Death on the Installment Plan

by Louis-Ferdinand Celine

  “Maybe after all it’s better not to wake your father up now … What do you think? … Maybe he’s asleep … Don’t you think so? You saw how the slightest excitement upsets him … I’m afraid it’ll throw him off again to see you leave … Doesn’t it seem wiser … Suppose he had another attack like three weeks ago … I’d never get him to sleep again … I’d do anything to prevent that from happening …”I was of the same opinion … It struck me as perfectly reasonable … to clear out quietly … while the wind was right … We whispered good-bye … She gave me a little advice about my underwear … I didn’t listen to the end … I slipped into the Passage and then galloped out to the street.

  I hightailed it … I was late, very late in fact! … It was exactly midnight by the gilded dial of the Crédit Lyonnais … Courtial and his old cutie had been waiting for me for two solid hours outside the church of Saint-Vincent-de-Paul … with their pushcart … I climbed the whole length of the rue d’Hauteville in high … I could see them in the distance under a gas lamp … It was an honest-to-God moving … He’d brought the whole works. He’d really sweated for once in his life … He must have cleaned out the homestead regardless and notwithstanding … He’d had to murder the old punk (not for real!) … The cart was so loaded full of junk it was sagging … The dynamo and the motor were under the mattresses and the clothes … The double curtains, the whole kitchen … He’d saved as much as possible … You had to hand it to him … He was wearing a new frock coat I’d never seen … I wondered where he’d found it … It was pearl-gray … I remarked on it … it was from his younger days … He’d pinned up the tails. The old lady wasn’t wearing her hydrangea-and-cherry hat … It was perched on top of the cart … for safekeeping … Instead she’d put on a real pretty Andalusian shawl, all embroidered in bright colors … It looked good under the street lamp … She told me it was really the best thing for long trips … it protected the hair.

  Well, there we were finally … After some discussion about an obsolete timetable we started off very slowly … Frankly, I was happy! … The rue Lafayette is steep … especially between the church and the corner drugstore … We couldn’t lay down on the job … Des Pereires had harnessed himself to the cart … The old bag and I pushed from behind … And “Come on, kid!” and “I know you got it in you! …” And “keep her rolling …” And “Never say die!” The only trouble was that we’d lost too much time … We missed our train … It was my fault … We could forget about the twelve-forty … now it was the two-twelve … the first of the day … So now we were ahead of time, pretty near fifty minutes … We had plenty of time to take our dolly apart … it was the folding reversible type … and load all our stuff … again! … into the freight car at the tail of the train. After that we still had time enough to blow ourselves to some mud, two cups with milk, a mazagran, and a “breakfast coffee,” all in a row! At the spiffy Terminus … We were nuts about coffee all three of us … really gone … And I had the treasury.

  We got out in Persant-la-Rivière … It was a sweet little village between two hills and some woods … A chateau with turrets provided the finishing touch … The dam below the houses made a majestic roar … All in all, it was very pretty … We could have picked worse, even for a vacation … I said as much to the old battle-ax… But she was out of sorts … We had a hell of a time with our stuff, getting our motor out of the freight car … We had to ask for help …

  The Stationmaster looked our paraphernalia over … He thought we were itinerants … come for the fair … to put on movie shows … He judged by our rig … For the fair we’d have to come back another time … It was over two weeks ago … Des Pereires didn’t like leaving him with the wrong idea … He put the little jerk straight right away … told him all about our projects … He wanted to speak to the notary! Immediately! … This was no laughing matter, it was an agricultural revolution … A crowd of yokels started poking into our stuff … They clustered around the tarp … They made a lot of remarks about our apparatus. On the road the three of us by ourselves couldn’t make it … The cart was too damn heavy … We’d noticed that on the rue Lafayette … And our agricultural hole was too far away … We needed a horse at least … Right away those hicks put up a remarkable show of inertia … Finally we were able to start out …

  Once settled on the seat, our cutie lit up a good pipe … Our hangers-on laid bets that she was a man dressed like a woman …

  To reach our property at Blême-le-Petit it was still seven miles … with plenty of hills … They warned us at Persant … Des Pereires had already collected piles of dope, going around from one group to another … It hadn’t taken him long to sign all the papers … he’d hurried the notary … Now he was prospecting the green hills from the top of the cart … We’d given one of the peasants a lift … With the map spread out on his knees, Courtial never stopped talking once the whole time … He commented on every rise, every roll in the ground … He searched for every last brook … in the distance with his hand over his eyes … He didn’t always find them … He gave us a regular lecture that went on at least two solid hours, bumpity-bump, on the potentialities, the lag in development, the agricultural splendors and weaknesses of a region whose “metallo-geodisic infrastructure” didn’t entirely suit him … Oh no! … He told us right off and several times over … He’d have to make his analyses before throwing himself into this thing … It was a beautiful day.

  At Blême-le-Petit things weren’t exactly the way the notary had said. It took us two whole days to find out …

  The farm was plenty run-down … That much had been stated in the papers … The old man who’d had it last had died only two months before and nobody in the whole family had wanted to take over … It seemed that nobody wanted the land, or the shanty, or even the village … We looked over some of the other shacks a little farther on … We knocked at all the doors … We went into the barns … There was no sign of life … Finally near the watering trough, in some kind of a shed, we found two old customers so old they couldn’t leave the place … They were almost blind … and completely deaf … They kept pissing on each other … That seemed to be their only amusement … We tried to talk to them … They couldn’t think of anything to say … They made signs that we should go away and leave them alone … They’d lost the habit of anybody coming to see them … We frightened them.

  It didn’t look very promising to me … That deserted village … All those half-open doors … Those two old folks who didn’t like us … And the owls all over the place …

  Des Pereires, on the contrary, thought it was perfectly splendid … He felt invigorated by the country air … First thing he wanted to dress the part … He’d lost his panama, so he had to borrow a hat from our old sweetie … An enormous soft-straw number with a chin strap … He kept on his frock coat, the beautiful gray one … plus a soft shirt and a pair of wooden shoes (that he never really got used to) … When he took a long walk through the fields, he always came home barefoot … and so’s to look really like a tiller of the soil, he never forgot his spade … He carried it jauntily over his right shoulder … Spade at the ready, we went out every afternoon to inspect the fallow fields, looking for a suitable place to plant radishes.

  Madame des Pereires kept busy on her own hook … She did the errands and kept house … and most of all she went to the market in Persant twice a week … She did the cooking … She repaired things and made the place halfway livable … Cooking in the hearth was an awful business, we wouldn’t have eaten if not for her … just to make an omelet you had to light the fire so many times … the logs, the embers … you lost your appetite …

  The two of us, Pereires and me, didn’t get up very early, I’ve got to admit … Even that made her gripe … She always wanted us to be getting a move on … to be doing something really useful … But once we’d gone out, we didn’t feel like coming back … Then she got mad again, poor old thing, wondering what we were doing so long outside … Des Pereires enjoyed our big exc
ursions … Every day he discovered new aspects of the countryside … and in the afternoon again, thanks to his map, he could be as instructive as hell … Now and then, at the edge of the woods … or on some slope … we’d make ourselves comfortable … as soon as a little heat came on … We always had a few bottles of beer … Pereires was free to meditate … I didn’t bother him much … He talked to himself … with his spade in the ground, dug in right beside us … The time passed pleasantly … It was a real change … the peace … the quiet of the woods … But the dough was going out fast … She was getting worried … She went over the accounts every night …

  In the matter of dress I wasn’t long in adapting myself … Little by little the soil gets you … You forget about the nonessentials … In the end I worked out a rugged little outfit consisting of bicycle pants and a spring overcoat with the tails cut to half length that I tucked into my baggy pants … kind of warm but comfortable … I could be recognized a mile away … The whole thing decorated with lengths of string … with ingenious props. The old cutie came around to our way of thinking, she wore pants too like a man … She didn’t have a skirt to her name anyway. She thought it was handier … She went to market that way too. The school kids waited for her on the way into town. They hooted at her, they bombarded her with cowflop and broken bottles and big stones … It ended in a fight … She didn’t take it lying down … The cops stepped in … They asked for her papers … She was very high and mighty: “I’m an honest woman, messieurs … You can follow me home! …” They weren’t in the mood.

  It was a beautiful summer … You really couldn’t imagine it would ever end … The heat makes for idleness … Des Pereires and I, after his pousse-café, we’d head for the fields … and all afternoon we’d wander aimlessly over hill and furrow. If we ran into a yokel, we’d give him a polite “good-day” … Our life was mighty pleasant … It reminded us of the happy days with the balloon … But we had to be careful not to talk about our stratospheric setbacks in front of Madame des Pereires … or about the Enthusiast or the Archimedes! … Or she’d burst into tears … She couldn’t contain her grief … She treated us like dirt … We mostly talked about one thing and another … We couldn’t stir up the past … And we had to watch our step with the future … We could only mention it with kid gloves … The future was ticklish too … Ours was vague … it didn’t stand out very clearly … Courtial was still hesitating … He preferred to wait a little longer, he didn’t want to dive in until he felt perfectly sure … Between meditations, in the course of our afternoon wanderings, he’d prospect around with his spade … He’d bend down to examine, weigh, scrutinize the fresh earth he’d stirred up … He’d crush it into a powder … He’d filter it between his fingers as if looking for gold … Finally he’d clap his hands and blow on them hard … It would all fly away … He’d frown … “Tt, tt … This soil isn’t so hot, Ferdinand. It’s not rich. Hm! hm! I’m mighty scared about radishes . ‘. . Hm! Maybe artichokes … And even then I wouldn’t be too sure … My oh my! There’s an awful lot of magnesium in it …” We’d start off again, undecided.

  At table his wife asked us for the hundredth time if we’d picked our vegetable … if we’d finally made up our minds … if maybe it wasn’t high time … She suggested beans … she didn’t put it very tactfully, I’ve got to admit … Hearing a thing like that made Courtial jump sky-high …

  “Beans? … Beans? … Here? … In these rifts? … Did you hear that, Ferdinand? … Beans? In a soil without manganese! Why not peas? … Or eggplant while you’re at it … Oh, this is too much!” He was scandalized … “Vermicelli! That’s the thing! … Or truffles! … Say, what about truffles?”

  He’d thump around the house for hours grumbling like a bear … The indignation aroused by an unwarranted suggestion was good for a long session … On that score he was uncompromising … Free deliberation! Scientific selection! … She’d go off to bed all alone in her windowless cubbyhole, a kind of alcove she’d fixed up for herself, far from the murderous drafts, between the threshing machine and the kneading trough … You could hear her sobbing through the partition … He was pretty rough on her.

  You couldn’t say she was ever short on courage or perseverance … or self-abnegation … Not once … She did wonders reclaiming that old shack … She never stopped fixing … Nothing worked … neither the pump nor the mill that was supposed to run the water … The hearth crumbled into the soup … She had to putty all the chinks in the walls, plug up all the holes … all the cracks in the fireplace … patch up the shutters, put on new tiles … She climbed up on the eaves … But at the first storm a lot of rain came into the rooms irregardless … through the holes in the roof … We put glasses underneath … one for each stream … All those repairs and alterations were a rough job, no petty tinkering … She changed the enormous hinges on the big barn door … Carpentry … locksmithing … nothing fazed her … She got to be real good at it … a regular mechanic … And in addition of course all the housekeeping and cooking were her department … She said so herself, no line of work bothered her except the laundry … There got to be less and less of that … Our wardrobe was rock bottom … Hardly any shirts … and no shoes at all …

  Plugging the chinks in those thick walls she kind of fouled up … her plaster wasn’t right … Des Pereires was critical, he thought we should do it over … but we had other worries … Anyway we certainly had her to thank if that mangy den finally began to look like something more or less. It was a ruin even so … Whatever you did to patch it up, it kept falling apart …

  Our old lady was heroic all right, but that operation with her ovaries kept bothering her more and more … Maybe the overwork … She sweated like a waterfall … her moustache dripped … she was all flushed and congested … By the end of the day she was so het up, exasperated from waiting … that at the least misplaced word … bam! … the storm broke … She’d blow her top … She’d be waiting there all tensed up … She’d explode over nothing … The tirades were endless …

  What we mostly had to avoid was the slightest allusion to the good old days in Montretout … She had that on her esophagus … It gnawed at her like a tumor … If a single word escaped us on the subject, she called us every name in the calendar, she said it was a plot … she called us bloodsuckers, homos, vampires … We had to put her to bed by force …

  Des Pereires’ problem was still making up his mind about his precious vegetable … We had to think of something else … We were beginning to have our doubts about radishes … What vegetable would we try? … Which would be right for radiotellurism? … And grow to ten times its normal bulk? … And where to plant? … That was no small question … It would require minute investigation … We’d already spaded up samples of every field for ten miles around … We weren’t going into this thing with our eyes closed … We were thinking it over, that’s all …

  One day in the course of our explorations we came across a really sweet little village in the opposite direction from Persant, on the way south … Saligons-en-Mesloir … It was pretty far on foot … at least two good hours from Blême-le-Petit … That was one hideout where our old lady wouldn’t ever think of tracking us down … The soil around Mesloir, Courtial discovered right away, was much richer than ours in “radio-metallic” content and consequently, he figured, infinitely more fertile … it would yield quicker results … We came back to study it almost every afternoon … The remarkable thing about that soil was its “cadmio-potassic” and its special calcium … You could tell by the feel and even more by the smell … Its composition seems to have been simply amazing … des Pereires sniffed it out right away … Thinking it over, he even began to wonder if it mightn’t be too rich in telluric catalyst … if we mightn’t get concentrations so powerful as to make our vegetables burst … to make their pulp explode … That was the danger, the one questionable point … He had a hunch … In that case we’d have to give up the idea of growing small early vegetables in this ground that
was really too rich … choose something coarse, something vulgar and resistant … Pumpkins for instance … But who’d buy them? … A single pumpkin for a whole city? … A monumental pumpkin? … The market wouldn’t absorb them all … It was time we put our heads together! New problems to face! It’s always like that with action.