Castle to Castle by Louis-Ferdinand Céline Page B

forgot to tell you . . . Louise Michel!° . . . Nowadays they talk about sensations! suspense! what have they got? Nothing! . . . there on the Place Clichy you didn't talk, you just looked and trembled . . . look . . . the main attraction! Louise Michel rising out of the darkness! deathly pale! all the spotlights converging . . . for half a second! " Bow-wow! " . . . she seemed to be climbing on a chair . . . bow! wow! . . . Angry! . . . out with the lights! . . . my grandmother had lived through the Commune on the rue Montorgueil she knew . . . "That's not Louise Michel, my boy . . . it's not her nose or her mouth!" . . . you couldn't fool my grandmother . . .
    Nowadays it's out of the question, you won't see Khrushchev, Picasso or Triolette climbing on a chair . . . the Desmoulins-Palais Royal effect! . . . not those pallid shouters . . . appearing under the spotlights " bow! wow!" . . . Thorez perhaps? Mauriac?
    One thing is sure, nose or no nose, Louise had a perfect right! " bow! wow! " . . . and angry! . . . and how! . . . I say it and I'll say it again louder . . . later on! . . . when I have time to think about it . . .

I've known him since the Dreyfus case! . . . he gets worse every year! . . . every month! . . . the crustiest pirate of them all! of the whole publishing trade! . . . him and his whole gang . . . there's nothing lower . . . You're the laughing stock of his whole shop! . . . the whole buggering mob! . . . the way they fleece you . . . champion sucker . . . only too happy to be sabotaged, looted, and insulted! . . . what a crew! . . . him and his head eunuch Loukoum!"
    Gertrut of the sky-blue monocle, naturally he wasn't telling me anything new . . . hell, no . . . Gertrut Bérengères, I could have sold him some dirt . . . I knew Achille was crossing me up, I knew all about it! my, oh, my! When you come to think that he . . . old Gertrut . . . had plenty of time to spare and money coming in . . . he could afford to dig up scandals that were of no interest to anybody, except maybe himself . . . the bilious chit-chat of 1900.
    To hell with all that! Gertrut! Achille! those crooks . . . I only had one thing on my mind . . . cold cash and good-bye! . . . what was I going to leave Lili? . . . quid ? . . . how? . . . what? . . . that little nest egg? . . . but there's the rub! . . . nest egg, it's easy to say! . . . with me gone? my last gasp? I could see the rush of "claimants''! . . . the mob! . . . once the animal is dead, you see them swarming, stampeding . . . those jaws! . . . all with claims . . . with papers, without papers . . . seals, stamps . . . or without! . . . pouring out of every Métro station! . . . crocodiles with tears . . . without! . . . those teeth! all with claims! Lili will be evicted pronto. . . . out on the street . . . I can see it as if I was there . . . she's incapable of defending herself! . . . exactly the same story as on the rue Girardon . . . or in Saint-Malo . . . or Copenhagen, Ved Stranden 20 (tuve) . . . the same sect . . . the claimants . . . absolutely international . . . adapted to every climate . . . the same crooks . . . wherever you go . . . regardless of regime, philosophy, creed, or color . . . any pretext will do . . . they descend in swarms . . . like locusts . . . and you won't see Lili defending herself! . . . no! . . . the exact opposite . . . it's sad . . . romantic-sad . . . a dancer . . .

Why kid myself . . . Private worries, you'll say . . . but even so . . . nobody . . . Gertrut, Brottin, or anyone else . . . will advance me a plug nickel for a book like Normance , and that's that . . . what the readers want is a laugh . . . in the first place Paris was never bombed . . . not a single commemorative tablet, isn't that proof enough? . . . I'm the only one who still remembers two, three families buried under the nuns . . . as far as sales are concerned, Normance was a total flop . . . for one reason or another . . . in addition to being sabotaged . . .