Guignol's Band

by Louis-Ferdinand Celine

  He shouts to Mimi again!

  “Burgundy, Mimi!… Burgundy, sweetie!”

  The drinking’s not over! He yells down the stairs again…

  Mimi was downstairs in the basement kitchen goosing around with the others… You could hear them all clucking away… They were having a great time!

  “She doesn’t give a damn what I say, that trollop… just doesn’t give a damn!… Mimi! Mimi! You hear me?… Tell Joconde to come up!… Boys, she’s got to read the cards for you! You’ll see something!… You’re going to have a belly laugh! Joconde’s a real circus! Boy, she’s something!… Cards!… Cards!… Hands!… You’ll split!… My wench used to believe in cards! She used to say to me, ‘Darling…’ In any case, I don’t believe in it!… Not a bit of superstition in me!… But I get a kick out of watching Joconde! She’s right once in a thousand! It’s the real thing with her!… She even knows the Tarots! Since the cradle… All kinds of cards! Life! Past… Future!… A hell of a character! You’ll get a look at her face!… She’s not from Seville for nothing!… They’ve got it in their blood!… I brought her back in 1902 from the Castilian Exposition!… Her name was Carmen… I call her Joconde! And, well, she’s still around! Leaves today! Comes back tomorrow! In the kitchen!… She takes a little outing… she comes back!… She says to me, ‘Goodbye, Cascade!… You’ll never see me again!’… It doesn’t worry me!… Three days later my beauty’s back! Faithfulness in person!… The same song and dance for twenty years!… Gypsy to the core!… Steals, cheats, lies, everything!… She drinks only water! It’s not from booze that she’s batty! It’s something worse… Got to see her castanets too!… Some workout!… Hailstones!… You’d think it was hailing!… You don’t see her fingers!… I never ask her for anything… She brings me a pound… two pounds!… Sometimes a fiver!… No discussion!… I take it all!… So does she!… A gypsy!”

  “Joconde’s busy!” someone answers from downstairs… “She’s preparing the rabbit for this evening!”

  Mimi yelling from the bottom of the stairs.

  “Damn it! Tell her to get going! We’re waiting! Are we going to wait all day?”

  “Coming, darling!… My sweet Precious!”

  What a cooing! coo-coo-coo!…

  It’s Joconde cooing like that… from downstairs… all the way in the back…

  “And all the cards! Don’t forget anything, Precious!… And not the junk! You hear me?… The real stuff!… Luck, Baby!”

  He tells us about it… “It’s a passion of hers! She’d cheat with Deibler.” We burst out laughing!

  There she comes, scaling up, Carmen the annunciated!… She sniffles… she spits… wheezes…

  “Sacro mio!… Sacro mio!… Quouelle casa!… Craouha!”

  The two… three… four flights!… Finally she emerges! Ah! What a vision in laces!… He didn’t lie!… She clutches the rail, gasping… she’s all in!… A short-winded doll!… A plaster cast!… Black eyes!… Embers!… Chantilly lace… furbelows!… Velvet flounces!… A whole train!… And her skirts full of medals!… In tiers… they jingle! Little bells!… They chime soon as she moves! More lacework… narrow waist!… All of it with spots!… More spots! Grease! Dust! Sauces!… In her ears barbaric pendants that almost drop to her shoulders… She’s choking after the rail… Suddenly she perks up!… Here she is! She’s giving us the once-over! She plants herself!… She grumbles!…

  “Greatness av my life!”

  She’s defying us!… Crap like us! It’s an outrage! She’s flaring up, puckered, twitching, lips twisted, violet, black… from looking at us with anger… towering rage…

  “You wanta me, Cascade?… You wanta me, pimpa?”

  That’s what she calls him.

  “Get the cards, baby doll!”

  That’s an order.

  “In front of those roughnecks?”

  “Yes! And shut up, slut!”

  That gags her… her innards are tied up in knots… she starts coughing!… And coughing!…

  Angèle stands there not saying a thing.

  Carmen sees her.

  “And that bitch?”

  Angèle lets out a shriek.

  “Cascade, throw that pig out! Back to the doghouse, you hag!… Back to the doghouse! If she stays another minute!… I’m going to clear out!… I didn’t come from Rio to be made a fool of!… I already find seven floozies on the bed! Do I have to stand that lunatic besides? The idea! Goodbye!… I’m no angel… Goo-oo-ood night!”

  They’re off!… The doll starts choking… she shakes the whole place… She’d better rest… better sit down there on a step… she’s going to faint!…

  “Dumb bitch!” she chokes… “Dumb bitch!… and you haven’t seen everything! Just wait for the thirteenth! You’ll have thirteen in your bed!”

  She’s having a high time, a little cracked!… Dizzy!… She suddenly lies down… she can’t sit up!… She’s squirming and convulsing on her belly!… What a time the other kids are having, in seventh heaven!… The way they giggle!… They’re all over the place!… On the cushions! The rugs!… Cackling… kicking up! They’re twisted into one another with delight!… The old ones, the young ones, feeling each other up!… It’s like a movie!… Life in a castle!… And pretty loose! They hand around glasses, bottles, first the Calva and then the sausages… There’s no crapping around!… Everything goes!… The old-timers yell at each other!

  Boro goes back to the piano… The chorus starts up again…

  “The Knights of Misfor-or-or-tune!” The girls tuck up their dresses… they unhook themselves to breathe easier… They slap their thighs… wild laughing!… Cheeks all red… Some are thin and some chubby!…

  Cascade starts getting sore, he’s riled, they tickle him, pull his hair… Not a bit of respect left!…

  “What! My women! And you too, you tramps? Trying to get in my hair?… Well I’ll be damned!… If that’s not the limit!… Where’ll it all end? Bughouse!… The grandmothers worse than the brats!… The world’s cracking up!… It’s the pavement of vice!”

  Suddenly the fun’s over… They’re all in!… Everyone’s crying… He stands up, indignant, sits down again astride… he mops his forehead…

  “So it’s only a joke? Gentlemen! Just wait a minute! Peace!… Health!… Now Mimi the foie gras! The rillettes, the olives!… I see the gentlemen are still hungry!… Boro!… Boro!… Play ‘The Golden Wheat’, Boro! You hear me?” But the girls preferred ‘The Poet’… “A poet told me!” All right, ‘The Poet’! “That there was a sta-a-a-ar!”… But they got no further… Everybody started squabbling again!… About Angèle!… Some were for!… Some against!… About the airs she put on… etc.… etc.… If she had a right to make faces!… That she wasn’t very polite!… The whole coop was clucking away!… It made a wild racket… jabbering so you couldn’t hear yourself!… The two of us would have liked to talk some more with Cascade!… About our brawl with the cops!… To explain what happened… After all, it was serious!… About the rioting and violence… I didn’t want things to get nasty… If the cops were getting shitty with me… it meant someone must have done me dirt… tipped off the Special Brigade… It was teeming against the window panes in sheets, cats and dogs, it was pouring buckets, winter wasn’t far off… I’d been in London four months… four months already! It wasn’t always comfortable because of the busybodies! Still it was better than across the Channel!… Much better than taking a beating with the Sixteenth Cavalry… croaking wet every day from Artois to Quercy… counting if you still had all your limbs in every foxhole… barbed wire everywhere, waiting for you!… Goodbye!… I’d had three years of it!… My youth knocked around in the army!… It had ended pretty badly with the Viviani business! Hail Déroulède!… I brought back my bones and the mortgage! Holes everywhere!… My arm twisted! Just a hunk of flesh left… maybe enough for them to yank me in again! The little game wasn
’t over!… War hooks on!… You’ve got to watch out!… Wars keep going… My ear got a lousy screwing too… A buzzing inside!… Whistling!… Like that, a bullet… In a way it’s alarming… the whistling’s hell on sleep… My leg dragging along… Not much to joke about… The little pimps made me smile… They’d eaten up the hokum!… It turned their little heads!… I didn’t say anything!… That’s experience!… I knew!… No need to boast!… They were children in a way!… “emancipated”, my arse!… They’d learn somersaults over there in the sectors!… Everything that wasn’t in the papers!… It wasn’t enough to talk out of the corner of your mouth and chew the fat!… They’d see the rest of it!… I was all right at Cascade’s!… I was staying put!… It looked magical to me after what I’d been through!… The others would see! The guys who were steamed up would get over it!… They could all argue as much as they liked, life at the Leicester was all the same a real treat… Too happy, that was all!… Leave that?… Youth is crazy!… Go looking for slaughter, crazy contraptions, poor sucker! Eat gunfire!… You rot in the water… trench mud… your dome full of gases… Here’s to your health, Meatballs!… I love you!… Wacky with duty!… And taratata!… Shit! I wasn’t going to wise them up!… Never wise up a dope! There’s the bugle, men!… They’d have argued with me!… Aah!… Information’s no use!… They want a change!… Bon voyage!… They’ll be dead before I do it again!… When it was full of customers outside… Just think!… Right near… full of traffic!… And they were throwing away all their chances!… The streets jammed! Full of dough!… The girls never stopped… It was a real circus of customers, couldn’t pick a pin up!… A merry-go-round, a crowd of lovers! Shaftesbury, full! Tottenham, full!… The kind of thing they never dreamt of!… Right side by side, in a hurry, continuous! Easy-going! Happy-go-lucky, Tommies, Sammies, Boys, my balls! Sweating whisky and little presents!… Pavements made of gold, that’s a fact!… Just had to lie down to pick it up… Cascade wasn’t exaggerating a thing!… Those were the palmy years, the end of 1914, ’16, ’17!… The take had never been so good… The pimps had it wonderful! And there they were evaporating!… They were slipping away!… Nitwits!… Their bunions were burning ’em!… Whooping cough and panic! They were getting their knapsacks ready!… They were storming the consulates!… Bedford Square was full of ’em!… Rarin’ to go!… Stung all at once!… Bamboozled by the newspapers!… Cascade stuck to his guns!… They’d gone off their nuts!… In the frenzy!… The wind of glory!… The girls all up in the air!… In distress!… That was the result of it!… The hurricane had left him a queer heritage!… He was still complaining!… Twelve pieces… Twelve items! All at once! Everything for Cascade! Ah! Some joke!… Maybe it wasn’t over yet!… Now how to handle it?… Ship the whole lot of them to the Leicester?… With Angèle in charge?… That was the most practical thing… Whoring right at the corner… right nearby!… Not a hundred yards away!… You couldn’t want any better!… Fine location for a boarding house. The six floors all continuous!… Leicester Street… Leicester Square, W1… You could see the people on the sixth floor going up from the door… big spacious premises!… For treating friends right!… Hygiene on every floor… French bidets… gallantry everywhere! Toil and honour!… The motto! The whole basement all a well-stocked kitchen, a dream! Nothing petty at Cascade’s… Open and generous house! Hot dishes at all hours… day and night! No woman can deny it! London’s the training ground for hustling… the delicate ones are always coughing! Murderous pavement in winter!… Tuberculous fog!… Have to eat things that stick to your ribs… Not titbits and noodles… Boy, oh boy! Everything! Solid stuff! Choice quality!… When it came to grub, Cascade wouldn’t trust anyone! He did the marketing himself three times a week. He’d bring back the tastiest things he could find, the plumpest poultry, turkeys just right! Perfect fowls! The kind of leg of lamb you don’t see any more!… So that the platters’d sizzle in the oven! Superfine mutton… when he found woodcocks we’d have a dozen!… Baskets so loaded that the maids dragged along the stores… and special butter!… And in blocks!… Never a question of economy… The Table first!… That was the boss’s other motto!… Nothing cheap on the table!… Fine fruit!… The best peaches in all seasons! That accounted for his success!… The Leicester Boarding House had lots of other advantages… Centrally located for appointments, near the Regent, two minutes from the Royal, the Exchange of the business, the pimps’ favourite spot, but no fakes, no small stuff!… Get it straight! The ones who know how to handle things! Class! The laws of the trade! The real established procurers who go back ten, fifteen, twenty years! The big shots of the profession!…

  Shame on the small-timers!… On the little guys!… They’d get the cockiness knocked out of them fast! Eliminated one two three!… Should’ve seen them when the gambling started, the big poker games!… The stiff betting!… Laid out at the first call!… Washed up!… Wrung out!… Curtains!… You never saw them again!… Where things were treated seriously at the Royal from four to six… Buying, selling, discussing, all the refunds… In the promenade of the Empire, which was the gold mine of the trade, a woman cost three pounds, just for the doorman’s percentage… and the same amount for the cops… That gives you an idea right away… Cascade had five working for him alone, often more, Léa, Ursule, Ginette, Mireille and little Toinon, who went out only with her mother… They were all just resting when we arrived… They were waiting for the theatre hour to start the grind… the 8.30 standees… And we dropped in just at the right time! In the midst of the teasing and cuddling!… Especially around the gossip being peddled… those who’d just lost their husbands… who’d been widows since morning… the nervous guys who’d joined up!… They were planning little kitchy-kitchy teams… They were consoling themselves as best they could… The cognac was helping things along fine!… They were all hitting it off together!… It put new heart into Cascade to see them all getting along… He was looking forward to some quiet… Cascade adapted himself quickly, not Angèle! Naturally! She was tight-lipped and suspicious! And not keen about vagabonds. Cascade was offhand, impromptu… even on the afterbeat… he’d suddenly get playful, just like that. That’s why he’d quickly forget about raw deals… you could disarm him by laughing… women as well as pimps… Some bitches, of course, as everywhere, told awful stories about him and his girls! And about his woman!… A number of these vicious slanders dragged at his arse, but they weren’t his headaches!… He’d box their ears for them every now and then… Jealousies, treachery, but didn’t dare grumble about it when he was around. From the Royal to Soho, from the Elephant to Charing Cross, he claimed respect. He’d get into a jam from time to time, the cops would come down on him for form’s sake, like that fairy Matthew, but just to show that it was normal, that the Law was for everyone, that every big shot had to take it and that even Cascade took his turn. It was a sacrifice, that was all!… They weren’t tough with him. They seldom pestered his girls, at the Yard they thought he was regular, they knew that he was a square shooter, handling his affairs right, his women going home at reasonable hours, never abusing their patience, never strutting around the clubs, never using bad language. The English cop is mainly a loafer, down on everything, as I’ve said, war or no war… Mustn’t complicate his life… Otherwise you’re in for one hell of a time. Cascade really had an experience of things English that was rather special! Knew all the angles! Never away a single day in his twenty-five years in London, since his leave in fact, his three years in Africa, in Blida, except for his two trips to Rio, always on the job… actually a sedentary man… and just a little broken English… maybe twenty or thirty words… at most… no facility of speech… He admitted it himself…

  All the arse work at Cascade’s came from France, except the Portuguese!… And Jeanne Jambe, the blonde, who was born in Luxembourg…

  As for his health, he was greying around the temples, he had his albumin, but he was still pope at the table and the bottle and elsewhere too! He wasn’t much of a shot any
more at the rifle ranges, but he was always a man with real class! In everything and for everything! He’d still pick up girls, and slick ones, showgirls!… Real cookies! He hung around stage doors… Just so, for the hell of it! Innocent-looking!… And more than his share. And no worrying about conversation… just wild laughing and pantomime!… Giddy and gallant!… He used to waltz like a prince in Angèle’s heyday!… He didn’t dance any more because of his varicose veins!… But all the same, two or three dances while he was on the make!… It’s true he liked skirts, his little weakness, his venial sin, not very common among pimps, who were more the card-playing grocer types… they were pretty indifferent when it came to tail.

  And I’d like you to know he was always ticklish about respect, not familiar, even when he was high, even at the “whore market” with the men… a pretty low dive where they gulped down vitriol by the pitcherful and tableful… Ah! Better not lack any with him!… The young ones would snicker a little… they’d make little digs… They’d learn what’s what right away!… He didn’t tolerate impropriety, he was a chief and that was that!… Cordial, pleasant, but touchy… A smudge on his honour!… Never women’s gossip… His word was all!… And never aggressive! Even drunk!… Even staggering!… Never held grudges!… Only, and get it straight, if there was any impudence, a tiger! Lightning!… Let it be the Strong Man of the Halles, the Cannon Man of the Ternes,* the Terror of the Corsican Heath, the swallower of flaming pythons, the big Dinosaur in a cap, he let him have it straight in the kisser, and clean, and then and there!… And in front of everybody! And no arguing, no nonsense!… Let them see what law and order mean! Good manners, politeness! It often started when they made cracks about his rings, about his “Brazilian six-carat” and his “knight’s sapphire”, two magnificent stones. They made some people jealous. The little hoodlums thought they were too showy, they asked him whether they were heavy? Whether they didn’t twist his wrists? He didn’t tolerate wisecracks, when they repeated it two or three times, the smacks started flying… As for his lock of hair, that was something else… then he was the one who was aggressive… he’d start things… he wanted exclusive rights… He didn’t want to see another like it, a spit curl smooth as himself, in any pub in the neighbourhood. He’d fly right off the handle, had to get his competitor out, he’d have ripped up the joint and the spit curl with it!