Castle to Castle

Castle to Castle by Louis-Ferdinand Céline

Book: Castle to Castle by Louis-Ferdinand Céline Read Free Book Online
Authors: Louis-Ferdinand Céline
Tags: Classics
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scores and wins! . . . takes the whole pot . . . stows me away in his cellar! . . . me and my white elephants! . . . I disappear from view! the Marquise de Fualdès digests . . . Old stuff! . . . The times have changed . . . Whoopee! Bagged and gagged . . . A laugh! see you next year on the ice!
    A buck private in all that . . . a square like me! . . . spoiled darling! . . and, I repeat, it doesn't date from yesterday . . . ever since public school on the rue Louvois . . .which doesn't make us any younger . . . takes you back to the Impressionists, to the Dreyfus case! public school is the keynote of the people . . . Mauriac can talk "Communist," he'll never know what he's talking about! He's a hundred percent Chartron! ° and will be to his dying day . . . Chartron! I flatter him!
    So just then . . . when the cold feet were hanging out flags . . . when the tremblers were looting, when the deserters were triumphant, when the gollywobblers were coming up strong, when forty million yellow-bellies were taking their vengeance, it wasn't exactly the time for me to show my face! It was as if Larengon the apostate or Triolette in her "double-duty bikini" were to cross the bridge in Pest . . . If I'd been at my mother's on the rue Marsolier, they'd have got me . . . like Le Bourdonnais! . . . bam! . . . like on the rue Girardon . . . "you stink" . . . that's reason enough! "He's got it coming to him . . . that's all . . . Bring him out!" Vaillant, who's boasted plenty and still regrets bitterly that he missed me, and by so little . . . there he wouldn't have missed me . . . if I'd been at my mother's aged seventy-four . . .
    They left me nothing . . . not a handkerchief, not a chair, not a manuscript . . . if I'd been a stiff I would have stunk . . . I'd have inconvenienced them . . . like this I wasn't in the way, they were able to cart everything off and sell it at the Flea Market! at the Auction Rooms! . . . coming up hard with the joy of it! . . . Sold out . . . I'm like France . . . sold out, bag and baggage! . . . birth certificate and all! . . . sixty-three in a week! . . . Assassins, you've got him by the balls! . . . diving off the Budapest bridge? how many like me?

It'll be mighty amusing someday if a future Lenôtre digs up our tombs and our statues, our halos and our bank deposits . . . to see how much the "pure" took in . . . how many de Beers shares? How many Rhône shares? How many castles, whores, treasures, stables, embassies? . . . more than in '89? . . . less? . . . What debates! . . . at the Sorbonne! . . . at the Trois Magots! . . . in the Annals! . . . and if Hitler had won . . . Aragon joining the S.S.? Triolette a charming Walkyrie? . . . ah, those lectures! . . . an earful! . . . In the Annals for the year 2000 . . . the grand Communist marquises fighting for seats for fear of missing a single session! . . . a single one of their super-super Herriot's dazzling fights . . . with his rear end ten times as big as our Herrioet's . . . not to mention the sensa-a-ational Abbé Pierre . . . ten revolvers!
    To hell with the future . . . let's get back to our own affairs! that Gertrut should screw Brottin? . . . hell, why not? . . . that they should cut each others throats! by all means! if you see him with his eyes hanging out, be sure to tell me about it for kicks . . . I'm speaking of Achille . . . let them skin each other alive . . . both of them . . . bright red, scarlet . . . peeled! . . . a good show! but before they fix each other up, listen to this! . . . it's funny! . . . in the days of the Hippodrome on the Place Clichy, Gertrut and Achille both had a hard-on for the same woman, one of those eaters of gold francs! a rival of the Bank of France! . . . anybody who remembers those "good old" days remembers Suzanne . . . what a screen artist! and her vaporous negligees against a background of "soft blue light!" of "moonlight" . . . what a sublime artist, absolutely silent, no talkies in those days . . . it's

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