North by Louis-Ferdinand Céline Read Free Book Online Page A

must admit . . . pursued by those little coffins" ° . . . we've gone from bad to worse . . . I see a lot of fatheads, stuffed full of liquor and cigarettes and news-sheet bubbles, making light of such omens . . . grave omens! . . . and worse! Living higher and softer than under Loubet! ° . . . glutted on True Confessions . . . House and Kitchen . . . The Healers Art! . . . lovely future! . . . mechanized super-gibbons! . . . pithecanthropus with a degree! . . . just a minute! what about the trend of History? . . . maybe so! but oh, you pissy-panted hominids, maybe the shits wouldn't plague you so if you ate a little less . . . alas! . . . the trend of History through the asshole! . . . the details are pretty funny . . . let's laugh at the shocks and countershocks . . . like at the circus, bust a gut! . . . the atomic tremors from year to year, through mutations and myths! from Venus to Mars and the Moon . . . how far will we go? your health, sir! . . . specters! . . . thousand light-year trips! . . . as for me . . . I've made a slight start already, in a tin coffin, at the vertical, straight to Police Headquarters in Copenhagen . . . if I've come out for a little while . . . I have my reasons . . . try it yourself . . . petty larceny for instance . . . first shop you see . . . they'll give you a good taste of their "space capsule"! . . . Sure! Go on! . . . Get moving! . . . stick-in-the-mud tourist! you'll see places! . . . you'll have adventures to tell about! . . . picturesque! . . . real experiences . . . my Achille, 0 for instance, my ageless philanthropist, he's a glutton for them .. .
    "Haven't you finished yet, Céline? You owe me millions! . . . don't forget it!"
    Last month they celebrated his birthday, his "ageless day". . . He'd been strabismic and deaf, well, pretty near, so long . . . that nobody paid any attention to bis infirmities . . . everybody'd seen him bumping into the furniture and asking you to repeat things so long they'd stopped noticing . . . but his "ageless day" was moving even so . . . delegations of employees and editors, moguls of literary movements . . . with brass bands in the lead, and followed by three four symbolic nylon coffins decked out with brassieres and black stockings and wreaths of immortelles with big ribbons . . . "to our dearly beloved Achille" . . . one of the coffins was full of rattles . . . another of "heavy" francs . . . the next of eyeglasses . . . naturally a month's vacation for everybody that wasn't on vacation already . . .
    All in all, I could see, his "ageless day" was a big success . . . that special number of the Compact Review  ° . . . "He is ageless, he will last forever" . . . had done him a hell of a lot of good, a good strong shot of viciousness . . .
    "You're not through yet?"
    "No, Monsieur Achille, not yet."
    "Especially no philosophy! no intelligent remarks! watch your step! my cellars are full of them! . . . I chuck them in the Seine! . . . whole storehouses, bargeloads, myriatons of 'sage remarks'! about everything! in manuscript and printed, hyper-intelligent! even sadistic, flagellant, bloody! stale spice, Céline! . . . my 'ageless day' gave me pleasure, but think of my remainders . . . labor of Sisyphus, pushing that junk, getting it to the top of that grueling hill, ready to come down and crush the reading public, those belching monsters, instead of falling back on my own neck! try! . . . to understand, Céline! remember you owe me astronomic sums! . . . Shun! shun intelligence as the sardine shuns the hawk! . . . stay away from the precipice! . . . beware! I'm ageless now! ageless! . . . Definitely!"
    You can see that I'd better cut him short . . . In spite of his "agelessness" and his Compact Review Achille is in great peril . . . I'll hurry you back to Baden-Baden! forget what I've been saying! idle comments! jeremiads, good-bye! we're at the Simplon again . . . remember? . . . well, surprise! . . . no sooner back in our room than knock