Rigadoon (2 page)

"What's this, Céline? You?"

"Pure mongrelization. By marriage of course! With all the sacraments! Amen!"

"I don't quite understand you, Céline . . ."

"You could try . . . you with your death sentence! colored blood, all colored blood is 'dominant,' yellow, red, or indigo . . . white blood is 'dominated' . . . always! the children of your lovely mixed marriages will always be yellow, black, red, never white, never again white! . . . Presto change-o! with all the blessings of the Church!"

"Christian civilization!"

"Creation, Poulet! imagination! hokum! imposture!"

"Come, come! God's creation!"

"Mongrelization! twenty centuries of destruction, Poulet! nothing else! made to order! for that very purpose! every creation, from the moment it's born, bears within it its own end, its assassination!"

"The Church assassinate, Céline?"

"That's right! and you too! all your Church is good for! you holy asshole!"

"You're too much given to paradoxes, Céline! the Chinese are antiracist! . . . and so are the blacks!"

"That's rich! wait till they get here, won't take them a year to fuck everybody! that'll be the end of it! not a white man left! the white race has never existed . . . a 'make-up base,' that's all! your real, honest-to-God man is black and yellow! The white man with his mongrelizing religion! his religions, Jewish, Catholic, Protestant! The white man is dead! dead as a doornail! Believe it or not!"

"Céline, you make me laugh . . ."

I never saw Poulet again . . . I read his articles from time to time . . . a remark or two . . . no more . . . I kind of bugged him . . .

"Maître! . . . Maaaître! Would you be kind enough to read the letter we're sending you?"

"Monsieur! . . . monsieur! letters! . . . I throw them all in the waste basket, always have! . . . unread! . . . where would I be?"

"Maître, oh dear dear Maître! your opinion! two words!"

"Hell's bells, I haven't got any!"

"Oh, but you have, Maaître!"

"About what, dammit?"

"Our new literature!"

"That obscene antique? zounds, it doesn't exist! Fetal stammering, that's what it is!"

"Give us that in writing! . . . most hoonored Maître!"

"I've got a quicker way! take Brunetière, plagiarize him! he's said it all!"

"Oh, but we want it from you! from you, dear Maaaître!"

"You won't pester me any more? You won't come around?"

"Word of honor, Maaître!"

"He said that literature, all literature, would be devoured!"

"But by whom, Maître?"

"By charlatans!"

"Write us that, Maître! Maître!"

"Hell's britches, no! you'll catch me writing when my teeth grow in again!"

"Couldn't we drop in after all! and take down your extraordinary words?"

"Not mine! Brunetière's! You pipsqueaks! Brunetière!"

"If you'd do us that honor! Maître! For our journal! Please!"

"What journal?"

How can I stop them from coming?

"L'Espoir!"

"But there is no hope, you poor punk!"

"Oh, have pity, write us that! Maître! Maître! Our young people don't know you!"

"Glad to hear it, the swine! Put 'em to work, knock 'em out, make 'em paint the Eiffel Tower head down . . ."

"Do you despair of our youth, Maaaître? underestimate France . . . its prodigious resources, our Algeria, our Academy, our participles?"

"To the shithouse, I tell you! the whole shebang! the country doesn't exist any more, nothing but bureaucrats! . . . and funerals . . . a hundred languages stronger than ours have gone out of existence! How come you don't talk Hittite? or Aramaic?"

"In that case, my dear Maître, we'll definitely come to see you! We'll knock your servants down, we'll kill your dogs, we'll spill your guts! and your rotten demented brains! hello! hello! Got that? Understand?"

"Sure thing! I'm ready! a ferocious interview! count on me! face to face with the wild beasts! a Roman conference! Hear me belch!"

"Splendid, Maître."

"Come! Come quickly, my dear boys! let me embrace you! kiss you! . . ."

"Yum! Yum!"

"You're from
l'Espoir?
"

"Exactly, Céline! We were wondering, we're still wondering, we and our friends, if you're really as crummy as everybody says?. . . And now we've come to ask you."

"Who are these friends?"

"Well, first of all the magnificent Cousteau!"°

"First-class skunk if you ask me! . . . Where's he out of?"

"
Je Suis Partout.
"

"Oh, working for Lesca and the
Propagandastaffel
."

"He says you're the one, that you were in the pay of the Germans, he said so in black and white, with his magnificent courage, in our Rivarol! one Rivarol is as good as ten Humas.° Did you know that? . . . What's your answer to that, Céline?"

"Most tedious pipsqueaks, get this through your heads! if I were to answer all the damn foolishness, all the crap printed in the gazettes, not to mention my mail, it would take all that remains to me of life! . . . I've got my chronicle to finish, my enormous debts to pay! . . . Cousteau was a jealous little punk, a would-be deputy, just what it takes to make fanatics out of little jerks like you . . ."

The funny part of it, I'm thinking . . . these two young punks, these hotheads, could just as well be right, left, or center . . . any period . . . identical! . . . mean hidebound pricks the whole lot of them . . . Maillotins,° Guise conspirators,° partisans of Chambord° or Charles the Bold! . . . fuck all Causes! Etienne Marcel° or Juanovici° . . . this year that year! . . . let the future decide! movie stars' tits and assorted thighs!

"Céline, we asked you on the phone and we ask you again: How far will you go in your career of egoism, treason, and cowardice?"

"Oh, very far, my good friends!"

"All right, but watch your step, Céline, you've only one last chance! We've come to warn you! Rally to our cause! or justice will be done! That'll be the end! No more monkeyshines!"

"Curses! I thought it had been done already!"

"Christ, no! our justice! impeccable!"

"So what!"

"So what? Haven't you read? . . . no, naturally, you don't read! . . . except for a bit of smut!"

"Mercy! Have mercy! I've got to know!"

"The program of the new wave! our
Espoir
, a message from our supreme seer! Listen, take note, meditate, wretch! 'The movement of History demands that France and Germany become brothers.' "

"Get out! oh! what do I hear! the gangsters! out of my sight! you dare! I'll let the dogs out!"

I was going to! they'd have gobbled them up . . . thin air! . . . my two zebras had disappeared! the wind was blowing . . .

"In my opinion, the twentieth century has thus far produced only one innovator, and that is Ferdinand. I should go so far as to say, only one writer. I hope you won't be offended. He is so much above us. That he should be tortured and persecuted is only normal. That is a terrible tiring to write when you consider that this is a living man, but at the same time, what with his greatness, one cannot help regarding him as outside of the times and contingencies that are crushing him. I profoundly believe that the greater a man is the more he exposes himself to being wounded by all. Peace and quiet are only for the mediocre, for those whose heads disappear in the crowd. Céline would like to return to Paris or at least France, and you're doing everything you can to help him, but rest assured of this: wherever he is, he'll be persecuted. His hope of finding peace somewhere else is only a dream. He won't find peace anywhere. Wherever he goes, he'll be persecuted to the death. And he knows it. And he can't help it, and neither can we. The most we can do is to proclaim, on every occasion, that he is the greatest, and even in doing that we bring down on him the decupled hatred of the midgets, the mediocrities, the eunuchs, of all those who burst with jealous hatred the moment anyone raises their heads to show them the summits. They are the multitude."

I expected some effect . . . none at all! . . . on the contrary! "His Barjavel, good joke! as putrid as he is! . . . Throw 'em on the dump! Both of them!"