North

by Louis-Ferdinand Celine

  “You mustn’t think we’re complaining, Harras! … we could manage on a thousand calories, but there aren’t three hundred in that soup …”

  “I know, and la Kretzer took your cards …”

  “All of them, Harras!”

  I’ll give her a piece of my mind, and I’ll speak to Inge, it’ll be all right …”

  “I haven’t much faith in Madame von Leiden, maybe she’s worse than the son, or; the father … or the prisoners … we’ve seen them, they hate each other, but on one thing they get together, that we’re the scum of the earth and it’s a damn shame that we’re here and not hanged …”

  “You think so, Celine? Did they tell you?”

  “Harras, if I waited for people to tell me, we’d have been sent to the cleaners long ago …”

  “You’re right, my good friend, but at a time like this? you’ve got a roof, you wouldn’t stand a chance in France! … here you’ll eat! … if you really want to … do you think everything is sweetness and light between us? even between the Landrat and the von Leidens?”

  “Sixes and daggers, I’ll bet … granted! … but you people … while you’re waiting for everything to collapse … you roll in clover! … that’s something! …”

  “True! But very disagreeably, I assure you, colleague! … all these people denounce, plot … and rave! not, just the prisoners! the people in the village, all of them! … the bibélforschers too! … even the geese I think! …and the cows!”

  “I’m sure of it! but what do they denounce? to whom?”

  “Everything! … to Adolf Hitler! to the Chancellery! … what doesn’t exist they make up! somebody made up the Crusades, didn’t they? so I ask you? … not just Zornhof! oh no! All Germany! … twenty! … thirty thousand villages like this! same in France! … anti-Boche! … the Crusades! the Landrat spends his time getting people arrested … not enough trees to hang them all! … if the rabbits could speak! the prisoners are great hunters … two shot last week! … I’ve told you, this Landrat is a bad egg, but good or bad, it comes to the same, he knows what he can expect, he’s no fool, he’s getting even in advance … when you’re in Zornhof, don’t go into the houses, not even if they invite you … especially if they invite you! … they’re all Germans, so they say, German families … the men are fighting at the front … actually they’re Slavs, here for two generations, but still Slavs … Polish … Russian … and they hate us … the gooks die for you, your best soldiers, but they hate you too … hell, the Roman gladiators detested Rome! … the lansquenets here detested their captains … always making war on other lansquenets as murderous thieving as themselves, from other villages! … or the same villages! … courage and dying don’t prove a thing … the psychologists are idiots, the moralists are wrong about everything … only facts exist … and not for long … for the moment one dung is sure, the Russians will go as far as Berlin and a little farther … they’re at home here, don’t you see? … the pastor here is a German, Rieder, you’ll see him if he turns up again … as anti-Nazi as the Russians … we haven’t enough police … anyway I’ve warned you, the most dangerous for you are the French prisoners …”

  “We’re used to it, Harras … family hatred …”

  “Anyway you’ve nothing to worry about! … Kracht is here!”

  It’s all so fragile though!”

  “Think of the bird on its branch …”

  “Three birds, Harras! … and where’s the bird seed? I see it’s impossible …”

  “No! No! Don’t say that! come with me! … anything you want, Céline!”

  He takes me to the back of the drawing room … a cupboard with double doors … Louis XV, pink and pearl-gray … he opens it wide … he hands me the keys … three keys … three locks … I see there are still more locks … click! click! … he’s right … all we want … ‘

  “Plenty of everything, see?”

  Canned goods from top to bottom … the other side wine and cigars … cartons of Navy Cut and Camels …

  “For a regiment, Céline! take what you like but not a word! to anybody! … do what they do! same as they do!”

  “Harras, they must have been! … they haven’t got the keys … but they’ve helped themselves …”

  “Not much, Céline, not much, I can tell … they know I know … all this comes from Portugal … don’t cook anything … only eat ham, sausage, butter … sardines … but in your room … like them! throw the empty cans far away … On your walks!”

  “In the Urals?”

  “No … not that far, in the ponds … they’ll go looking … they’re laying for you … you know … and especially watch yourself at table! … ask for more soup as if you were always hungry … as if you liked it! hungrier and hungrier! the air! don’t forget the air … and the long walks!”

  Knock, knock! it’s Lili … I open … she apologizes … she’s been to see the Kretzers, they’ve got a whole floor to themselves … the other stairway …

  “Well?”

  “I asked her for the cards, we’d like them back, so we can go to Moorsburg and buy leberwurst … ourselves!”

  “And she wouldn’t?”

  “No … she said there was no point, her husband would go … and she threw a fit … said we didn’t trust her … that we took her for a thief … that she was a martyred mother! … that her two sons had been killed! by the French! … I cried with her as hard as I could … she wouldn’t let me go … she was furious …

  “‘You don’t believe me?’

  “‘Yes, yes, I believe you!’

  “She had to show me her sons’ tunics, one with brandenburgs, the other with piping … both torn, riddled … caked with blood …”

  “Really her sons?”

  I ask Harras …

  “Yes … yes … the truth … her two sons! … a prize bitch all the same! … even a bit of a poisoner, I think! … oh, she’s not the only one! …”

  “Not the only one” makes me think of other words I’ve heard … snatches between him and Kracht… I was going to ask him for details … really weird … Lili’s supposed to show us the pictures, she’s promised … fact! … we see the two sons, twenty and twenty-five, both in the artillery … they look like their mother … killed the same day, four years rago … at Péronne … Harras had known the two sons …

  But Bébert? … I was thinking about him … he didn’t care much for ham or sardines … what he wanted was fresh fish … lucky we had the hunchback … she was very kind … her father lived in Berlin, in a big bunker … he fished in the Spree … good deal! … every Monday his daughter would bring us back a bottle full of little fishes … all settled … and Bébert would feast all week … while it lasted … there are good-hearted people wherever you go … you can’t say that everything stinks …

  Harras isn’t a bad guy for a Kraut … but time will, tell …

  “Harras, colleague, when are you leaving?”

  “Tomorrow morning … but if you don’t mind, Céline, I want to ask you for a bit of advice … a little work perhaps … if you dont mind … we’ll talk it over if you don’t mind … a project! this evening! we can be alone after dinner … you don’t mind? …”

  “No, of course not, Harras! of course not! … but not too late …”

  “Nine o’clock … is nine all right?”

  “Yes … yes, I’ll be here … Lili too … and Le Vig … and Bébert.”

  “Of course.”

  I confess that I’d known Haïras for years, and I’d never had the impression that he took us very seriously, or that he looked down on us either … we were French and that was that … later, like a lot of other people, I came to see very clearly that we were clowns … and even now in France, every day … and forever, I imagine … which reminds me that the worst stinkers, the most dangerous, are the benefactors, the worst sadists … they get a real kick out of your contortions … what a bunch! … the bullfight audience, in on every circus … if you can’t “sue” you’re t
he fall guy … the only question is how loud they can make you yell … threatened on all sides … first the cops, your fingerprints on the “Wanted list” … and your rogues’ gargoyle portraits … the family pastime! … “This guy … look at him … no right to sue … we’ll give him the works all right!” … burn his bed and table and chairs … and haul him into court again with an indictment that’ll make his guts pop out of their own free will and send him double-tuning around-the world over broken bottles and rusty nails … I wasn’t expecting that kind of thing from Harras, what worried me was his “absences” … he’d be with you, really with you, perfectly reasonable, and then bing! … presto, he wasn’t there any more! a different guy! … a kind of exaltation … the look in his eyes … the things he said … Later … much later … thinking about him … and thinking about other Germans, doctors and patients, what griped me was these “second states” they’d fall into … later, much later, I realized that this was their moment of inspiration, their mystic trance … poor Harras, he came to a bad end … bound to … a lot worse than me …

  I’m sorry … I’ll get you back! … Harras and I had one thing in common … punctuality! military! … nine o’clock! … I go down to the drawing room … I meet him outside … we go in … he shuts the door … I look at his face … plenty to eat, and drink … I listen …

  “My dear Céline, the time has come, I believe, for us, the new Europe, to acquaint not only the learned world but the general public as well with the age-old collaboration between our two nations in every field, philosophical, literary, scientific, and medical! yes medical! our field, my dear Céline!… How many Germans have taught at your schools in the last eight centuries? How many do you think? … Montpellier? … Paris? … Sorbonne? …”

  This was a good time to look convinced … and in perfect agreement …

  “You’ll find it all here! … in these files!”

  A chest I hadn’t opened … a few pieces of velvet … and files! plenty of files!

  “All this comes to us from the Archives … the Museum of the Sciences …”

  His way, I seem to gather, of giving us a suitable and official occupation! … a bundle! … another! manuscripts in Gothic print … green and red Gothic … and portraits of professors! … woodcuts …

  “You’ll do me this favor, won’t you, Celine? you catch my meaning?”

  I catch it perfectly …

  “Certainly, Harras, certainly!”

  An article that I’ll drag out for a month … two months … to keep those people from complaining … we won’t be idle parasites … but historical propagandists … prima! prima! first-rate! ho-ho! … his laugh took over! what a joke! … but here’s another woodcut … Dürer’s Four Horsemen …

  “We could use this for our preface.’*

  “Good idea!”

  “But easy there, Céline! Easy! There’s been a big revolution! Pestilence has shrunk … So’s Famine … little, very little … Death and War, enormous! … the proportions have changed since Durer! … everything’s changed! … don’t you agreed?”

  I agree to the hilt!

  “The Apocalypse, yes! but no more Pestilence and Famine!”

  I object…

  “Maybe a wee bit of Famine?”

  “You’ve got the cupboard, Céline! oh-ho-ho! …”

  What a laugh!

  “The calamity, Céline, I told you in Berlin, you saw the cables … epidemics are washed up … even in Mongolia! … or India! … under Dürer this war would have been over two years ago! … now it can never end … you’ll say that in your preface! … two horsemen instead of four! pathetic!”

  “At your service, Harras! it will all be written!”

  “The Apocalypse inoculated? Impossible!”

  I see! … I see, Harras!”

  He was steamed up … I thought of Lili, she must be getting worried … Bébert was with her … probably Le Vig in his basement cell wasn’t too easy in his mind either … If only Harras would dry up and let me go … but he bas a long practice of international conferences … I know the atmosphere … I’ve been around the world several times with a raft of these scientists … there you can say that reason has quit … just lend an ear … you think politicos shoot off their mouths … they don’t hold a candle to scientists! … they want the platform to have and to hold … soliloquies! more damn foolishness in the annals of the Higher Scientific Institutes than in the parliamentary record … or your daily paper… and not only in this country, that would be too easy, but everywhere else: astronomy, histology, every conceivable meridian … color of skin, iron curtains, sects and races … same difference … the biggest windbag takes the prize! … fanaticized, spellbound! … the learned with the ignorant! on their knees! asininities that overshoot the moon, from galaxy to galaxy … you don’t know where they’ll go … how far? … how long? a thousand years! … I could see our Harras was launched … one thing I knew, little by little he’d put me to sleep with his talk about files … and this preface! … and his Four Horsemen! … his mini-Famine and mini-Pestilence … I could see whole months of Apocalypse ahead of me! …

  I was with the League of Nations … the stuff I heard! … the mightiest brains of the age, geniuses to the nth power! … Harras was an A-1 technician, but not their speed … far from it! … I mean in the class of the Bertrand Rüssels, ° Curies, or Luchaire ° … they were real Titans in the art of saying nothing … Harras and his Apocalypse … pht! … balloon juice! maybe it would do me two … three months … no more! I Warn him …

  “Ho-ho! we’ve also got a secret weapon!”

  He wants to tell me about that too …

  “Harras, if you don’t mind, tomorrow …”

  “Yes, of course … tomorrow evening! heil! heil!”

  Lili must have been getting bored, up there in our round tower … barely high enough to stand in … Harras went right on … developing his thesis: Franco-German medicine down through the ages … proofs! this file and that file! … with every portrait an anecdote! … to impress my memory! … Kraut professors in Paris, in Montpellier … eleventh century … twelfth … fifteenth … their controversies! …and no little sawbone barbers! scholars even then! … esteemed at court or persecuted …

  I see the door moving … I can guess … Harras doesn’t see … Lili … making motions … Okay! … I get up very quietly … Harras will be at it for another two hours … at least … he’s capable of spending whole nights on a trifling statistical detail, on a “Summary of Conclusions” … you’ll find the typescript one day in the outhouse … soaked, illegible … and nobody remembers what it was all about . . Harras was the kind who could sit up all night getting to the bottommost bottom of that outbreak of measles in the Faroe Islands in the seventeenth century! … for the moment his passion was the Krauts in Montpellier in the twelfth … the fourteenth …

  We sneaked out of the room without his noticing … he was lecturing … to himself … we could hear him down the stairs … but there on my tick I couldn’t sleep … I said to myself: he’s sure to notice! … he’ll be offended! … not just the echo of his words, there was another echo … boom boom in the distance … that didn’t bother him, an hour and a half he went on about those twelfth-century professors … we got a little rest … I was just dozing off … might as well! … knock! knock! no surprise to me! … him! … at the door!

  “Colleague! Colleague! forgive met I have to leave!”

  I get up … I go outside … I see him on the stairs … in full campaign uniform … triple overcoat… hand grenades … potato masher … I see him clearly, very cinematic with his big flashlight against the darkness of the stairs …

  “I’m leaving now, Céline … I have to!”

  “Trouble?”

  “Oh, they’ve dropped a few bombs … didn’t you hear?”

  “Yes … but far away!”

  “It’s best to travel at night … they only bomb the roads in the daytime …”


  “Good luck, my dear Harras!”

  “You’ll have it ready?”

  “What ready ?”

  “The summary of the files, of course!”

  “Of course, my dear Harras! … I’ll be finished in a week!”

  “Not so fast, Céline! Not so fast! Take your time!”

  “As you wish, Harras … as you wish …”

  “Wait! … may I come in? two words! … you will excuse me, Madame?”

  “Come in, Harras! Come in!”

  I close the door behind him … we’d never seen him in full battle dress … enormous to begin with, now he’s monstrous … especially in our little tower room … he’s too big, he lowers his head …

  “Now my friend, listen! I don’t know when I’ll be able to come back …Kracht will phone me … I may be going back to the Russian front … maybe … or to Lisbon … it all depends … now you here … don’t budge … I’ve told you about the people … especially the Landrat … you know him … you’ll see him, don’t try to meet him, he’s a silly vicious old man … you’ve seen the manor and the farm … what they’re like … the other old buzzard, the Rittmeister with his soubrettes, he’s not dangerous … little manias, that’s all … an old man! … young von Leiden, the cripple and his wife across the way, they’ve got a daughter, Cillie … the little girl will come to see you, it’s all arranged, shell bring you milk for yourselves and Bébert … now let’s see … let’s see …”

  He ponders …

  “The son’s wife Inge is difficult … menopause hasn’t set in, but just around the corner … fine figure of a frustrated woman … you get the picture?”

  “Yes, yes … of course …”

  “Wait … there’s a complication … he … the cripple … takes drugs … they drug him … he’s been crippled for four years … approximately … both legs … disseminated sclerosis? … syringomyelia? … he’s been examined ten times … twenty times … Paget’s disease? … The developments will show …”