Journey to the End of the Night (65 page)

Parapine kept his wits about him. He managed to send someone to the police station for a cop. The cop just happened to be Gustave, our Gustave, who was on stand-by after his traffic duty.

"OhmyGod!" said Gustave when he entered the room and saw Robinson. Then he sat down at the nurses' table that hadn't been cleared yet to get his breath and take a little drink. "Seeing it's a crime," he said, "we'd better take him to headquarters." Then he remarked: "Robinson was all right, he wouldn't have hurt a fly. I wonder why she killed him ..." Then he drank some more. He shouldn't have. Drink didn't agree with him. But he liked the bottle. It was his weakness.

We went up to the storeroom to get a stretcher. By then it was too late to disturb the staff, so we decided to carry the body to the police station ourselves. It was far away, at the other end of town, after the grade crossing, the last house.

We started out. Parapine held the front of the stretcher, Gustave Mandamour the other end. But neither of them walked very straight. Going down the little stairway, Sophie had to steady them a bit. It was then I noticed that she didn't seem terribly upset. Yet it had happened right beside her, so close that one of that madwoman's bullets could have gone right into her. But Sophie, as I'd noticed on other occasions, needed time to get her emotions started. Not that she was cold. When it hit her, it was like a ton of bricks, but she needed time.

I wanted to follow the body a little way to make sure it was really over. But instead of actually following as I should have, I veered from side to side of the road and finally, after passing the big school building near the grade crossing, I slipped into a side street that leads down to the Seine, first sloping gently between hedges and then taking a steep plunge. Over the fences I saw them moving off with their stretcher.

They looked as if they'd suffocate in the sheets of mist that slowly closed behind them. Along the riverbank the current was driving hard against the barges, which had been wedged tight as a precaution against the flood water. More cold came from the Gennevilliers plain, in puffs of mist that spread over the swirling river and made the water glisten under the arches.

Down there in the distance lay the sea. But there was no more room in me for imaginings about the sea. I had other things to do. I had tried to lose myself, I hadn't wanted to be face to face with my own life anymore, but everywhere I kept finding it. I was always coming back to myself. My wanderings were over. No more knocking about for me ... The world had closed in ... We had come to the end! Like at the carnival! It's not enough to be sad; there ought to be some way to start the music up again and go looking for more sadness ... But not for me ... We may not admit it, but what we really want is to have our youth back again ... We ought to be ashamed ... Anyway, I wasn't prepared to endure any more! ... Yet I hadn't gone as far in life as Robinson! ... All in all, I hadn't succeeded ... I hadn't conceived even one good, sound idea, like his idea of getting himself bumped off ... That idea was bigger than my big head, bigger than all the fear that was in it, a fine, a magnificent idea to die with ... How many lives would I need to make myself an idea more powerful than anything in the world? No saying. A flop! My ideas went rattling around in my head with lots of space between them. They were like faint, flickering little candles, trembling throughout a lifetime in the middle of a ghostly, abominable universe. Maybe things were a little better than twenty years ago, nobody could say that I hadn't made a wee beginning of progress, but there seemed no possibility of my ever managing, like Robinson, to fill my head with one single idea, but that one superb, a thought far stronger than death, and of my succeeding, just with my idea, of exuding joy, carefreeness, and courage wherever I went. A scrumptious hero!

I'd be brimful of courage then. I'd be dripping with courage, and life itself would be just one big idea of courage, that would be the driving force behind everything, behind all men and things from earth to heaven. And by the same token there would be so much love that Death would be shut up inside it with tenderness, and Death would be so cosy-comfortable in there, the bitch, that she'd finally start enjoying herself, she'd get pleasure out of love along with everyone else. How wonderful that would be! What a production! I was laughing to myself all alone on the riverbank, when I thought of all the things I'd have to do if I wanted to inflate myself like that with infinite resolutions ... An idealistic toad! Fever, you know.

My friends had been looking for me for at least an hour. Especially because they'd noticed that I wasn't in very good shape when I left them ... Gustave Mandamour was the first to sight me under my gas lamp. "Hey, doctor!" he shouted. Mandamour, I can assure you, had some voice! "This way! They want you at the police station. They want your deposition.  You know, doctor," he added, but now he was whispering in my ear, "you're not looking well." He walked beside me, in fact he held me up. Gustave was fond of me. I never found fault with him for his drinking. I was full of understanding. Whereas Parapine was rather severe and sometimes made him feel ashamed of himself for drinking so much. Gustave would have done practically anything for me. He admired me in fact. He told me so. He didn't know why. Neither did I. But he admired me. He was the only one. We went down two or three streets together until we saw the lantern outside the police station. After that you couldn't go wrong. Gustave was worrying about the report he'd have to write. He didn't dare tell me so. He'd already made everyone sign at the bottom, but a lot of things were still missing from his report.

Gustave had a big head. Like me. I could actually wear his kepi, which goes to show, but he tended to forget details. Ideas didn't come easy to him, it cost him a struggle to speak and even more to write. Parapine would have been glad to help him write his report, but he hadn't seen the crime, he didn't know the circumstances. He'd have had to invent, and the inspector didn't want any inventions in his reports, he wanted nothing but the truth, so he said.

Climbing the stairway at the police station, I was shivering. I couldn't tell the inspector much either. I really wasn't feeling so good.

They'd put Robinson's body down beside the rows of big filing cabinets. All around the benches the floor was littered with printed matter and cigarette butts. On the wall the inscription "Fuck the Fuzz" was only partly erased.

"Did you get lost, doctor?" the secretary asked me, quite amiably I must say, when I finally got there. We were all so tired we couldn't really talk straight.

Finally we were agreed about the phrasing and the trajectory of the bullets, one of which was still embedded in the spinal column. It hadn't been found. He'd be buried with it. They looked for the other bullets. The other bullets were embedded in the wall of the taxi. It was a powerful revolver.

Sophie came and joined us. She'd gone back for my overcoat. She kissed me and pressed me close to her, as if I were going to die too or fly away. "I'm not going away," I kept saying. "Be reasonable, Sophie, I'm not going away." Nothing I said could set her mind at rest.

Standing around the stretcher, we chewed the fat with the inspector's secretary, who'd seen worse in his time, crimes and noncrimes and disasters, and he wanted to tell us about all his experiences in one breath. We didn't dare leave for fear of offending him. He was so affable. It gave him pleasure to be talking with educated people for a change instead of thugs. We didn't want to hurt his feelings, so we hung around.

Parapine had no raincoat. Listening to us lulled Gustave's mind. His mouth hung open, and his thick neck was thrust out as if he was pulling a hand cart. I hadn't heard Parapine pour out so many words for many years, not since my student days, to tell the truth. All the things that had happened that day went to his head. But we decided to go home all the same.

We took Mandamour with us and Sophie too. Now and then she gave me a hug, her body was filled with the strength of worry and tenderness, and so was her heart. Her strength was all over her, it was wonderful. I, too, was full of her strength. That bothered me ... it wasn't mine, and it was my own I'd need if I were to go and die magnificently one day, like Léon. I had no time to waste on grimaces. To work! I said to myself. But nothing came of it.

She even wanted me to go back and look at the corpse again. So I left without turning around. A sign said: "Close the door." Parapine was thirsty. From talking, no doubt. From talking too much for him. Passing the bistrot by the canal, we knocked on the shutters for a while. It made me think of the road to Noirceur during the war. The same little light over the door, on the point of going out. Finally the owner in person came and opened. He hadn't heard anything. We told him all the news, ending up with the murder. "A crime of passion!" Gustave called it.

The bar opened just before dawn for the benefit of the bargemen. As the night draws to an end, the locks open slowly. And then the whole countryside comes to life and starts to work. Slowly the banks break away from the river and rise up on both sides. Work emerges from the darkness. You begin to see it again, all very simple and hard. Over here the winches, over there the fences around the work sites, and far away on the road men are coming from still farther away. In small chilled groups they move into the murky light. For a starter they splatter their faces with daylight as they walk past the dawn. All you can see of them is their pale, simple faces ... the rest still belongs to the night. They, too, will all have to die some day. How will they go about it?

They move toward the bridge. Then little by little they vanish across the plain, and other men come along, paler and paler as the light rises all around them. What are they thinking about?

The owner of the bar wanted to know all about the tragedy. He wanted us to tell him everything.

Vaudescal was the owner's name; he was from the North and very clean. Gustave gave him an earful.

Gustave kept chewing over the details. But that wasn't the essential, again we were losing ourselves in words. Besides, he was drunk and kept starting all over from the beginning. But there really wasn't any more to say, nothing at all. Even so, I'd have listened to him for a while yet, quietly half asleep, but the others started contradicting him and that made him mad.

In his rage he clouted the little stove. The whole thing collapsed and turned over: the stovepipe, the grate, the glowing coals. Mandamour was as strong as an ox. To make matters worse he wanted to show us the genuine Fire Dance. He wanted to take off his shoes and prance around on the coals.

There had been some bad blood between Gustave and the bar owner about a slot machine that hadn't been licensed ... Vaudescal was a snake in the grass. You couldn't trust him. His shirts were too clean for him to be really honest. He was vindictive and he was a stool pigeon. The riverbanks are full of that kind.

Parapine suspected that he was laying for Mandamour, hoping to take advantage of his drunkenness and get him fired.

Parapine had stopped him from doing his Fire Dance and made him feel ashamed. We pushed Mandamour to the end of the table. There he finally collapsed, as quiet as a mouse, amid Gargantuan sighs and smells. And fell asleep.

Far in the distance the tugboat whistled; its call passed the bridge, one more arch, then another, the lock, another bridge, farther and farther ... It was summoning all the barges on the river, every last one, and the whole city and the sky and the countryside, and ourselves, to carry us all away, the Seine too, and that would be the end of us. 

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Reformatted for easier reference with numbered footnotes replacing asterisks referenced
by page number (obviously useless in this format). Page numbers left for posterity.
]

[1] p. vii
Littré
. Emile Littré (1801-81), French lexicographer. His
Dictionnaire de la
langue français
enjoys the prestige of Webster in the United States and of the
Oxford
English Dictionary
in England.

[2] p. 2
Sarabbath
. A combination of witches' sabbath and saraband.

[3] p. 3
Ganate
. Probably derived from
ganache
, meaning "blockhead."

[4] p. 3
Poincaré
. Raymond Poincaré (1860-1934). Then President of France, a largely ceremonial office at the time.

[5] p. 3
Le Temps
. A daily newspaper. Regarded as the semiofficial organ of the Third Republic. Liberal in tendency. Became rightist after the First World War.

[6] p. 8
Déroulède
. Paul Déroulède (1847-1914). Writer and politician. Extreme nationalist, supporter of General Boulanger and founder of the League of Patriots.

[7] p. 9
General des Entrayes
.
Entrayes
derives from
entrailles
, "entrails." (Old Blood and Guts.) As will be seen later on, his first name was Céladon, which suggests a languishing lover.

[8] p. 11
Belisarius
. Byzantine general (500-65). According to the legend, he was blinded by order of Emperor Justinian. Numerous paintings show him as a beggar, holding out his reversed helmet for alms.

[9] p. 14
Fragson
. Popular cabaret singer early in the century.

[10] p. 15
Kerdoncuff
. Ker = "house" in the Breton language. The name suggests a Breton yokel. "
Doncuff
" seems to be a transliteration of the German
Dummkopf
?jughead.

[11] p. 16
Major Pinçon
.
Pinçon
= louse in argot, but Céline probably had in mind the expression "
gai comme un pinçon
"?merry as a louse.

[12] p. 17
Barbigny
. Connected no doubt with "
barbant
," "
barbe
," meaning "boring," "annoying."

[13] p. 24
Lieutenant de Sainte-Engeance
. "
La sainte engeance
" means roughly "the nogood crew."

[14] p. 28
Noirceur-sur-la-Lys
. The Lys River is partly in Belgium and partly in northern France. The word
lys
= "lily." In French as in English lilies are proverbially white.
Noirceur
? blackness.