Guignol's Band

by Louis-Ferdinand Celine

  Matthew’s frozen, he watches it all… a pope!…

  He doesn’t move…

  “The cab’s here!” Mireille announces.

  We’ve got to go down now… Boro and me… Cascade slips us a pack of bills, a fistful, just like that… It’s to arrange things… The old hag’s still bawling too loud… She demands her little remedy!… Otherwise, she won’t go! Blackmail! Mireille dashes off again to get some!… It’s a whim, got to give in!… Needs her remedy!… Cascade hardly knows what to say to fix matters up… so that the guy’ll say something after all… Mr Conscience! Who’s been there an hour, who hasn’t said anything… A log!

  “Believe me, if you like, Inspector! But I was insisting that someone read the cards for me! Well, I got it!… I’ve got the question… the answer!… Look! Catastrophe!”

  A little joking, to loosen him up…

  “Ah! Inspector, you’ve witnessed a nasty family scene!… You walked in! As if by chance!… What do you run into?… Lunatics? Positively!… Lunatics! I’m very sorry, Inspector!… Really!… Please excuse me!”

  Not a word… Wooden… He lets him talk…

  “The cards! The cards! of course!… But Angèle’s a terror!… Did you see, Inspector? By yourself!… What a character!… I don’t have the last word in my own home!… It’s really no life!… I’m not exaggerating a thing!… And all these girls besides!… All these kids they shove on to me like that!… Bang! My arms loaded!… And me so peaceful!… quiet!… Is that a life?… You know me, Inspector… I get pushed into complications! What kind of business is that? I ask you?”

  The Inspector still speechless.

  “We’ll see later on! We’ll see! Who’s at fault, responsible… They say it’s Wilhelm! I wish it were!… In any case, it’s never me!… You know that, Inspector!… Everybody’s mind is topsy-turvy!… It’s awful the way people’re going batty!… I’m not going to look for the whys and wherefores!… I’d go off my nut too, just hearing them!… You too, Inspector!… I’m convinced!… I’m sure it worries you!… With all due respect!… Look, Inspector, I’m not making any comparison… Let’s get that straight!… It’s obvious… But I’m sure that in your family, Inspector, you’ve got trouble too!… Ah! I’d bet!… The events affect everybody!… With all due respect!… It’s obvious! Of course!… But the circumstances affect everybody, don’t they?… Everyone gets it according to his station… and the toughest situations! The worries, the ups and downs aren’t only for poor people!… Ah! that’s a fact!… It’s a real fact! So it is! Just look at the men!… Ah! I won’t say any more… That’s war, Inspector!… That’s war!… It’s a subject that makes me terribly sad! There you’ve got the sadness of Life!… And how unhappy everyone is!… And how that kind of thing ages you!… If only they noticed it… An hour’s like a year!… The things we’ve got to go through!… Ah! It’s no exaggeration!… You’re reasonable too, Inspector!… It’s really bad luck!… You won’t deny it!… I’m not making any comparison… Of course! It’s obvious!”

  While he was jabbering away like that, occupying his attention, we fixed the old gal up, she could just about stand… supported under the arms… with the oilcloth in her arse, the towels, all tied up tight… outfitted for the trip!… “Forward, Madame!”… We walked in front of Matthew… he moved aside a bit… Not a peep out of him… He was listening to Cascade clacking away…

  On the stairs… more shrieks!… Our chippy wasn’t feeling well! She screamed at every movement!… We stopped and started a dozen times… Downstairs, another session!… We had to lift her… get her into the cab… people gathered around… get her among the cushions… so she’d be all set… Damn it!… There was already a crowd around… We started at a snail’s pace… we’d asked the chauffeur to drive “in low”! Forward!… Tottenham… the Strand… and the East streets… That wasn’t where the hospital was!… At the other side of Mile End!… A real journey! Luckily it was already dark… She’d stopped yelling except at the bumps… The air outside did her good… she almost kept quiet… We’d propped her up pretty well… “It won’t be anything,” I said to myself… “It won’t be anything… It’s not much of a wound…” I knew about wounds… We could have taken her to the Charing Cross nearby, the other hospital much closer! The most practical thing to do… But Cascade wouldn’t hear of it… He’d forbidden us!… to him Charing Cross Hospital was just a cop’s hangout. He stuck to the London… All right, the London!… Giddy-up, horsie!… It was some haul!… It was at least two hours’ ride at the rate we were going!… London’s big… It’s fifteen or twenty towns laid end to end! the same road as for the docks… Fleet Street, the Bank, Seven Sisters… then the Elephant, and the Port East… Cascade trusted the London… London Hospital!… He had confidence only in the London… It was all right with me… with Joconde too! It seems it was very serious… that you could count on the pal, the Clodo medico… the Dr Clodovitz in question… that they’d known each other since their army days… Never a slip-up… the injured went through like clockwork!… Nothing indiscreet… no gabbing… In the hands of Dr Clodo… London Hospital… They must have hit it off perfectly… Had to remember the guy… Clovis like old King Clovis and the Vase of Soissons…* Maybe it wouldn’t work out so easily… Maybe Cascade was kidding himself a little!… He was often optimistic… We’d see!… The streets… the little lamps!… There aren’t any before the Elephant… you start imagining things just looking at them… things dance!… Thousands… thousands… the way they unwind… dangling that way… in a daze… The ride reminded me of the Sixteenth… the patrols… the platoons… Tup! Tup!… Tup! Tup!… The rhythm… the irons… I knew something about that… at night, tup! Tup!… But mustn’t forget the guy!… Ah! Clovis… Clodo! Clodovitz!… Clovis like the Vase of Soissons!… Boro’d already forgotten!… Good thing I’ve got a good memory…

  * * *

  When Clodovitz saw us coming, he made a kind of sour face… got to admit it… The nurse went to let him know that someone was asking for him very specially… He was in the back of the hospital treating an emergency case… according to her… I rather think he’d been sleeping… He arrived drowsy, he looked bleary, he was rubbing his eyes… All the same he was pleasant, we could see he was explaining matters so that the old gal would be taken before the others… Two men put her on a stretcher… We waited outside… in the vestibule, that is… We weren’t alone… Even at ten at night it was full of families and people… whispering together…

  They put our maniac to sleep, they sewed up her buttock, it didn’t take long… They put her into a common ward. We still hung around… Eleven o’clock, then midnight… We could see her in her cot, with her face all purple… drooling all over the place…

  As soon as she came to, she started raising a row, demanding her Cascade… They gave her another injection, she went to sleep again, it was one in the morning. Clodovitz wasn’t the boss, not even the important doctor, he was just a second-stringer at the London Freeborn Hospital, almost without pay, there were several like that who drudged away at all the thankless jobs, especially at night, on duty, Clodovitz almost every other night! Especially the foreign doctors who were interns at the London, that helped them get a start before they set themselves up.

  I got to know Clodo well later on. It’s true that he was obliging, eager, you might even say zealous, only he’d falter for a moment, he was vague with words, had to tell him right away what you wanted, to put it on the line… had to know how to handle him…

  The London, in the East End, wasn’t a swanky hospital at the time! They were waiting for donors who had to be begged!… It was written on all the doors that they were waiting for them, and pretty badly… in pleading terms! The philanthropists took their time. On the other hand, the corridors were full and so were the vestibules, every hour of the day and night, crowds, mobs, of all ages and origins… whispering horrible things, how they all felt on their last l
egs, and that they’d rather croak there, sitting on the tiles, then be sent home to suffer again… They wanted a bed or to die! That was the kind of thing you heard. Not to speak of a hundred little children out-screaming each other all over the place… after their bottles and toys… the vestibules full of their whooping… the chairs full of their muck everywhere… It wasn’t at all big enough for the patients squeezed against the doors, there were always some waiting outside, filling the pavements, the streets… Still, it was an enormous place, a big lengthwise joint, wards and wards, with God knows how many windows, as far as Burdget, almost the other avenue… The donations weren’t rolling in, only poverty kept coming. What a crowd! Even in winter, in the rain, for admission!… Lined up hours on end!… They caught the rest of what finished them off spitting out complaints and catarrhs! I always saw crowds being refused. It was very warm inside, naturally, from October on, a furnace. The undernourished are always cold. Coal’s not expensive there, they use it for everything…

  They cried to be admitted, they cried again when they left… they didn’t want to go away… they were comfortable inside, they were even delighted with the ordinary food, red cabbage with mashed peas…

  It was a dense crowded area, all Poplar, Limehouse and Stepney, all the surrounding neighbourhoods, and Greenwich opposite, naturally, for medicine and surgery. In short, the whole East End, I’m talking of those days, from Highgate to the Docks, look at that mob, the jamming! It was so full when we came that if we hadn’t known Clodo we’d never have been taken in with our Mamma! Even in the dark night, cuddling together shivering, they’d noticed our get-up, and right away insults! Ah! A furious line! We came parading, bluffing them all! An enormous mob, take it from me! People who’d been there since morning trying to get in, one fellow even came to let us know, bellowing right in our faces, just like that, damned sore, that he had a double hernia! That he’d been waiting there for three days, while we with our cab and our dressed-up doll and her behind, we gave him a swift pain in the arse! It was no use explaining to him… It was a general chorus, a frightful agony!… They didn’t want to let us in! In order to get out we had to get a lantern and show them the blood, the towels, the dressing on her arse, which was dripping all over, that they were real clots!… They moved aside a little, but they were grumbling, rough, ready to bite, we walked past the insults, we came to the ticket window, we immediately asked for Clodo… Luckily!… Dr Clodovitz! Boro was the Soissons business all over again! We barely escaped getting tossed out.

  Later on, over the years, I often passed by there, in front of the London Hospital… It still has pretty much the same walls, the same raspberry and yellow colour, the same soot everywhere, the same enormous window cage from Commercial Road to East Port, only the people have changed a lot. The crowd, the mugs, the gait all surprise me, I no longer recognize them… They’re not the same noisy squabblers, bullying tramps… still a few bedraggled women… not many youngsters… No longer the same bums… they now discuss things soberly, they’ve taken on vocabulary… They still gabble away in the fog about their varicose veins and their aches and pains… but not so peevishly… They’ve stopped smacking each other in the puss if someone gets ahead of them… they hardly swear any more… the very neighbourhood’s been changed… I mean just before the war… the one of 1939 until doomsday…

  It’s the population moving, if you think about it… There’re almost no sailing vessels, that’s what brought the real savages, they were the unmanageable ones, the real horrors… yellow-skins… blacks… chocolates!… Hell-raisers!… They often came about their injuries, they had them on all their fingers… one dressing, another… on their feet too, and their bodies… they’d start a riot over a trifle, at the door of the hospital, they’d bleed at the slightest provocation, rip each other’s guts out the way you’d say hello, especially from the Islands and from America! Real wild men, from the tropics, from the Sunda Isles, from the equator colonies, and from the north too, have to be fair… At bottom, they were all man-eaters… all that on the “entrants” line. That made a mixture of yelling, terrific gales of laughter… with the cockney housewives and the drunken bullies of the neighbourhood, the peg legs, the whisky cirrhoses, the fistulas, the broken heads, the dyspeptics, the lumbagos cut in two who squalled about everything, the albuminous, their little bottles, the finical bellyachers, the anti-everythings, the death-dodgers, the people with little pensions, the choking asthmatics, all of them corralled, roped in, pushing one another, squeezed against the door… Often there was entertainment… an interlude… a minstrel… with his clappers, his mouth noises, the whoah-whoah blackface! And a mandolin!… The popular tunes!… He’d pick up a couple of pennies… he’d beat it… I did that later on… a button-up tailcoat, all kinds of colours, a real carapace!… I think performers of that kind are still around… Whitechapel likes hoofers, they drew a crowd quickly, but they cluttered up the street, stopped the trolleys, then the cops would swoop down, everyone would be pushed against the walls, women, legless cripples, one-armed men, spitters… It would break up fast!

  The days when there was too much fog, when the frost spread out the crowd, the line wound round La Vaillance… there was a permanent session in the pub… One man would keep two others’ places… They’d go to warm up a bit around the liquor… They’d have a sniff of cherry punch… The ones who still had a penny would treat themselves to a small glass of beer together, the others pretended to be having something, it created a constant coming and going between the bar and the street when the weather was stinging cold…

  Naturally there was always a slightly carbolic smell at La Vaillance… inside the pub…

  They’re not the same men today, the same clientele, as I’ve said, there’s decorum… the neighbourhood’s making progress… Poverty’s going in for furniture… They were already looking for white wood, they’ll soon be fixing up cosy corners, one fine day they’ll be having their nails done… Unless it’s all smashed at the time I’m writing, gone up in smoke beneath the bombs, the peccadilloes and the whims! Naturally I’m no longer up-to-date, we’re separated by the events, in ten years I won’t recognize the place! The streets, the walls were gloomy in those days, I mean the buildings. The house fronts were coated with soot, the goo trickled… should’ve seen the way it came down from the port, the docks, the factories… the clouds kept bringing in smears, coal tar… gusts, tornadoes of it in winter, and sticky mists, a real affliction. It was sticky inside the hospital too, and dark, the walls, even the beds, the drab, almost yellow linen. The odours stuck in my nose, the urine, the ether, the coal tar and the honeyed tobacco. I still get a whiff of them. Once you’re used to it, it has a charm… Only the operating room was nickel-plated, whitewashed, gleaming, even blinding, coming from outside.

  As soon as there was a bit of mist you couldn’t see the big hospital, yet it was a building that had bulk and breadth… It melted into the surroundings, you had to go near it, almost touch it… It was painted like fog with some yellow and raspberry added. It’s a slimy depressing mess from October on, gets into everything, mixes up everything, your head, things, makes you gently dizzy so you don’t know what time it is and that time is passing and night falling… It rises up from the river, sweeps in from the end of the neighbourhood, takes in all the landings, docks, people and trams… makes everything hazy and stumpy…

  Days when it really streams in you can’t see the hospital from La Vaillance, the pub opposite… when it comes steaming out, in enormous torrents… You just catch little gleams… it blinks a little in the windows… and the big yellow lantern at the door… It’s almost blotted out already… It’s not a bad thing for your worries… they drift away… it leaves you quiet… I can’t help saying that when I die I’d like to be left on the pavement as is, just like that, all alone in front of the London… let everyone go away… you wouldn’t see anything happening… I think I’d be carried off gently… That’s my notion… faith in the
gloom… It hasn’t any basis, of course… Ah! Good thing I’m aware of it… I’m joking, it’s just an impression… brief futility… an idle thought… Boy!

  * * *

  Once her arse was sewn up, Joconde was impossible! There was no holding her!… All the way to the end of the common ward you could hear her roaring out awful curses against Angèle, that snake in the grass, whom she wanted to finish off right away, to go home and pound her to a jelly once and for all. Good thing she couldn’t do anything! She lay stiff in bed, wrapped up from her neck to her heels… in bandages, cotton… wasn’t allowed to move…

  She stank of iodoform, she sickened the whole ward more with her stink than her screaming! Never a second’s silence. The nurses, who weren’t prudish, snapped right back at her, hung on till they got the last word… That caused some awful sessions… Always thinking about Angèle, that ghastly hag, she boiled in the sheets… “That fart! That fart!” that’s what she called her, brooding away. “Murdering an arteezt!… The jealousy of that bitch!… Zlut!… Oh! Woe eez me!”

  The suffering patients protested right and left… that they were fed up with the noise…

  There were all kinds of patients around… but mostly women of the neighbourhood, housewives and maids, some waitresses from the bars, and some Chinese too… and also two or three Negresses, women under treatment… most of them for the belly… breasts, and also for the skin… running sores, ulcers, chronic cases… Joconde wasn’t in for long, but all the same at least twenty-five days like that on her back, that was Clodovitz’s opinion, absolutely motionless. He came by at least three or four times a day to examine and check. He came to look at her drain, whether it was running… He was as attentive as could be… Recommended by Cascade, that wasn’t to be sneezed at!… Clodovitz wasn’t old, yet he already looked rheumatic, sickly, shrivelled up, and his joints full of arthritis… He even made the patients laugh at his aches, he made dry, ropy, creaky noises at will…