Read Online Castle to Castle by Louis-Ferdinand Céline - Free Book Online Page A

Charlie Chaplin! honest to God criminals with handcuffs and straitjackets! guarded by a dozen tommy guns . . . what a show! . . . the passersby weave and waver, cling to the shopfronts . . . for fear this might happen to them . . . their consciences quake! scared shitless! . . . memories . . . it's a rare passerby that hasn't got a little abortion tucked away . . . a little theft . . . nothing to be ashamed of! the only thing to be ashamed of is poverty! the one and only! Take me, for instance, no car, a doctor on foot! what do I look like? . . . The advantage of a doctor, even if he's a prize dope, is that with a telephone call . . . he gets there . . . often there's no ambulance available . . . taxis? . . . you can never find one . . . even the most idiotic of doctors has his car! . . . even with my ghastly reputation . . . the old jailbird . . . if I had a car, people wouldn't think me so crummy, so old . . . cars. and more cars . . . what a laugh! . . . that one up there wasn't mine! nor any of these down here . . . I'm expecting Achille's . . . in case he wants to show me his horrible accounts . . . proving that I owe him enormous sums, so he says! homo deliquensis , as I've said . . . give him the whole bus to himself! and hell, why not? his whole Trust with him! . . . and Norbert trotting along behind! in handcuffs and corset! that's the way I see it!
    When you got to Police Headquarters, you could wait at least five, six hours . . . for somebody to come and get you . . . five, six hours on your feet, each man in a vertical coffin, under lock and key . . . I can safely say that I've stood for hours and hours in the course of my life . . . on guard, cooling my heels, in war as in peace . . . but in those vertical boxes at the Copenhagen Politiigaard . . . I've never felt like such a creep . . . waiting to be questioned . . . by whom? about what? I had plenty of time to think it over . . . here we go! . . . they opened my box . . . they helped me up the stairs . . . they had to! . . . two cops . . . the effects of beriberi and also of waiting at the vertical . . . the office was on the fifth floor . . . the cops helped me ever so gently . . . never any brutality . . . I tried everything to shake off my dizziness . . . to keep from staggering . . . from crumpling . . . no use! . . . I fold up . . . that's my pellagra! . . . You can read in any medical treatise that it's easy to cure the scurvy . . . a few slices of lemon . . . your health, sir! . . . all the same I'm a wreck and always will be . . . they'll bury me this way . . . okay, okay! So I'm on my last legs, but that's no excuse for losing me in transit! I was telling you about the stairs . . . Here we are on the fifth floor . . . an amusing little sidelight on their Politiigaard . . . the way it's stacked . . . corridors and corridors so twisty . . . hairpins and corkscrews . . . that supposing you made a break . . . no matter when or where . . . you always end up in a court where the "bruisers" are waiting for you . . . special cops . . . you get a message that sends you to the hospital. . . so don't get any fancy ideas . . . for me it was out of the question . . . not with my hundred years . . . all the "treatises" in the world can't change it . . . what's done . . . is done . . . your Nordic prison is built with that in mind! Those guys who are sticking their necks out now in Budapest and Warsaw . . . some of them are going to end up in the house of numbers . . . it's in the cards . . . ask them in twenty years what they think about all this . . . the tourist, as I said, doesn't see a thing, he follows the guide . . . Hotel d'Angleterre, Nyehavn, the tattooed babies, the Big Tower . . . the Mermaid . . . he's satisfied, he goes back home, he talks a blue streak . . . He's seen . . . two, three horses with the trademark of the Carlsberg brewery, wearing their little summer hats! . . . that's what the tourist sees! 
    Back to my fifth floor! hoisted by cops on