North

by Louis-Ferdinand Celine

  Which doesn’t prevent them from having residence and travel permits! Ausweis … try and make head or tail … I ask Kracht how come … when according to Nuremberg they’re the world’s worst contaminators of races … worse than the Jews … why don’t they shut them up, why do they let them roam around in the east, south, and north? … he has no idea, he admits it, their permits are all in good order, he’s got the duplicates, he shows me … stamps, seals, absolutely authentic! … he makes a gesture meaning “beats the shit out of me!” … those permits come from very high up … we’d run into some incredible privileged characters in Baden-Baden … something to think about … but not out loud! could these lanky-haired greasy ragtails be ramified in something? … fifteen years later I’m still wondering … naturally I’ve heard a thing or two, you won’t find everything in the Figaro or the Huma or the Express, those tedious blab-fests, carnivals as boring as the one in Nice, all papier mâché and hot air …

  Who gave these Gypsies their orders? who pulled the strings? was there somebody behind their monkeyshines? later, much-later, in prison, in Copenhagen, the Boche inmates, civilians. and soldiers pouring in from the east and north, had à word to explain everything, “Verrat! verrat! treason! balls! … when things are going wrong, it’s always treason … on both sides! take right now the Kremlin or on the other side the Pentagon … swarming with traitors … the corridors are packed with them, biding their time … Any time a régime says: it’s me! … proclaims, shouts, and bellows it from the rooftops … and throws scads of enemies in the clink … you’ll see plots flourishing! man-traps! traitors all over! carnival of the renegades! sincere heroes, traitors, fence-sitters and two-timers, exchanging ten thousand oaths an hour, wet kisses, and guillotines! traitors all over! … Caesar, Alexander, Poléon, Pétain, Malagaule, Cleopatra, Cromwell, they’ve all seen it! and will forever! hanged, quartered, chopped! they’ll be!

  Same as with love … wait! … kisses in the dark, wriggling asses, flies wide open, foolish virgins upside-down, imploring … and what prize obscenities at the end! … and wedding bells! … a bucking, belching free-for-all! …

  I’m horsing around, taking you for a ride … we were in Zornhof … late for our soup … we hadn’t finished … Kracht had come out to get us … we go back with him … I don’t say anything about Inge … or her daughter or her servant girls … seeing them in the distance … not a word …

  Back at the table they ask us what we’ve seen … nothing! nothing! … heil! heil! but I’ve seen the holster in the entrance … I’ll do my stuff on the way out … but I’ve got a hunch that all this is a setup and I’m the fall guy … I can see now … if I had it all to do over again, I wouldn’t … so much trouble! … take it away! … that’s the way I feel about them all, Nazis, resisters, housewives, apiculturist, beadle, gentry, and cripple! happy landings! smiles and grimaces, victors and vanquished, same cauldron! … what you want at the end of your life is not to see them any more, not to talk about anything, you’ve seen enough … inside and outside, head and anus … and all the too much trouble you’ve taken …

  But then there at the table I was twenty-five years younger, patching my step and mahlzeit! … the jibberjabber was .going strong! compulsory! morale-building … lots of encouraging news! … armies advancing on all fronts! Crete! Stalingrad! … Bielorussia! so many million prisoners nobody could count them … plenty of information they had! but where’d it come from? … through whom? … I wasn’t going to look skeptical, neither was Le Vig … heil! heil! … if you want to be skeptical, do it in the right place! go tell them in Moscow right now that Eisenhower’s failing fast! … you won’t last long! there you had to look very piously at the big portrait of Adolf between two enormous candelabra … and no cracks! … heil! heil! … and that was that! … the war as good as won, like Algeria now, like Hérault and Poitou tomorrow, like Cameroun isn’t racist and Asiatic bandits don’t dismember missionaries … there it was Hitler’s portrait, his beautiful blue eyes, his little moustache … and not something else! … his frame on the wall was taking punishment! trembling like our dishes and lukewarm soup, though, as I’ve said, the bombs were seventy miles away … day and night they were at it, turning over the craters and ruins! … sending vibrations through everybody’s soup, ripples and waves, and the Führer in his frame, the walls, the windowpanes, the enormous trees … I wonder what they did with that big portrait of Adolf, where it is today … the Russians must have burned it when they came to Zornhof, maybe they put the frame on Stalin … worshiped and burned too! … have they put Kroukrou in his place? and somebody else when they burn him? … Marshal Youyou? Sidi-Petzareff? … Francis I? … time will tell! … those imposing solid gold frames are always waiting for another Titan! dedicated frames! Prophet, Attila, Washington, Lyautey, Robespierre, Bernadotte, the Pope … whoopee! let’s go! rivets of blood! throw on the featherbed! … and hang it up again! a new idol! oh, not for long! the next in line is stamping his feet under the frame, he wants it, he wants it! … let him climb up there! Beelzebub, Pompey, Billy the Kid, Magaule roaring, frantic, exasperated!

  Us there, I was waiting for them to wind up the comedy … mahlzeit! … heil! … and finish discussing the news … I knew the rite … it hadn’t taken us long to catch on … to get initiated … Now it was time for the small talk, I thought I’d ask a question … la Kretzer cuts me short: what did I think of the Gypsy girls? “And you, Monsieur Le Vigan? weren’t you fascinated? And you, Kracht?”

  I can see la Kretzer is het up … hot pants? jealous? she doesn’t give me time to answer, she attacks …

  “You’ll see them dance! and sing! … you’ll see! … and you too, Monsieur Le Vigan!”

  The bitch is aggressive, with her two sons’ tunics still in her lap …

  “All those Gypsies are acrobats … the men, you’ll see! … and violinists! … and snake charmers! … the whole wagon is full of them! … and boilermakers!”

  Isn’t it a scream? What’s she been drinking? there’s nothing to drink! … that laugh of hers, if it was a menagerie all the animals and people would be scared … we didn’t provoke her … she did it all by herself! … with her two tunics under her arm … ach! ach! ach! and a repeat … ach! ach! I don’t see what’s so funny … oh yes! oh yes! she’s going to tell us …

  “Sie wissen nicht? you don’t know? … the Gypsy … the old man … he plays the harp too, not just the fiddle! ach! ach!”

  Another spasm!

  She takes us outside to show us … we should look! the park! … the wagon! …

  “Alle Kabala! … all cabalists, wunderbar! … haven’t you seen it? they haven’t seen it! … marvelous! …”

  We’re so stupid, she feels sorry for us … ach! ach! … the whole lot of us! … I haven’t seen a thing … Le Vig just a little … Kracht, yes! … what? … those signs, those symbols … is that all? those pink and green daubs … cabalistic … so what? I want to know all about it … on the other side of the wagon … Kracht explains … I hadn’t noticed … I should have … where’s my memory? … at a certain age I’d tried everything to make a living … very skimpy, but oh well! … in the days when I worked as a delivery boy for Paul Laffitte, ° I really galloped … much quicker and more economical in those days that Metro Line 1, between Gance, ° Mardrus, ° Mme. Fraya, ° Bénénictus, and the print shop on rué du Temple … and Vaschid, ° the palmist, and Van Dongen, ° Villa Said … spirits get around pretty quick, I don’t doubt if, but I’d have taken them on any day … especially the way I hightailed it down the boulevards, up the Champs-Elysées and Avenue des Ternes … picking up proofs, trying not to lose them, putting the rag together, plus cooking up an article, so succulent and fascinating that the reader couldn’t sleep, eat, or live before he’d seen the next issue … I really mastered … no bones … the Scheherazade suspense and magic style, I had it in my fingertips … half a century ago … plus the deliveries, proofs, engravings, and layout … all on foot, at a spri
nt, my private Olympics … no bus or métro fares … But there, on that wagon, I admit, I hadn’t seen a thing … fatigue? … age? I hadn’t seen the esoteric squiggles … but I’d seen Ingewon Leiden all right … and her daughter and the servant girls … I don’t mention them … nobody asks me … my job is to think and that’s all … there are times when it’s dangerous to look curious …

  Anyway, we’d thrown la Kretzer into a tizzy … she’s rolling her eyes at us … she’s ready to leap, like Inge … I know hysteria, don’t worry … but in France you seldom see those … those belligerent forms … in our women and young people it’s mostly little tremors, pallor, tears, screams … Grabbing the cripple’s gun like that in one leap, Inge von Leiden had shown us the aggressive form of hysteria, without pallor, without screams, the warlike form, so to speak … for my money la Kretzer was practically getting into the same state, ready to threaten somebody with a Mauser … I thought if I just said ja! ja! ja! to everything … she’d calm down … oh no! … now she’s stood up, she’s pressing her two sons’ tunics to her heart … what does she want? … no ja jas! … or ach achs! … what then? does she want us to bellow? … no! she’s going to tell us what she thinks! she climbs up on her chair and addresses us …

  “Yes! … yes! … noch! still! you still don’t know? you don’t know anything! … Countess von Thorfels has arrived … yes! … she’ll be here tomorrow!”

  Who cared? … I didn’t get it … who was this Thorfels anyway? Kracht knew … he lets la Kretzer rave … what? … why? … something between the two of them … she didn’t like this Thor von Thorfels … Kracht tells me about it, he can talk, her screams cover it up … I’ve heard plenty of screaming … orators, prisoners, cancer patients, cabinet ministers, generals, childbirth, and then some, but Kretzer there, I must say, you couldn’t stop her … comedy, yes, but dangerous, I don’t think her heart is in good shape … let her yell, who cares, but bad business if she passes out … I make him repeat what he’s been telling me … this Madame Thor is in Moorsburg … she’s spending a week at the Landrat’s … Countess Thor von Thorfels … he knew all about her … what relation? … Inge von Leiden’s mother … adoptive mother … she’s come from Königsberg … an important detail: she speaks French and very well! … she’ll be very glad to see us! … fine and dandy! … suits me! … she’s kind of exuberant, Kracht warns me … she’s sure to invite us, all four … and the cat? … the cat too … she has an enormous estate up there … ten times as big as the von Leidens’! … and a whale of a castle! … and forests! and lakes! we’d see! … to tell the truth, all that seemed far away … but if this Countess Thor von Thorfels was nice and wanted to take us in … certain situations, anything tempts you … what did we have to lose? … Kracht wants to make sure I’ve got it straight: Inge was only an adoptive daughter! … didn’t-seem very important to me … hell! what skin off my ass? … the important thing was that the Thor von Thorfelses were counts of the Teutonic Order … okay for the Teutonic Order! … and that the titles of the Teutonic Order could only be transmitted in the male line … and not to adoptive children … that’s why the fair Inge wasn’t drawn to Königsberg … but this Kretzer woman, still yelling and quaking, wasn’t an adoptive anything, she was just hysterical! and jealous! jealous of everything! of Kracht who didn’t look at her … and of her husband and Le Vigan … Kracht, as far as I could see, was more interested in Inge … of course he wouldn’t have dared, but even so … he knew all about the von Leidens, that they were small gentry, counts of Brandenburg, while the Thor von Thorfelses were almost princes … Inge was mad about titles, she’d married the cripple to be a countess! in spite of everything! … but there was another angle! by Brandenburg law this title was transmissible … the last count could leave it to anybody he pleased! … Kracht knew all about it! … comical under the circumstances … the sky all black, everything trembling, the ground, the walls, the table, the soup, and the enormous portrait of Adolf … really out of this world to be talking about male lines! Kretzer, standing on her chair, yelling for all she’s worth, still manages to suspect that Kracht and I are talking about her … she attacks …

  “You don’t know a thing! You don’t know a thing!”

  The bookkeepers protest …

  “Oh yes they do! Oh yes they do!”

  “Ah, so you know? Then where’s the beadle?”

  General silence …

  “And the pastor? You know that too?”

  Nobody knows that either …

  “Idiots! … muttonheads! … they’ve disappeared! … disappeared! and you’ll disappear too! all of you! … do you hear me?”

  We hear her all right! … Kracht motions everybody to let her yell … not to answer, she’s nuts … naturally we let her … naturally she’s nuts … but that doesn’t soothe her at all … a high-grade fit! our not looking at her makes it worse! … she heaves and writhes … she presses the two tunics to her lips … she kisses them! … she cries into the blood! the clots! … she smears her whole face with it …

  “Can’t you hear the bombs? boom! boom! heil! heil!”

  She gets down off her chair and imitates …

  “Boom! boom! heil! heil!”

  She goes behind the secretaries … she explodes the bomb in their ears … Kracht’s too … boom! boom!”

  “You’ll all blow up! and these franzosen here, the whole lot of you! And Simmer too! … and the soup! heil! heil!”

  She stamps … first one foot, then the other … boom! boom! … and on the windowpanes with her hands … her palms … boom! … nobody says a word …

  “It’ll blow up in your bellies! all of you! … his too! heil! heil!”

  Him is Adolf in his frame … she points … she’s right under him … she stamps her feet … first one, then the other! … she dances … pom! pom! … and she laughs … it doesn’t seem funny to us … her menagerie laugh … practically like a hyena … she picks up her tunics and paints her face with the blood clots, she makes herself a little moustache like the character in the frame … not a good time to look at her … everybody pretends not to see her or hear her … but even so, she’s making too much noise … Kracht whispers to her husband and me and Le Vig to help him take her into the next room … gently … through the door in back … she’s willing, in fact she’s pleased, all of a sudden the fury’s gone out of her … she’s quiet, she lets us pick her up and lake her away with her tunics … we lay her down on her back … she’s not crying any more … she’s stopped threatening Adolf … everybody gets up from the table … heil! heil! … they all go up to their rooms … all together and not a word, as if nothing had happened … Le Vig and me and Kracht stop for a chat … the sky’s darker than yesterday, maybe yellower, more sulfury … the wind’s from the east … you can’t see any planes but you hear them … the RAF … not the same sound as the Luftwaffe … like a coffee grinder … but soft and steady … says Kracht … he wants my opinion … I haven’t got an opinion … I won’t have one tomorrow either … “Musik,” he says …

  Okay, why not? musik!

  We withdrew … oh, very discreetly … Lili, Le Vig, Bébert, and me … on my way past the hatrack I left my contribution … of course the whole thing was a farce … it was no secret to anybody that I was dipping into Harras’s cupboard … there’d be consequences … well, we’d see … back in our tower niche we shook our ticks and rags and snippets of rug … our rats too … they’d stopped running away … with the cold weather they were getting bold, familiar … Bébert’s not the affable type of cat, but he didn’t bother with them any more … I could see that if we’d put out two three messkits for them we’d have had whole generations hanging around, from the cellar and the woods … housecleaning and rats were the least of our worries … La Kretzer’s fit of hysteria was something to think about … of course the whole thing was a comedy … this business of screaming at Hitler and (daubing herself with blood and imitating his little moustache … plus the hei
l heils … could give people a very sticky opinion of us! … All Zornhof must have known, even Moorsburg … what would Kracht do? … the three of us hadn’t said a word … just witnesses! … I could remember the stuff people said after Les Beaux Draps ° … which-was simply a chronicle of the times … and still saying it… this thing now could be very serious … we were just as much “gallowsbird traitors” as on rue Girardon … we’d be accused of everything! … when you think it over later on, there are certain advantages in bping cursed by all and sundry … especially, it dispenses you with having to be nice to anybody… there’s nothing more emollient, stultifying, emasculating than wanting to be liked … “not nice!” … that does it, you’re free! … but now, with that Kretzer bitch, it would get around that we’d attacked the Führer! what could we say? … I ask them … Lili and Le Vig … in a very soft whisper … you can’t be too careful … Le Vig bursts out laughing! …