London Bridge

by Louis-Ferdinand Celine

  We’d been within a hair’s breadth, Sosthène had felt it the whole time long, we’d been this close to witnessing something like a cosmic wonder, the overthrow of all religions, right smack in Piccadilly Circus, heaven literally on earth, with a tremendous message, he swore the magical power was simmering under the street, right under his shoes, Geon’s tellurium! No sooner he executed the sixteenth dance pose… The proof being all the buses started backing up, and the mob acclaiming the miracle, the first glimmers of which were already visible out over the Thames and Trafalgar Square.

  I hadn’t seen any of that myself, just a horrendous snarl-up, a God-awful nasty free-for-all, and Sosthène beaten within an inch of his life under a mob of cops… he still had the black eyes, but that didn’t matter, apparently… I was the lousy son of a bitch, the fuck-up, the saboteur, you name it… That took some nerve!

  “You dumb ass,” I came back at him, “let’s get one thing straight, if I hadn’t been around and kept my magnificent cool, the fuzz would have torn you limb from limb. I was the one who pulled you out of the gutter – the cops would have torn you limb from limb – so you keep your rotten trap shut! That’s what your saboteur’s got to say to you! It makes me sick to hear all your bull – magician my ass!…”

  He’d been warned once and for all… He was at a loss for words.

  “Take care of your black eyes!…”

  I cuddled Virginia, who was stretched out on the sofa. Our absence had given her a scare all the same. We weren’t worried at all, the old man wasn’t due back until dinner, and only just. He himself wasn’t sure when he left. “All right! All right! Complete rest!”

  Sosthène the sorcerer was placing damp towels all over his body, he had huge black-and-blue bruises, especially on his head. A heel had ground his nape so badly it had shaved his skin clean off. He was still bleeding, and a lot too, so Virginia and I kept dabbing at it…

  “Ah! I’m telling you!… Ah! No kidding, I won’t fall for that trick next time! That’s one for the record books! Ah! It mustn’t be forgotten!”

  He’d got under my skin.

  “When you going off to the war? You’ll turn the cannons into slag if you dance in front of them!”

  He didn’t appreciate my jokes. But we started seeing eye-to-eye again when it came to feeding our faces. We both were partial to jam. And now was the chance to treat ourselves.

  We had ourselves served up a really out-of-this-world tea, with five kinds of jam and toast with maple syrup and sandwiches and caramel-topped pastries stuffed with cream, plus a chocolate bombe. Just to bust the servants’ balls, get them moving their asses. We were nice and cosy in the salon, lords of the manor. We started up the gramophone. All the tart, bouncy tunes, the herky-jerky beats, ragtime melodies, the songs reaching this side from New York with the Sammies, full of pizzazz and razzle-dazzle, naughty and infectious… The whole repertoire of the Empire, the newfangled vice, the wriggle-and-whine. Sosthène loved the stuff, from the first note he wanted to dance with Virginia. So what that he was still woozy, beaten black and blue, all aches and pains, he blissed out anyway when he heard the music, profane though it was. He was a genuine fanatic.

  “Aren’t you fed up with tripping the light fantastic? Jeez, you’re screwy!” He wanted me to dance with Virginia, do the foxtrot, the one-step, the cakewalk, a memory of America. He’d danced them all with Pépé…

  “Yes sir, back in San Francisco, me decked out like Uncle Sam, and she dolled up like the Statue of Liberty, a French dame with a torch! That was for the grand finale! What a smash! I’m telling you!”

  We messed around a little, but not poor Virginia who didn’t really feel up to much. And she was usually so playful, so mischievous.

  “The cat’s away so the mice’ll play!”

  That was Sosthène’s refrain.

  Even so in front of Virginia it was a thoughtless comment. Anyway, that’s how I saw it. On the pretext of catering to our needs the lackeys kept poking their heads in to check whether we were ripping up the joint. But we were just living it up because we had the house to ourselves, the Colonel was out and we were the masters.

  Truth is, the Colonel was a killjoy, the crafty crackpot type, wheels always turning, plus those wild outbursts over trifles. I never knew where I stood with him. I was still waiting for him to bring up the mercury business again. When he wasn’t in the picture I felt better, even physically, my headaches went away. I felt out of sorts at the mere sight of that ugly mug with its monocle and that phoney smile creasing just half of his face. Ah! I wished he’d never come back. We played a few more records. I made Virginia dance. Sosthène also made her do a polka-mazurka.

  All of a sudden, she feels upset, turns pale, leans on a chair. She sits down, almost faints… She feels queasy…

  “I don’t know…” she says out loud…

  “Honey,” I go, “stay still, lie down, darling, lie down…”

  I kiss her… I make her stretch out full-length… Playing it safe, understandably. I calm her, set her at ease.

  Poor little Virginia, it was inevitable after all her problems, and then us making her dance on top of that, it gave her a headache, a tummy ache too, her head spinning.

  “You see, you’ve got to play it safe.”

  Ah! I’ve stopped feeling self-conscious in front of Sosthène. We’re thick as thieves. This is our situation, so we just accept it, and have a little more tea. All at once from down the street a burst of music, blaring oom-pah-pahs, a Barbary organ.

  “Hey, listen,” I go, “that’s ‘The Dark Waltz’… The Knights of the Moon… That’s the song they used to sing at Cascade’s, morning, noon and night!…”

  It was grinding out in our street, right there in front of the garden. I step over to the window, take a peek…

  Ah! My eyes pop open… Can’t be!… Oh, yes it can!… I walk away, go back… I’m nuts, fuck, it isn’t them! Oh, yes it is!… It is!… It’s them all right!… I’m not seeing things at all!… I cling to the curtains… my legs like rubber… I sit down… walk back over to the window… yeah, it’s them! No mistake! They even spotted me… they’re waving…

  There’s Nelson lugging the instrument, Ten-Paw turning the crank… Nelson’s having a grand old time… he points over at me… I recognize him all right… and Curlers is out there too… Ah! The lousy pest… they’re all out there with the instrument… they’re driving me crazy. How’d they wind up out there?… All three of them just like that?… Who tipped them off?… This is just one more piece of funny business!… Who sent them over?… Ten-Paw… Nelson… Curlers! Ah! Such God-awful, hell-bent… such vicious persecution… I’m their pigeon… I’m keeping this from Sosthène… He’d throw another fit. From the girl too… I stay cool. I step out for a breath of fresh air… I walk over to the door… down the front steps… make a dash… reach the gate… It really is them!… Plopped there… laughing their asses off… they greet me like savages.

  “Ah! Look who’s here, you silly dumb fart! Well, well, Ferdinand, you fathead! You’ve got la-dee-da airs! Not a single worry in the world, you faggot! Not a worry! You’ve moved up now! How about that, you dumb ox! You’re on the make, right, dickhead! Belly always stuffed! Ah! The pimp! Ah! You’re some piece of work!”

  “Ah,” I throw back at them, “it’s none of your business!”

  Right off they give me lip.

  “None of our business! None of our business! Well, how about that, so what more do you need? Ah! What bullshit, damn! Ah! You dumb prick! You cocky bastard!…”

  I owed it all to them, apparently. They went on grinding away at the organ, kept up the racket… playing ‘The Dark Waltz’ over and over… A little more and they’d have knocked me over… gesticulating so wildly in order to get it through my skull what a lousy bastard I was, ungrateful, not a nice guy.

  “What the hell are you doing out here?”

  Ten-Paw was still green around the gills and all, with that little glow of his undernea
th… so it was in his nature, but he didn’t stink so bad any more. And Nelson was still his gimpy self, the man just couldn’t stop laughing. Curlers burst out at the sight of me standing there panic-stricken… I could see all her teeth shaking in her big fat mouth… smeared with lipstick… up to her nose like a clown, practically ear to ear… Like a mask over her face… plastered with make-up and red lipstick… all weepy-eyed from laughing… plus those wobbly teeth…

  I try to get them to leave… But no way… they want in… they want to visit the house… they’re pushy… they don’t want to stand out there in the rain… they let me know about it pronto.

  “You’ve got a sweet set-up, you’re all comfy! You joker! You just wait and see! Hey, now, you never showed up at the standing gallery? Is that the way you keep your word?!”

  I was waiting for that… the bad blood I’d stirred the other day, she was sore cos I stood her up.

  “Ah!” she guffaws. “What a terrific pimp, not even able to deliver his girl! You’ll always be good for a laugh…”

  Curlers was a depraved old bitch, she had a reputation throughout the entire red-light district, she was always having fights with her man over all the time it cost her… But that’s not why he’d left – he didn’t have a jealous bone in his body, let’s not get carried away. He’d left like some dumb jerk, she repeated loud enough, so he could come back a general! Intelligent cracks of this sort kept them laughing out there in the rain. All three soaked to the bone. I just reached out and felt their clothes, I wanted to make sure I wasn’t dreaming… they were dripping wet, that’s a fact… In one way it made me happy that they were absolutely real, concrete, and not some hallucination, that they were made of flesh and blood… Inevitably I had my doubts…

  “Where’d you come from?” I ask.

  “From hell! What about your ass?”

  “Clear out of here, go to the Devil!” I snap.

  “No way we’re going to the Devil!” the trio comes back at me in unison! “We’re just so very glad to be setting eyes on your gorgeous kisser! We’re not going to go away just like that! After all the trouble we went through! Ah! You’re kidding yourself, old buddy! Can’t you see us standing here? Ah! Well then, you’ve got some gall!”

  Ten-Paw is wailing cantankerously! Almost like back at the Tweet-Tweet Club. Ah! I still can’t believe my eyes. Ah! I pissed him off. Curlers too. As for Nelson, he’s not nasty, he doesn’t give a shit, thinks it’s all one big joke!

  “You’re not being straight with us, Ferdinand! Your honour’s not worth tuppence! To send us packing like that! Aren’t you going to give us a tour of your joint? Ah! It’s just appalling! And here we come wearing our hearts on our sleeves! Just take a look at this instrument!… We’ve lugged it over from the Leicester… On loan from Jerome…

  “‘I’m looking for a man in Willesden,’ I said to him. ‘Lend me your instrument… I don’t know his address… I’ll need to go door to door… ask all over for the Colonel… but I don’t want to kick up a fuss, ruffle his feathers, be taken for the fuzz… once you start nosing around you can’t help it…’

  “So off we went, all three of us – wait till you hear the next part – we even collected two shillings six from door to door… we’re happy we’ve hooked up with you again… and this is how you jerk us around!… You don’t know when to quit! Ah! You’re pressing your luck, pal!…”

  None of this put a damper on Curlers…

  The Knights of the Moon…

  Bring you good fortune!

  She was belting out the song on the sidewalk… Windows were already flying open in the houses across the street. The trio had already knocked back a few… they must have stopped for breaks along the way…

  “You’ve been on the road since this morning?”

  “You said it, buster!”

  “Come in!” I say. What choice did I have, they were raising hell again. I lead the way.

  Curlers is all dolled up for turning tricks… but she got rained on… her ostrich-feather boa is dripping wet… her Chantilly hat veil is faded… her violet Liberty-fabric dress, her cockatoo elegance… the huge handbag hanging from her shoulder down to the ground… sloppily slung! The whole mess goes tramping into the house… with Ten-Paw and Nelson taking up the rear. The entrance hall wows them, the thick-pile wool carpet, the lackeys.

  I snap at them: “What about the organ? You’re just leaving it?”

  “We’ll play it for you a little later, you don’t deserve to hear anything right away!” Just like that they dish it back, mischievously.

  Sosthène was clueless. He’d never set eyes on them before… But they recognized him right away…

  “Ah! So there he is, your Triboulet!* Hey, now, he was in Chink drag, we saw him with you this morning. Yeah, that’s right, we were on the sidewalk. What the hell were you up to? Yeah, that guy was one crazy son of a bitch!…”

  Curlers slapped her thighs, remembering what a kick he’d given her! The old geezer in his gown was a scream!

  “Ah! You didn’t see him, Ten-Paw! he had all of Piccadilly, every bus stopped dead! Just like that cos he felt like imitating a butterfly! A dancing girl! Ah! kicking up hammer and tongs! the way he cavorted! Ah! what a weirdo! And then the coppers, what a stink! Racing after him, I’ll say! Piccadilly was a sight! And he made like the angel in the centre of the fountain, like the Eros.”

  Curlers aped him! Picking up her skirts. She was wearing sequined stockings…

  “I was over at Lyon’s getting my hair done… So I had a front-row seat! All hell broke loose with that mob of cops! And the buses! Ah! What a fucking mess! The cars all piled on top of each other! That’s what it’d turned into! Ah! What a zoo! The old fogey! He really cracked me up! I was pissing my panties! Gaby the hairdresser goes to me: ‘Honey, you’re gonna hurt yourself!’ And so, you’re the hell-raiser! Ah! You old joker! Where’d you learn to dance like that? Ah! You old rascal! His lips are sealed! Come on, teach me your jungle jive! So I can scare buses too! Ah! Teach me your whole bag of tricks…”

  They slapped him real hard on the back! All three thought he was this superduper hero, after the way he’d stopped all traffic in Piccadilly! By writhing around in his Chinaman suit!

  “Ah! He’s one of a kind!”

  Sosthène was a featherweight, the backslaps sent him reeling!

  “Let’s have a peek at what you’ve got underneath…”

  They were crazy about battle scars. He’s glad to oblige, undoes his buttons, pretty proud. Try as he might to be a fakir, he got banged up anyway… Not just those two black eyes and the gash on his nape, but his ribs punched raw!

  “Hey, look at this, tattoos!”

  Now that had them marvelling… A rose, a female snake charmer and a squirrel… all in blue and yellow, from collarbone to crotch, very delicately crafted with cabalistic significance apparently, it looked like lace it was so finely wrought. It had a metaphysical meaning, but he was forbidden from revealing it to the uninitiated under penalty of the worst sorts of disasters. Another one of his cock-and-bulls… The three rotters blew a gut they were laughing so hard…

  “That guy’ll always make me piss myself,” Curlers gasped out.

  They hadn’t spotted Virginia stretched out on the sofa in front of the fireplace. They were laughing so much they’d overlooked her.

  “Ah! Well, I’ll be!…” Curlers spots her.

  She rushes over… kisses the girl.

  “Ah! Does this ever make me happy. Look how cute this kid is…”

  She shows her to the two hooligans.

  “Isn’t she pretty now! Look what he’s got his hands on… The guy’s a real pro!”

  Planted in front of the sofa, Curlers gazed in admiration… with the eyes of an expert… a connoisseur.

  “But what’s wrong with you? You’re pale as death! Ah! My poor darling, this guy didn’t hurt you, did he? He’s an animal, an ignoramus.”

  She drops back to her knees, kisses her aga
in…

  “You’re still beautiful, my precious!”

  She cuddles, coddles her. Showers her with affection.

  “Well, since you’re here,” I ask, “what the fuck you come for?”

  My little crack really sends them rolling in the aisles! I’m not plastered, they’re the ones who’ve been drinking, not me. They reek of liquor. Especially Nelson, he’s zonked, rocking back and forth in front of my eyes. Now they’re splitting their sides. “Ah! That’s a hot one! Ah! Really is!”

  Curlers is laughing herself hoarse, she’s lost her voice. She doubles up, rattling her necklace chains, has at least five-six flopping against her belly, all made of gold no less… and inset with small sparklers. She’s rich, everybody knows it; she didn’t work herself to death for her old men, ever since her younger days she always had a bank account, snitching just so much from her pimp each week, simple as that; she thrived all on her own, she’s a businesswoman, even put two or three tarts to work for her.

  “My weakness, you know, is for young girls! That’s the honest truth! I adore them when they’re in the bloom of youth. I could lay one every morning… Say, Ferdinand! Like her! Your blossom! Ah! I’ve got to say you know how to pick them! I just love her! I love her, she’s a treasure!”

  She dropped to her knees to woo the girl. She entreated her like that right against the sofa, drenched boa in tow, she’d taken off her shoes because they were sopping wet.

  “Come off it! Get up, Curlers, leave her alone, she’s not feeling well…”

  “Shit!” she snaps back. “I’m going to sing something, look, just for her… ‘When we’re two!’… You’re a pain in our ass… ‘Things aren’t the same!’…” She couldn’t go on, too hoarse…

  “Hey, pour us a little glass of cordial! Your boss’s got some… She’ll have a drink with me!…”

  “She shouldn’t, she’s ill…”