Read Online Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Céline - Free Book Online
Authors: Louis-Ferdinand Céline
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to live in as her room, all pale blue with a bathroom adjoining. Photographs of her friends were all over, with dedications, not many women, lots of men, handsome, dark with curly hair, that was her type, she'd talk to me about the color of their eyes and read me the dedications, which were tender, solemn, and every last one of them absolutely irrevocable. At first those effigies embarrassed me, I felt I was being rude, but then I got used to it,
The moment I stopped kissing her, I was in for it, she'd start on the war and her fritters. France figured prominently in our conversation. To Lola's way of thinking, France was some sort of chivalric being, not very clearly defined in space or time, but at the moment dangerously wounded and for that very reason too too exciting. When anybody mentioned France to me, I instantly thought of my guts, so I wasn't nearly so open to patriotic ardor. Each man to his fears. Nevertheless, since she was sexually accommodating, I listened and never contradicted her. But when it came to my soul, she wasn't at all satisfied with me. She'd have liked to see me bubbling and bursting with enthusiasm, whereas I couldn't see a single reason for adopting that sublime state of mind, in fact I could see a thousand, all equally irrefutable, for persevering in the exact opposite disposition. Obviously Lola was nuts with happiness and optimism, like all people on the good side of life, the ones with privilege, health, security, who still have a long time to live. She kept bothering me with the soul, she was always going on about it. The soul is the body's vanity and pleasure as long as the body's in good health, but it's also the urge to escape from the body as soon as the body is sick or things are going badly. Of the two poses, you take the one that suits you best at the moment, and that's all there is to it! As long as you can choose between the two, you're all right. But I couldn't choose anymore, my die was cast! I was up to my neck in the truth; death dogged my every step, so to speak. It was very hard for me to think of anything but my suspended sentence to be murdered, a fate which everyone else regarded as just the right thing for me.
In this kind of deferred death agony that hits you when you're lucid and in good health, the mind is open to nothing but absolute truths. Once you've been through it, you'll know what you're talking about till the end of your days.
My conclusion was that if the Germans were to come and pillage, massacre, and burn everything in sight, the hotel, the fritters, Lola, the Tuileries, the cabinet ministers, their little boyfriends, the Coupole, the Louvre, the department stores, if they were to swoop down on the city and unleash the wrath of God and the fires of hell on this putrid carnival, to which nothing in the way of sordidness could possibly be added, I would have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
You don't lose much when the landlord's house burns down. Another landlord will always turn up, unless it's the same one, German or French, English or Chinese, to collect the rent ... In marks or francs? What difference does it make, seeing you've got to pay ... In short, my morale was low. If I'd told Lola what I thought of the war, she'd have taken me for a monster and banished me from the ultimate joys of her boudoir. So I was careful to keep my sentiments to myself. Besides, I had outside difficulties and rivalries to worry about. Quite a few officers were trying to filch her away from me. Their competition was redoubtable, armed as they were with the seduction of their Legions of Honor. And just then the American papers were beginning to be full of this damned Legion of Honor. She cuckolded me two or three times, and I'd go so far to say that our relationship would have been in serious danger on those occasions, if it hadn't dawned on her that I could be put to a higher use, namely, made to taste the fritters every morning in her stead. This last-minute
The moment I stopped kissing her, I was in for it, she'd start on the war and her fritters. France figured prominently in our conversation. To Lola's way of thinking, France was some sort of chivalric being, not very clearly defined in space or time, but at the moment dangerously wounded and for that very reason too too exciting. When anybody mentioned France to me, I instantly thought of my guts, so I wasn't nearly so open to patriotic ardor. Each man to his fears. Nevertheless, since she was sexually accommodating, I listened and never contradicted her. But when it came to my soul, she wasn't at all satisfied with me. She'd have liked to see me bubbling and bursting with enthusiasm, whereas I couldn't see a single reason for adopting that sublime state of mind, in fact I could see a thousand, all equally irrefutable, for persevering in the exact opposite disposition. Obviously Lola was nuts with happiness and optimism, like all people on the good side of life, the ones with privilege, health, security, who still have a long time to live. She kept bothering me with the soul, she was always going on about it. The soul is the body's vanity and pleasure as long as the body's in good health, but it's also the urge to escape from the body as soon as the body is sick or things are going badly. Of the two poses, you take the one that suits you best at the moment, and that's all there is to it! As long as you can choose between the two, you're all right. But I couldn't choose anymore, my die was cast! I was up to my neck in the truth; death dogged my every step, so to speak. It was very hard for me to think of anything but my suspended sentence to be murdered, a fate which everyone else regarded as just the right thing for me.
In this kind of deferred death agony that hits you when you're lucid and in good health, the mind is open to nothing but absolute truths. Once you've been through it, you'll know what you're talking about till the end of your days.
My conclusion was that if the Germans were to come and pillage, massacre, and burn everything in sight, the hotel, the fritters, Lola, the Tuileries, the cabinet ministers, their little boyfriends, the Coupole, the Louvre, the department stores, if they were to swoop down on the city and unleash the wrath of God and the fires of hell on this putrid carnival, to which nothing in the way of sordidness could possibly be added, I would have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
You don't lose much when the landlord's house burns down. Another landlord will always turn up, unless it's the same one, German or French, English or Chinese, to collect the rent ... In marks or francs? What difference does it make, seeing you've got to pay ... In short, my morale was low. If I'd told Lola what I thought of the war, she'd have taken me for a monster and banished me from the ultimate joys of her boudoir. So I was careful to keep my sentiments to myself. Besides, I had outside difficulties and rivalries to worry about. Quite a few officers were trying to filch her away from me. Their competition was redoubtable, armed as they were with the seduction of their Legions of Honor. And just then the American papers were beginning to be full of this damned Legion of Honor. She cuckolded me two or three times, and I'd go so far to say that our relationship would have been in serious danger on those occasions, if it hadn't dawned on her that I could be put to a higher use, namely, made to taste the fritters every morning in her stead. This last-minute
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