Read Online Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Céline - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Louis-Ferdinand Céline
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specialization saved me. She could accept me as a substitute, for I was a valiant comrade-in-arms, hence worthy of so sacred a mission. From that moment on we were more than lovers, we were partners as well. The modern age had dawned. To me her body was a joy without end. I never wearied of exploring that American body. I have to admit that I was a terrible lecher. I still am.
And I formed the pleasant and fortifying conviction that a country capable of producing bodies so daringly graceful, so tempting in their spiritual flights, must have countless other vital revelations to offer, of a biological nature, it goes without saying. I made up my mind, while feeling and fondling Lola, that sooner or later I'd take a trip, or call it a pilgrimage, to the United States, the sooner the better. And the fact is that I knew neither peace nor rest (in an implacably adverse and harassed life) until I managed to go through with that profound and mystically anatomical adventure.
So it was in the immediate vicinity of Lola's rear end that I received the message of a new world. Of course Lola wasn't all body, she also had a wee little face that was adorable and just a bit cruel because of her gray-blue eyes that slanted slightly upward at the corners like a wildcat's.
Just looking at her made my mouth water, like a sip of dry wine, that flinty taste. There was a hardness in her eyes, unrelieved by the amiably commercial orientalo-Fragonard vivacity you find in nearly all the eyes in these parts.
We usually met in a cafe nearby. There were more and more wounded men hobbling through the streets, many of them very bedraggled. Collections were taken for their benefit,
"days" for this group and "days" for that group, especially for the organizers of the "days." Lying, fucking, dying. A law had just been passed prohibiting all other activity. The lies that were being told surpassed the imagination, far exceeded the limits of the absurd and preposterous?in the newspapers, on posters, on foot, on horseback, on pleasure boats. Everybody was doing it. In competition, to see who could lie the most outrageously. Soon there wasn't a bit of truth in the city.
The little that had been left in 1914, people were ashamed of now. Everything you touched was phony, the sugar, the aeroplanes, the shoes, the jam, the photographs ... Everything you read, swallowed, sucked, admired, proclaimed, refuted, defended was made up of hateridden myths and grinning masquerades, phony to the hilt. The mania for telling lies and believing them is as contagious as the itch. Little Lola's French consisted of only a few phrases, but they were all patriotic: "On les aura! ... ," "Madelon, viens! ..." [17] It was enough to make you cry.
Stubbornly, shamelessly she harped on the deaths of those doomed to die, actually all the women did, as soon as it became fashionable to be brave for other people. Just as I was looking within and discovering such an extraordinary taste for everything that took me away from the war! I often asked Lola questions about America, but her answers were vague, pretentious, and manifestly unreliable, calculated to make a brilliant impression on me. But by that time I distrusted impressions. I'd been taken in once by an impression, and nobody was going to hoodwink me again. Nobody.
I believed in her body, I didn't believe in her soul. I thought of Lola as a charming goldbrick, miles away from the war, miles away from life.
She flitted across my nightmare with the mentality of the patriotic press: the poilus in the trenches, our own Lorraine, the cadets in their white gloves ... In the meantime I made love to her more and more, I'd convinced her it was a good way to lose weight. But she set more store by our long walks. I hated long walks. But she insisted.
So we spent several hours every afternoon being athletic in the Bois de Boulogne, walking around the lakes and back.
Nature is a frightening thing ... Even when it's solidly domesticated as in
And I formed the pleasant and fortifying conviction that a country capable of producing bodies so daringly graceful, so tempting in their spiritual flights, must have countless other vital revelations to offer, of a biological nature, it goes without saying. I made up my mind, while feeling and fondling Lola, that sooner or later I'd take a trip, or call it a pilgrimage, to the United States, the sooner the better. And the fact is that I knew neither peace nor rest (in an implacably adverse and harassed life) until I managed to go through with that profound and mystically anatomical adventure.
So it was in the immediate vicinity of Lola's rear end that I received the message of a new world. Of course Lola wasn't all body, she also had a wee little face that was adorable and just a bit cruel because of her gray-blue eyes that slanted slightly upward at the corners like a wildcat's.
Just looking at her made my mouth water, like a sip of dry wine, that flinty taste. There was a hardness in her eyes, unrelieved by the amiably commercial orientalo-Fragonard vivacity you find in nearly all the eyes in these parts.
We usually met in a cafe nearby. There were more and more wounded men hobbling through the streets, many of them very bedraggled. Collections were taken for their benefit,
"days" for this group and "days" for that group, especially for the organizers of the "days." Lying, fucking, dying. A law had just been passed prohibiting all other activity. The lies that were being told surpassed the imagination, far exceeded the limits of the absurd and preposterous?in the newspapers, on posters, on foot, on horseback, on pleasure boats. Everybody was doing it. In competition, to see who could lie the most outrageously. Soon there wasn't a bit of truth in the city.
The little that had been left in 1914, people were ashamed of now. Everything you touched was phony, the sugar, the aeroplanes, the shoes, the jam, the photographs ... Everything you read, swallowed, sucked, admired, proclaimed, refuted, defended was made up of hateridden myths and grinning masquerades, phony to the hilt. The mania for telling lies and believing them is as contagious as the itch. Little Lola's French consisted of only a few phrases, but they were all patriotic: "On les aura! ... ," "Madelon, viens! ..." [17] It was enough to make you cry.
Stubbornly, shamelessly she harped on the deaths of those doomed to die, actually all the women did, as soon as it became fashionable to be brave for other people. Just as I was looking within and discovering such an extraordinary taste for everything that took me away from the war! I often asked Lola questions about America, but her answers were vague, pretentious, and manifestly unreliable, calculated to make a brilliant impression on me. But by that time I distrusted impressions. I'd been taken in once by an impression, and nobody was going to hoodwink me again. Nobody.
I believed in her body, I didn't believe in her soul. I thought of Lola as a charming goldbrick, miles away from the war, miles away from life.
She flitted across my nightmare with the mentality of the patriotic press: the poilus in the trenches, our own Lorraine, the cadets in their white gloves ... In the meantime I made love to her more and more, I'd convinced her it was a good way to lose weight. But she set more store by our long walks. I hated long walks. But she insisted.
So we spent several hours every afternoon being athletic in the Bois de Boulogne, walking around the lakes and back.
Nature is a frightening thing ... Even when it's solidly domesticated as in
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