A Quiet Life (20 page)

I intend to focus on these children and the cat, Bébert, in
Rigadoon
. By way of preparing the general framework of my thesis, I have started by first copying down certain passages from the novel, and then attaching my own translations to them. I have one here that, I think, clearly shows Céline's warm-hearted seriousness. Incidentally, it's in this passage that
our little idiots
, an expression I have written a number of times already, appears for the first time.

“Our little idiots are all where they belong; they've got nothing to do with us anymore; now they're Swedes, all of them—drooling, deaf and dumb Swedes … thirty years have passed and I'm thinking: must be grown-ups now, if they lived through it … moreover, they aren't drooling, maybe they can hear well, too—thoroughly reeducated … the old have nothing more to hope for, those kids, all …”

I don't have the ability to comment on French style, but with Céline, I get the impression that he writes in a way that, contrary to what I had imagined, presents a serious subject in a light and straightforward manner—and I like this. I had copied this passage on one of my cards a few days before, and was translating it far into the night, when I realized Father was standing beside me, having snuck up without my noticing—which is another reason this passage, in particular, remains in my heart. Father doesn't dare touch my letters, but he readily picks up the books I read, or the reference cards I make, and looks at them. He does this all the time, and it has irritated me since I was in kindergarten. And that night, while I was copying down some more passages from the book, he picked up a few of the cards and said, “Hmm … ‘the old have nothing more to hope for, those kids, all …’ How true.” His voice was so unusually earnest and sad that. I couldn't make a face at him for having read my cards without asking me.

The next day. however, Father brought me volumes one and two of Céline's
Novels
, from the shelf of the Pléiade editions he especially treasures, and said, “The appendices and annotations should come in handy for the slang and the identities and backgrounds of the models. Take them, they're yours. And you can use volume three and the other reference books too, if you need to.” I was actually very grateful for his giving me the two Pléiade books, which would have put too heavy a burden on my meager allowance.

My interest in Céline, in the first place, had been aroused by my meeting an American writer on an errand I once ran for Father. Though I personally believe I chose to major in literature independently of Father's occupation, I have to admit that the occasion has influenced me in many ways.

When I was still in my second year of senior high school, Mr. K. V., a very well-known writer in the United States, came to Japan. Father interviewed him on a TV talk show, and Mr. K. V., when publishing its transcript in a literary magazine, said he wished to donate the proceeds to a hospital for atomic bomb survivors in Hiroshima. In return for his kindness, the publishers said they would pay Mr. K. V. more than the usual fee. But they would first hand the money to him in a special envelope, and after this, he would make the donation. Father said he would gladly act as go-between for Mr. K. V. and the hospital. But then he started saying that he, being the bashful type, would rather not stand in the limelight, and so it turned out that I would go to the ceremony to receive from Mr. K. V. the envelope that would go to the hospital. As I waited in the lobby with a man from the publishing house, Mr. K. V. emerged from the elevator, a tall man with a dignified, winsome head on his shoulders, like a scientist you might see in a cartoon. I had practiced saying, in order to receive the envelope from him, “I shall forward a voucher to your publisher in the I United States.” I thought
receipt
would have sounded too weak, so I decided, without consulting anyone, to use
roncher
, a word I had found in a Japanese-English dictionary. The word must have rung amusingly odd in Mr. K. V.'s ears, for though he didn't burst out laughing, he vigorously rolled his large eyes.

Mr. K. V. then went to the bookstore in the corner of the lobby to see if they had a pocket edition of his works, but unfortunately he didn't find any. “They have a good selection,” he said ruefully, but so seriously that neither the man from
the publishing company nor I could help laughing. Encouraged by his sense of humor. I produced a Penguin edition of a Céline book for which Mr. K. V. had written an introduction. Father had told me to look it over before meeting him, and I got him to sign it. The introduction included an illustration of a tombstone that looked like the graffiti of a mischievous boy. The outline sketch he drew next to his signature, of a girl with a small placard hanging from her neck with
VOUCHER!
written on it, was the same as that of the tombstone, which turns out to bear the writer's pseudonym, his real name as a doctor, and the years of his birth and death: Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Le Docteur Destouches / 1894–1961.

I carried the inscribed book home, impressed by the fact that Mr. K. V. was a gentle and refined American. I made a brief report to Father, gave him the envelope, and continued talking in the kitchen with Mother about my impression of Mr. K. V. Father, who promptly set about sending the money to Hiroshima, heard me with his sharp ears and happily said, “Yes, K. V. is a very
decent
man.” Reading Mr. K. V.'s introduction to the book he had inscribed for me, I felt that
decent
, the English word Father used, was the perfect adjective to describe him.

The last passage in Mr. K. V.'s introduction also aroused in me a desire to read Céline. It touched upon an essay Céline, as a doctor, had written in 1924, a treatise on a nineteenth-century Hungarian physicist, entitled “The Life and Work of Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis.” Mr. K. V. wrote: “It was written at a time when theses in medicine could still be beautifully literary, since ignorance about diseases and the human body still required that medicine be an art.”

Young Destouches penned his essay on Semmelweis with zeal akin to hero worship. Semmelweis was a Vienna hospital obstetrician who devoted his life to preventing the spread of
childbed fever. It was largely the poor who were victims of the disease, for in those days people who had houses, which is to say decent dwellings of their own, chose to give birth at home. The essay tells of those times.

“The mortality rate in some wards was sensational—twenty-five percent or more. Semmelweis reasoned that the mothers were being killed by medical students, who often came into the wards immediately after having dissected corpses riddled with the disease. He was able to prove this by having the students wash their hands in soap and water before touching a woman in labor. The mortality rate dropped.

“The jealousy and ignorance of Semmelweis's colleagues, however, caused him to be fired, and the mortality rate went up again.

“The lesson Destouches learned from this true story, in my opinion, if he hadn't learned it from an impoverished childhood and a stretch in the army, is that vanity rather than wisdom determines how the world is run.”

I immediately asked Father about this medical treatise, whereupon a look of surprise, which itself he appeared to be relishing, suffused his face. I don't blame him, though, for then I didn't know a word of French. Still, I think he decided to give me his prized Pléiade books because he remembered my asking him about the treatise. Before this, too, when he went to France on some business he had, he bought me, as a souvenir, a Gallimard book entitled
Semmelweis (1815–1865), thèse.
I put this book on my bookshelf without reading it, and it's still there where I put it. When looking back like this, though, it becomes clear that Father
does
seriously consider the things I inquire about.

I was already a sophomore, and had started taking courses in French literature, when Father gave me the treatise he had
gone to the trouble to buy me. So if only I had tried, I would somehow have managed to read it. But I didn't, and there were psychological reasons for this. To begin with, I had recurrent nightmares after reading about the treatise in Mr. K. V.'s introduction. Hands that touch a corpse full of holes, gnawed away by germs that appeared to the naked eye as small bugs; and fingers, wet, slimy, and glimmering with black blood and pus. They take the form of the arms of a doctor of obstetrics you might see in a TV movie, and gloveless and bare, they come closer between my raised knees. …

Hands don't appear in my other nightmares, but I see paramecialike germs, a myriad of them, ravaging the back of Eeyore's head—Eeyore the newborn babe lying on the operating table. … If my subconscious was causing me to have these shocking dreams, then I detested myself for having such a subconscious. But quite apart from the dream itself, I was overcome with self-hatred, which made me repeatedly shudder. In any event, these were the things that prompted me to read Céline's novels, and go on to French literature in college.

Well, what I want to focus on in my graduation thesis is
Rigadoon.
In this story, Céline does not allow any sentimentalism, though common in such relationships, to come between him and
our little idiots.
Instead of giving them an endearing “oh-you-poor-little-things” embrace, he uses his medical expertise to make the most strenuous efforts to help the children. The children themselves, though handicapped, give it their all, and their actions amid dire circumstances are as shrewd as Céline's. This is what I really like about
Rigadoon.

The time is toward the end of World War II. The locale is Germany. Air raids by the Allies have virtually paralyzed the railway systems, and multitudes of refugees are fleeing in confusion. The story progresses with the decrepit railway as the main theater of action. Céline is labeled as a Nazi sympathizer
who ought to be denounced—though today the prevailing thought seems to be that the French public's denunciation of such individuals, both during the Resistance and alter the war, solely because of their antisemitic beliefs, was not appropriate—and because he cannot return to France, or remain in Germany, he tries to make off to Switzerland, or to Denmark, and ends up plying back and forth in Germany, as if he were dancing the rigadoon. And there's his wife, Lili, the cat. Bébert, and his actor friend, La Vigue.

Relying on their uncertain lifeline, an obscure German officer, they continue their narrow escape by trains, on whose tracks bombs repeatedly rain down. To the bitter end, Céline writes, as he would speak, the details of the trips they made back and forth, and of the thoughts that arose in his mind at the time. He freely inserts movements of his mind that occurred to him as he wrote the novel in the French countryside in 1961. And I understand he died the day after he put his last idiosyncratic ellipsis points to the end of this novel. His style, I believe, is really egocentric. Moreover, the novel is full of the practically fanatical self-justifications of an out-and-out egotist. But, of course, this itself represents a spirited charm, which again is the mark of a great writer's work. …

But Céline, who runs around amid the flames of war with the sole purpose of saving himself and his retinue, and who spits out cusses and curses everywhere, simply cannot turn a cold shoulder to the abandoned infant or to
our little idiots
he chances upon, which, admittedly, is a rather unnatural thing to do. Nevertheless, he writes with such feeling, and his words pierce the heart. This is what attracts me to
Rigadoon
, and why I think I now know how to help myself rise above the hurt I feel when someone says, “An innocent princess reading Céline, huh? … feigning the villain. … When did Céline turn into a cute hobbyhorse?” Were I to offer a slightly thorny rebuttal, I
would say that those who say such things perhaps haven't read Céline well enough. …

With no place to go. Céline, his wife, friend, and cat sneak into a village farm, but then, with a
Reichsbevoll
permit that may already have lost its validity, leave for Norbord on the opposite shore via Denmark—I understand
Reischsbevoll
means Reich plenipotentiary, but I'll have to look it up at the university library to find out more about it. They finally manage to scramble onto a flatcar guarded by a gunner, and halfway through their escape they are forced to disembark from the would-be Berlin-Rostock train. They have to melt into the crowd of evacuees from Berlin to search for another train. Upon learning that the French government has left Vichy for the town of Sigmaringen, near the Swiss border, they decide to mingle with the people returning to France via the same route. …

The Ulm-bound train they get on—one passing through Leipzig—is also bombed, forcing them to escape into a tunnel, lest they be roasted by the liquid white-phosphorus shells. The circumstances are frightening, but when Céline sees, on the train, an abandoned infant in its swaddling clothes, he can't just let it be. There's no milk, no diapers: yet he can't keep from doing something for it.

“… empty … nobody! … wait! A baby on the middle sofa, in swaddling clothes! … a month old, perhaps less … not crying … abandoned there by its mother … I enter … I look … it's not doing badly … not breathing hard … a healthy baby … now what?”

My stilted translation cannot properly convey the feeling, but as I copy the scene on my card in French—this scene, which starts from where Céline, or rather Dr. Destouches, finds a baby abandoned in the face of hellish circumstances, and then continues until be can entrust it to reliable hands—I feel his warmth directly communicated to me: his spontaneous emotions
upon finding the child, his doctor's watchful eye ever on it, and his desperate feelings to want to somehow look after it. And the usage of the Céline-esque ellipsis points is so natural here. Simple though it may be, I imagine the following association: “What if I had been the rescued infant!—found by this diminutive man, who looks ferocious, like a dog, and yet is so kind and unhypocritical! How happy I must have been, picked up by this doctor's big, experienced hands!”

Caught in one impasse after another, they continue their nightmarish railway journey with no alternative but to make repeated changes in course; and amid all this, Céline, who chances upon
our little idiots
, takes them with him, all of them, without a second thought.