Death on the Installment Plan (2 page)

Céline often said that he regarded himself primarily as a stylist. He wrote with great care and the apparent disorder of his style is a well-laid trap. He held that the French literary language was stiff and spent with age, that classicism and academicism had emasculated the language of Villon and Rabelais, and that in our age emotion could be captured only in the spoken tongue. He regarded his use of popular French as his chief contribution to letters. In
Journey to the End of the Night
the style—sentence structure, vocabulary—is still relatively literary, though there too a strong popular admixture lends a tone that had never before been heard in French prose. In
Death on the Installment Plan
this spoken style is perfected. It is also in this book that the three dots, which so infuriated academic critics at the time, appear in force; they mark the incompleteness, the abruptness, the sudden shifts of direction characteristic of everyday speech, and signify a declaration of war on the flowing prose period.

English-language readers who are bored with this brand of punctuation, which has unpleasant associations especially in American letters, will observe that in Céline its use is not a sign of vagueness or sloppiness, but rather reflects the agitation, the fast-flying emotion he wished to convey.

Céline was in love with argot—underworld slang—which in French is extraordinarily rich and hermetic, a complete language; he called it the language of hatred. But Celine’s language is not argot; if it were, only the underworld would be able to read it. It is the language of the common people of the Paris region, a language that continuously absorbs words and phrases of argot, usually after they have been discarded by the underworld. In his use of this medium he is faithful to its spirit, but by no means realistic. He embroiders, transposes, invents new words and corrupts old ones for his own purposes. He employs this richly imaged, down-to-earth, lowdown language in incongruous upper realms, in scientific and philosophical disquisitions; and he mixes it with noble discourse in parodies of noble discourse or for other purposes.

A more detailed discussion of Celine’s style would have to deal with technical matters of French morphology and syntax, which would be of little interest to English-language readers, or with problems of translation, which would interest only translators. Still, there is one question that may call for an answer: Why a new translation?

I have said that people thirty years ago were shocked by Celine’s subject matter and style. The previous translator was an able craftsman, but he too seems to have been shocked, at least by the style, which he evidently regarded either as a mistake or as conceivable only in French. The three dots and what they stand for are largely eliminated; the swift abrupt ejaculations are transformed into the flowing periods that Céline had rejected; and the language is to a considerable extent ennobled. I have tried to give an idea of Celine’s style.

R.M.

                            DEATH ON THE INSTALLMENT PLAN

Here we are, alone again. It’s all so slow, so heavy, so sad … I’ll be old soon. Then at last it will be over. So many people have come into my room. They’ve talked. They haven’t said much. They’ve gone away. They’ve grown old, wretched, sluggish, each in some corner of the world.

Yesterday, at eight o’clock, Madame Bérenge, the concierge, died. A great storm blew up during the night. Way up here where we are, the whole house is shaking. She was a good friend, gentle and faithful. Tomorrow they’re going to bury her in the cemetery on the rue des Saules. She was really old, at the very end of old age. The first day she coughed I said to her: “Whatever you do, don’t stretch out. Sit up in bed.” I was worried. Well, now it’s happened … anyway, it couldn’t be helped …

I haven’t always been a doctor … crummy trade. I’ll write the people who’ve known her, who’ve known me, and tell them that Madame Bérenge is dead. Where are they?

I wish the storm would make even more of a clatter, I wish the roofs would cave in, that spring would never come again, that the house would blow down.

Madame Bérenge knew that grief always comes in the mail. I don’t know whom to write to anymore … Those people are all so far away … They’ve changed their souls, that’s a way to be disloyal, to forget, to keep talking about something else.

Poor old Madame Bérenge; they’ll come and take her cross-eyed dog away.

For almost twenty years all the sadness that comes by mail passed through her hands. It lingers on in the smell of her death, in that awful sour taste. It has burst out … it’s here … it’s skulking through the passageway. It knows us and now we know it. It will never go away. Someone will have to put out the fire in the lodge. Whom will I write to? I’ve nobody left. No one to receive the friendly spirits of the dead … and let me speak more softly to the world … I’ll have to bear it all alone.

Toward the end the old lady was unable to speak. She was suffocating. She clung to my hand … The postman came in. He saw her die. A little hiccup. That’s all. In the old days lots of people used to knock on her door and ask for me. Now they’re gone, far away into forgetfulness, trying to find souls for themselves. The postman took off his cap. I know I could talk about my hatred. I’ll do that later on if they don’t come back. I’d rather tell stories. I’ll tell stories that will make them come back, to kill me, from the ends of the world. Then it will be over and that will be all right with me.

At the clinic where I work, the Linuty Foundation, I’ve had a lot of complaints about the stories I tell … My cousin Gustin Sabayot makes no bones about it, he says I should change my style. He’s a doctor too, but he works across the Seine, at La Chapelle-Jonction. I didn’t have time to go see him yesterday. The fact is I wanted to talk to him about Madame Bérenge. I got started too late. Seeing patients is a rough job. At the end of the day we’re both pooped. Most of the patients ask such tedious questions. It’s no use trying to hurry, you’ve got to explain everything in the prescription twenty times over. They get a kick out of making you talk, wearing you down … They’re not going to make any use of the wonderful advice you give them. But they’re afraid you won’t take trouble enough, and they keep at you to make sure; they want suction cups, X rays, blood tests … they want you to feel them from top to toe … to measure everything, to take their blood pressure, the whole damn works. Gustin has been at it for thirty years. One of these days I’m going to send those pests of mine to the slaughterhouse at La Villette for a good drink of warm blood, first thing in the morning. That ought to knock them out for the day. I can’t think of any other way to discourage them …

The day before yesterday I finally decided to go and see Gustin at home. The suburb where he lives is a twenty-minute walk from my place once you’ve crossed the Seine. The weather wasn’t so good but I started out just the same. I thought I’d take the bus. I hurry through my consultation. I’m slipping out past the accident ward when an old bag spots me and latches on to me. She drags out her words, like me. That comes of fatigue. She has a voice like a grater. That’s from liquor. She starts whining and whimpering, she wants me to go home with her. “Oh, Doctor, please come, I beg of you! … My little girl, my Alice! … it’s on the rue Rancienne, just around the corner …” I didn’t have to go. My office hours were over, supposedly. She insists … By that time we’re outside … I’m fed up with sick people; I’ve been patching up those pests all day, thirty of them … I was all in. Let them cough. Let them spit. Let their bones fall apart … Let them bugger each other. Let them fly away with forty different gases in their guts … To hell with them … But this sniveling bitch holds me tight, falls on my neck, and blows her despair in my face. Her despair reeks of red wine … I haven’t the strength to resist. Anyway, nothing would have made her let go. I thought maybe when we got to the rue des Casses, which is a long street without a single lamp, I’d give her a good kick in the ass … So for the hundredth time I weaken … And the record starts up again. “My little girl! … Please, Doctor, please! My little Alice … You know her?” The rue Rancienne wasn’t around the corner … It was completely out of my way … I knew exactly where it was. It’s after the cable factory … She’s still talking, and I listen through my private haze … “Eighty-two francs a week … that’s all we’ve got to live on … with two children. And my husband is such a brute. It’s shameful, Doctor.”

I knew it was all a lot of hokum. Her whole story stank of booze and sour stomach.

By that time we’d got to their hangout. I climb the stairs. At last I could sit down … The kid wore glasses. I sit down beside her bed. She’s sick all right, but even so she was playing with her doll, kind of. I thought I’d cheer her up. I’m always good for a laugh when I put my mind to it … She’s not dying, but she does have trouble breathing … She’s certainly got an inflammation … I make her laugh. She gags. I tell her mother there’s nothing to worry about. The bitch! Now she’s got me cornered, she decides she can use a doctor too. It’s her legs, all covered with black-and-blue marks where she’s been beaten. She hikes up her skirts. Enormous bruises and deep burns. Her unemployed husband did that with the poker. That’s the way he is. I tell her what she can put on them … I take a piece of string and make a kind of swing for the miserable doll. Up and down she goes, from the bed to the doorknob and back. It was very funny … that was better than talking.

I apply the stethoscope. She’s wheezing pretty bad, but it’s nothing dangerous. I tell the mother there’s nothing to worry about … exactly the same words as before. That’s what gets you down. The kid begins to laugh. She gags again. I have to stop. Her face is all blue … Mightn’t she have a little diphtheria? I’ll have to see … Take a specimen? … Tomorrow.

The father comes in. With his eighty-two francs they can’t afford wine, all they’ve got to drink is cider. “I drink it out of a bowl,” he says right off the bat. “It makes you piss.” And he takes a swig from the bottle to show me… . We all say how lucky it is that the little angel isn’t too sick. What interested me most was the doll … I was too tired to bother about grown-ups and diagnoses. Grown-ups are a pain in the ass. I was determined not to treat a single one until next day.

I guess they think I don’t take my work seriously. To hell with what they think. I drink their health again. The consultation is absolutely free, gratis, for nothing. The mother brings up her legs again. I give her a last piece of advice. Then I go down the stairs. On the sidewalk there’s a little dog with a limp. He follows me without a moment’s hesitation. Everything attaches itself to me today. It’s a little fox terrier, black and white. Seems to be lost. Those unemployed punks upstairs, what ingratitude! They don’t even see me to the door. I bet they’re fighting again. I can hear them yelling. He can stick the whole poker up her ass for all I care. That’ll teach her to waylay me at closing time.

I turned off to the left, toward Colombes. The little dog was still following me … After Asnières comes La Jonction, and then it’s not far to my cousin’s. I couldn’t stand seeing him drag along like that. Maybe I’d better go home after all. We turned back by way of the Pont Bineau. skirting the row of factories. The dispensary was shut up tight when we got there … “We’ll feed the little mutt,” I said to Madame Hortense. “Somebody’ll have to get some meat … We’ll call up first thing in the morning. The S.P.C.A. will send a car for him. We’d better lock him up for tonight.” Then I went out again, easy in my mind. But that dog was too scared. He’d been beaten too much. Life is hard on the streets. When we opened the window next day, he wouldn’t wait, he jumped out, he was even afraid of us. He thought we’d locked him up to punish him. He couldn’t understand. He didn’t trust anybody anymore. It’s bad when that happens.

Gustin knows me well. When he’s sober, he has good ideas. He has a sense of style. His judgments are reliable. There’s no jealousy in him. He doesn’t ask much of this world. He’s got an old sorrow … disappointment in love. He doesn’t want to forget it. He seldom talks about it. She was a floozie. Gustin is good as gold. He’ll never change till his dying day.

Meanwhile he drinks, kind of.

My trouble is insomnia. If I had always slept properly, I’d never have written a line.

“You could talk about something pleasant now and then.” That was Gustin’s opinion. “Life isn’t always disgusting.” In a way he’s right. With me it’s kind of a mania, a bias. The fact is that in the days when I had that buzzing in both ears, even worse than now, and attacks of fever all day long, I wasn’t half so gloomy … I had lovely dreams … Madame Vitruve, my secretary, was talking about it only the other day. She knew how I tormented myself. When a man’s so generous, he squanders his treasures, loses sight of them. I said to myself: “That damn Vitruve, she’s hidden them some place …” Real marvels they were … bits of Legend, pure delight … That’s the kind of stuff I’m going to write from now on … To make sure they’re as good as I think, I rummage through my papers. I can’t find a thing … I call Delumelle, my agent; I want to make him hate me … to make him groan under my insults. But he’s not so easily fazed. It’s all one to him, he’s loaded. All he says is that I need a vacation … Finally Vitruve comes in. I don’t trust her. I have my reasons. I light into her, point blank: where did you put my masterpiece? I had several hundred reasons for suspecting her …

The Linuty Foundation was across the way from the bronze balloon at the Porte Péreire. Almost every day when I’d finished with my patients, she’d come up to deliver my typescripts. A little temporary structure that’s been torn down since. I wasn’t happy there. The hours were too regular. Linuty, who had founded it, was a big millionaire, he wanted everybody to have medical treatment and feel better without money. Philanthropists are a pain in the ass. I’d have preferred some municipal dispensary … a little vaccinating on the side … a modest racket in certificates of good or bad health … . or maybe I could have supervised a public bath … in other words, something soft. Well, so be it. I’m not a Yid
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or a foreigner or a Freemason, or a graduate of the École Normale; I don’t know how to make friends and influence people, I fuck around too much, my reputation’s bad. For fifteen years now they’ve seen me struggling along out here in the Zone;
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the dregs of the dregs take liberties with me, show me every sign of contempt. I’m lucky they haven’t fired me. Writing picks me up. I’m not so badly off. Vitruve types my manuscripts. She’s attached to me. “Listen,” I say, “listen, old girl, this is the last time I’m going to give you hell … If you don’t find my Legend, it’s the parting of the ways, it’s the end of our friendship. No more intimate collaboration . . No more grub and bub, no more dough.”