Rigadoon (5 page)
Authors: Louis-ferdinand & Manheim Celine
"Yes . . . not much!"
"Wait for the end! the white man's blood doesn't hold up under mongrelization! . . . it turns black, yellow! . . . and that's the end! the white man was born a mongrel, he was created to perish! dominated blood! Agincourt, Verdun, Stalingrad, the Maginot Line, Algeria, pure hash! . . . white meat! now you can go to lunch!"
"Now you've insulted me. You satisfied?"
"Didn't you want them to hang me?"
"No, never!"
"Shoot me, then! and how!. . . beat it, Tartuffe!"
Hee hee! . . . a grim laugh! we were on the outs . . . it lasted two weeks . . . he came back, we talked about different things . . . when you've reached a certain age, no use getting mad . . . we'll all be taking the train and that's that: murderers and murdered . . . same train!
choo! choo!
the engine . . . it's time . . . I hope he comes back, the bastard! . . . mongrel or not! . . .
I could entertain you some more, or at least try, with my Nostradamus, my yellow army in Brest, my black army at the Montparnasse Station, the capitulation of Saint-Denis. But I'll be seventy when this book comes out and by that time your family papers will have run these episodes into the ground, a thousand and one magazines will have photographed them from every angle . . . "nobody's amused by us any more" . . . Marcel warned me . . . we might as well be modest . . . which reminds me that in New York, on the back streets near Battery Place, you'll find old ladies about my age, spinsters in tiny little apartments half a mile from Times Square, fancyworking furniture and knickknacks, embroidering armchairs, upholstering prie-dieus, painting and trimming the cunningest flowerpot covers, things that would bring good prices on the rue de Provence . . . they heat with wood, they've got their regular tradesmen right around the corner, they live like me here in Meudon, insensible to fashions, serenely out of date . . . but in no great hurry to pass on! . . . though there are plenty of young old maids in the neighborhood . . . that go in for upholstery too and are just waiting to take over their equipment, their canvas and wool . . . Marlene, Maurice Dache,° Chaplin . . . all one to these old ladies! a president? another? stratosphere, bubblegum, Fifth Avenue! you see the skyscrapers, their summits, seems a lot of people live up there . . . these old ladies have work to do, no time to crane their necks! . . . an embroidered cushion takes a year . . . same here, I'm not the idle type, the clowning goggle-eyed tourist, far from it! working my fingers to the bone on the little jobs Achille pays me for! a pittance! a joke! but even so! fine tapestries, artful embroideries, style, that's my trade! . . . not many customers, you'll say, and so hateful! all right with me! they'll be faithful to me at leastl jealous? insanely! . . . they'll still be talking about me, about my horrible books, when there are no Frenchmen left . . . I'll be transplanted to Mali when this little appendage to Asia has been wiped completely off the map! its people, former whites . . . blond, chestnut, brunette! incredible! . . . one of History's bum jokes! . . . deciphered out of a dead language, I'll have my little chance . . . at last!
In the meantime I'm keeping you waiting . . . I lost you at Zornhof . . . Harras° and the
Reichsbevoll
had just left us . . . I've run out on you, you and my
comics
. . . quick, back to business and you! this way, Ladies and Gentlemen! . . . another two thousand pages at least! Achille that wants to see me dead! and inherit everything!
gratis pro Deo!
born to the part! so clever . . . he thinks! he can get in line and follow the guide! that's me! now you're going to see something . . . This magic lantern . . . magic, I say! period and all; like you were there in person!
Bergson tells us! you fill a wooden box, a big one, with fine iron filings, and you plunk your fist in, a good hard punch . . . what do you see? you've made a crater . . . the exact same shape as your fist! . . . To understand what's happened, this phenomenon, two kinds of intelligence, two explanations . . . the intelligence of the befuddled ant, who wonders by what miracle another insect, an ant like itself, has been able to keep all these filings in a state of equilibrium, in the shape of a crater . . . and the other intelligence, genius, yours, mine, explains it by saying that a simple blow of the fist has sufficed . . . as a chronicler I have to choose . . . with the ant explanation I could amuse you . . . scurrying around in the filings . . . with the fist explanation I could entertain you too, but much less . . . the Chinese in Brest . . . all churches in the same boat . . . Demolition and Co. . . . Hebraic, Rome, Protestant,
tutti frutti!
"League of Mongrelization"! in the short time I've left to live, I'd better not annoy you too much . . . not tell you you're a lot of stumbling dipsos . . . Byzantium got along fine for ten centuries, bluffing the world . . . the world saw nothing but conspiracies, double and triple chariot races, buggeries . . . and then the Turks . . . and then curtains . . . will the same happen here? possible! all right with you . . . I, chronicler of Grands Guignols, will show you, without mirrors or false bottoms, the finest spectacle that ever was, the burning of the impregnable bastions . . . the contortions and the mimicry . . . which a lot of people survived!
"What's this? Byzantium? a thousand years? Byzantine yourself! Byzantium didn't have the resources that we have, thank God! . . . progress, monsieur! atomic progress! a thousand years! your thousand years, bah! a minute! . . . a quarter revolution of the cyclotron! science, monsieur! you look pretty sick with your Byzantium! . . . you retarded slow-motion primate! . . . one minute, monsieur, for your whole decadence . . . at the most!"
"Your Greek fire! . . . archaic!"
Another detractor . . . I won't tell you who or where from . . . I don't answer . . . I know them . . .
"Come on, Céline, cut the clowning . . . your readers have a right to expect it. . . even of you! that stuff about the Chinese in Brest may amuse people for a minute . . . no morel all your anti-white . . . mongrelizing churches . . . ho! hum! doubtful humor! . . . your public wants something else! . . . you didn't know? . . . brain surgery, color vivisection, three-forceps deliveries, the production of 'geniuses' in the chromoplastic factories of the Cordilleras at an altitude of 12,000 feet. . ."
"Curses! 'paleface' that I am, monsieur! and stubborn as such!"
"The 'redskins' perished, didn't they?"
"With a good deal of help from liquor . . . I only drink water . . . the redskins have their reservations and their privileges . . . their conqueror protected them . . . but paleface that I am, the conqueror has only one thought, to debase me more and more! to make off with everything I have, to humiliate me to death . . . and if one of the 'great autolyzer's' cops looks around and finds me at the bottom of the sewer, Fréjus° will be nothing to what I can expect, the torrents of sulphuric acid! Buffalo Bill's wild-western heart was in the right place! . . . racist, yes, but fair play . . . the Sioux had a chance! . . . at a gallop,
bzing!
. . . but there in the sewer, zero! . . . they'll never bring us to the Châtelet° . . . species to be exterminated, covered with shame . . . drowned in shit . . ."
Hard time getting started! . . . but I've got to, I promised! . . . my age? tomorrow I can only be more gaga . . . I've shillyshallied enough!
Here we are! . . . homage to the reader! . . . a low bow! . . . back in the exact same place . . . Harras has just left. . . time to take action, now or never! . . . we've got the main thing, our pass, signed and stamped by the
Reichsbevoll
. . . and still the same idea, Denmark . . . the crossing . . . the opposite coast, Nordport . . . still a certain amount of traffic, so they say, it's possible . . . we'll see! . . . main thing to make it quick . . . our pass won't be good for more than two three days . . .
"What do you think, Le Vig?"°
He leaves the decision to me . . . okay, Le Vig will stay here . . . with Bébert . . . we'll go to Warnemünde and take a look . . . he'll wait for us, not more than two three days . . . see if the ferry's still running . . . if it's possible to get on board . . . clandestinely . . . I'm not too keen, neither is Le Vig . . . we're clandestine enough already . . . and we'll find out if over there in Denmark they're not worse than over here . . . it's possible!
"You'll take care of our stuff and the cat . . . Don't go too far away!"
He shouldn't get any funny ideas!
"Count on me! . . . except I know what to expect at the manor!"
"You can go to the farm across the way!"
"No dice! . . . anyplace but there!"
No use arguing . . . we leave him . . .
"Good-bye, Le Vig! . . . so long, Bébert!"
We know the road to Moorsburg . . . we've got our pass . . . but even so . . . we don't meet anybody . . . they're bound to be suspicious . . . I hobble . . . but pretty fast . . . I know how to manage my two canes . . . no time to lose . . . straight to the station! there's a crowd at the door . . . and inside, soldiers, civilians, peasants, workers, all sorts, like the Métro . . . and every language . . . there hasn't been a train in six days . . . the Berlin-Rostock . . . nothing to do but wait . . . we're pretty well used to that, I can say . . . there we are, standing . . . then we sit down outside, on the iron bench . . . we'll see the train coming if it comes . . . ah, here comes somebody! . . . talking about trains! . . . Le Vig! . . . sure enough, it's him! didn't hang around Zornhof ° very long! . . . couldn't stand it . . . here he is with a pushcart . . .
"Say, you haven't wasted any time! what you got there?"
"Our stuff!"
I take a look . . . a bundle of shirts, dirty . . . and some burlap bags, empty . . .
"You think it was worth the bother? . . . where's Bébert? . . ."
He had him in his musette bag, slung over his shoulder . . . Bébert goes
miow!
. . . we pat him . . .
"Got anything to eat?"
He shows me . . . in his duffel coat. . . a whole pile of
butterbrot
. . .