Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Céline Page A
Authors: Louis-Ferdinand Céline
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existence, as if I were a monster. She, so sensitive, feels obliged to ask me crude, stupid questions, the kind that a housemaid caught stealing sugar might ask. All women are domestics at heart. But possibly she imagines this revulsion more than she feels it; that's the only consolation I can find. Maybe I'm not really repulsive, but only give her the illusion that I am. Maybe I'm an artist in that line. After all, why wouldn't there be an art of ugliness as well as beauty?
Maybe it's a gift that needs to be cultivated.
For a long time I thought little Musyne was stupid, but that was only because I was vain and she had run out on me. Before the war, you know, we were all a lot more ignorant and conceited than today. A little nobody like me was much more likely to take rubbish for rainbows than he would be today. I thought being in love with somebody as adorable as Musyne would give me every kind of strength and virtue, especially the courage I lacked, just because she was so pretty and such a gifted musician. Love is like liquor, the drunker and more impotent you are, the stronger and smarter you think yourself and the surer you are of your rights.
Dozens of Madame Herote's cousins had made the supreme sacrifice, so she never left her passage except in deep mourning. To tell the truth, she seldom went out, because the appraiser was pretty jealous. We gathered in the dining room behind the shop, which with the coming of prosperity had taken on the appearance of a little salon. There we would chat and pass the time in a pleasant, well-behaved kind of way under the gas jet. Little Musyne at the piano would charm us with classical pieces, only classical music was thought fitting in those sorrowful times. We'd sit there for whole afternoons, side by side, the appraiser in the middle, musing over our secrets, our fears and hopes.
Madame Herote's maid, whom she had hired only a short time before, was always bursting with impatience to find out when this one would finally make up his mind to marry that one. In her village free love was unheard of. All those Argentines and officers and slippery-fingered customers filled her with an almost animal terror. More and more often Musyne was monopolized by the South American customers. What with waiting for my angel, I soon got to know the caballeros' kitchens and servants very well. Naturally the valets took me for a pimp. In the end everybody took me for a pimp, including Musyne and, I'm pretty sure, the regulars at Madame Herote's shop. There was nothing I could do about it. Sooner or later people are bound to classify you as something. I wangled another two months' convalescent leave, and there was even some talk of a medical discharge. Musyne and I decided to go and live together in Billancourt. This was actually a subterfuge to ditch me, because she took advantage of its being so far away to come home less and less frequently. She was always finding some pretext for spending the night in Paris.
The nights in Billancourt were soft and sweet, enlivened now and then by those childish airplane or zeppelin alarms which provided the civilian population with thrills and selfjustification. While waiting for Musyne, I'd walk as far as the Pont de Grenelle,[28] where the darkness rises from the river to the overhead Métro tracks, with their strings of lights traversing the darkness and their enormous metallic hulks, hurling themselves like thunder at the flanks of the big buildings on the Quai de Passy.
There are neighborhoods like that in big cities, so stupidly ugly that you're almost always alone there.
In the end Musyne was showing up at our so-called home only once a week. More and more often she'd spend the evening accompanying some lady singer at the house of some Argentine. She could have made a living playing at the movies, and it would have been a lot easier for me to call for her, but the Argentines were lively and paid well, while the movie houses were dismal and the pay was
Maybe it's a gift that needs to be cultivated.
For a long time I thought little Musyne was stupid, but that was only because I was vain and she had run out on me. Before the war, you know, we were all a lot more ignorant and conceited than today. A little nobody like me was much more likely to take rubbish for rainbows than he would be today. I thought being in love with somebody as adorable as Musyne would give me every kind of strength and virtue, especially the courage I lacked, just because she was so pretty and such a gifted musician. Love is like liquor, the drunker and more impotent you are, the stronger and smarter you think yourself and the surer you are of your rights.
Dozens of Madame Herote's cousins had made the supreme sacrifice, so she never left her passage except in deep mourning. To tell the truth, she seldom went out, because the appraiser was pretty jealous. We gathered in the dining room behind the shop, which with the coming of prosperity had taken on the appearance of a little salon. There we would chat and pass the time in a pleasant, well-behaved kind of way under the gas jet. Little Musyne at the piano would charm us with classical pieces, only classical music was thought fitting in those sorrowful times. We'd sit there for whole afternoons, side by side, the appraiser in the middle, musing over our secrets, our fears and hopes.
Madame Herote's maid, whom she had hired only a short time before, was always bursting with impatience to find out when this one would finally make up his mind to marry that one. In her village free love was unheard of. All those Argentines and officers and slippery-fingered customers filled her with an almost animal terror. More and more often Musyne was monopolized by the South American customers. What with waiting for my angel, I soon got to know the caballeros' kitchens and servants very well. Naturally the valets took me for a pimp. In the end everybody took me for a pimp, including Musyne and, I'm pretty sure, the regulars at Madame Herote's shop. There was nothing I could do about it. Sooner or later people are bound to classify you as something. I wangled another two months' convalescent leave, and there was even some talk of a medical discharge. Musyne and I decided to go and live together in Billancourt. This was actually a subterfuge to ditch me, because she took advantage of its being so far away to come home less and less frequently. She was always finding some pretext for spending the night in Paris.
The nights in Billancourt were soft and sweet, enlivened now and then by those childish airplane or zeppelin alarms which provided the civilian population with thrills and selfjustification. While waiting for Musyne, I'd walk as far as the Pont de Grenelle,[28] where the darkness rises from the river to the overhead Métro tracks, with their strings of lights traversing the darkness and their enormous metallic hulks, hurling themselves like thunder at the flanks of the big buildings on the Quai de Passy.
There are neighborhoods like that in big cities, so stupidly ugly that you're almost always alone there.
In the end Musyne was showing up at our so-called home only once a week. More and more often she'd spend the evening accompanying some lady singer at the house of some Argentine. She could have made a living playing at the movies, and it would have been a lot easier for me to call for her, but the Argentines were lively and paid well, while the movie houses were dismal and the pay was
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