North by Louis-Ferdinand Céline

neither . . . luckily I'm the boss . . .
    "If we stay here we're fucked!"
    "Where do we go?"
    "Tve got an address!"
    I didn't want to use that address . . . but this was no time to be finicky . . . couldn't be helped . . . the "alien squad" with those "anti-us" pictures of ours . . . no other solution . . . but Harras . . . a very compromising friend, couldn't deny it! super-SS! Just too bad! alea facta! Caesar hadn't gone into his thing very cheerfully either . . . At least Harras was the genuine article! no half-Nazi, quarter something else . . . Professor Harras, President of the Reich Medical Association . . . yes, plenty compromising, no question, but our first fatal crime was leaving our country . . . it's always the first step that counts!. . . forging checks, cracking safes, shop windows, high treason, and everything eue!. . . the first step is the toboggan of dishonor! . . . Lili and Le Vig see what I mean . . . 
    "Yes, sure . . . you're right!"
    They agree . . . but what a holy mess! . . . the game was up when we left Montmartre! . . . Le Vig himself, before he left, had built a kind of fort in bis own kitchen, beds, tables, chairs, washboiler . . . but they'd got him in the end! . . . same as they got Bonnot ° and Fort Chabrol °. . . Speaking of Fort Chabrol, a childhood memory, I saw that siege . . . and the surrender . . . and while we're at it, I've read since that Guérin ° was a very shady character . . . cop or not, I saw the bridge company of the First Engineers taking him away . . . he'd died a natural death on Quai de l'Ecluse . . . during the big flood of 1910 . . . those kid memories are always like yesterday . . .
    Le Vig decided not to defend his bedspring barricade . . . for fear of setting the house on fire . . . his concierge, a big-hearted woman, had begged him:
    "Go away, Monsieur Le Vigan! you know we all love you! . . . you'll be back . . ."
    Myself I'd thought of blowing up the whole place on rue Girardon . . . I wouldn't have been buried with honors like Guérin, the stool-pigeon anarchist . . . they'd have sent me to Villa Said ° . . . the Dental Institute . . . Cousteau ° would have sent me . . . and Je suis partout . . . no need of any mean bastards from outside . . . the ones in my own crowd are enough for me . . . Lili, me, and Le Vig, we'd have looked fine as shish kebab, with our friends doing the snake dance all around us . . . flutes and tambourines!
    All very amusing these meditations, but we had to get going . . . and watch out that the junkies down there . . . when they lined up for soup at No. 26 down the street . . . didn't see us . . . then socko to the Untergrundbahn . . . I'd located the station . . . at the end of our street . . . I had a map of the Untergrundbahn . . . bought it in Paris in '39, I'd said to myself: one of these days! . . . you get these hunches . . . but never clear enough . . . never really imperative! . . . terrible the things I should have hunched! . . . my hunch had ended there, with a map of their subway . . . while I was at it I could have foreseen . . . as a seer I'm a failure . . . I say to Le Vig:
    "Now you know, we're going to Grünwald!"
    "Who's in Grünwald?"
    "Sap! Harras! Harras is our man, remember that name!"
    There on the bed I'd overloaded his mind, he was staring out into space . . . his role was catching up with him again . . . he often went back to that role . . . "the man from nowhere" ° . . .
    "Harras, I tell you! I've told you often enough! . . . wake up . . . Grünwald! . . . seven stations on the map! . . . the High Chamber of Reich Physicians! . . . Professor Harras! That's where we're going! . . . but get this! . . . a genuine Nazi! . . . oh yes! . . . ober! ober Alles! . . . no choice, son . . . no use shillyshallying . . . it's him or the clink! what do you say?"
    "Yes, son, you're right . . ."
    I pull him out of his dream . . . he shakes himself . . .
    "Where'd you say?"
    "Grünwald . . . you'd dunk you wore in the