North

by Louis-Ferdinand Celine

  Really an imposing edifice! … at least eight stories … but what a state! whole floors hanging out the windows … a junkpile! … merchandise, glassware … cascading … tatters in the wind … I can’t imagine what they have to sell… we get a load of dust! A shower … we rush inside … the bombs have made a fine mess … no more shelves … or stairs … or showcases … or elevators … all jummixed, toppling down in the basement … ah, the staff is still there! … salesmen, old fossils … oh, very friendly … all smiles … two three to a counter … counters full of nothing under signs … “Silks” … “China” … “Men’s Suits” … but what about canes? … or crutches?

  “Oh, certainly … yes, yes, of course … third floor …”

  No more stairs … we climbed up on stepladders … the “Notions” counter …

  “Leider! leider! Well have them soon! Bald!”

  Still smiling, the old gentlemen send us away … canes are on fourth floor … more little ladders … They’ve got some! … heavens above! the only counter with goods! all the canes you could wish for! and people!… the only busy counter! soldiers and civilians! … and kids! … here the salesmen aren’t old, they’re all cripples! … one leg, no legs! … as bad off as the customers … the up-and-coming department … the “Court of Miracles!” °

  I don’t shillyshally, I pick two canes, bamboo, light, rubber tips, perfect! … they give me a slip, and on to the cashier … twenty marks … marvelous! … fully equipped for dizzy spells … light in the head … beginnings are always fun, even for lumpers! … delirious joy … finding the only department fully stocked with merchandise in this enormous empty store …

  Where can it be now? … what zone? … what’s become of it? … that store without staircases? … I’ve asked around … thé people look at me … they think I’m nuts … they don’t remember …

  Me and my canes, Lili and Bébert, now we’re tourists … better go find a hotel! this city has suffered all right … all those holes, those exploded streets! … funny, you don t hear any planes … aren’t they interested in Berlin any more? … I didn’t get it, but little by little I caught on … the city was all stage sets … whole streets of facades, the insides had caved in, sunk into holes … not all, but pretty near … much cleaner, I hear, in Hiroshima, neat, dipped … decoration by bombing is a science, it hadn’t been perfected yet … here the two sides of the street still created an illusion … closed shutters … another curious thing was that on every sidewalk the rubble—beams, tiles, chimneys-was neatly piled up, no disorder, every house had its wreckage right outside the door, one or two stories high … everything numbered! … If the war ended tomorrow all of a sudden, they wouldn’t need a week to put everything back in place … in Hiroshima it couldn’t be done, progress has its drawbacks … there in Berlin, a week, and they’d fix it all up! … the beams, the drain pipes, every brick, already classified and numbered, painted yellow and red … which gives you an idea … a nation with an innate sense of order … that house is good and dead, one big crater, all its bowels and pipes outside, its skin, heart, and bones, yes, but the innards nicely grouped, in perfect order on the sidewalk … as if an animal in the slaughterhouse … a stroke of the wand! presto! … were to pick up its guts! giddyap! … and gallop away! If Paris had been destroyed, you can imagine the reconstruction crews! … what they’d build with the bricks and beams and drain pipes! … maybe two three barricades? … if that! … and there in that dismal Berlin I saw men and women about my age and even older, maybe seventy or eighty … some of them blind … hard at work … . bringing everything back to the sidewalk, piling it up in front of every house front, putting on numbers … bricks here! yellow tiles there! … broken glass in a hole! everything! … no goofing off! … rain, sun, or snow, Berlin was never funny … a sky that will never smile … never … from Nancy on you’ve got nothing to look forward to … trouble and more trouble, Pharaonic labor, deep gloom, seven-year wars … thousand-year wars … now and forever! look at their faces! … even their rivers! … their Spree … that Teutonic Styx … the way it flows, slow, inexorable … so black and muddy … one look is enough to discourage several nations, dry up their laughter … we looked down from the parapet … Lili, me, and Bébert … A German lady comes up … she wants to talk to us … an animal lover … she wants to pat Bébert … his head is out of the bag … he’s looking at the Spree with us … the lady asks where we come from … Paris! … we’re “refugees” … she’s a kindly soul, she knows how sad we must feel …

  “Oh, you’ll have a lot of trouble with your cat…”

  I didn’t know … she fills me in … “unreproductive” animals, cats, dogs, “without pedigree,” are classified as “useless” … according to Reich Regulations they must be handed over immediately to the “SPCA.”

  “Be careful at the hotels! on one pretext or another their delegate drops in … supposedly for a “veterinary examination” … and you never see your cat again! … the SS take them away and tear their eyes out …”

  Now we know … I thank her … we’ll be careful at the hotels! … Bébert is neither reproductive nor pedigreed … still, we’ve got a passport for him … I had him examined at the Hotel Crillon … by a colonel-veterinary of the German Army … “the cat known as Bébert, belonging to Dr. Destouches, 4 rue Girardon, seems to be free from all contagious disease” (photograph of Bébert) … the colonel-veterinary hadn’t said a word about any pedigree … well, we’d see at the police … All very well to daydream and chat, but what about our visa? … oh, it comes back to me! … nobody’ll take us in if our passports aren’t in order … Schulze had warned us … “go straight to the police!”

  “Okay, lets go!”

  We’d been taking it easy … I ask the first schupo … on the other side of the bridge … . “the visa, office?” … Not far … he points out two three shacks between the Museum and the streetcar … okay! … we go that way … a sign … “displaced persons” or some such … further on we see, we hear, every conceivable lingo … children, grandparents, girls … you’d expect a free-for-all … actually there’s a kind of order, everything according to signs … like the bricks … here the “Balkans” … there “Russia” … farther on “Italy” … we Franzosen way at the end … we go … we knock on a door … there’s a short line … herein! here we are! … the trick is catching the attention of the man at the typewriter … there’s about twenty of us standing over him … and answering the other people’s questions … we’re altruists, answers for all … the problems of the whole line … people from Noirmoutiers … Gargan … Marly … Villetaneuse … they can’t speak German … we’ve got to answer for them … we don’t give the man at the typewriter time to ask any questions … we ask him … and we answer all at once … each for all … what we want, his signature and stamp! he tries to tell us what he wants … papers! Our papers! … hell! we got plenty of papers! papers to sell! our gamebags and pants are full of them! … what does he want ‘em for, the jerk? … I look at all the papers, certificates, and booklets I’m toting around … when you reach a certain age it’s horrible … enough to disgust you with life … all the certificates, photostats, baptismal records, tax receipts you’ve accumulated … triplicate, duplicate! … another pen-pusher turns up … wants our photographs … we got plenty! … especially Le Vigan!… the best stills from his latest film … the bureaucrat looks us up and down … compares our mugs … not satisfied, far from it! … That you? … never!” … Neither me nor Lili nor Le Vigan! “No likeness!”… Hell, we know it’s us and not somebody else!

  “Ach! … nein! … nein!”

  The nerve of that pen-pusher! … haven’t changed very much! … he’s blind! in such a hurry! who does he think he’s kidding? … I look, I compare … sure, we look tired … we’ve lost weight, but that’s all! … what does he take us for? … parachutists? … saboteurs? … their newspapers are full of that stuff! … anyway one thing’s for sure, he wants differ
ent pictures … new photos … which means that Photomaton joint… across the Spree, you can see it from here, that red and yellow shack …

  “He’s crazy!”

  Or maybe … definitely … he’s in cahoots with the joint … anyway he’s got a thing about photos, never sees a likeness … that couple over there, for instance … nice-looking gentleman with a goatee and his wife in tears … they’d come to Berlin to see their son at the hospital … the “Charité ° … wounded on the East Front … that nut with the pince-nez didn’t think they looked like their pictures either … they were from Carcassonne … they told us their story … our opinion? …

  “Maybe we’ve changed a little, but not that much … What do you think, Madame? … Grief? The trip?”

  That clerk with the monocle is a maniac or a scoundrel … anyway he’s dangerous … he thinks it over, he makes us stand in the corner while he copies our papers … first by hand … then the machine … Mr. Coatee from Carcassonne, blazes! he’s good and sick of it! … who do they think he is? … damn foolishness! Le Vigan agrees with him … they’re putting us on! … that pen-pushing cop is going too far!

  “I ask you, Monsieur! unrecognizable! Me! … Me! … my picture on every wall! all Europe has my picturel alas! alas! … and America! and that idiot doesn’t recognize me! When did they let him out, I ask you … that’s their police for you! Lousy slackers! that’s what they are! … should have been in the train! our train! … I was in that train, Monsieur! … the last train from the Gare de l’Est … look at my suitcase!”

  He goes over to the bench … he pulls his suitcase out from under … swings it through the air! … opens it … a wad of junk falls out… in shreds … his shirts … handkerchiefs … underdrawers …

  “See what I mean? … after Epernay … a living target… that train! … from both embankments … crossfire … rat-tat-tat … rrrt! and not just my suitcases … how many dead? … well never know! I had three musette bags … I abandoned them! the underground is master of France! … I saw it, I know… Paris? … Paris tool you didn’t know? … Seen it with my own eyes! …”

  Standing there, he saw it all again …

  “You have no ideal Gray Mice, ° telephone operators! … tongues torn out, hogtied, two by two in the Seine! … from the Pont de la Concorde!”

  The couple, Goatee and his weeping willow, seemed dubious … No! Really?

  “You don’t believe me, Monsieur? … You yourself … right now … cross any bridge in Paris … and come and tell me about it …”

  Those skeptics nauseated him! their own suitcases were riddled? … what does that amount to? three … four bullets …

  “Come on, Ferd! I can’t hold it!”

  He goes out, he takes me with him … straight to the sign: Abort … W.C… . we go in …

  “Those mugs are cops! couldn’t you tell? from Carcassonne they say! … trying to make us talk! …”

  “You think so?”

  “Positive!” … mikes all over the place … the whole joint! …”

  Possible … I think it over.

  “Ferdinand, if we don’t get out of here in an hour … no, right away! right away! … well never get out!”

  Makes sense to me.

  “Go get Lili! … we’ll tell the guy at the window we’re going across the street for lunch … we’ll be right back … that we’re leaving our, papers … all our papers! … and coming back with our pictures! … he’s getting a rake-off … take it from me …”

  “Yon got something there!”

  I motion to Lili … We hop back to the office … well, I hop the best I can … our bureaucrat isn’t there any more, gone out to eat … hell! it’s another guy! This other guy listens to me … “Well be back, etc.” … all right with him, but he warns us that we won’t get anything to eat without our passports.

  “I can give you a ‘little permit’… best I can do … for the hausgericht … a simple meal …”

  Yes! Yes!, it’s all right with us… just so he lets us go, doesn’t keep us there! maybe the couple from Perpignan is okay, not cops at all! … their real crime is not recognizing Le Vigan … from the theater … or the movies … who the hell can they be? … incredible … people like that would suck eggs! …

  “Step on it, Ferd, don’t wait for the other cop to come back!”

  He prods us …

  “First we feed … no, first the Photomaton … I’ve told you all about it, Ferd … our pleasure train! last one out of the Gare de l’Est … machine-gunned four times … Epernay … Mézières … and then in Belgium … both embankments full of guerrillas! take a look!”

  Repeat performance!

  “Look at my suitcase!”

  He opens it again … his shirts all over the sidewalk! … showing the people in line what that last train was like! … show them those weeping willows from Carcassonne hadn’t seen a thing!

  “That’s what France is today!”

  Ah! At last! Somebody’s recognized him! … one! … ten!

  “Le Vigan! … Le Vigan! … It’s him!”

  He thanks them … once … twice … he bows … he packs up his duds … his rags … in a hurry …

  “And now, son, let’s go!”

  It’s not far … the other side of the avenue, the “Basler Hof” … we finally decide to go there first … the pictures could wait … Lili’s carrying Bébert in his bag …

  “You can’t walk without canes?” he asks me.

  “Oh yes, I could, but I feel better with them.”

  “They make you look older.”

  Getting old! his obsession …

  “See here, son, you’re ten years younger! … you’ll see what it is in ten years …”

  Normal for me to totter, and him straight as a die …

  Here we are at the “Basler Hof” … a palace … oh, badly beat up … between two buildings completely in ruins … hollowed out … the “Basler” is still holding up, only one balcony hanging down the front … we go in … the reception desk … in the middle of an enormous lobby, all gold … I show our little permit: “one meal” …

  “Stimmt … right! … and you wish to eat?”

  “Yes! … yes! … yes!”

  Le Vigan answers …

  “You desire a room?”

  “Two rooms … one for me and my wife … one for our friend here …”

  The receptionist is an old-timer … enormous tail coat with squiggly braid … vermicelli … cap like a super-admiral … but then he gets a load of Bébert! … the face on him! … Bébert gives him a mean look too …

  “You have a cat?”

  Damn! he’s seen him! … bang! … he slams his register shut … he’s through with us.

  “Animals are not admitted!”

  “Well?”

  “Well?”

  Plenty of comebacks: flunkey, Boche, Fritz, etc. … go get yourself … ! It wouldn’t do us much good …

  “Show him your suitcase, sap!” I say to Le Vigan … He does … he shows him the holes … his underwear in rags … I show him my canes … a cripple …

  “Wounded! wounded! verwundet! my wife too!”

  “This is the place for you … they take people with animals …”

  He writes the name on a card … “Steinbock Hotel” … Schinderstrasse …