North

by Louis-Ferdinand Celine

  “I know … I know …”

  “The files are right here … look! by the wall! those piles!”

  The piles are trembling … *

  He looks at the files … oh-ho-ho! so funny! … ah, but I can play the wag too!

  “Harm, the Russians’ll be here soon! … we’ve got isbas for them! … we’re prepared! and ladies in them!”

  Which reminds me, time to go see them … I ask him to join me … sure, he’ll be glad to … he won’t find out anything new … he knows what happened better than I do … the funeral … the murders … he hasn’t said anything, but he doesn’t miss a trick … with that benevolent blasé air of his … well, maybe there’s one thing he doesn’t know … the cupboard … as long as we’re in a joking mood, I’ll bring it up …

  “You know, Harras …”

  Wasting my breath … he stops me …

  “Of course! … of course! my poor friends! … necessity knows no law!”

  He puts me at my ease! he even pleads our cause … we’re to be pitied and that’s that! … a deplorable situation! … yes indeed! followed by an enormous oh-ho-ho! we’d thought we’d emptied the cupboard … which proved our innocence … it’s still full! … I don’t believe it … oh-ho, he doesn’t believe it! Harras goes in on his knees … his enormous ass with the crazy chameleon splotches … he pushes! a panel! … Christ! … bottles! what a haul! and hams and sausages! and four baskets of champagne! enough to stew whole hordes … the Russian Army can come! … the village people know something about it … Harras knows they know, he couldn’t care less! … he’s got six SA-men with him … or eight … what for? to guard the isba? … got to talk it over … first Kracht! … he calls him … I listen …

  “Kracht! … watch your step, Kracht! … those bibelforschers are traitors, cowards, and pederasts … don’t trust them! … send two SA-men! … if somebody comes out: bzing! a warning shot! … no nonsense! you understand? those bibels make fine coffins … see? … you get the drift?”

  “Ja! … ja! Herr Oberarzt!”

  “All this stuff now! … have somebody take it over to them!”

  “All this” was at least twenty bottles of red wine … plus two baskets of Mum’s … and three big hams … plus, incredible … dozens of jars of foie gras! and pâté de canard … enough to start a delicatessen!

  “And no scrimping! I want them to eat it all! there’ll be more tomorrow! … but they’re not to go out! … bang! bang! you understand, Kracht?”

  “Certainly, Herr Oberarzt!”

  He turns to me … he’s standing there solid as a rock with his big Mausers and his potato mashers and his binoculars … twice my size, I’ve told you … in spite of all the weight he’d lost … and all daubed and painted … his helmet, his coat, his, boots, green, yellow, and red … camouflage … the bibels are painted green, yellow, and red too … supposedly to make them easier to see from a distance! … try and make sense out of that one!

  “My dear Destouches, another thing! the examining magistrate’s been here, I’m told … the Untersuchungsrichter! ah, say that word! do me the favor!”

  I say it …

  “Oh-ho-ho! you know his name?”

  “No … no idea!”

  “Ramke! you know what he did under Hindenburg?”

  “Yes, the Revizor told me: he was a hairdresser …”

  “Right! Gegnenstrasse … Meisterfrisör … the Danaë Parlor …”

  “My dear Destouches, that’s not all! enough trifling! time to administer! … you and I! a table! … two chairs! Nazi administration! … you’ll see! Colleague, I’m going to compromise you! you’ll be shot! … soon! … either by these! or by those! … oh-ho-ho! you’re a ‘wait-and-see-er’! aren’t you? … and what’s more, something of an ‘alarmist’! … oh-ho-ho! … I’m good and sick of it! … and now to serious matters! … the table! … the table! … the time has come!”

  I didn’t see the table … the Ping-Pong table … buried … ah, a leg! one leg! … he grabs hold … and pulls it out … he’s strong … and he plumps the table down! … I tell him how our two ladies, Thor Thorfels and Marie-Thérèse, had wanted to play Ping-Pong … like two kids! … but raised so much dust looking for the rackets that they’d had to drink … so much and no matter what that they’d vomited and collapsed into a deep sleep! …

  “Not deep enough, colleague! not deep enough! I want them to sleep like babies! … indispensable! I see more convulsions …”

  He’s apprehensive … he’s right … Kracht comes back from the isba …

  “All delivered?”

  “Everything Herr Oberarzt!”

  “Are they eating? … and drinking? Inge too? … and the little girl?”

  The kid? … he hadn’t noticed …

  “The child must have milk! … lots of milk! … we have everything! … everything! … look in the cupboard, Kracht, I’ve opened the bottom … you a pharmacist! … not thinking of milk! … Skandal! … another skandal! … oh-ho-ho! … you’ll see the cans … condensed milk … the best … no ersatz! … Swiss! … send ‘em over ten cans! … but careful … we don’t want the mother drinking it all! … or the others! … relatives in deep sorrow are, very keen on milk … especially Swiss condensed! … I’ll go over myself! I know Inge Leiden … I know the Kretzers!

  To our administration, colleague! let us administer! and classify these humans! … the species! what species? … both! your opinion, colleague! … no possible doubt: homo deliquensis! both of them! the Leidens and the Kretzers! congenital delinquents! … heredity! … capable of anything! … and here these two?”

  He meant la Thor von Thorfels and Marie-Thérèse with their legs sprawled out in the curtains …

  “Gentle old women, doddering drunkards … not dangerous … no! senile optimistic alcoholics! the others, yes! … you agree, Destouches?”

  “Certainly, Harras!”

  “Ah, we agree!”

  “You, Kracht! … something else! … bring me Nicholas, the Russian! … when I think that I donated him to the farm! … I’m responsible … wounded in Orel… he was in my hospital … I treated him … I sent him here … a present to the von Leidens! ah, another matter! … still another! your two charming compatriots! I want to see them too!”

  “Leonard? … and Joseph?”

  “Exactly!”

  I see he knows all about it, even if he was wherever he was …

  “It won’t take long, colleague! … you don’t know our ‘blitz’ method … innovational! … of administration in depth! … oh, very simple! … very simple! you’ll see! … really German! … philosophical-accelerated! … I’ll show you … you’ll see! … sit down! … absolutely Boche, cogitated and deliberate! but accelerated! formerly, the vanquished had their throats cut! … common knowledge! you know all that, colleague! … still the Russian system! … barbarism! … me! … you! tomorrow! oh-ho-ho!”

  A scream!

  “Next stage … they stopped killing them! … slavery instead! … the Pyramids! … later, the galleys! … am I right?”

  “Certainly, Harras!”

  “Now comes our philosophical-accelerated Revolution! … no more slavery for the vanquished! in a moment you’ll see and, I hope, admire … with your own eyes! … the National Socialist mystique! the murderers become commanders!”

  He calls …

  “Kracht, send us Joseph … and Leonard … and Nicholas!”

  He asks me …

  “All murderers! … aren’t they, colleague?”

  “It looks like it!”

  “Send all three of them in, Kracht!”

  Here they are …

  “Ah, Kracht, an interpreter!”

  Kracht thinks of everything … there’s a bibel at the door … the interpreter …

  Joseph and Léonard come in.,. not happy! … they look at the walls … and the floor … Nicholas looks us straight in the eye … he’s suddenly woken up … Harras isn’t talking to him … />
  “Léonard, you! listen to me!”

  Léonard doesn’t dare to look at us …

  “Léonard, I need you! … I repeat: I need you!… but listen carefully! you know the barns … the farm … the silos … the animals! … Don’t you, Leonard?”

  Léonard nods, but doesn’t say anything …

  “Come on, come on! say yes!”

  “Yes, mon colonel!”

  “Splendid! from now on you’re the boss here! … the boss! in command of the cattle and personnel! you understand?”

  “Yes, mon colonel!”

  “If anything goes wrong, you’ll be shot!”

  “Yes, mon colonel!”

  “Now you, Joseph! … you’re in command of the Poles and prisoners! the garden and kitchen! … understand? … if anything goes wrong, you’ll be hanged … understand, Joseph?”

  “Oh yes, Monsieur le Président!”

  “No use trying to escape, the tank and the SA-men are staying here, you’ll be caught! … very well! now you’re bosses! … you, Léonard, I’ve got a job for you right away! I need eight cows! … a team of eight cows … understand?”

  “How do you want them harnessed?”

  “Your problem! but quick!”

  Kracht catches on … harnessed to the big beet wagon … fine, but one complication … the cows’ll have to be shod … Léonard knows all about it … shoes with “mitre joints” … Le Vig explains it to me … he’s practically one of them … he was almost an agronomist at one time …

  “Quick! … quick!”

  The three of them push off … they take a “torch” … two “torches” … to work fast … it’s going on eleven …

  “And now, my good friends, to our work!”

  What does he expect of us? … no let-up, I observe, in the traffic upstairs … Fortresses on Fortresses … over Berlin! what for? … if there’s nothing left; he said so … clobbering all the same … you can tell by our walls … habit? routine? … no comment from me…

  “That man! Suppose we go over and see him!”

  The Revizor’s groaning … at the other end of the room …

  “Guten abend! good evening! how are you?”

  I introduce … Reichsgesundheits, etc. . .. the Revizor is most honored … he can’t sit up … he’s given up trying … but how he regrets! how he regrets!

  “Nein! nein! bleibt! don’t move!”

  I explain his fracture, and how we’d saved him in the nick of time … the prostitutes were going to finish him off … like the other one …

  The other one?”

  The Rittmeister!”

  He knew … he knew the exact circumstances … it amused him to hear me telling about it … I hadn’t been able to do much for this fellow here … not equipped for it! …

  “No, of course not!”

  “Morphine …”

  “Of course! of course!”

  Two ccs …”

  That won’t be enough for tonight … plenty of excitement tonight! high-powered administration! … I’ll appoint him director! … your battered Revizor! … yes, colleague! yes! Director of the Dienstelle! master after God! … he won’t have to move, hell check the accounts! and the cash balance! … his obsession! … right here! … the others are taking a long trip! … nobody here to bother him!

  “Kretzer?”

  “Yes! … and Inge von Leiden!”

  “And Countess Thor von Thorfels?”

  “Oh, yes! all in the wagon! … it’s all arranged! the way stations, have been notified … Rostock … Stettin … Danzig … Nazi administration! … high-powered and meticulous! philosophic-accelerated! you’ll see, my dear colleague! … nothing left to chancel long-term planning! every detail! and Nicholas! … my prisoner Nicholas! … oh-ho-ho! … you know, I’ve told you … I gave him to the cripple… he threw the cripple in the manure … his good master! … oh-ho-ho! … perfectly normal! inhibition, liberation, shock! … you know! … shock reaction, perfectly normal! … Surgeon-General Goring, you’ll meet him in a little while, has made a close study of Russian prisoners … he’s described such cases … ‘liberation, shock’!” …

  “Göring?”

  “Not the fat one, not Hermann! … no! … Werner Goring, the alienist! … oh, this one’s extremely moderate … reasonable … no pretzel-bender … he’ll be glad to meet you, he speaks French … much better than me … wrote a magnificent thesis in French, for Dupré in Paris …”

  Another mirthquake about that one … oh-ho-ho!

  “Werner’s an expert clinician! … you’ll see!”

  “So you’re sending them to Königsberg? … the whole lot? … ladies and retinue?”

  “Exactly! … via Stettin and along the Baltic … you see the picture? … grandiose life up there! … never been? … forests! … wolves! … bears! … rabbits! oh-ho-ho! hasn’t she invited you?”

  “Oh yes!… yes indeed! … all of us!”

  “You’ll go, later … if you want to! … her castle! … gigantic! … she hasn’t explored it all … impossible! never seen the whole of it! and the forests! the snows! … the foxes! … the eagles! … and ‘partisans’! Russian! … hordes!”

  “Harras, I believe you know everything!”

  “Not everything, but quite a lot …”

  “Well then, those powdered men who came here?”

  “Oh-ho-ho! … perfectly possible! … they infiltrate, don’t you see … what can we do?”

  “And the Moorsburg prostitutes?”

  “They’re in Hamburg! … Hamburg’s in flames! … worse than Berlin! that’s where they wanted to go … all the prostitutes in Germany are rushing to meet the English!”

  “I see! … I see!”

  “Your obsession, colleague, is the north … Denmark! … ‘partisans’ in Denmark too! … didn’t you know? … ferocious! … oh well, if that’s your idea! … I can’t help you, but Göring can! he’s got the rubber stamp! … this big!”

  He shows me … the width of his palm … the enormous rubber stamp …

  “Göring can do it, General Göring! … and more! … you’ll see! … boom! this big!”

  He imitates the general affixing his stamp …

  “Administration! boom! … Surgeon-General Göring! … oh, very friendly! … you’ll see! … doesn’t shoot his mouth off like me! … no! … shrewd alienist! level-headed! reasonable! … Kracht!”

  Kracht comes running …

  “Everything all right? … es geht?”

  “Oh yes! … they’re working … they ought to be ready soon …”

  “Colleague … our patient?”

  Asleep, I should think …

  “He’s had his four ampuls …”

  “And the two ladies?”

  “Marie-Thérèse? … Thor von Thorfels?”

  “They’re sleeping … oh, definitely … but not sound enough …”

  With all this noise, he’s got something there … we’re used to it, but even so! … floor! … windowpanes! … the explosions fall back down and seem to scatter … from the sky to the plain … in cascades! … all over the place … Harras is right, the Revizor isn’t sleeping right, just dozing … he wouldn’t understand us, he doesn’t know French … but the ladies … we’re not saying very much, but even so … I suggest …

  “Should I give them another two ccs… . they’ll vomit!”

  “Doesn’t matter!”

  “They’ll still be asleep tomorrow …”

  “All the better … Marie-Thérèse stays here! … she’s at home, nobody’ll bother her, no trouble! … we’re taking the other one away!”

  Okay, morphine! … I inject… first the Revizor … then the two ladies … all three with the same syringe … and the same needle … Harras observes …

  “Morphine addicts never boil their syringes … and they seldom get abscesses …”

  I tell him how one night when I was a doctor aboard the Chella I had to give more than two hundred shots … same
way! … not a single abscess! … shipwreck victims! horror for horror, he tells me how in Krasnodar he’d had to amputate a whole ward full of Russian prisoners without a drop of chloroform …

  “Harras! … shades of Ambroise Paré!”

  “Oh, the Russians are amazing, colleague! … animals complain … Russians, not a whimper! … and that’s not all … you know what they, wanted me to do? while I was at it? … pull a tooth! … two teeth! … in addition to their legs … dentists are rare in that country …”

  Le Vigan was listening, but our little stories didn’t amuse him …

  “Le Vigan, give me a hand!”

  I could see that the ladies weren’t sleeping … lousy morphine!

  “Poor stuff, Harras!”

  I load my syringe …

  First divan! … Countess Thor von Thorfels … at that time, in Zornhof, I was still very adroit, you couldn’t feel my needle … now I’ve got the shakes …

  “The Revizor!”

  He sees us coming back … he’s delighted …

  “Merkwürdig! … marvelous!”

  Harras fills me in …

  “You know colleague, you and I … we won’t be getting any sleep tonight! … no thebaine for us! … caffeine! … a long wait!”

  “But my dear Harras, I have no desire to sleep! … none at all!”

  “And Madame Destouches?”

  “Oh, the same! the same!”

  “But Monsieur Le Vigan perhaps?”

  “Hum! Hum!”

  Le Vigan s thinking it over … Harras lifts a finger … an idea, by golly! …

  “Monsieur Le Vigan, café-crême! better still, don’t you think? … I’d forgotten! … I’ve got everything! … everything!”

  “Sure thing! … café-crême? … where?”

  “In the car! how stupid of me! … you’ll see! … administration! Kracht! Kracht! … the tin box! … you know … bring it in … if you please!”

  We wait … he brings the box … some box … it’s a trunk, no less! … he opens it … it’s full of thermos bottles!

  “Drink! … drink! … café-crême! your health!”

  I taste it … not bad, the real stuff! … we’ll never sleep again! … seven eight thermos bottles … good and hot! …

  Le Vigan tastes … ah, no ersatz! … moka-créme! definitely!