London Bridge

by Louis-Ferdinand Celine

  Ah! What a despot! What arrogance! Torture inflames him! He’s totally in thrall to the dragons! their claws gouge his guts… This would be impossible without magic… make no mistake about that… I whip myself, give it what I got… I’m still slowpoking behind anyway… handicapped by my arm… stabbing with howling pain… I’m yanking too hard on my stitches… it’s not that my heart isn’t in it… can’t even see my hands any more they’re moving so fast… my click-clacking so hot and crackling the copper’s smoking… the whole bed is glowing red… The bones in my arms, hands, my nerves are on fire too… shocks, bolts mashing up my shoulder… My slaving-away juices up the jerk… he loves suffering… martyrdom’s the only thing that turns him on!…

  “Great going, my little cherub!” he bawls over at me…

  My whole hand on fire because I was playing my two little sticks so hard… faster and faster! Hell-bent!… In a lather, wiggling like mad… whirling around, even more nuts than he is… the genuine sacred dance, make no mistake! Here we go! The big shake and quake!

  “We’ve got it! We’ve got it!” I exclaim… I’m already getting off…

  “We’ve got it, Sosthène!” I shout…

  “No, we don’t, you dumb bastard!” He jumps down my throat… “You need moonlight for that!”

  Moonlight? Ah! The baboon! He’s tearing me apart! All the trouble I went through! He’ll pay for this! He’s been killing us over some practice session! I’m ready to drop dead from exhaustion! Ah! The slimeball! I choke on my words, I’ve had just about enough! Ah! Goa! Bullshit! My limbs are drained, numb! He handed me a line! He’ll cross over into the Armoid all on his own, the conqueror of the Arkiosaurs, monsters! No more butt-bumping for me! I’m pooped! The mites can have their way with me! The ferociousness of body and soul! He can go take a flying fuck all by himself too! Ah! But he’s got something else in mind!

  “The mites? what mites? If you stop now you die! A victim of a savagely unleashed fury! The atom strikes us dead!”

  Ah! Now I’m in another stew! What’s he cooked up this time? What am I mixed up in? In what magic vibrations? “The dragons’ll swallow you up if you stop drumming!” What a fine fix! Out-and-out blackmail! I’m forced back into his silly-ass routine…

  “You’re in the fourth power!” he shouts at me, shooting past…

  A fat lot of good that does me! I’ve got to start up again! I’m seeing everything double, triple, quadruple!… I could see Sosthène with thirty-six heads and a slew of dragon tails all around, sticky icky, with broad scales, a total mishmash, a cyclone of flesh and bone in the middle of the room, wound into an enormous ball, a seething pulp from which waves of drool shot out, scorching ceiling-high streams… all quivering, convulsing, the entire throbbing mass, the whole tangle of knots, banging, ricocheting off the walls… and frightening curses that exploded non-stop… monster roars… and Sosthène’s own sharp voice coming out of the slimy gob, the knot of intertwining tentacles… I remained flat on my ass before the sight… no slacking off! He’d warned me… If I’d petered out I’d bring on the cosmic hurricane! No way out of it! If I stopped my click-clacking the mites would snatch us away! That was the real horror… we’d wind up zapped, vaporized! The risk was tremendous… The book spelt it all out… the rituals, the necessary precautions, the sacred body gestures… Sosthène had it all at his fingertips… For the moment at any rate I could barely catch a glimpse of him in the heart of the furious fuming tangle… just a couple of heads here and there… then came the moment when it all unwound… collapsed in a heap… crumbled down to the carpet… the whole raging hulk… the monsters wheezing like forges… tired too probably… then they lost their scales, their finery, their immense fins… their mother-of-pearl wing things… the entire mess melted away before my eyes… went up in a little puff of smoke… nobody but Sosthène left standing after the dust settled, the battle, the lone survivor of the chaos, naked as the day he was born, pale and ashen… I shout over to him:

  “Get what you were after?”

  “Let’s go!” he snaps out. “Back to work!”

  He hunches in lotus position… feels his head with his fingers… incredibly deep in thought… meditating, muttering… filling his head with inspiration… this new bout would be with the devils… a brand-new story! A brand-new rhythm, a new approach… with a whole new set of rules… We’d put on a charmer, a genteel perky jig, a bouncy step… had to turn the demons on… seduce them by winking wildly… right off at the outset… impishly bewitch them… with some butt-bumps thrown in to be sure… but all in a frisky, playful tone, none of that slinky sultry stuff, with coarse spells and monster free-for-alls… Ah! No way!… A different deal!… Now we were talking one-hundred-percent refined… he explained that according to the text the trick was to amuse the evil spirits, to turn their heads with some spicy banter, and then do them in when their minds were elsewhere… jump at the chance… to lure them in with high jinks… once they were rollicking and rocking with wild laughter, totally distracted, then I’d step into the trance… that was my cue! I’d sneak behind their heads and whack them unconscious one after the other… hard with my baton across their mouths! And whack! Whack! Game’s over! I’d take advantage once they were pissing themselves with laughter… and let them have it!… Ah! Damn clever! For the time being I was just going through the motions, naturally… and bop! bop! – had to keep hopping, and how!… I really put myself out! According to the book I had to massacre a dozen demons… right on the spot one after the other… He acted out the magic gesture for me… The way I was supposed to swing downwards…

  “You’re looking at a man who did the bamboo dance for fourteen years! Imagine you’re Prince Gorlor… You knock them out with all your might!”

  He gave me a demonstration of his style, such great panache! And what a show-off!

  “I used to fly through the air, you better believe it!… My feet didn’t touch the ground!”

  The comparisons… mean and bitchy!… In the meantime he couldn’t stand up straight…

  “Bingbangboom! You old asshole!”

  I sit him down… so exhausted his knees are like jelly… he’s doing the shakes to my beat… I give myself a little show… His entire body’s streaming with sweat… I sit down beside him… the joint’s absolutely sealed… sweaty, steamy, stifling… he can’t stop flapping his trap, whispering hoarsely, hacking like crazy… he’s back on the Prince business… the way I should land my blows… And all his spouting about stuff, his great successes, his mind goes back to the old days… between 1898 and 1915… the Miracle Man of the Pacific!… No stopping him…

  “Heaven’s Own Pépé, that’s what they called her… judge for yourself!… In her blue-lamé white dress… I can still see her now! You can’t even begin to imagine!… A full-size Brahman orchestra! The entire band of the Deltas! Three Burmese fakirs on cymbals! Plus thirteen black flute players from Ceylon! A once-in-a-lifetime ensemble! It wasn’t just a musical number any more, it was a grand mystical enchantment! An orgy of magic vibrations! It made all the papers from Cyprus to Cape Town! Fourteen columns, my little dimwit! From Suez to Tokyo! You ought to have seen my Pépé hovering over the demons! You wouldn’t believe it’s the same woman today! Carried away by the vibrations, swaddled up in the spell, transported, she sailed through the air with the greatest ease, a bird! That’s how beautiful the music was!… Whirlwinds of mites, my friend! That’s what lifted her! Invisible mites! Just to show you how special it was! You’ve got a long way to go, you poor tadpole! A storm of flutes so captivating you forgot where you were! You took off into the air, that’s a fact! The audience too! We often had to run and pull them back down… found them all over the place, in all the theatre loges… Now that was enchantment, I’m telling you… not the sort of show that bores the crap out of you!”

  Recalling his glory days snapped him back on his feet, miraculously, his juices flowed faster with each passing second…

  “We’ll never see
such days again!…”

  The memories give him quite a turn… now he starts with the snorting, pawing the ground… just like that, stark naked… he wants to do his rendition of Pépé for me… he really wants me to get it through my head how she floated through space, the grace of her sky-blue veils… her arms fluttering in triple time… “The Waltz of the Spiritual Rays”!… The grand hypnotic translation!… So I can savour the quality… And all this a dozen yards off the ground! Keep that in mind! Without a net!… No props of any kind… except for the incantatory emanations! And the bewitching music! Heaven’s Own Pépé!

  “Go try and do that over at the Empire or even at the London Hippodrome with the jungle bunnies we have nowadays! Won’t you look pretty! The only thing they understand is quick razzle-dazzle! Tenors with no balls, showgirls with spring-action asses… legs everywhere! Whizz! Boom! Boom! Full spotlights! I’m sending over my mummies! Jazz them up for me! What are their music halls like? They turn your stomach, that’s what! I’m telling you straight out! When they start giving you their Oriental Fantasy numbers, it’s too disgraceful for words! Their crummy, junky souks, the trashy Ethiopian crap they rig up for you! Couldn’t get any worse, I’m telling you!… All the buggers from the Aden docks decked out in ridiculous get-ups, that’s what their mirages are about!… And they throw it at you in gala performances! This sort of crap is killing off the carnivals like the one they used to have in Neuilly! That’s no joke! Hey, I’m all for that! A smash success! A stampede for seats… Everybody’s happy! They applaud, clapping till their hands break! You should see them! You call that an audience! There are no audiences any more! And so what am I supposed to do about it, you swindler? Come on! Let’s go! Back to the grindstone! I’ve broken my back for peanuts! Twenty-two years straight! Get that, son? Audiences just like shit! They’re thick-heads, and that’s that! I’m not going to drop dead in grief over it… Ah! No, that’s not for me!… Actually you’re pretty thick-headed yourself!…”

  He eyed me suspiciously…

  “You’re thick, you know, you numbskull! I give my all and you don’t give a damn! You act like you’re here for the show… Plus maybe it tuckers you out…”

  He was flat out provoking me, acting like a smart-ass now… It was incredible in a sense… just a minute back he had one foot in the grave… Ah! Goddamned prick!

  “Come on! Come on! Let’s see your stuff!…”

  I’m tantalizing him, I want to see him drop dead!…

  “Come on, you clown, start wiggling!”

  Here we go again, back in action, only this time around with a new approach… All my idea sound-wise… Actually I wasn’t doing too bad a job banging away… I’d already worked up a nice, steady shower of click-clacks… very graceful… he couldn’t top that himself… I held my own with real skill… Ditto for the dirtball!… And in spite of my trick arm, my bum leg, I was terrifically nimble, I spread from my click-clacking over to the demons… there and back knocking them cold! All ten and whoosh! They’d never laid eyes on me!… I poured myself into it… the real grind was the shouting-in-anger part… “Tshoooh! Tshoooh!” – those were my lines… an enraged she-cat… and at the same time he was supposed take a few swipes at me with claws, and then hop back into his jig… I wouldn’t have won any prizes, I admit, I spit out everything ass-backwards… for a start I was frazzled, pooped…

  “From the top!” I sigh…

  We’d been knocking ourselves out for hours… time to wrap up… He damn sure had the Devil up his butt, that asshole monkey over there, and in spite of his age, the clobbering he took, you name it… even with his mouth bashed out of whack, nose swollen, eyes inflamed, he was raising hell all the same, the gorilla! And I had to keep hustling!… He pushed me to the limit…

  “You’re a damn fanatic! Shut up!”

  He gives me the rundown anyway, dead set…

  “Take a look! A good look, brat!”

  There he goes whipping out his pictures, opening the book back up, spelling out the details again, without skipping over a thing… it’s fabulous… this gives him another brainstorm… ah! A real whopper!

  “You’ve got to be able to remember the words… recite them to me as we go along… just a single sentence… in rhythm… just as I strike up… with my leg…”

  “Ah! You’re off your rocker, you flake!”

  So I was supposed to pick up Hindi on the fly!… I gave it a try… No go… Mangled the pronunciation, choked on the words… I’m pissed! Did he take me for some idiot!

  “We all have our own special talents, Monsieur Sosthène… take your English, for example, not so great, is it? Let’s just hear one of your thous and give us both a laugh! Now in my case, you see, my stumbling block’s Hindi! Imagine that!”

  I said it, so there! I drop the subject, don’t move a muscle, I gaze around at the disasters, our bedroom looks like a cyclone hit it… Lucky there was a carpet, our entire place was covered wall to wall… it cushioned the leaps… By now we’d have broken our ankles with our beastie bounds… Only the armoire got messed up… whacked right in the mirror, a good third in smithereens…

  “That’s for good luck, right, you mongoloid?” I check with him…

  I wanted to have a laugh… Ah! But he doesn’t even crack a smile! He takes it all the wrong way…

  “It’s easy to be silly, my little birdbrain! Obviously I look funny! You think I don’t realize that? And you think your own idiocy’s not a real crime? That you’re not flirting with calamities, jinxing our innocent activities by carrying on this way like some imbecile!…”

  Crude talk, a bolt from the blue!

  “Tsk! Tsk!” I answer. “And so your hands are spotless or something?”

  “Shut up!”

  He’s terrorizing me.

  “You wouldn’t be so dissolute, you’d have other things beside high jinks on your mind, your horny sex-maniac business, if maybe you’d lend me a little hand… you’re not just some young war veteran wounded before his time… you’ve also got filthy senses!…”

  That’s his big insight… On that note he levels his stare at me, looks me over hard…

  “Filthy senses?… Look who’s talking, honey!…”

  Ah! I’m going to take him down to size!… The guy’s gone a little too far!

  I hold off, want to catch my breath…

  “We’re celebrating a mass!…” The same old song… back to that… “You’ve never understood that!” My sour grapes gave him grief… “You’ve been working against me all the way!…” He was letting the tears flow… “You’re the saboteur of my mystic vibrations! You’re worthless to me!… You’re thicker than a thousand bricks! A mass for the Spirits of Goa, the Sars of the Third Trial! I’ve explained it to you a thousand times! What a waste of breath! I’m so weak! You’ve just got sex on your mind! Debauchery! A depraved birdbrain!… That’s what heaven sent me!”

  Ah! I drive him to total despair… he’s shaking his head in hopelessness… he’s got one more thing to say to me… one last sigh…

  “When I think that I put clothes on his back!”

  Ah! That riles me back up!… He’s crossed the line! Ah! The balls on that bum! Clothes on my back! Ah! The words stick in my craw! He’s vicious as hell! A two-faced sack of shit! He’s going to throw that suit back in my face?… The mercury? All that jazz! He’s putting me on with his lousy crap… I stand there like a jerk… He doesn’t back off, he keeps piling it on, keeps up his little falsetto number, spouting off at me stark naked…

  “Of course you’re completely clueless! You’d swallow any load of nonsense! Not hard! An easy mark! You’re like the British public! Any old act enchants you! Gullible as they come… One example! The way that little vixen of yours carries on!…”

  Phooey! Phooey! Phooey! What’s he getting at?… What’s he trying to dig up, the old goat? Ah! I don’t want to hear it! I cut him short! Start screeching like a peacock!… He looks at me…

  “Come on, let’s go
, pops! No foot-dragging! I need to make lightning progress!… I admire you! I worship you! We mustn’t waste a second… Quick, teach me your gavotte!”

  I draw him back into his act… He’s not so ornery when he’s hopping around.

  Good! He agrees, all right, but I need to strip naked, otherwise we can’t hop around any more! Those are the basics for esoterics!

  “Come on! Come on! No little tricks! Take off those filthy trousers! Your gear’s ridiculous! Wear your soul on your skin, young man! You’re shutting off your whole soul! Forms, my friend! Every form! God exists in forms! Show off all your forms! Stark naked! Let’s breathe!”

  Yet another demand! He was really turning out to be a despot!… He sort of had a point though… we were practically smothering to death… Even with me stripped down to nothing… nothing but my undershorts… I take them off… but being in the buff or not won’t improve my click-clacking… I snap back at him right away… my real problem was my drumsticks… I needed the thin orchestra kind… the real things… not these snapped-off toothbrush jobs… I would have put out a whole lot better sound…