighting about the shithouse… there was nothing more to wreck, there was nothing left. They turned them into storerooms. They put in their wheelbarrows, their watering cans and coal… At the moment we don’t even know exactly who’s living there… They’ve been condemned to widen the street… They’re going to be torn down… As far as we know, there are four families… Portuguese, so they say…

  Nobody’s bothered to try to keep them up… Grandma knocked herself out, it didn’t do her any good… When you come right down to it, that’s what killed her… Messing around that day in January even later than usual, first in cold water, then in boiling water… Always in the draught, putting oakum in the pump and thawing out the faucets.

  The tenants came out with their candles to needle us and see if the work was getting ahead. The rent? Well, they wanted a little more time. We should come round next week… We started back to the station…

  At the ticket window Grandma Caroline had a dizzy spell. She clutched the railing… it wasn’t like her… She had chills all over… We went back across the square to a café… While we were waiting for the train, the two of us shared some grog… When we got to Gare Saint-Lazare, she went straight home to bed… She was all in… She came down with a high fever, same as I’d had in the Passage, but hers was flu and it turned to pneumonia… The doctor came morning and evening… She was so sick that we in the Passage didn’t know what to tell the neighbours when they asked.

  Uncle Édouard shuttled back and forth between her place and the shop… She was worse than ever… She was sick of having her temperature taken, she didn’t even want us to know what it was… She still had all her wits about her. Tom hid under the furniture, he didn’t budge, he hardly ate… My uncle came to the shop. He had a great big balloon full of oxygen.

  One night my mother didn’t even come home for supper… Next morning it was still dark when Uncle Édouard shook me in my bed and told me to get dressed quickly. To go and kiss Grandma, he explained… I didn’t know exactly what he meant… I was still half asleep… We walked fast… It was on the Rue du Rocher… on the mezzanine… The concierge hadn’t been to bed… She came out with a lamp to light the hallway… We went upstairs, Mama was in the first room crying, down on her knees, slumped against a chair. She was moaning softly, mumbling in her grief… Papa was standing… he didn’t say a word… He went out to the landing, then he came back again… He looked at his watch… He tugged at his moustache… Then I caught a glimpse of Grandma in her bed in the next room… She was breathing hard, gasping, suffocating, making a disgusting racket… The doctor was just leaving… He shook hands with everybody… Then they led me in… I could see she was fighting for breath. She was all yellow and red, her face was covered with sweat, like a wax mask beginning to melt… Grandma stared at me, but her look was still friendly… They had told me to kiss her… I was already leaning against the bed. She motioned me not to… She smiled a little… She wanted to tell me something… There was a rasping sound in her throat… it wouldn’t come out… In the end she made it… she spoke as softly as she could… “Work hard, my dear little Ferdinand!” she whispered… I wasn’t afraid of her. We understood each other deep down… The fact is that I have worked hard, all in all… That’s nobody’s business…

  She wanted to say something to my mother too. “Clémence, my little girl… take care… don’t let yourself go… please, for my sake…” That was all she could manage. She couldn’t breathe at all… She motioned us to leave… to go into the other room… We obeyed… We could hear her… The whole apartment was full of it… We stayed there at least an hour, stunned and silent. My uncle went to the door. He wanted to see her, but he didn’t dare disobey. He only pushed open one of the double doors, that way we could hear her more distinctly… There was a kind of hiccup… My mother jumped up… She went eek, as if her throat were being cut. She crumpled up in a heap on the carpet between her chair and my uncle… Her hand was clenched so tight over her mouth that we couldn’t take it away…

  When she came to, she screamed: “Mama’s dead!”… over and over… she didn’t know where she was… My uncle stayed on to keep watch… We went back to the Passage in a cab…

  We closed the shop. We rolled down all the blinds… We felt kind of ashamed… Kind of guilty… We didn’t dare to move, for fear of spoiling our grief… Mama and all of us cried with our heads on the table… We weren’t hungry… We didn’t want anything… We didn’t take up much room, but we’d have liked to make ourselves even smaller… to apologize to somebody, to everybody… We forgave each other… We begged and promised to love each other… We were afraid of losing each other… for ever… like Caroline.

  Then came the funeral… Uncle Édouard attended to everything all by himself… he had made all the arrangements… He had his grief too… He didn’t show it… He wasn’t demonstrative… He called for us at the Passage just as they were taking away the body…

  Everybody… neighbours… and people with nothing else to do… came over and said: “Be brave!” We stopped on the Rue Deaudeville to pick up our flowers… We took the best… Nothing but roses… They were her favourite flower…

  * * *

  We couldn’t get used to her absence. Even my father was shattered… There was nobody but me to have scenes with… I was getting better but I was still so weak it was no fun to pick on me. Seeing me so wobbly, he hesitated to bellow at me…

  I dragged myself from one chair to another… I had lost six pounds in two months… I was wasting away. I puked up all the cod-liver oil…

  My mother couldn’t think of anything but her grief. The shop was sinking beyond rescue… Even at rock-bottom prices we couldn’t sell our trinkets… The customers were all stone broke… they were making up for their wild extravagance at the World Fair… They had as little mending done as possible. They thought twice before spending five francs…

  My mother would sit there for hours without moving, on her bad leg, in an impossible position, benumbed… When she got up, it hurt so bad that she’d limp the whole time… My father would pace about upstairs in the opposite direction. The sound of her limp drove him nuts…

  I’d pretend I had to do something. I’d go to the can and play with myself… I’d give it a tug or two… I couldn’t get it up…

  Aside from the two houses that had gone to Uncle Édouard, there were three thousand francs left from Grandma’s estate… But that money was sacred… Mama said so right away… We must never part with it… We unloaded the earrings, they went for loans, one in Clichy, the other in Asnières…

  And yet our stock was getting sleazier and skimpier, enough to break your heart… it was hardly fit to show…

  Grandma at least had been enterprising, she’d bring us stuff to sell on consignment… white elephants that other dealers were willing to lend her… But with us it wasn’t the same… They were suspicious… No get-up-and-go, that’s what they thought of us… We were going to the dogs…

  When my father came home from the office, he’d dream up solutions… some pretty grim ones… it was he who cooked our bread soup… Mama wasn’t up to it… he’d be stringing the beans… Why wouldn’t we turn on the gas and all commit suicide?… My mother just sat there… He blamed it all on the Freemasons… and Dreyfus!… And all the other criminals who were out to get us.

  My mother was off her rocker… even her movements were weird… She’d always been clumsy, now she dropped everything. She’d break three dishes a day… She never came out of her
daze… She was like a sleepwalker… If she went into the shop she’d be afraid… She didn’t want to move, she’d stay upstairs the whole time…

  One night when we were going to bed and not expecting anybody any more, Mme Héronde turned up. She began to hammer at the shop door and sing out… We’d forgotten all about her. I went to open. My mother didn’t want to be bothered, she even refused to see her… She just went hobbling around the kitchen. So then my father spoke up:

  “How about it, Clémence?… Make up your mind. If you leave it to me, I’ll just send her home, you know that!…” She thought it over a minute, then she went down. She tried to count the pieces Mme Héronde had brought back… She couldn’t count right… She was all muddled with grief… ideas, figures… Papa and I helped her…

  Then she went up to bed… Later she got up and came down again… She spent the whole night straightening out the shop, furiously, obstinately putting the stuff away.

  In the morning everything was in perfect order… She was a different woman… You wouldn’t have recognized her… All of a sudden she felt ashamed…

  What a terrible humiliation to have let Mme Héronde see her so frazzled!

  “When I think of my poor Caroline!… Of the energy she had up to the last minute. Ah, what if she’d seen me like that!…”

  Suddenly she bucked up. During the night she had even made all sorts of plans… “Well, Ferdinand, son, if the customers won’t come to us any more, we’ll go find them!… Spring is coming, we’ll close the shop for a while… We’ll do all the markets in the suburbs… Chatou!… Le Vésinet!… Bougival!… Where they’re putting up all those fine villas… where all the fancy people live… That will be better than stewing in our own juice!… Than hanging around here waiting for nothing!… Besides, you’ll get some fresh air!”

  * * *

  The idea of doing the markets didn’t appeal to my father one bit… A risky business!… It panicked him to think about it… He foresaw the worst complications… We were sure to get our last remnant of merchandise stolen!… We’d be stoned by the local shopkeepers… Mama let him talk… She’d made up her mind.

  Anyway, we had no choice! We were skipping every other meal… We’d taken to lighting the stove with tapers instead of matches.

  One morning the time came and we raced off to the station. My father carried the big bundle, an enormous piece of canvas stuffed with merchandise… Everything we had left that wasn’t too disgusting… Mama and I lugged the cartons… On the platform at Saint-Lazare he ran through the list of his fears again. Then he beat it to the office.

  In those days Chatou was quite a trip. We were there at the crack of dawn… We bribed the local cop… He rolled out the red carpet and found us a place… We found a stand for our stuff… We had a pretty good spot… between a butcher and a man selling little birds. But they didn’t want us there… that was plain from the start… immediately.

  The butter-and-egg man behind us kept griping the whole time. For his money we were nutcases with piles of rubbish. He made some very vicious remarks!…

  The alley we were in wasn’t the best place, but it was near the park… in the shade of magnificent linden trees… About noontime the ladies appeared… simpering and my-dearing… If a wind started up, we were lost! At the first breeze all our stuff blows away, all the bonnets and hankies and ribbons… Those things are just waiting to take off, they’re as light as clouds… We fastened them with mountains of clasps and clothespins. Our stand looked like a hedgehog… The ladies strolled by… capricious creatures… butterflies followed by one or two cooks… Then they’d turn and come back… My mother tried to catch them with her spiel… To draw their attention to her embroideries… to the boleros she was taking orders for… to her “Brussels type” lace… or Mme Héronde’s gossamer marvels…

  “Isn’t it amusing to meet you here!… In this draughty market!… Oh, you have a shop?… Do give me your card!… Of course we’ll come to see you!…”

  They went on to gush somewhere else, we didn’t sell them much… Well, it was publicity!…

  Now and then a tornado would pick up our gewgaws and drop them on the veal cutlets next door… The butcher gave us a piece of his mind…

  We’d have made out better if we’d brought along our handsome dressmaker’s dummy with the firm bust… that would have brought out our exquisite treasures… the muslin and satin frills… the creations of Mme Héronde’s fairy wand… To maintain a Louis XV flavour, an atmosphere of refinement, amid the tripe and vegetables, we’d haul out a real museum piece, a diminutive masterpiece, the rosewood doll’s cupboard… We kept our sandwiches in it.

  Our dread, maybe even worse than the wind, was showers… All our finery turned to pancakes!… The ochre ran out in rivers… the pavement was all sticky with it… The stuff felt like a lot of sponges… The trip home was awful. We never complained in my father’s hearing.

  The following week it was Enghien and certain Thursdays Clignan­court… the Porte… We were right next to the flea market… I liked the markets all right… they made me miss school. The fresh air pepped me up… When we saw my father in the evening, he gave me a pain in the neck… He was never satisfied… He met us at the station… I felt like dropping the little cupboard on his dogs to make him jump.

  At Clignancourt it was an entirely different clientele… We’d only lay out our junk, our worst crap, the stuff that had been in the cellar for years. We let it go for beans…

  It was at the flea market that I met little Paulo. He worked for a woman two rows behind us. He sold buttons up and down the avenue, near the Porte, or he’d stroll around the market with his tray on his belly, held up by a string around his neck. “Thirteen for two sous, ladies!…” He was younger than me but awfully smart… We made friends right away… What I admired about Popaul was that he didn’t wear shoes, just boards tied on with tapes… They didn’t hurt his feet… So I took off mine too when we went out on expeditions together on the fortifications.

  He sold his buttons quick, in baker’s dozens, bone and mother-of-pearl, you didn’t have time to look… After that we were free.

  In addition he had a little racket. “It’s easy,” he explained… as soon as we had no secrets from each other. In Bastion 18 or in the tram shelters near La Villette, he’d make little dates with soldiers and butchers and soften them up. He asked me to come and meet them. I couldn’t, because it was too late when he did those things… You could make five francs, sometimes more.

  Behind the weighing house he showed me – I didn’t ask him to – the way grown-ups sucked him off. Popaul was lucky, he had juice, I didn’t have any yet. One time he made fifteen francs in a single evening.

  I had to lie to get away, I said I was going for French fries. My mother knew Popaul well, she couldn’t abide him even at a distance and she forbade me to go with him. We went just the same, we’d go wandering around as far as Gonesse. I found him irresistible… Every time he got a little scared, he had a tick: he’d suck in his tongue, and suck and suck, it made him look awful. In the end, from seeing so much of him, I began to do it too.

  Popaul’s boss, the one that sold the dry goods, had a funny little jacket she put on him; it was very special, like a blazer designed for a monkey, all covered with buttons, big ones and little ones, thousands of them, on the front, on the back, a whole sample case, mother-of-pearl, steel and bone…

  Popaul’s idea of heaven was absinthe; his boss poured him a little aperitif whenever he came back sold out. It made him spunky. He smoked army tobacco, we made our own cigarettes out of newspaper… He didn’t mind sucking people, he had a dirty mind. Every man we passed, we’d bet how big it was. My mother couldn’t leave her stand, especially in that kind of neighbourhood. I’d slip away more and more… And then here’s what happened:

  I’d thought Popaul was a regular guy, loyal and faithful. I was mistaken. He behaved li
ke a queer. Why not face it? He was always talking about a harquebus. I didn’t know exactly what he meant. So one day he brings it over. It was a big rubber band on a forked stick, a kind of slingshot, for shooting sparrows. “Let’s practise,” he says. “Then we’ll smash a window!… There’s an easy one on the avenue… After that we’ll try a cop!…” OK, it seemed like a good idea! We go off by the school. “We’ll start here!…” he says. School was just out and it was handy for a getaway. He passes me his bean-shooter… I put in a big stone. I pull it way back… as far as the rubber will go… “Take a gander up there!” I say to Popaul. And ping!… Crash!… right square in the clock!… The whole thing flies into smithereens… I stand there frozen like an arsehole. The racket and the dial going to pieces like that… I’m flabbergasted. People come running… I’m screwed… cornered like a rat… They all start tugging at my ears. “Popaul!” I holler… He’s melted into thin air!… He’s gone!… They drag me off to my mother. They raise hell with her. She’d better pay for the breakage, or they’ll take me off to jail. She gives her name, her address… I try to explain: “Popaul!”… The slaps rain down so thick and fast I can’t see straight…

  At home it starts up all over again, a tempest… It’s a hurricane… My father beats the hell out of me, kicks me in the ribs, steps on me, takes my pants down. In addition he keeps bellowing that I’m killing him!… That I ought to be in jail! That I should have been there from the start!… My mother pleads, clings to him, falls at his feet, and screams that in prison “they get even worse”. I was the lowest of the low… I was a gallows bird. That’s what I’d come to!… Popaul had a good deal to do with it, but there was the fresh air too and the freedom… I won’t try to justify myself…

  * * *

  We spent a whole week like that, absolutely frantic. Papa was so angry, he got so red in the face, we were afraid he’d have an attack. Uncle Édouard came in from Romainville just to reason with him. Uncle Arthur didn’t have enough influence, he was too frivolous. Rodolphe was far away, touring the provinces with the Capitol Circus.