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

flick of the wheel . . . if you don't demolish the whole embankment, and the maple tree and the poplar with it! not to mention your steering geer! bingo! two thousand poplars! wild expedition! autopunitive! screeching stinking brakes! . . . the whole freeway and the tunnel! . . . roaring drunk . . . passing, double-passing, plunging into the chasm! ah, the delirium, the fervor of it! . . . ah,  Château Trompette 1900! . . . new life in your veins! . . . into the chasm! Canard aux navets! . . . thirteen hundred cars bumper to bumper! Christ almighty Jesus, flesh bursting with blood, ready to roast! step on the gas! the oven opens! The Mass is ready! Not with holy water . . . with hot blood, the whole tunnel full of blood and guts . . . the rare bird who escapes will never really know whether he's killed the others or not . . . Crusade! Off to the wars! pilgrims of the accelerator! Seize the moment, crush the poplars! farting, belching, furious, drunk as lords!  Château Trompette! duckling maison! The cops look on . . . grumble . . . wave their arms . . . stir up the air! . . . From thirty miles around the faithful have come . . . to see it all! to take it in! both embankments are full of them . . . mamas, papas, aunties, babies! sadistic sheep! the abyss at eighty miles an hour, the fire-balls, the cops in despair . . . stirring the atmosphere! . . . smoking tunnel!  Château   Trompette! . . . burning asphalt! . . .
    Oh, if I were rich, I tell you, or if I even had Social Security, I'd watch all this disorder, all this dilapidation of hydrocarbon, lipides, and rubber, this crusade of gasoline, duck, and super-booze, with Napoleonic calm! mamas, papas, jalopies . . . let them all be swallowed up . . . why not? Three cheers! But the trouble is . . . I haven't the wherewithal . . . can't afford it . . . that's all . . . and you're taken with resentment, bitterness, hatred . . . being splattered by those swine . . . knowing that at every stopover, every Yquem, every spin of their wheels they run through enough for us to live a month on! . . . without even smashing up! uprooting a hedge! . . . Their masochistic rage doesn't impress me! . . . hell no . . . or Loukoum's corset! or Tartre's crummy tricks . . . or Achille's googoo eyes . . . any more than Vaillant!°. . . what makes him valiant, I'd like to know? . . . who tried to murder me . . . that's right . . . he went up there with exactly that in mind! so he runs around telling all and sundry . . . he even writes about it! . . . hell! I'm here! it's not too late! let him come, I'm waiting for him. I'm always here, I never go out, I stay in especially for the latecomers . . . another spring . . . two . . . or three . . . I won't be here any more . . . it'll be too late . . . I'll have died a natural death . . .

Drinking water? . . . sure, sure . . . taste it . . . tastes like chlorine, you say? . . . might go down with plenty of wine in it . . . but straight? . . . it's a joke, but it's not funny . . . this alleged drinking water saturated with chlorine . . . it's undrinkable, I say . . . oh, there are plenty of other things to complain about . . . my situation in general . . . and anyway I bore everybody with my lamentations . . . I have my nerve . . . Achille Brottin said exactly that the other night: "Make them laugh! You used to know how. Can't you do it anymore? . . ." He was surprised. "Everybody has his little troubles! you're not the only one! . . . I've got mine too, don't worry . . . If you'd lost a hundred and thirty million on de Beers . . . forty-seven million on Suez! and listen . . . in two sessions! and fourteen million on the "Croix"—that I had to take to Geneva myself . . . at my age! crosses ° to the buyer . . . luckily my son helped me . . . fourteen million in 20-Swiss-franc pieces! . . . can you imagine?" I thought it over, I tried to imagine . . . Norbert imagined too . . . he was present . . . Norbert Loukoum, president of his