Guignol's Band

by Louis-Ferdinand Celine

  “All the more reason!… All the more reason!… Listen to me!”

  Now he starts dragging me. He doesn’t want to stay in the doorway. As soon as we get outside he speeds up… He’s tearing along in his cassock… big rush!… The whole Strand… Charing Cross… We race along Villiers Street down below the station… the street that goes down to the Thames… Charing Cross, the station right above it… the string of pubs… the whole slope… full of low dives… Ginger… Three Swans… Star… Wellington… side by side, each bar an arcade… He heads for the Singapore, the saloon just in front of the tunnel… I still see the place, curlicue mosaics… festoons all over the ceiling… luminous artificial flowers… and the big player piano, a cyclone earthquake, that never stopped day or night, booming all through the street from Regent, Strand, to the bank of the river; it jounced the drinkers, shaking them up at all the bars, making them puke like crashing cymbals, with big hiccups, spin round dancing, falling over, oop! They’re gone, tearing off, wobble, crazy head to foot, from one pavement to the other! It’s sticky all along, gooey, sooty, the whole pavement slippery black… you can’t see a thing, the drunk disappears in the fog. The mists from the river choke and swallow things… You can’t even see in the saloon, need brilliant lights… the bar’s lit by electric… lights shining under the bottles… Have to light up everything!… Even the waitresses have bulbs, they’ve got little lamps in their hair… You can see Sosthène’s a regular customer… He waves hello to everyone…

  They sit him down at a table right under the biggest chandelier… Ah! He starts scowling… Something’s wrong…

  “Be careful! The waitress!…”

  More suspicions.

  “Two sodas, Beauty!” he orders.

  “Tuppence!” she answers.

  “Lend me the two pennies!…”

  Luckily I’ve got ’em!

  He changes the conversation.

  “I talk English like a pig!… I grant you, you may say it! I agree!… I can’t manage to pronounce their thee or thou…”

  He reminds me of Cascade when it comes to English, he was mulish about thee too!

  “And yet, young man, it’s not from lack of habit! It’s almost thirty-five years that I’ve been associating with the English!… And with all kinds, let me tell you!… The good! The awful! The best! The rich! The well-to-do! The gay! The sad! The nabobs! The bums! The whole shebang!… Beneath all skies! Latitudes! They all say the!… I can guarantee you! In India! In China! In Malaysia! Right here!… The hell with it! I give up! I give up!… No thou!… No the!…

  “I think in French, I pronounce in French! French is all I talk!… Got to take me as I am! That’s what I’m like! Nothing to be done about it!… I’ll never learn their language!… It’s angry with me!… That’s it!… It’s angry with me!… It’s not the same with Hindustani! Ah! That’s different! I worship it! It’s my mother tongue! That’s another matter! It’s an ancestor… I wish you could hear me!… I’m Sanskrit in my heart! In my fibre!… There I’m initiated!… That’s another matter! The way I talk Hindustani! Intimately!”

  And then he leans over to my ear confidentially, though he brays like a donkey because of the piano… You could probably have heard him from the street!… The piano was playing the ‘Merry Widow Waltz’… cymbals and storm! The whole thunder! It really was the popular tune!… It was hard to understand what he was confiding, he was trying to out-yell the piano… it was a struggle…

  “Water alone is propitious, young man!… You stare at me… I amaze you!… Propitious, I’ll have you understand!… Propitious to the great call of the waves!… Drink lots of water!… Do as I do!… We were both born of Amphitrite! Therefore, fish! To be sure, fish! Ah! Ah that’s it! Fish and horsemen alike!… Assuredly! Dolphin! Monsieur Ferdinand! Certainly dolphins!…”

  He was drunk.

  “Dolphins of the mountains!… Dolphins of the purple clouds!… Dolphins of Tibet!… I see you!… Look! I see you!”

  I was making him dreamy… visioning…

  “Would you go? Imagine! Would you go riding the dolphins of the beery sea? The elf of the sticky stout? Certainly not!”

  He stops.

  “Stout!” he orders. “Waitress, two beers! Just between us, isn’t it horrible?…”

  He continues…

  “What a heresy! An aberrant monster!”

  He’s taking it to heart.

  “Don’t let anything astonish you!… Everything bogs down, rots in this country because of the heavy stout! That’s the downright truth!… Hogwash and muck!… But on the other hand, you see all the water-drinkers galloping everywhere, all around the universe! Take my word for it! I assure you! Just look at me, Sosthène! A Knight of the Waves! Five and six times around the world! A water-drinker! your humble servant!…”

  “Waitress! Another one!”

  The waitress didn’t bring anything at all, she knew him… she let him rant.

  “No more joking!… Be careful! No blundering! Washing is another matter! I rarely wash!…”

  I suspected so.

  “Let me explain… Achille Norbert, for example, washed himself only twice in the course of his entire existence and he lived 102 years! You’ll read about it in his letters! I’ve had them bound with his arms! Master of the King’s Artillery! Let me explain!… Without any shame! Water? Hmph! Inside? Fine! Wonderful! Outside? No go! That’s a different matter!”

  Then another worry starts eating him, another bee in his bonnet! After the way it’s been raining! The awful weather outside… it’s foggy and raining at the same time! You can’t see three yards away! He’s fed up! He’s going to cry out to the sky! To curse it! He opens the door wide! He addresses the sky!

  “Sulphurous and mournful city! City of the wet devil! Demonic city of the weak! But I am strong! Achille! Thank you!”

  The customers are yelling! He closes the door, he comes back to the table.

  “All great dreams are born in London, young man! Don’t forget it! You don’t know London! From the mirror of its grey waters!… Way down there at the mercy of its river… Ah! That’s a fact! Didn’t you know that?… Isn’t there anything you know? The admirable Véga declares it quite expressly! Canto 14! Verse 9… The Charm!…”

  He leans forward to my ear.

  “Are you ignorant of everything?”

  “Yes.”

  “India?…”

  I admit…

  “So you know nothing at all! I suspected!… Hm! Hm! You’ll have trouble!”

  It sounded nuts.

  “Oh! Of course!…”

  “The Devil? You understand me?…”

  “Sure, I believe you…”

  “Do you follow me?”

  “Of course!…”

  The drunks were raising hell at the bar, it was a real din plus the player piano!… So he yells in my ear… the really utterly confidential words…

  “The Armadalis of Tibet? The flower of Tara-Tohé?… You know nothing about that flower?… Absolutely nothing?”

  He stares at me to see if I’m hesitant… he’s suspicious…

  “Oh! Not at all, Monsieur! I swear!”

  “The Flower of the Magi?”

  “No, really I don’t!…”

  “Well, I know it! I know where it is! The way to the Sanctuary!…”

  Ah! I sit there flabbergasted!

  “But that’s nothing yet! Now listen closely! I, you hear me? I’ve approached the Armadalis of Tibet three consecutive times! Yes! The Tara-Tohé!… It’s not where people think it is!… Ah! Not at all! Ah! No indeed! No!… No!…”

  Some joke!

  “To mislead idiots! You, for example, where would you think it is? in the Convent of Arthampajar? Now I’ll tell one! nonsense! Phew! Phew! Don’t hand me that!”

  I was making him laugh. />
  “I know where they’re hiding the Armadalis of Tibet!… Prospecting mercury quartz for the scoundrels in Calcutta… the Gem Proceeding Company… Ah! Those bloodsuckers! What bloodsuckers! Still they’ve been of use to me, after all!… I’ve discovered everything! Chance! Exactly!… The secret of Things!…”

  Ah! It’s superb! I admire him more. Everything’s fine! My fingers go right into my nose now that I’ve got confidence. We’d have it easy since he’d discovered everything! I was rolling snotballs.

  “I’ll have you read the passages! Verses 25 and 42 of the secret Véga!… for the time being, sh!… Mum’s the word! When we come to Mahé… the little monsoon port… then I’ll reveal everything to you!… Mahé! Karikal! Of course!”

  “Miss! Miss! Please two glasses of Bass! Two Bass!”

  He was ordering two more glasses of beer… His head must have been going round… his eyes shining… cheekbones red… imaginarily… He was tipsy with seltzer water, the waitress didn’t bring any stout or Bass! All we’d had was soda.

  “So we’ll put into port at Mahé, as I was saying, then Delhi! You see it, don’t you?… The borders!… The little Lama Rawpidor!… Ah! Watch out! What a rascal! A shrewd little article! I interest him fifty per cent!… Greedy!… Greedy!… I’ll hook him later on!… I’ll hook him!…”

  Things were shaping up.

  “The whole mission! Everything! You, the convoy! The porters! Off we go! Tara-Tohé’s ours! My boy! At the nose of the Universe! Exactly the word for it!… At least twenty missions at the present time!… You understand?… Dead sure!… Very secret! Flawless! Get it straight! The most austere initiates! At this very moment exploring! Stirring up! rummaging through Tibet in all directions, north and south! They’re turning all the lamaseries inside out! Foiled! Not a word more! It would compromise everything! No! I won’t tell you anything more!… Sh!… The Gem Proceeding Company owes me, just imagine, $25,000 at the very least!… For my quartz alone! And I’m not talking about the emeralds! Or the ebonites! A fortune! My mercurous isocenes!… The mere waste products of my prospectings! What if I presented my entire bill!… In short!… A fantastic swindle!… But we’ll talk about it another time!… Here are the accounts!…”

  He rummages around in his cassock… He takes out a big roll… He spreads it on the table… columns and columns of figures!… What additions!… Staggering!

  “Credit!… My credit! Read there! In red!… 25,000… right? 25,000… more! and 75,000 for something else!… dollars! dollars! more! credit! Hindu piastres!… That tells you everything!… and pounds sterling!… And my options!… and that’s nothing!… not a tenth! Trifles!… Does that give you an inkling?… What if Gem Proceeding should learn of my return?… then it all goes wrong! Of course!… the poor victim resurrected?… The gentlemen learn of it!… the scoundrels immediately take action!”

  In my ear.

  “They all think I’m dead!… Buried!… Some joke, young fellow!…”

  He beats his chest… it resounds…

  “Then and there! They send their craftiest murderers out after us!… They poison our wells! All our wells!… All along our route!… I know them! Capable of anything! Even before approaching the places!… The Falls of Madrapore!… We’ll perish murdered!… In ambush! Pfft!… It’s over!… That tells everything!… Those people stop at nothing!… I know that crowd!… The Viceroy? Pfft! One of the gang! Shuts his eyes, obviously! Thick as thieves! Wait! Wait, my friend!…”

  He starts searching again… he hesitates… He wants to give me real proof… the utter importance of the great secret!… Entirely convincing!…

  “Listen, Ferdinand, at this very moment the Brahmanic Consistories would offer me all the gold in the world!… You hear me? All the gold in the world! That’s something! If I turned over to them all my plans and diagrams… the sketch of the route of the summits!… Nothing doing! I’d tell them to go to hell!… No go!… Mum’s the word!… Ah! You see what we’re in for?…”

  Obviously it was serious… Then he gets anxious again… he frowns… all those people around us… the coming and going at the door… Ah what a bother! The voices of the men drinking and arguing next to us… He feels in another pocket, another lining… He decides to… another roll… He unrolls it… all over the table!… A big parchment… He pushes the glasses aside… It’s a huge map… heights, surveys, ridges… full of mountains… a wide river… deep hollows… dark abysses…

  “There!” he points with his finger… “That red cross!… There!… That blue cross!… Here! This one!… All our stopping places!…”

  Ah! Fine!… It’s the beginning!

  “You understand me?…”

  Ah! Of course, I understand!… Maps, I know all about them! But watch out! I’m getting excited, I’m talking too much… If I go shooting my mouth off, it won’t look good… he won’t want to any more! He fumbles around in his linings… he takes out another piece of cardboard… a coloured square…

  “Here’s the Convent!… You hear me?… The Convent!”

  “Oh yes, oh yes!”

  I’m with him in everything.

  “The place of Magic!”

  I bend forward to get a better look.

  “Oh! Perfectly!…”

  I stare.

  “There we are!…”

  No doubt about it.

  He murmurs to me.

  “The Tara-Tohé!…”

  He’s in his stride!

  “Ah! Ah!…”

  “The Flower of the Secret!…”

  I’m pleased too.

  “Moscow!… Lhasa!…” He’s going over it in his mind… He’s muttering our whole route!… Possessed by it, imbued… “Listen to me, Moscow! Lhasa!… One hundred and twenty-seven days at least!… Lhasa! Mahé!… Another stage… two weeks here… the coast! We mobilize!… Our transport!… Our guides!… Our letters of welcome!… Requisitioning of ponies!… You attend to the foraging!… I leave these matters to you!… I set out alone!… I go away!… I spend a few days in Swoboly, in the Province of Penwane!… The Pagoda with jade lazuli! Just a purification! I sign an agreement with Gowpur, the Lama of the Brahmans… Oh! A real bloodsucker!… I bring him my prayer rolls… perfection itself… the praying wheel I invented… thirty-seven prayers all at once!… Automatic!… I grant him exclusive rights!… Oh! He’s so eager!… All the customers of the Plateaux!… He wants them all!… Everything for himself!… For him alone!… What a demand!… The whole Roof of the world!… Every Brahman becomes his customer!… He lets us pass!… He attends to our provisions!… Fifty-fifty!… I his prayer wheels!… He our corn meal!… We barter! We can’t do anything without him!… When you hear his name! Gowpur Rawpidor… Three bows! North! South! South-east!”

  He shows me how… I execute them… I bend forward as he does… twice… three times…

  He continues.

  “You command our column!… Naturally!… You pick me up on the way!… I’m purified!… Rawpidor accompanies us awhile… Three stages!… Maybe two… He introduces us to his brigands… to the Chu bandits, to their chief executioner, so that they’ll let us pass… Contributions, bows, gifts… there we are! Twelve more days of climbing!… We’re on the site!… We leave the level of moss… and then the heaths!…”

  “We’re coming to the mystic slope… to the steeps of the great Maswanpur!… Our trails are starting!… At the Lazuli Rocks!… Be careful!… The eyries of the Great Route… We hear the Winds of the World!… Our Convent’s not very far off! We’re on the very roof of the world!… Very careful now!… You leave me for three weeks!… Maybe two… You go off discreetly… very discreetly! Absolutely alone!… Absolutely without provisions!… The spirits sustain you!… Feed you!… The Spirits of the Snows!… The heart of our trials… where blow the winds of the world! The gusts sweep you up! Cast you forth! Plague you! Tear you from the crests o
f the rocks! Hurl you away! You cling! to the edge of the abyss!… You creep along on all fours!… You hang on to the slopes… It’s Strength!… Let the hurricanes crush you! Don’t complain! All for the Faith! All for Strength… More strength! In the heart of the Hurricanes of the World! You palpitate with the world! You have to get to the Grand Convent of the Great Shroud! The Supreme Lamasery… Do you understand me? Dead or alive!…”

  Ah! That was all right with me… “All for the Faith!” I repeated. I was talking like him… Dead or alive!

  He’s promising me more and still more!

  “The Tara-Tohé! Verse 42! You see it! At last! It’s in front of you!… What more can I say? There it is beneath your eyes!… Beneath your fingers!… You contemplate it!… You’ve undergone all the trials!… Terrifying, to be sure! Inexorable! No doubt about it!… Perhaps mortal!… But what joy!… You enter the sanctuary!… There!… No farther!… No further doubt!… You contemplate the Great Nest!… The goal itself… ‘Nest of Truth beneath the Roof of the World’! ‘Beneath the Roof of the Snows’!… I’m translating literally… Woupagu Sanskut! ‘On the Beams of the Roof of the World’! Nest of the Snow Swallows!… Wiwopolgi!… And in this nest?”

  Ah! He’s changing his mind! Pulling back! Ah! What else was he going to tell me? Imprudent!

  “Don’t think I can’t hold my tongue!”

  He looks me up and down, mistrustful, distrustful.

  I wasn’t asking anything!

  But immediately he’s off again! A haze! Even more eagerly! Sure about everything!

  “The Tara-Tohé, Flower of Dreams!… Seven colours!… The rainbow!… Seven petals!… Seven colours!… Exactly seven! The figure in Véga 72… Remember that!… The magical Tara-Tohé! The flower opens out in your hand! All the petals! With your heat! Your faith! What a proof! Is that enough, do you think?”

  It was more than I’d asked for.

  “The secret?… Seven petals!… Seven colours!… Be careful! The seven sins! What’s the colour of your soul?…”

  He had me there!… I had no idea!…

  Immediately he gets sore.