Guignol's band

Readers, friends, less than friends, enemies, Critics! Here l am at it again with Book I of Guignol! Don’t judge me too soon! Wait awhile for what’s to follow! Book II! Book II! it all clears up! develops, straightens out! As is, % of it’s missing! Is that a way to do things? It had to be printed fast because with things as they are you don’t know who’s living or dead! Denoel?[1] you? me?. I was off for 1,200 pages! Just imagine!

"Oh! it’s good he’s letting us know! We’ll never buy the rest of it! What a crook! What a botched book! What a bore! What a guignol! What a slob! What a traitor!”

Everything.

I know, I know, I’m used to it.. that’s my music!

I give everyone a pain in the ass.

And what if they study it in school in two hundred years, and the Chinese too? What’ll you say then?

"Take it easy! wise guy! What about the three dots? Ah! all over the place again! An outrage! He’s butchering the Trench language! It’s scandalous! Into jail! Give us back our dough! Nauseating! He’s damaging our complements! The pig! Ah! things are bad!”

An awful session!

"Unreadable! Sex-maniac! Damned Loafer! Crook!”

For the time being.

Here comes Denoel, beside himself!..

"See here, l don’t understand it at all! It’s terrible! impossible! All I see in your book is brawling! It’s not even a book! we’re heading straight for disaster! Neither head nor tail!”

I could bring him King Lear so he could see massacres.

What does he see in existence?

And then it cools off.. everyone gets used to it!.. it all works out.. Till the next time!

The same cackle every time. A lot of yelling and then it calms down. They never like what you give them. It hurts them! Oooooh! or it’s too long!.. it bores them!.. always something!.. It’s never what they want! and then they suddenly go wild about it! Try to figure them out! Go get all hot and bothered! all a matter of whim! I expect it to take a good year to ripen.. let everyone have his say, spit out his bile, shoot his mouth off, overflow.. Then silence.. and a hundred, two hundred thousand buy it.. on the sly..and read it.. and squabble.. twenty thousand adore it, learn it by heart.. it’s the Pantheon.

The same scenario every time.

Death on the Installment Plan was received, please remember, by a barrage of intensity, snarling and spleen, such as you seldom see! The whole works, the dregs of criticism, out-and-out swearing, churchgoers, masons, Jews, men and women, four-eyes, whisperers, athletes, ass-scratchers, the whole Legion, all standing up, wild-looking, foaming gibberish!

The finishing shot!

And then it subsides and now, you see, Death on the Installment Plan is more popular than Journey. He’s even gobbling up all our paper! He’s outrageous!

So it goes…

"Oh/ hut there*s the word, 'shit! Coarseness! That's what attracts your clientele!”

"Oh! I see you a mile off! Its easy to talk! Got to know when to say it! Just try! Not everyone can shit right! It would be too easy!”

I'm giving you some idea of how things stand. Ym taking you backstage so you won't get any illusions.. I had some in the beginning.. but not now.. experience…

It's even funny, they jabber and get all worked up.. arguing yes and no about the three dots.. whether you're making damned fools of them.. and now one thing and then another. what airs he puts on!. the affectation.. etc. and so on..and the commas!..but no one asks me what I think!.. and they make comparisons. I'm not jealous, please believe me!.. I really don't give a damn! So much the better for other books!.. But I just can't read them.. I find them sketchy, not-written, stillborn, neither finished nor likely to be, lifeless..they're not much.. or else they live on phrases, all hideous and black, ink-heavy, phrasish deaths, rhetorish deaths. Ah! It's pretty sad! Matter of taste.

To hell with the invalid! you'll say to yourself. I'll let you have my ailment, you won't be able to read a single sentence! And since we're on secrets, I'm going to let you in on another one.. appalling, oh my, horrible!.. really absolutely deadly.. that I'd rather share right away!.. and that warped my whole life..

Got to admit to you about my grandfather, named Auguste Destouches, he went in for rhetoric, was even professor of it at the lycie in Le Havre, and was brilliant at it, around 1855.

Which means I distrust it bad! May be an innate tendency!

I've got all of grandfather's writings, his bundles of them, his rough drafts, drawerfuls! Terrific! He used to write the prefect’s speeches, I assure you, in one hell of a style! What a hand with adjectives! How he stuck in the flowers! Never a faux pas! Moss and vine leaves! Sons of the Gracchi! Maxims and everything! In prose and verse alike! He won all the medals of the French Academy.

I keep them with strong emotion.

That’s my ancestor! So I know something about the language, and not since yesterday like lots of others! I’m telling you right away! down to the fine points!

I crapped out all my "effects,” my "litotes,” and my "pertinences” into my diapers..

I’m through with them! they’d be the death of me! My grandfather Auguste agrees. He says to me from up above, he calls down to me from the sky, "Child, no phrases.”

He knows what’s needed to make it tick. I’m making it tick!

Ah! I’m intransigent, something fierce! If I ever fell into "periods” again.. three dots! ten! twelve dots! help! Nothing at all if necessary! That’s how I am!

Jazz knocked out the waltz, impressionism killed "faux-jour,” you’ll write in "telegraphic” or you won’t write at all:

Up to you to understand! Get hot! "There’s nothing but brawls in all your chapters!” What an objection! What crap! Watch out! Dopiness! By the yard! Fluttery twittering! Go get God excited! Rub-a-dub-dub! Jump! Wiggle! Bust out of your shell! Use your bean, you little hustlers! Break open! Palpitate, damn it! That’s where the fun is! All right! Something! Wake up! Come on, hello! You robot crap! Shit! Transpose or it’s death!

I can't do any more for you.

Kiss any girl you please! If there's still time! Here's to you! If you live! The rest’ll come all by itself! Happiness, health, grace and fun! Don’t worry too much about me! set your little heart going!

It'll be whatever you put into it! storm or flute! as in Hell! as in Heaven!

Boom! Zoom!. It’s the big smashup!. The whole street caving in at the water front!.. It’s Orleans crumbling and thunder in the Grand Cafe!. A table sails by and splits the air!.. Marble bird!.. spins round, shatters a window to splinters!.. A houseful of furniture rocks, spirts from the casements, scatters in a rain of fire!.. The proud bridge, twelve arches, staggers, topples smack into the mud. The slime of the river splatters!.. mashes, splashes the mob yelling choking overflowing at the parapet!.. It’s pretty bad..

Our jalopy balks, shivers, squeezed diagonally on the sidewalk between three trucks, drifts, hiccups, it’s dead! Fagged engine! Been warning us since Colombes that she can’t hold out! with a hundred asthmatic wheezes. She was born for normal service… not for a hell-hunt!.. The whole mob fuming at our heels because we’re not moving. That we’re a lousy calamity!.. That’s an idea!.. The two hundred eighteen thousand trucks, tanks and handcarts massed and melted in the horror, straddling one another to get by first, ass over heels, the bridge crumbling, are tangled up, ripping each other, squashing wildly. Only a bicycle gets away and without the handle bar..

Things are bad!. The world’s collapsing!..

"Stop blocking the way you lousy pigs! Go take a crap you slimy lice! ”

Not everything’s said! Or carried out! Still things to do!.. Pirouette!

The engineering officer’s preparing something! Another blast of thunder! Sets the fuse at the small end. It’s a demon!

.. But suddenly his gadget roars out and crackles right between his fingers!.. the whole shebang blasts him, pours on him, tears him apart, somersaults him wildly away.. The column gets going, the motors are all roaring and spitting in an unbearable din!. Terrifying remarks and blasphemies!.

Everything! the carcasses! the junk! the tanks! piles upon the crunching and rattling caterpiller-guns that smash all interference under the direction of a quartermaster! It’s the saraband of fright, the fair under the crawling-dislocating thunder! It’s the rubber-man who wins! Ah! hooray for the cosmic scoundrel, the unscrupulous bachelor with the corkscrew bicycle, the armored stinker!..

The Fritz is peppering away like mad, swooping down from the skies! The louse! He’s bzzbzzing us! he’s sprinkling us from the summits, he’s enveloping us, he’s whirring at us!.. It’s the fury of murder, wild volleys and raging stabs! ricocheting all about! He’s watering us, spilling us to death! And then he starts us up again, he’s getting a big kick out of our dance! out of our stung and swaying rage! We’re stuck all right! A shell! Three enormous ones!.. Fright! And much too heavy! And one after the other!. The earth’s dying upside down!.. losing strength, shivering, groaning in the distance, out of hearing. as far as the low and gentle hillsides! Bust, echo! Bust, bomb! No mistake! It’s getting worse!

.. We’re going to die mashed up!.. like bedbugs!.. choking sulphurations! massed in the saltpeter, ravaging combustions! The dunghill’s raving! He’s eager up there!.. He’s sore about our trouble! The awful plane! He’s sugaring us again! And three loopings! And hail falls!.. A frying in the atmos-

phere! The cobblestones full of bull’s-eyes!.. The lady who got one in the back hugs a sheep lying there, shuffles off with it under the axles, creeps and convulses… farther off… grimaces, collapses, knocked over, her arms stretched like a cross. groans. stops moving!..

The ambulance, our ship of grace, can’t make the big cobblestones, skids, shimmies, wobbles, loses all its bolts, bumps into a flock of oxen, stallions, fowls, and then plops. a cart smacks it right in the ass. Bang!. The shock sends two tricycles flying, plus a nun and a policeman.. it’s the moment of absolution. all that on the bridge! Look at the poor auto lifted by the wind of the torpedoes twenty yards away! Horrible flight! And then two steps and two burps. There she is rolling down in the whirlwind of the slaughter. The mob catches up with us.. squeezes us.. The engine’s racing to get the hell away.. They’re frisking us, they’re hugging us fiercely! Our vehicle’s getting damned sore. We’re being hoisted in triumph!.. scaling over heads!.. roosting up there over the crowd. Bam!. Bang!. Three tough strikes! We flop! A "twelve-ton” truck full of railmen whacks us from the other side! Ah! made it!. Pushed around, torn from the tide! We’re knocked apart right in the middle of the mess!. The ambulance loses its front wheels!. The surging scatters us to bits!

.. It’s the turn of a baby carriage being carried away over our heads!. A little soldier’s lolling in it! His leg hanging out in shreds. pretty slick. Damned little soldier-boy! he’s making obscene gestures. We’re having fun with him! We’re all together in the atmosphere!. All seething in the whirl!

.. That devil up there’s sore at us.. He’s coming back.. strafing us like a tornado!.. Tobogganing down on us, blazing away, spurting out all his lightning.. The savage is cutting our heads off. the swine!.. He’s sweeping us into his belly! into his murderous din!..He’s climbing back very tiny into the clouds!.. He turns about on the ceiling! a fly!..

Who’s that dead in the gutter? They’re stumbling over it, it’s soft!.. There’s a belly there! wide open and the foot and leg twisted, folded in. One of Death’s acrobats!. blasted on the spot!

Zoom! Zoom! There’s no time to think!.. two enormous thuds. It’s the big river being hit downstream! The smooth water’s drinking two giant torpedoes!. That makes two wild corollae for it!. Two astounding water-volcano flowers!.. It all falls back. cascades over the bridge. We’re crushed under the spout, soaked, rolled, flattened by the cyclone.. vomited back… the mob catches up with us, sticks to us.. and then they open fire again. It’s cannon getting at us.. The parapet’s full of flashes. It must be coming from the little clouds over the church! must be a reconnaissance flight.. Other airmen trying to finish us up!.. They don’t give a damn, men, cattle or things!. They’re French or German!.. The situation’s getting critical.. My soaked clothes feel boiling. Confusion’s at its height?. A mother in tears on the parapet wants to throw herself into the abyss with her three little children!.. Seven workmen interfere and hold her back.. cool brave chaps.. They first finish their ham and headcheese!..Just let them dare touch her! she shrieks! such a terrifying shrill clamor that it blots out the other noises!.. You’re forced to look at her!.. A shell. Bam! hitting the bridge!.. The main arch blows up, splinters.. Digs a hollow in the middle… an enormous gaping… a crater that swallows up everything!.. The people melt and ram the crevices.. topple beneath the bitter smoke. into a hurricane of dust!

.. You can see a colonel, of Zouaves I think, floundering in the cataract. He succumbs beneath the weight of the corpses!

topples down to the bottom!.."Vive la France!” he finally cries… vanquished beneath the pile of bodies!.. There’re others alive who grab on to the walls of the gulf, they’re in rags because of the explosion, they make desperate efforts, fall down, they puke, they’re through.. They’ve been burned everywhere. A baby all naked surges up on the hood of a flaming truck. He’s roasted, done to a turn.. "Good God!.. Good God!. Shit! It's not right!”.. It’s the father in a sweat. Those are his very words. Then he looks for something to drink!. He yells at me if I’ve got anything. Canteen? Canteen?

The music’s not over, another archangel’s peppering us, swooping down from the sky at full speed… He tires us with his ravaging. We’re so crammed that we stop moving.. The bridge is rumbling.. wobbling on its arches!.. And then tic-tac! Rrooo! Rrooo!.. It’s' the music of the big slaughter! the sky’s rattling with rage against us!.. The water from underneath.. And then the abyss!.. It all blows up!..

Everything I’m telling you’s exact. There’s a lot more besides!.. But my memory’s out of breath! Too many people have walked over it.. like the bridge. over the memories.. as over the days!.. Too many people yelling battle!.. And then the smoke again. And I dive under the car. I’m telling it the way I’m thinking. Going down toward the floodgates, they were carousing something fantastic as far as the Orleans ramp!.. They were dancing worse than on the other, a hundred thousand times worse than the one in Avignon!.. In the forge of God’s Thunder!. And boom! and zimm! and Saint Mary! and dead and dead! in the Hurricane Ball!.. Look!. Look!. Unimportant!.. Even the world there turned inside out, an old soft broken-down umbrella!.. It drifted in the cyclones!. Too bad!. Rrpp!.. and Bing!.. Boom!. I saw it passing over the Grand Hotel! It was going fine! I saw it drifting.. swaying up there.. frolicking in the clouds!.. The bumbershoot and the main span! they were spinning around in the flurry. together!. among the massacring pussy planes, squirting gunfire. Rraap!.. Whah!.. Rraango!.. Whah!.. Rroong!. That’s about the noise made by a real molten torpedo. the most enormous! In the heart of a black and green volcano!.. What a burst of fire!.. Another bomb grazing us! goes exploding right into the current. The blast rocks us. Your guts all ripped out… Your heart popping into your mouth!.. palpitating like a rabbit.. What shame, shitting with fright.. crawling.. under the ammunition trucks with three.. four.. five legs all wound up.. Arms everywhere all mixed up.. smashed, melted into jitters! into a pulp of panic-mad slugs everyone for himself!.. Sunk, wallowing, hiccuping, you come to, tossing in the air, ripped apart, shrunk, shot the hell away! head over heels! It’s a motor about to catch fire!.. We scale a mountain of wounded.. Thick groans beneath our feet!.. They puke…We’re lucky! It’s a favor!..We emerge! groggy, smiling. Another one attacking us! He’s swooping down, a death drum! He smashes the clouds with bullets… His little tongues of fire shoot forth everywhere!.. I see all his flames pointed at us.. It’s gray and black!.. and cursed from head to tail!. He’s looking for us. He catapults from the sky with a volley of rage!.. He’s bewitching us!.. He’s damning us!.. We throw ourselves on our knees.. We beg the Virgin Mary!.. with big fervent signs of the cross!.. God the Father. the North winds! the ass-hole!. Mercy upon us! which fails us in our gurgling drawers… It’s the fall of the Spirits!.. He keeps shooting away at us, volley after volley each one worse! hanging from the angels!.. He flits about. bolts forward. wavers. He’s closing in inside his cyclone. Ffrroo!. He’s gliding again. A silky noise!

We stop seeing him. He’s enchanting us!..A sign of the cross!.. three. four. five!.. That doesn’t stop the horrors!.. the murderous atrocities!.. No conjuring him away!.. He sugars us again from leeward! We’re going to get the whole works!. He’s at the height of his passion. He's hailing us.. blasting us. on the wing!.. It’s the ricochets of the massacre!. The sheet metal’s drumming away!. The suppliants swoon and collapse!. The mob’s capsizing!. The convoy gives way!.. the parapet splits!.. the string of trucks starts kicking up. rioting. and pitches into the water!.. Ah! I’m still being spared!.. Got away from an awful upset!.. It’s been that way for twenty-two years!. It can’t last forever!.. I take a stance with Lisette, a girl-friend who’s not scared.. between the wheels of the ambulance.. you see the cavalcade from there!.. all of it! all!.. Capsizing in all directions.. We also see Largot the barber, he hasn’t left us since Bezons, he’s been following us with his bike.. He’s been drunk since Juvisy, he wanted to kill a German, but he hasn’t talked about it since fitampes.. There he is against the parapet… He’s squeezing a grandmother in his arms… He kisses her at every explosion… In the throbbing of the motors… An old woman with white hair… in wisps, braids and curlpapers. Her whole head’s bleeding red. Largot’s gentle with her. He’s drinking her blood. He’s lost his sense of respect.. but he’s stubborn, greedy..

"Bah!.. It’s red wine!” he declares. "Bah! It’s good, too!”.. He’s joking besides!. But not her!.. The grandmother closes her eyes.. She’s wagging her head… She’s lulled by the thundering!.. by the storms rocking us.. Largot yells out to me again…

"It’s red wine! Hey, ambulance! It’s red wine! Say! Macadam! ”

That’s what he calls me. In spite of our being in a catastrophe I’m irritated by him. I don’t like familiarity. All those drunken carcasses around sicken me. I feel some funny ideas myself. I’m not drunk!. I never drink anything.. It’s my reason tottering.. under the shocks of the circumstances! just that! events that are just too much!..And Zoom! it starts again worse!..

It’s coming back bad, a horrible din!.. A fantastic combustion!.. three torpedoes together, a bouquet! enough to shatter sky and earth! you don’t recognize the elements! enough to blow the top of your head off!.. and then your mind and eyeballs! and it shoots horribly through your lungs!.. stabbed from front to back!.. nailed to the shutter like an owl!.. and that backfire!.. the thousand motors at it again.. attacking the ramp!. The mad racket’s closing in!.. the jerking!

.. smashing mob!.. and the howling of the trampled! of those skinned by the wild column!. those crushed beneath the transports!.. and the caterpillar with the hundred-twenty thousand grinding teeth!. to bite the echo. a rent calvary!

.. under its three hundred thousand chains stuffed with dangling steel… with guts of twirling hoops… cockeyed under its crown. with its whole big cannon head to flatten you from way off!.. Sees you from way off, watches you! crazy you, tearing up the road!.. fleeing in a daze the Godawful sight of that monstrous hodgepodge!.. Ah! that tank, the "Bite-Me-Awful”!.. Tell me about it! Nostradamus Model!

.. that there’s really no surviving the hopeless racket!.. under the mechanical poxing, the oil-bearing tribulations!.. But the world-shakeup’s musical… no stopping the dance!.. It’s the "Damn-it-all Ball”!. And the string of the hundred thousand dead, of the thousand squeaking birds flying around cheeping, weaving their calls..

And then there's another garland with two accents and heavy blunderbusses. It’s coming from way back. from the hills… Artillery’s rolling in the echoes. You can’t cut capers you’re so crushed by your body loaded with damned frozen lead!.. But the rhythm gets you again. the bottom of the bridge full of grenades is fidgeting for you.. Got to prance the same way over the wreckage of people and animals. quartered by the dragging.. then shriveled tight big as an egg depending on the bursts of panic. Ah! the case of rebellion crops up in those dazed whirls. There’s Brigitte, the wife of Sacagne the District Attorney, she suddenly ups and gets out of her car, tears away from the anguished pleas, lifts her skirt up once and for all and jumps on the parapet, from there overlooking the mob, yelling insults through the torment!..

"Brigitte!.. Brigitte!.. I beg you! please come back to me!. your kind husband! Keep your head!. I beseech you! I summon you!”

"Shit! Shit! You don’t exist!”

"Gentlemen, Ladies, my wife’s crazy!.. She’s pregnant! It’s the excitement! I’m District Attorney Sacagne of Montargis from the Cote-d’Or!”

"Shit! Hey, Chink, you’re a pain in the ass! The hell with your bitch! The slob!”

That’s what the crowd calls her.. That’s what made things bitter! He collapses on the world! Just then everything becomes fire, thunder and lightning again! a ripping from the sky inside and about. A blast crushes, pulverizes the wall. Ah! it was time!.. scatters the whole panic, the people, arches, cars, the boiling river’s steaming. Hell’s right here!. The flames envelop us, we’re whirled about in space!.. I’m carried off with a cartload of plums, the little terrier that’s stopped barking, a sewing machine and, I think, a cast-iron tank trap hooked with barbed wire! as far as I could see!.. We split off in mid-air! The molten iron squirted toward the right, toward the locks, the whole works and the slugs! Me, the little terrier and the cart bore toward the left. in another volley of grenades. toward the poplars. the Warehouse. at a good height and full of drive… I saw higher than the clouds.. and bleeding drop by drop… a pale white hand and all about clouds of birds. all red. flitting about sprung from the wounds.. the fingers all studded with stars. strewn on the margins of space… in long gentle veils.. light and graceful.. lulling the Worlds. and grazing you. and your pretty eyes.. caressingly.. everything carries you off.. every thing drifts dream ward.. everything yields… to the fetes of the Palace of Nights..

Very well said!. Very well! You tell it well! Told in vain! Done in vain! The obsession’s there, gray, lingering, oppressive, stumbles at every step with fresh doubt.. Nothing stands out, nothing shines. A big mass of horror and shadow!.

Is that all?

Lots of fuss! Going through hell just to get a little thirstier! A somersault!

Like a drunken brute in early June With madness in August wandering Under a cannon

Emerges into delirium mid-September!

Right in a bistrot.

Murders a Fritz playing billiards.

Revenge of the Flemish!

Right away everything breaks out again.

The war’s got to start all over.

You’re here again all jittery.

Whinnying, eager for the whirl.

Under the flood of artifice.

Prancing at the challenges! and Tallyho!

In splendid health!

Torch in hand!

Death’s hokum is waiting for you again.

You’ve drunk a charm!

You’ve been cooked and damned again!

Ah! that awful predicament!

Ah! the carrionish philter!

The stars are dunghills for the Century!

All the almanachs are for sale!

Not a single honest occultist left!

It’s high time for me to get down to it! Damn it!

I have terrible doubts about Joan of Arc since the mass in Orleans!..

It was a nasty chime..

There’s an aftertaste in everything you touch..

I saw Saint Genevieve in Paris..

I was at mass in Reynaud..

The chapel was full of Jews..

And I never talk unless I know..

Are they going after the Freemasons?

Good! Nice to begin with..

But suppose they touch our cronies?

What if they lay hands on the manes of the Temple?

The joking’ll be over!..

They’re going to discover a powder in a diabolical pyrette!..

I predict it, and not without anxiety..

I’m warning! I’m warning! I’m blowing the siren!

Hell doesn’t boil over in a day.

You need oil and knowledge.

Who knows?

You need collaboration..

You saw everything on the road..

The whole world in a rush!..

And what wild, furious, crucifying, fantastic gatherings! Insatiable for martyrdom!

Did you see those vehicles!

The esoteric decoration?

Once you’ve been initiated you don’t stand there dawdling over the abyss. To get yourself sublimated alive, to go up in smoke, fragile toys in the wind! By God! By God! The hell with the timid! Death to illusions! It’s the moment for stout deeds! For sublime, bitter Trafalgars! The faith that saves! Anyone giving in is murdered on the spot! Hashed! Bled! all white with shame!

When the valiant come forward, the pure, the tough, the uncompromising, the lynx-hearted, then you can say it’s getting hot! that there’s a pungent sizzle in the fire! that everything’s chucked in! except shreds of love, lily-of-the-valley, base doubts! As is! Torn away from the spell! No mercy! One after the other in the sulphurous regions to appear in line.. That’s the test!.. the scowling and the sorry.. into memory. The mumblers and cowards. terrible in their swathes of lies!..

I know all about it!

Proud brazen sneaks.. arrogant or base or speechless.. one after the other… all baleful and stinking whose throats should be slit under moon-gall torture and cursed oaths! Poisons, dark messages.. Martyred calves!..

Let everyone blame the demon! go for him, lock him away, slay him, revolt, find in his heart the song, withered… the gracious secret of the fairies. or else let him die a thousand deaths and then come to with a thousand pangs! With frightful choking, a thousand playful Sayings and green contortions of wounds, boiling wax that sticks, torn apart, muscles in mincemeat, floundering around that way a whole day and three months, a week in the bottom of a greasy hot pot, hissing snakes mixed with swollen toads, with leprosy, juicy, yellow with venom, sucked by greedy salamanders, loathsome vampires on the bodies of the damned, jiggers in your guts to stir your pain, shreds of sore flesh, munched with tongues of flame, and so from one millennium to another, slaking your thirst once in a while with a skinful of vinegar, of vitriol so hot that your tongue peels, puffs, bursts! and then to death from suffering howling from Hell all slashed up! day after day! and so on through eternal time..

You’ve got to see the thing is serious.

Y

JLou started in life with your parents’ advice. Life was too much for them. You got into messes, one more horrible than the other. You got out of the awful catastrophes as best you could, more or less sideways, a slobbering crab, backwards, missing a couple of paws. You had some good times, got to be even with all the crap, but always anxious, lest the dirty business start all over.. And it always did.. Let’s bear that in mind! They talk about illusions, that they ruin youth. We lost it without illusions!. More trouble!..

As I say. It happened from the beginning. You were little, a born dope, with two strikes on you.

If you’d been born the son of a rich planter in Cuba, Havana for example, everything would’ve gone off smoothly, but you came from small fry, who lived where it was nasty and slummy, then had to suffer on account of caste and it’s the injustice that crushes you, the sickness of the drooling worm that makes poor people go bragging after their blunders, their pettiness, their pussy blemishes, which makes you vomit listening, they’re so vile and tenacious! Month after month, it’s his nature, the poor slob expiates, on the Pro-Deo rack, his infamous birth, tied up tight with his service certificate, his voting card, his bloated face. Sometimes it’s War! It’s Peace! It’s Re-war! It’s Victory! It’s the Big Disaster! At bottom, nothing’s changed! In the end he’s always a fall guy. He’s the punching bag of the Universe. Wouldn't change places with anyone… He wiggles only for the hangmen. Always available for all the dunghills of the Planet! Everyone walks over his rags, gets worked up over his troubles, he’s spoiled. I’ve seen all the tornadoes of the compass swoop down on our miseries, blowing in on our catastrophes, in on the kill, the Chinese, Moldors, Botriacs, Marsupians, the glacial Swiss, the Mascagats, the Big Berbers, the Vanutedians, the Inkspots, the Jews of Lourdes, all happy, having a great time, gleaming like lunatics! Doing us dirt and nothing to defend us. Cute Francois, imp of the liquor-bottle, stuffed dotard, mushy enough in speech to shake the Rights of Man, in the torrent of Oblivion, hide and soul driven crazy and disgusting with obedience, letting his patrimony be shaken, his sweet little savings, his darling, his dream flower, never any use for him to go pondering anything, more honest to become carrion and lazy enough to piss in bed, it’s always even Stephen, he’s always a sucker in any deal, he’s not in the running, he’s always doomed to be a washup. Besides, the world’s got him so down that he’s got surprise itself puzzled, the world’s tired of pulling him apart, of destroying him even more, he’s pushed around on all sides! the Stinker of the Universe! Hail! A little more injustice, he loathes himself, pukes out his lot.. Awful protests.

Revolution in their hearts.. Got to know a little about his disappointments. Everyone’s made an easy punching bag out of him. The whole Universe has had a fine time with Dopey-Frangois-huh-huh-jerk until he cracks up and comes apart at the foundation! Then he’s the supreme infection, and the most eager run away… He stays there gaping on the counter.. decomposing, green in shreds, can’t look at him… He gives off such a smell that the most disgusting think it over, twist around to finish him off!

There’re things you don’t see! And yet which are essential!

Boy! Just wait! Hidden in the bottom of the rot itself! holes in the body! bowel philters! would you suspect? Only the initiated whisper to each other with their eyes closed… the Mass isn’t over!. Still more to say!. Lots more!. as for the tainted, they’re still around, they’re not going to let us leisurely rot that way on the heap!. We’re still full of pus and lots of flashy gangrenes, vested in elegant, bloody brocades!

.. very slight scrapes.. before brisking up for the dance, free, light diaphanous minuets! not weighing a thing in the waves, evaporated, a whirl of wings, most delightful, here, there, springish, voguish! all roguish and furtive and joys! secretly graceful to the world, everything magically reborn! a clip of flowers and moss!.. Fluttering even lighter.. amidst a wind of roses! All cares wreathed in music. scattered off to the sport of air! Zephyrs!

Naturally I’m not going to tell you everything. They were too vile with me. It would be doing them too much of a favor!

I want them to taste a little more. It’s not vengeance or soreness, it’s just a feeling of prudence, an esoteric precaution. You don’t play around with omens. It costs your life if you’re indiscreet! I’m giving them just a small idea, that’ll do! I’m making a bit of an effort, all right, I’m not exhausting my charm. I’m staying on good terms with the music, little animals, the harmony of dreams, the cat, its purring. That way it’s perfect. A pleasure, no more, otherwise I fiddle around, sell myself, get worked up, I show off, I lose out boasting, it’s over! To hell with the glamor! I get down to the pebbles, I stumble all over, I flop, I proclaim myself Emperor, the Prosecutor’s after me, finds me, there I am like a dope, everyone’s picking on me, cutting me to pieces, it’s the third degree, Napoleon style.

And I’m not alluding to anyone! If the shoe fits, wear it! Wasn’t born under a lucky star! "Quarantine’s” my baptismal name, I know the oracles as I call them! I don’t go far wrong in my dreams, but on the mystifying condition that I keep my ear right to the ground and my guts full of suspicion! All right then…

Let me wobble and break down to the depths! Ah! a sorry conviction!.. "Don’t let yourself be tempted! ” Boy! have I seen witches!.. On moors! meadows and shores! and a lot of other places too!.. on rocks! in abysses!.. with their brooms and owl! The owl’s what I understand best. He always says to me, "Watch out, pal! You’re going to talk too much.”… That’s right, in a way. My good nature excites me and works me up, makes me talk without rhyme or reason. A sorry excuse! Here comes cop's meat. With an immediate comeback! Jeering, razzing, ferocities, demonic dirty deals, pouring out torrents of droppings for me to die haggard, swamped, beneath the disgrace, the repulsion of the righteous, of extortionists, legionnaires! Infamy! consummate cabal! I can’t open my pen any more. Whether in court, under the blows of wild "evidence,” or in the waiting-rooms of the big shots, I’m crushed on the spot, scraped, shriveled up slimy in the rank of stinking grubs, in spite of good intentions, loathed, beaten within an inch of my life, something absolutely unspeakable, squashed surreptitiously between saltpeter and hot ashes and the fact that proves it is that even the people on my side who are in a way in the same sort of boat are shy about my case, they’ve got scruples about discussing it, it chaps their faces a little, they’d rather keep quiet. It would be a pity for them to compromise themselves because I’m a pain in the ass to them too… So that way we’ve agreed… We understand each other without getting together.. without the slightest consultation.

That’s grace, discretion itself.

l knew a real archangel on the downgrade, though still rather frisky, even resplendent in a way. I never really knew his name. He had too many papers. They finally called him Borokrom because of his knowledge of chemistry, of the bombs he’d made, it seems, when he was young. It was hearsay, legend. He made me smile right away. I thought I knew the ropes at the time. Later on I realized the weight of the man, his value, beneath his unprepossessing exterior, of my own dumbness. He played the piano delightfully when he had nothing else to do. I’m talking about our odd jobs. He’d come to London twenty years earlier to take a job as chemist. He was supposed to work at Wickers, in the nitrate laboratory. He had all his diplomas from Sofia and Petersburg, but he didn’t know what time it was. That played him a dirty trick. He couldn’t be employed, and then he really drank too much, even for England. He didn’t stay on long at Wickers National Steel Ltd., three months with board and lodging and then fired, probably also because of his ways which were really pretty doubtful, spotty in general, a sneaky look. He hung out with a low crowd, his friends looked like a bad lot.. even worse than he..

He was always on the outs with his landladies at the end of the week. The police who knew him well left him pretty much alone. He was one of the tramps and that was that.

England’s all right for that, they never really bother you, even if you’re shabby-looking, even if you’re a little shady, with the tacit understanding that you don’t act like a jackass around noon in front of Drury Lane or at five around the Savoy. There’s a certain etiquette, that’s all. A conventional agreement. If Jackass you be, woe to you! There’re times for the Strand and others for Trafalgar, and everywhere else at ease!. Got to know the English cops, they don’t like force or scandal, they’re just loafers like father and mother, just don’t provoke them, don’t bother them in broad daylight, in short, let them the hell alone.. Even if they’ve got their pockets full of warrants with your photo, they won’t hound you if you don’t act like a wise guy, if you keep your distance, if you don’t change suits too often to show off, or change lodgings, or hangouts. There’s an etiquette, a way that’s decent and proper for real tramps, that’s the size of it! Mustn’t upset Tradition! If you act temperamental, or aggressive, or changeable, first in one pub, then another, if you’re not back at your game of pool at about your usual time, then don’t be surprised, the cops come down on you hard, they suddenly get rough and crafty, you’re complicating supervision, they get fed up with your ways, they get restless and keen to pin something on you. Any freakishness gets them wild, especially in clothes.. That was the trouble with Borokrom, who was in the habit of wearing plum derbies, never anything else on his big dome, always wearing his green plum, his uniform. He played the piano that way to earn his living between the Elephant and the Castle, the two limits of Mile End. Soon as he was kicked out of Wickers, he had to. All the pubs along Commercial, sometimes in one, sometimes the other. but always around the river. That’s what they call the Thames. He was known, likable, gay with his fingers but serious-looking, proper as a pope. It paid well, especially Saturdays. He easily took in three pounds between eight o’clock and midnight, plus the nourishing stout, so thick and creamy, absolutely all he wanted, thanks to the customers. And then the raucous song, the drinking canticle, as is the proud custom, with choruses by the drunks piled around the piano.

Yip-i-addy-i-ay-i-ay!

Yip-i-addy-i-ay!

Those were the first English words I knew by heart, "i-addy-i-ay!”. It sent terrific echoes out into the street, into the night outside where little children were waiting, shriveled up against the window, flattening their little beaks till their parents were finished sucking their beer, fun and joy of living, so drunk that the bulls would come in to kick them out so that they’d go puke somewhere else. We’d meet at La Vaillance, the pub of the swells of the lane, the busy street, the one with seven huge bars, with prows sculpted in ivory and twisted copper rails. A magnificent job. And a portrait of the Conqueror high as the ceiling, in a colossal gilt frame, adorned with sirens. That was where we were when the thing happened, when the fight started. It was Sergeant Matthew of the Yard who came in, at the sandwich counter in the swells’ stall, he blew in whistling "Good day, Ladies’’! He wasn’t in uniform, in civvies like you and me, he was humming with the others, he was a bit loaded, and so he was in good humor. Suddenly! what’s eating him?. he stops dead, he stands there frozen… in front of Boro… in a top hat! ah! that gags him! the nerve!.. busy there with his music, banging out his tunes, in a tart kind of rhythm, grinding out a cradle song, with the misty charm of tunes of that kind, they gather up your troubles, jig them away!. ding! dindin!. dong! dong!.. and whoops! presto! quick runs of trills and arpeggios! with his big dirty pudgy fingers… it was really magic the way he had them spellbound with the fluttering imps springing out of the big piano. Grinding out any old refrain. all nipping away at the pain of laughter. The hesitancy of orange marmalade that's sweet and acidy at the same time.. English tunes have the same kind of pitch… I remember well.. Sergeant Matthew stood there dumfounded at his man’s new hat. It knocked the wind out of him… it froze his smile. He couldn’t believe his eyes!

He came closer… he wanted to get a better look… to appreciate it. He came up to the piano. and bang point-blank! rage! He started swearing at the performer..

"Where did he get the idea of wearing a topper in that dirty bar? Never saw the likes of it! He was really crazy! Where did he think he was? At the Derby? In the House of Lords? It was an insult, and swaggering for such a rotten foreigner. An immigrant of the worst kind! A cheap musician, failure, tramp! He had a hell of a nerve coming and mimicking a gentleman!.. An unbelievable crime! He’d take him away on the spot if he didn’t remove that thing at once…” And more jabber and fiery threats, he was wild with rage!..

Boro stuck to his topper… It was a gift from someone.. The moment Sergeant Matthew started picking a quarrel he stopped weighing his words. To begin with, it was none of his business.. Boro had a perfect right to put a sofa on his head, a kite, a baby scale, the more so a top hat. It was no one’s business but Boro’s.. But the other one didn’t see it that way, he was getting his dander up. A brisk spat.. Things were getting worse. the racket!. the fever! it was steaming around the liquor. The crowd was swelling, closing in, bellowing, exciting and booing Matthew so that the whole works shook and floundered and wobbled!. Hemmed in close, Matthew got scared, I'm telling what happened, he took his whistle from his small pocket.. That set everything off!.. There was a rush!. He mustn’t whistle. No re-enforce-ments!.. Down with the police! Knocked down and flattened, Matthew covered with drunks, yelling, delighted, jumping on him, a mountain of them high as the chandelier.. Capering with ease and victory! A round of beer mugs over his head.. Here’s to Matthew!. .For he’s a jolly good fellow!..

He wasn’t saying any more down below, he’d had his share.. I was waiting near the door for them to quit beating him!.. I'd have liked to be somewhere else. What if the cops came and raided the place?… I was a goner with my fishy papers!. my discharge, my phony stamps! Boy, oh boy!.. I was in a delicate situation with the Consulate people!..

"Beat it!” says Boro from below. right under the pile.. and motions toward the Hospital!.. the other side of the street!..

London Hospital, well known, Mile End Road… We always made dates there, there were reasons why, the hustle was agreeable, a constant coming and going.. impossible to supervise. Especially around the entrance gate where the mob never lets up. coming and going day and night. All the buses pass Mile End. So I went and took up my post there opposite, right under the blue gas lamp.. Boro was corpulent, but very nimble in a brawl… He had a knack for getting out of things. Agile when he felt like it. frisky. Up and away!. he wasn’t long in joining me!. A big supple cat. He made his way between the scrappers, he went through the storm, the terrible tornado of blows. The riot was awful all through La Vaillance! a hurricane of lunatics! I realized it from the other side!.. Breaking things, hitting the walls, the window suddenly smashed! fell into splinters, spattered the street! What a whirlwind! A vile din! enough to wake the Lord Mayor!..

The women were yelping loudest! and the little children in the dark! waiting for the head of the family.. "Mummy!.. Mummy!..” They already saw themselves orphans!

Boro came hobbling up, he’d been banged ow! ow! right on his left kneecap! he was bleeding. we looked at his knee in the light. What it is to go through a massacre!. He’d lost his hat, the topper of wrath!.. It was worth the trouble! We said we’d never go back to La Vaillance, a damned dive! a shithouse! even with its mahogany, its famous bars! the railings! Boy, oh boy! a horror! just a flashy clip-joint! lousy, criminal! Where they beat up your friends! where cops behave like pigs!

Our serious opinion.

liet’s say you’re coming from Piccadilly. You get off at Wapping. I’ll have to show you the way. You wouldn’t find it. It’s on the left when you get out of the "Tube”.. between the Freezers.. It’s a kind of narrow street.. brick walls, a string of little houses on both sides, all in a line.. like weekdays… no end to it.. there it starts again… a raft of them… an eternity of houses.. not one bit of fantasy.. two-family, every one of them… a narrow door to the pavement… a brass knocker. and so on for streets and more streets.. eastbound, northbound. Plymouth Street.. Blossom Avenue.. Orchard Alley.. Neptune Commons.. scads of the same family.. All of it nicely aligned, proper.. Some people may say it’s dreary. Depends on the day, time of year. With a little shot of sunshine it becomes sweety-weety, it dolls up.. There’s starvation.. That’s one thing.. The window sills, the windows, are full of geraniums.. keeps you happy.. it’s the bricks that’re monotonous.. greasy… sticky with smoke all around.. stench of fog, of coal tar.. The smell of damp sulphur, of moist tobacco over there towards the docks, gets under your hair, clothes you. Of honey, too. It’s all things that just come to you, can’t explain to you, can’t explain talking about ’em. And the fairyland of children! That’s what sticks in your memory!..

When you get to know the spots, at the first smile of the sun, everything bursts out laughing and whirls around… A frolic! A saraband! It’s the elves’ ball from one end of Wap-ping to the other!. Tumbling from balcony to porch! on the run! on the sly!. Girls and boys!. loser wins!. try to beat that. A hundred mischievous and saucy games. The tots right in the middle. hand in hand..ring-a-ring-o’roses. darling brats of the fog. so happy about a day with no rain. more playful merry divine and nimble than dream cherubs!. And all around dirty make-believe hoodlums pestering the girls.. bullying the people going by.. the squealing monsters!

Policeman! Policeman! don’t touch me!

I have a wife and a family!

Other rascals up and charge! grab the girls by the pigtails!..

How many children have you got?

Five and twenty is my lot!

And then the ring starts hollering and shrieking again at the top of their voices.. ferocious hoarse urchins.. And then this rather bouncy one that’s danced two by two..

Dancing Dolly had no sense!

She bought a fiddle for eighteen pence!

And so many other pretty and fresh and funny and dainty songs that dance in my memory… all on the wings of youth.. And so for everything at the bottom of these alleys as soon as the weather isn’t too bad.. not quite so cold, not quite so bleak over the Wapping section between Poplar and Chinatown. Then sadness melts away in little gray piles in the sun.. I’ve seen lots of them melting that way from sadness, the streets verily full of them, delighting in the water running down the gutter..

Pert brisk little girl with golden muscles!. Keener health!. whimsical leap from one end of our troubles to the other! At the very beginning of the world the fairies must have been young enough to have ordained only extravagance. The world at the time all whimsical marvels and peopled with children, all games and trifles and whirls and gewgaws! A spray of giggles!.. Happy dances!. carried off in the ring!

I remember their pranks as if it were yesterday. their impish farandolas along the streets of sorrow those days of pain and hunger..

Glory be to their memory! Cute little monkey-faces! Imps of the pale sun! Misery! You will always well up for me, in gentle whirls, laughing angels in the gloom of the age, as in your alleys in times gone-by, no sooner shall I close my eyes.. the cowardly moment when everything dims. Thus Death, still, thanks to you, dancing a bit. expiring music of the heart!. Lavender Street!.. Daffodil Place!.. Grumble Avenue!. dank alleys of despair. The weather never really very fine, the round and the farandola of the fog pits between Poplar and Leeds Barking.. Little elves of the sun, light shockheaded band, fluttering from shadow to shadow!.. crystal facets of your laughter. sparkling all around, and your cheeky teasing. from one danger to another!. Startled faces right in front of the huge drays!.. Champing dray horses grinding the echo!. Enormous hairy pasterns. belong to Guinness and Co., one fright to another!. Little dream girls!.. lively as larks on the wing!. soar!. flutter o’er the lanes!. in the mist. in the sticky black gum!. Warwick Commons! Cari-bon Way where the frightened hobo roams. sniffling along the gutters. clad in fear!. and the minstrel, the fake soot-smeared darky, harlequin rags.. prowling around here, there, everywhere.. banjo in his fist.. t.b. voice.. from one fog.. from one mist to another.. jigging a sore foot for a penny,

for tuppence!.. the back-somersault!.. three coughs one after another!. spits reddish and goes off a way toward the gray of the clouds… far as the streets can see.. and then again another stretch of hovels. Hollyborn Street.. Falmouth Cottage. Hollander Place. Bread Avenue!. All of a sudden rings out the alarm, way off over there!.. from the end of the rooftops. the moan of the ship!. At the far other end of things!.. Watch out, bums on the lookout!. Watch out, peeping Toms and snoopers!. Vermin, cockeyes, wretches of bad luck!.. ship rats! pepper-red mugs! toothless stumpy riffraff! Flabby-armed good-for-nothings!. Whore lice! Load of stinkers! the Spirit of Water summons you!. Don't you hear its exquisite voice?. Shake a leg, carrion, and get going!. All pouring from the gangplank!. All ages!. origins!.. foul races! the scum of the four Universes! black, white, yellow and chocolate! Rogues of all kinds! No question about it! All cankers! All vices! Politely with a curtsy!. Please do!.. Flinching and funking and shying at the moment. Curse it! dodging to trammel the maneuver! religiously, skullcapfuls.. On with the punishment! with the flogging!.. souse that he be!. Truce to vehemence!. To your stations, men!.. Swarm of cables! traps shut, bolted, dumfounded, transposed, agog with excitement!.. prostrated at the prodigious spectacle of the fragilities of landing, of the subtle miracle!. the big bundle of packing falls right on the dot! on the dock! ropes taut! groans stop! grind crush, between port and dock. Let us pray! O what a moment! A tiny click! a thread too much! a bellyful of boat busts!. O Ship!. anyone not left breathless. just looking at it. is a dirty slut of a dungy cow’s ass! dead and done for! to drown without a gulp! pronto! not in the waves he blasphemes, but under immensities of crap, a hundred thousand truckloads of dull piss! That’s it! Song without words!

"Shame upon him! Shame upon his accursed ill-begotten henchmen!. May the Door close forever upon that vomit! Scandal in the Seamen’s Palace! A mess to the mutts! ”

You said it! This way! I’ll go first..

Let’s make it snappy!. Shake a leg! Two more blind alleys, a completely deserted market. and then the rubble of a fire. and then a tiny little square, a lamppost right in the middle, three putrid houses, ought to be torn right down, another that still holds its own, it’s the North Pole Shop where Tom Tackett would take my pennies, he used to hold them for me day after day, weeks when I used to do little odd jobs here and there.. on the Docks, easy chores because of my arm, my leg. At the sideshows with Boro in order to pick up a few cents for necessities… a couple of shirts, pair of new soles, a wool sweater. Tom Tackett, foresight itself, he had everything in his shop, he’d hold my dough for me, I wouldn’t have kept anything by myself, I’d draw a little at the end of the month. "Ship Chandlers,” that was his game, everything for the sailor, everything the crew needs, and the captain. Jackknives, all sorts of boots, and lanterns, flares of all colors, and then gamy smoked meat and pickling brine that sticks in the memory, that I haven’t digested yet.

I’m doddering around like an old bumblebee, I’m all tangled up in the air, Ah sees it, I ain’t tellin’ things in the right order, what about it! You’ll excuse me somewhat, kidding about my memories, digressing from rhyme to reason, jabbering away about my friends instead of showing you around!.. Let’s go! and let’s keep going!. Let me show you around nicely.. straying neither right nor left!.. Let s bear northwest right off!.. We’ll follow the walls of the Temple.. "The Disciples and the Anabaptist,” the Temple all yellow inside its railings, the bells chime only Sundays and no great shakes! just three-four strokes!.. Here around the big lot all green and black..

A puddly stretch of white and pink jerseys. where it’s the color that’s pretty.. Some of them all blue or all purple.. the Poplar team for instance. gets them excited easy. The wad-chewing fans boo the enemy team, bad going and they get sore! And then come bloody brawls all because of a little lost ball!. Like I tell ya!. It ends in a slaughter for a contested place kick. There’s dirty playing, sorehead sport, specially the Italians, who’re cocks o’ the walk in all the pubs from Limehouse to Poplar. a clan playing on the team, tribefuls of them sweating away on West Docks. A population that’s carried away… It served another purpose too, the slimy Anabaptist lot. We buried our tubes of opium in its mounds, in the ratholes, the cane boxes, the dope from the river, the fine contraband, that the Chinese flutters back and forth at the porthole, day or night. Fffftt!. It’s gone!. The boat slips gently off.. almost to a stop.. veers at the lock.. the pilot fools around with his dial. "Ding! Dang! Derang! Dong!..” A second!. A breath!. Box hits the water! Plunk!. Spray! Dope overboard!. Get it back!. At first I didn’t feel a damned thing! Came close to missing it a lot of times!.. Blind as a bat!.. Yessirree! Boro’s the one who wised me up!.. He showed me the fine points of the game.. Have to heave off right on the dot. The porthole spits out. Zzpp!

.. shoots out!.. Plop! in the water!.. Courier of the Waves!

the accomplice!. the dinghy darts off!.. let ’er go.. and snap it up!. c’mon, scull ’er!. I got it!. Keep to the side! Fish out the bundle. Watch it!. go look!. Scram!

… beat it… to the wharves.. stick in the shadow.. duck the bulls… lay low.. head for the mist!..

I’m telling you all these details because subdued in memory they lie lightly on the years. they gently enchant you to death, that’s their advantage. There’s sorcery for you, really there, tangible, lined by the water!. I’m warning you!.. A lot of good it’ll do you!.. Let’s forget it!..

After the strings of houses, after the unvarying streets through which I gently accompany you, the walls rise up.. the warehouses, all-brick giant ramparts. Treasure cliffs!.. monster shops. phantasmagoric storehouses, citadels of merchandise, mountains of tanned goatskins enough to stink all the way to Kamchatka! Forest of mahogany in thousands of piles, tied up like asparagus, in pyramids, miles of materials!

.. rugs enough to cover the Moon, the whole world… all the floors in the Universe!.. Enough sponges to dry up the Thames! What quantities!.. Enough wool to smother Europe beneath heaps of cuddly warmth. Herrings to fill the seas! Himalayas of powdered sugar.. Matches to fry the poles!.. Enormous avalanches of pepper, enough to make the Seven Floods sneeze!.. A thousand boatloads of onions, enough to cry through five hundred wars. Three thousand six hundred trains of beans drying in covered hangars more colossal than the Charing Cross, North and Saint Lazare stations put together. Coffee for the whole planet!. enough to give a lift during their forced marches to the four hundred thousand avenging conflicts of the fightingest armies in the world.. never again sitting, snoring, exempt from sleep and eating, hypertense, storming, exalted, dying in the charge, hearts unfolded, borne off to superdeath by the hyperpalpitating superglory of powdered coffee!.. The dream of the three hundred fifteen emperors!..

Still more buildings, more enormous, for the loads of cheap meat, preserved carcasses in dry freezers, in mustard sauce, in prodigious venison, myriads of sausages with chopped rind as high as the Alps! *.. Corned-beef fat, giant masses that would cover Parliament and Leicester and Waterloo so that you wouldn’t see them stuck underneath, they’d be swamped so fast! two mammoths all stuffed with truffles just transported from the River Love, preserved, intact in ice, refrigerated for twelve thousand years!..

I’m now talking about jam, really colossal sweetness, forums of jars of mirabelle plums, surging oceans of oranges, rising up on all sides, overflowing the roofs, fleetloads from Afghanistan, sweet golden loukoums from Istanbul, pure sugar, all in acacia leaves.. Myrtles from Smyrna and Karachi.. sloes from Finland.. Chaos, vales of precious fruits stored behind triple-doors, incredible choice of flavors, exquisite sugared Arabian Nights’ magic in amphora jars, eternal joys for childhood promised from the depths of the Scriptures, so dense, so eager that sometimes they crack the wall, they’re squeezed in so thick, burst the sheet metal, roll into the street, cascade right into the gutter! in pleasant torrents and delights!. Then the mounted police come charging in, clear the area, the view, lash the looters with blackjacks. It’s the end.of a dream!..

Immediately on the other side of these docks there’s the big violent sweep of air whirling in from the green heights of the valley in Greenwich.. the big bend in the river.. the gusts from the sea.. from the pale-dawn estuaries below.. after Barking.. lying just below the clouds.. where the tiny cargoes come up. where the waves break against the jetties, splash, fall back, swoon into the mud.. The ebbing tide. It all depends on the kind of thing you like!.. I say it in all simplicity!. The sky. the gray water. the purplish shores.. it’s all so soothing.. No control of one or the other. gently drawn round. in slow circles and eddies, you’re always charmed further off toward other dreams… all to expire in lovely secrets, toward other worlds getting ready in veils and mists with big pale and fuzzy designs among the whispering mosses.. Are you following me?

Farther off in the current toward Kindall, you see the worrying barges, cutters and sloops ready to tack, loaded to list.. All the morning’s vegetables, the whole cargo of "perishables,” carrots, potatoes, cauliflowers, high as the yard, doubling in the wind, struggling broadside toward the city, Housewives’ Cape!.. Not much traffic at the moment, except the citrus fruits, bargefuls, tide downstream around seven o’clock!.. water up to the arches, far as the channel of Major Bridge when the weighbridge loosens up, lifts, grinds, breaks in two!

.. the Australian Mail sweeps in with high, slow majesty, strutting to the river, its black bow cutting clean through the spray, its frilly train of a thousand waves, rippling off, lapping the pebbles..

A few more steps toward the pier, please!. and then a detour outside the tide gate and here we are again at the towing.. the sticky passway, all slimy, seaweed, watch out!.. A bit lower down, on the pebbles, we inch forward on eggs!.. feeling our way!. here and there. Now we’re in front of a tunnel.. Better say a kind of sewer, we go down into it, we’re swallowed up! we climb the dozen steps. and we come out right into a pub. Not much, but still and all roomy! a pub that can hold, all the shutters closed, around forty or fifty people. You’ve got to know how to get there. Better arrive at low tide, that way no one sees or knows, or at night from a boat, high tide, and easy does it now!. It’s picturesque!

The Dingby Cruise, the pub I’m telling about, the name on its license, between Colonial Docks and Trom.

Not much of it’s left, I can tell you right now, it ended in a disaster, you’ll hear about it as you keep reading.

Besides, now with the bombs probably nothing’s left at all, even the ashes must have blown away. It’s too bad! I’ve got to remember about everything! I’d have gone back to take a look!

Really a pretty orderly pub and well known around the three piers, and not bad, nor criminal, there were much worse kinds!. Mostly dockers, regular customers, workers, with a handful of smugglers, naturally, you always find some. A small school of hoodlums.

The boss wasn’t talkative. Agreeable, obliging, but reserved. He didn’t get confidential. You’d start the talking… His gestures which always amazed me, a knack of catching glasses, sometimes four or five at a time, in the air, like flies, juggling them! never breaking a saucer, trapeze artist. Must have been a performer at one time, rope dancer, not allowed now on the public stage, a fine metier lost. Besides his pub, did some pawnbroking on the side for the drunks, handled dope a little, too. I can’t deny that. He took commissions, deals that had to be handled just right and never the slightest slipup! discreet with the cops! never a word out of him! That’s rare in the underworld.

We hung out regularly in the joint, at least in the early days. The place was practical for us, right near the Wapping buses and yet in the center of the docks. It was a rare location. You could get away by the bank when the dicks from the Yard came around, when you heard their graceful steps. their shoes squeaking… all over the cobblestones… As for the others, the River Police, when they were snooping around the pylons with their motor boats, ptup! ptup!. sly motor. velvet fart.. slip through faultlessly.. makes you want to crap. would last more than an hour, the time for their job, to go up to the locks and then back. Always that to the good! What rats, I see them, mangy rats between river and bank, I never could stand them. the supreme scum, earth and waves!. Real water garbage!.. The River Police!.. Beyond the bounds of treachery!.. And I’m not telling everything!.. I boil with rage thinking about them!. I get steamed up!. I go haywire just talking about them!. at the memory!.. It’s not polite!.. Shame, shame!.. Sorry!.. No way to act I realize!.. not very artistic… or reasonable… I bring you back to the table… I welcome you!.. I offer you something! inside with everyone. I’m not going upstairs. I’m setting you up on the main floor.. It’s a long room, that’s all.. with partitions for the pub.. dark, sticky, but warm around the stove.. you appreciate it during the season… the boss handles the orders himself. Prosper can manage it… He doesn’t need bouncers like the Mile End saloons. at La Vaillance for example..

You cough slightly when you come in because of the thick smoke.. also because it’s the custom.. it’s opaque all the way to the back of the room.. and as far as the bay window on the Thames.. the little wide panes.. Got to get right against them to see clear. Prospero Jim’s at the bar. He’s squint-eyed but he sees his people all right.. He’s a flash size-up artist.. He’s not too keen on me.. He must be a little jealous..

"The rope, you understand?” he reminds me. "That tells everything… Right, my boy? The rope! That’s the whole story!..”

Talking about his old job perks him right up. dancer in the Bordington Company, the big world-wide circus, a month in every city, record sellouts, always the same triumph, flowers, cigars, and girls galore.. He had just about one joke, always the same, about the sun. When it was pouring outside he never let up with it..

"Lovely weather, my Lord! Lovely smile! London sun! Don’t you think so?”

He’d shoot it from the bar at everyone who came in, that was his Italian’s revenge, they called him Ravioli, he came down hard on the z’s.

"Here, you zee, it only rains twize a year!.. But zix monthz at a time!”

He knew all about the river, the people, the ways, the trafficking, just as he did about his pub and his customers. He was always suspicious of newcomers… he was afraid of anything that prowls… He wasn’t a bad sort, but soured because of the climate… he made dough, that was all.. He wanted to go back to the sun. Home to Calabria, and well-heeled! That was his program. It didn’t happen by itself. There were hard deals!..

"Big? Fat?” he’d ask me.

That was how he felt me out. I could see what he was insinuating. If I’d got something from the boat. If I’d answered right off, I’d have done myself harm.. Had to grunt at him just so, "Ooh!. Oh!..” anxious, not slobbering. a good impression. our way of talking, French style, did us a lot of harm. Answered "Hm! hm!” He’s got a good opinion of me. We’re going to sit down in the daylight at the long table against the window. time passes… the customers doze a bit.. Some of them even snore. It’s the fatigue, and then the smoke and the stout dulls you… A pint in each fist.. It’s a sort of maneuver. They’re waiting for the whistle to blow again at the Poplar wharves, for the noise to start up again, shrieking, for the trucks to unload.. then a dash to the storerooms! tearing away everywhere! disappearing into the works, the big uproar starts again, they’re sweating away inside, grunting with effort, knocking themselves silly, groaning, working punch-drunk at full steam! Chnooff!.. Chnooff!!.. Chnooff!!

.. the crane winds up, swings, carries off the slops!.. it goes up! down! it dusts! a whirl of junk! Still got time to see how things’re shaping up! the tide starts floundering out around eight o’clock. The clients don’t gab much!. they’re sort of dozing with fatigue.. they’re waiting.. Just have to be on the lookout from time to time, to keep an eye on things, on the flats beyond.. toward the trees… the break around the bend.. toward Greenwich after Gallions Rock where the ships come up with the pilots on the ebbing tide.. Nor’west-nor’-west. little ones first right at the head. the measly plunderers, the caravan.. the big ones afterward, the mastodons, the steamers, the sober buzzing with triple-echoed sirens.. the hoarse one.. the bassoon, the ailing. the Indias.. The P. and O.’s. they blast out!. majesty!. What Lords! the mail boat! the clients tear out of the joint! A rush to the moorings!

The ship’s pulling in!. The pub empties in a second!.. all the clients on the rungs!.. to the sculls! and I know you!.. at the stem! at the rails!

The Mate’s looking out from up above.

"Fifty going up!”

The Mate bawls out to the echo..

"Two extra!..”

Go to it, riffraff! jump windward!. Getting crushed! killing themselves on the ropes!..

The dockers climb up.

The big propeller’s churning at their asses!.. Prroof!!.. Prroof!!. Prroof!!. grinding through the mush! bulging bubbles!..

Telegraphing. from the bridge: Ding! Ding! Ding!..

"All astern!”

Easy does it! big tremble!. Nearing the dock!. groans at the side!.. slowly pulls in.. Tucks in there, tiny-enormous. docks!. It’s ready!. Oof! It’s over!. A big bellyfull of sigh. Oof! Oof! Over! Over! big little-boat!. Sad, the end of the music.. Sorrow comes down on it!.. Back to port!.. All tied up everywhere by a thousand ropes.. Pain covers everything over. blots it out. Stop!

r

\Jascade was at home and in such a boil that no one dared open his mouth. After all he liked his crew and the gals in particular. There were nine of them around him, some nice, some big, some skinny, and two who were pretty awful to look at, Martine and La Loupe, I got to know them well later on, they always had the best takes, his charm-champs, what scarecrows. Men’s tastes are a hash, they stick their noses anywhere, they bring back cockeyes, hags, they think they’re cream puffs, that’s their affair, it’s not yours, they’ll never know, so let ’em screw.

They twaddled away, a regular birdhouse, jabbering, squealing, enough to make you dizzy, on edge for a fight, you couldn’t hear yourself. Cascade wanted it to stop, he had a speech ripe, important things. He was dashing around in shirt sleeves, he was yelling for it to stop, for them to shut up. A pearl-gray form-fitting vest, tight pants, a spitcurl flat against his forehead nicely twisted down to his eyebrows, he still looked pretty good, he stood his ground all right, he’d stopped trying to be a lady-killer, just a little with his mustache, his handle bars, he must’ve been quite slick in the old days! But he was getting gray, he’d changed, especially since the big worries, the beginning of the war, he couldn’t stand screeching, especially the girls’ yapping, he’d fly right off the handle.

There were decisions had to be made..

"After all, I can’t pimp for all of you!.. God damn it! ”

They were laughing at his troubles.

"I’ve got four of my own! That’s enough! That’s my load! Am I the Chabanais? I don’t want any more, Angele! you hear me? I don’t want another single one!”

He was refusing women.

Angele must have smiled. Her man looked comical yelling away. A serious woman Angele, his real one, who ran his stable, she had a tough time.

"I’m not crazy, Angele! I’m not Pelican! Where’s it going to end? Where’m I going to hide them all if this goes on? What do I look like? What’s got to be has got to be! All right! but what the hell! let it stay as is! The Sharp wasn’t beating his brains out. he cleared out just two days ago. he’d been looking for me, the fairy..starts bending my ear. He tries to reason with me: Take mine, Cascade! you’re a pal! the only one I’ve got confidence in! I’m a-off to war!’ he tells me. 'I’m a-off to fight!’. Well go!

'You’re a pal! I know you! It’s a break!’ No sooner said than done!.. Satchel! The gentleman beats it, doesn’t even turn around! A job lot, a gal on my hands! Poor Cascade! One better! No time to grunt! I’m all swelled up! 'I’m a-off to war!’ that’s all there’s to it! Cool as a cucumber! 'I’m in it all right,’ he tells me, 'the Sappers! 42nd Engineers!’ All is forgiven! The gentleman gives another encore! The gentleman looks like a young man! The gentleman’s getting rid of his worries! Woman trouble for me, and how!.. I say to myself 'The Sharp saw me! He’s taking advantage of the circumstance! He’s appointing me goodhearted manager!’ I didn’t like that kind of trick! Let me tell you I was pretty sore! I left and went toward the Regent. I said to myself 'I’m going to wake up the bookie, got an idea. Four o’clock! that’s the time for the Royal! Pay-off time! I’m going to drop in and get my money from him! A wad! Stuttering Phil owes me a pile! He’s not in much of a hurry! I’m going to scare the hell out of him!’ Who do I bump into at the door but Jojo!.. He goes at me right away… in some state!.. What heat! I say to myself he’s drunk!. Not at all!. He’d just enlisted! Another one! He was shooting his mouth off.. ’Cascade,’ he says, 'take my Pauline!’. Begs me just like that!. He grabs hold of me!

.. 'You’ll be doing me a favor!.. and also Josette and Cle-mence! ’. Ah! that was the limit, I started gagging! 'Wh-wh-what?’ I said. He didn’t let me finish. 'I’m leaving tonight! I’m joining the 22nd in Saint Lo!’. Like that! Bang! No time to say ouch!. He grabbed me. strangled me!. In the stomach!. I couldn’t refuse him!..

'You’ll send me my share! You’ll keep your little fifty!’ That’s the way he talked to me!.. 'But keep an eye on Pauline,’ he comes back and says. 'She goes to sleep on blonds!

Break her ribs, you’ll be doing me a favor!. She’s not lazy, but you’ve got to reason with her a little!. Well, I’m going, pal!. Say hello to the boys. The train leaves at midnight! ’… 'Don’t get killed!’ I answered… And that makes two!.. I had a mean look on my face!.. The situation was getting worse… I sat down… I ordered a vermouth. Sluts!

.. They don’t let me breathe! along comes Poigne who sits down at the next table. I act a little deaf at first, she shakes me, calls me. Poigne, you know, from Piccadilly! the one who does the bar with her daughter, she starts plaguing me. 'Cascade, I’m counting on you!’. Another one!. She wasn’t listening to my opinion. 'Take care of my kid and her cousin! neither of them has a passport!.. I’m going to meet my guy in Fecamp, he’s been away for three weeks, he’s setting up a house in Brittany, I don’t know where yet, but it’s nice! ’ That’s how she begins. 'It’s for the Americans! You’re not leaving! Do me the favor!.. ’ 'Of course, of course! ’ I answered! Yours truly a sucker again!. I couldn’t refuse her either. Poigne’s a remarkable woman, not many like her, few like her in the w^rorld! A real model for pimps!.. regular and simple and sociable, no sleeping around! Straight as a die, obliging and everything! I’ve known her twenty-two years!.. I said, 'All right, bring your slaves around!.. but watch out for the mixtures!.. I don’t want them spoiling my babes! I’ve got enough trouble holding ’em.. Vice is the death of work!

a little dykish, all right!. but too much is too much!’.. that’s how I talked.

'I agree, Cascade,’ she answers. ‘Beat ’em up! Don’t be shy! It’s all right! I know your principles! ’.. I said to myself, Good! War profits!. Now are they going to let me the hell alone?.. Still and all they all ought to be gone by now, joined their ferocious outfits! Drums, trumpets and God damn!.. In Berlin right this very minute! Musn’t have any women dragging along!.. Phony fighters! Don’t be silly Nenette!. Along comes La Taupe!. Who does she talk to me about? Guess! Little-Arm Pierrot! He was just nabbed! Three years in the clink! Another bang on the head! And the lash, too! Good news! Little-Arm Pierrot! An angel! In the jug in Dartmoor! Could be! Since Friday! Damn it, they come whining to me again, that there’s not a guy around, that I’ve got to act as lawyer!. They’re counting on me!. his savior!. his friend!. his brother!. And so on and so on!. Another twenty-five pounds for yours truly! and I inherit again!. Two girls and cute! La Taupe and Raymonde!. Two hard workers!. My lucky star!. Promise made, promise kept! Bring the dames along! It’s Pierrot’s first slipup! Tough luck, I say! Things not getting better! His first muff! I can sniff trouble! No mistake about Pierrot’s women, with their vices and whatnot, if they make three pounds a day it’s the end of the world!

He’s passing ’em on to me cheap! I was the one who sold ’em to him. I know something about ’em!.. They weren’t broken in yet!.. I wasn’t going to say anything! a man in need… Of course!.. Still they cost three hundred quid all raw and I’m not talking about linen! Before I’d get my money back from the bitches, Pierrot’d be wearing a wig, he’d have made a pile of slippers over there on the moor! Beg your pardon! His women won’t have any more customers. I could fatten ’em up for twenty-five years! I know ’em, nothing’ll help ’em! You’d think they ate fog!. Dried-out string beans!.. Well, there’s got to be some like that!. It’s a pain in the ass to have ’em back! They’re just the servant-girl type! And what about Quenotte? Another fine yegg, the one who put ’em on my hands!. Boy do I remember that bird!. Came from Bordeaux! With that accent, and the way he hit the bottle!. Quenotte! boy! what a crook!.. His women were no better than he was!. That’s a type I don’t like!. women pickpockets!.. Business is business!.. Mustn’t mix one line with another! But watch out, I’m getting mixed up!. I’m getting lost, can’t help it!.. Then along comes Max.. He jumps at my neck. I was in the middle of thinking.

'I’ll take the saucers,’ he shouts. 'Listen to me, Cascade! Listen to me! I’m leaving tonight!’. Another one, I think. 'Where for?’ I ask. I’d stopped being surprised. ‘I’m joining up in Pau!’..

'In Pau?’ I laugh. Everyone at the table busts out laughing. 'Naked!’[2] His mug tight.

He jumps up sore! He starts raving. 'Dopes! Dopes!’ he yells. 'You gang of fairies! You got nothing in your pants! Rejected!. Aren’t you? Rejected!’

You’d think he was talking to me. Ah! that’s the limit!

But I wasn’t keeping him from leaving! Why’d he insult me?.. Another one for Alsace-Lorraine! It gives me a bellyache! Good-by! A bang on the bean!.. I didn’t want to hear the rest!. I cleared out. I jumped up from my seat! I tore out! right in front of me!.. Like all sixty!.. I thought I was saved!.. Keep quiet! I went into Berlemont’s.. Bob was at the bar with Bise… I didn’t want them to talk to me, I dashed through the alley with the tailor shops, came out on the other side, Soho. Who do I run into? You tell me! The one chance in a thousand!. Into Picpus and Berthe, his gal!. The one from Douai!.. I know her all right! she’s a ball and chain! A gift! I don’t want any! I say to myself he’s going to stick me with her! It’s my day, it’s the style!.. Bang! Doesn’t fail!.. He takes me in hand.. 'Ah, you loafer, you wouldn’t do that to me! ’… He wants to kid me along!.. He begs me!.. 'You’re the only one left and the Wops. they’re going to take the bread out of our mouths!. You’re our last hope! Cascade! they’re going to take away all our breadwinners!. If you drop your friends, they’ll be the only ones left and the Corsicans! We’ll be done for!.. It’ll be awful!.. It’ll be death!.. Doesn’t that get you?. Where’s your heart?’. It was sure as shootin’!. he was strangling me!..'What about you, you rats?’ I shoot back. 'Why’re you running away?. panic?’. 'You, you’ve got varicose veins and albumin!’ he answers. 'You can talk calmly!..’

I’d told him once.

'You, you’re all drunk!’ I snapped, 'and sick and dead, crazy drunk! You’ve been eating bugle!’

I wasn’t satisfied in the end.

He wanted to reason with me anyway.

'Don’t you understand the blues?.. That we’re in the dumps?. Don’t you realize anything?. The blues? Want me to make a drawing for you? We’re mopey! Don’t you get mopey?. Take a look at the guys around you!’ He mentioned Le Bubu, La Croquette, Grenade, Tartouille, Jean Maison and The Sharp. They left in order to get there!. That’s proof!..

'And my brother who’s on leave got the military medal.. He’s in the Cahors Regiment!

'So what? What does that prove? That it’s the one who gets most wacked up!.. you’ll all croak and feet first! That’s where your brains are! Not up there! Down there! I’m telling you!

And with shit on your kisser!’

'All right,’ he says, 'go on, work yourself up, Cascade! it does you good! I won’t get sore!. But take Berthe! I swear that’s all I’m asking!.. But then it’s definite, you know her! I’m putting her in your hands!.. It’s hell getting her to take care of herself but God knows she needs it!.. ’

It’s true she was dragging around a bad dose of syph, the kind you don’t see often… I knew all about it.. that she couldn’t get rid of it! The doctors, boy! they’d lap up her case! Sores all over ’er!.. Berthe had cost her weight in gold just for injections, buboes.. But that was his affair, wasn’t it!.. Sometimes three months easily in the hospital for a bubo. Times when she was rotting away everywhere, chancres even in her ears. Berthe and Picpus, they’re a whole world!.. Got to see how he handles her when there’s really an argument. He once broke three of her ribs!. Always because she’s stubborn and won’t go to the doctor. Women who don’t take care of themselves are repulsive!.. 'I don’t want to go for my blood test!’. What bellyaching!. W~ah!..Wah!

All blah!. What crap!. Me, I go to the doc all right!..And not since yesterday!.. for fifteen years! regular! I haven’t skipped a single time!. Health first!. Why the hell should the women get out of it? Because they just don’t feel like it? You listening? 'Ah! so I don’t wash my ass!. I’m pretty, people like me! ’.. What you get for picking up kitchen-maids! They’re plain filthy! They drag around!. get full of muck! never in a hurry! never put their ass in water!. I’m keeping the lot and that’s that! Syph and the rest!.. never see a bidet if their men weren’t always after ’em, rough with ’em. They’d rot from head to foot! Ah! the customers don’t realize the trouble a woman means!.. The way they’re so anxious to be sick and disgusting! Nice and veiled, all primped up, always natty! But when it comes to the squoosh! the hell with that!

they don’t give a good God damn!. Berthe’s worse than the others!.. Really got to have class, and more!.. It’s not every pimp! hmph! when it comes down to knowing his goods!

I’m telling you!. Picpus insists right off. 'Take my Berthe!’ He hands me a line. He’s dead set on it!. 'Take her on trial!.. She makes whatever she wants at the Empire. You won’t have trouble! Fifty-fifty!’ Still and all it hurts bad to see a pal leave that way when no one asked him for anything..

I argue with him all the same.

'What are you running away for, you poor dope? You want to leave your place to the others? There’s a real boom on now! You can rake in all you want!. It’s lousy with dough!.. Never had so much work in London! Ask Red!.. Been with us thirty years! Never saw the likes! You make a pile in a single day! furloughs all over the place! The girls come back loaded with dough!.. You’ll have your house in Nogent! You’ll be able to leave in six months. Just a little patience!

You’ve got your chance!. Now you beat it! It’s a gold mine! You’re getting dumb! dopey! You’re hurting me, Picpus! Go on, get your equipment! You disgust me! That’s what! You make me sick! ’

What else could I say? That’s how I talked!.. He wasn’t even listening!. He starts all over about his girl!. Both of them were there, Berthe and Picpus, on the sidewalk. They sure looked like dopes!. 'Go on!’ I said. 'Get away! That’ll do! you're crazy! It’s over!.. Let me have your punk! I don’t want to take advantage of your weakness!.. But be careful! No finagling and no monkey-business! If she doublecrosses me while you’re away, I’ll hand her over to Luigi!. He asked me for some!’

I knew she couldn’t stand him.

Luigi the Florentine! he knows how to train them!.. He sure can handle his women!.. Picpus is velvet compared to him. You’ve just got to see Luigi’s bunch! Both hands, all his fingers broken!. Smack!.. that’s it! At the edge of the sidewalk at the first slipup!.. Streetwalker! Smack! she gets it!. Penance!. Not a murmur!. You’ve just got to see his breadwinners. I assure you they watch their step! they’re on their toes. They don’t take their gloves off!. They do Tottenham. I assure you they don’t feel like laughing! Berthe! that burp! soon as you talk about Luigi… He almost pimped for her once! You can imagine!.. 'No! No! No! Cascade! I’ll be all right!.. I swear! I’ll never bother you! ’

'All right! All right, Berthe! We’ll see!’… That’s how I talked. I wasn’t very encouraging…

'Beat it, you! It’s agreed!. Only you’re just a worm! And don’t forget it! that’s all I’m saying!’

'I don’t give a damn as long as you give her back to me! I’m crazy about her! ’

It’s like dope, I tell you!

'When I get back it’ll be cushy!’ He was slobbering and raving. He talked to me like the Salvation Army!.. 'What we need is real Victory! Alsace-Lorraine, my boy! I want to see Berlin, you old sourpuss!

That’s how he talked!..

'Balls! that’s what you’ll see!. You’ll spit your little guts out..France has been getting along without you! There’re already seven or eight million over there getting smashed up! Ten thousand a day kicking the bucket, big dopes like you! A little pimp like you isn’t going to change things! Remember what I’m telling you!. You’ll be just a crap in the hay.. You won’t even be seen any more!. Your lousy war’s either lost or won. You’re just a blank!.. Glamor!. Do you have to die for that? Anybody asking your advice?’

'You’re talking crap, Cascade, you don’t know a thing!.. You going to keep her for me? Yes or no? My Berthe? My love?’

We’d have kept on arguing.

'Go on!’ I said. 'You’re raving! You’ve got it coming to you! Let the damned Fritzes knock hell out of you! ’

Another stripe on my arm!.. I get all the luck! I’m running a garage! Got all the chickens! I’ve got a head, etcetera!.. Where’m I going to put ’em?. It worries me!”

Big Angele was listening to it all, she could take his temper.. she saw her man getting worked up.. there were pros and cons. She could have put a word in. because after all she had a right to. being his woman and not since yesterday.. since always, practically.. The others?.. Just little understudies to the big-shot gals.. She’d come back from America just two weeks before with a nice roll of dollars and a cute little number she’d picked up in Vigo, just like that, at the port, a kid, a little flower girl, prettyish, but still shy, not used to it yet, she’d been pushed into it right away, the city, the mob, the cars, it was all too dark for her, the sky and the pavement, there wasn’t enough sun! It was hell and high water getting her out on the street.. Another complication.. The Portuguese was in the dumps. Cascade didn’t even look at her, just to see what she was like!.. He even wanted to ship her back!. ''I don’t want any wet blankets around!. I’m unlucky enough myself!”. And he blew up again!. He got sore at everyone again! at the war that screwed up everything! at the way things were done! at the cops! at people! at the little Portuguese! Big Angele, who hadn’t said anything, suddenly spoke up.

"You’re too good-natured, Cascade!.. You’re too good-natured!”

What was that she said?.. Boy! did that half-ass remark set him off! What a sock he took at her! Smack! Enough to stagger a donkey!. She sat down in a daze!..

"I do what I can, Cascade! I do what I can! ”

More wailing.

That made him scream at her! He was stamping with rage!

And since we were standing there and watching, we irritated him too. He yelled at us.

"There!” he says, "there’re my henchmen!. Indeed, gentlemen, indeed! I’m very kind. The gentlemen certainly think so, too!.. They’ve got good reason for running after me. The Queen!. Tootsy-wootsy Cascade! That’s how I am! Wait my little rascals! There’s some for you, too! You’ll get a look at the police! You’ll get a look at Matthew!. He’s coming back in a little while!. It’s a promise!. It’s agreed!. The Inspector from the Yard. Sergeant Matthew! Indeed! Indeed! That’s pretty! That’s fine! A scandal! The gentlemen make a scene right in Mile End! Ah! there’s going to be shit to pay in five minutes! Inspector Matthew hasn’t digested the hat!.. I might as well tell you.. Sergeant Matthew doesn’t like wise guys! Matthew the Bull, Sergeant Matthew of the Yard, Inspector Matthew, who does he come to see?.. Me, of course!

Damned sure!. That was all I needed!. We met at the Haymarket… He gets in front of me at the ticket window. He puts a pound on Chatterton. And it wasn’t the favorite!

… It surprised me a little about him… I didn’t make any remark!.. He was the one who buttonholed me. I let him start talking..

'Say, Cascade!. Don’t you know anything? There’s a war on, my dear fellow!.. There’s a war on!.. ’

A dumb remark.

'Again?’ I said. That gets him! It’s a peculiarity of his! Always the same gag since he saw my certificate!.. discharged, class of ’87. that I did my time. my seven years! that I’m not going to start all over!. I’m not bugs! like the others!.. that kind of gab, nuts to that!. they know me at the Consulate. at the Yard too!. Besides I’ve got my albumin.. with a checkup and everything.. just let ’em try and kick me out!.. that Matthew won’t get my hide, he’d sure like to see me yanked in!. For me to clear out! Ha! Small-timer!.. he’d treat me to a drink in Waterloo!. after that. he can have the cuties!.. Big-shot dealer and everything! The police don’t worry them!. hypocrites!. All the gals in bunches for the Corsicans!. for the Belgians!. for anyone!. Ah! that matter! Business fine!.. I know what that fox’s got in the back of his mind! I haven’t been on the Strand since yesterday! Beg your pardon!. No fog!. He says to himself. he’ll be drunk like the others. They’re all wacked up at the moment. they’re all bitten by the war!.. I’m going to make him ashamed!.. He’ll beat it!..Zim! Boom! Patriotic, those frogs! Beg your pardon!..A bone!. Just wait!

'Your papers!’ he asks. he’s getting sore. my papers? Papers are in order I’ll have you know!. Mr. Cascade!.. Papers!.. Papers!..

'Here, Inspector.’

'All real Frenchmen enlist!’ he starts off, looking at me.

'I agree!.. I agree!.. I grant you, Inspector!.. I’m not contradicting.. They leave their places to the clients.. Seems to be the fashion!.. But that’s pure nuts, isn’t it? Stark madness! in my opinion!. Don’t you think so Inspector?’

‘I don’t think so, Cascade!.. I don’t think so!.. ’

'The pretty war’ll go on without me, Inspector!. I feel comfortable with you, Inspector!.. No reason for me to leave you!’ And I just keep jabbering away at him!..

Ah! he says to himself.. It’s the death of the horse!..

He stands there dreaming!.. He starts hearing spirits!.. Just stands there sniffling!. Ah! the phony!. I act childish. I know the Yard all right!. dopes, but doublecrossers and stubborn!..

We talk for a while. He puts it another way..

'Yes! It’s a terrible war!’

That makes him sigh.

'Those Bodies are real savages!.. Did you see the Mirror this morning? Those photos? That atrocity? The way they cut off children’s hands?’

'Ah! It’s true, Inspector. All too true!’

'Got to kill those brutes, Cascade!’

'That’s right, Inspector!’

‘I’d go myself if I were free!.. Ah! how I wish I were free!

like you!. If I hadn’t my job!. Ah! if I were free!’ And then a shitload of sighs. the louse!

'I’m sick, Inspector! Haven’t you seen my certificate? Not strong! Delicate! Sensitive legs!’

'Sick!’ he says, 'but turbulent!’

Ah! I feel it coming. I see it’s getting fishy. I’ve annoyed him!

'Me turbulent, Inspector?.. Ah! I wouldn’t like to be that! Oh no!.. *

Ah! I protest.

'Quite well behaved I suppose?’

He’s skeptical.

‘Absolutely, Inspector! ’

What’s coming next?

'No violence? No breach of the law?’

'Oh, not at all, Inspector!’

'And what about your gang, Mr. Cascade?’

Ah! here it comes!

'My gang? my gang?…’ I’m startled. The first news! What’s he insinuating?..

'Oh! it’s going to get you into trouble! What an outfit! What riffraff, Mr. Cascade!. What a gang you’ve got!.. What reckless people! Oh! I just don’t understand you. With such roughnecks!. Ah! I’m warning you, my dear Cascade, in all sympathy!’

I didn’t see what he was driving at.

Then he starts telling me things… in detail.. the low-down tricks. the business of the hat. La Vaillance. your fight and everything. some stinker that cop!. Oh! Sister! what hot air!. I don’t say anything. I listen to him. I see what’s coming. He’s looking for trouble!. He’s been given orders, the rat!. They want to pin anarchism on me!.. That way they can deport me!. Not a word of truth!. But that’s enough!.. They invent, that’s all!.. Anything goes when the cops are after you!.. Just keep your mouth shut!.. I stop dead!. I play dumb!. I plead guilty, not proud. If I make a wrong move, I’m a goner!.. he’ll pull me in! I’m sure he’s got a warrant for me!. He’s warning me and means business!

'I don’t want to see them at La Vaillance! Your friends!’ 'Very well, very well, Inspector!.. They’re hoodlums! You’re right!. Mustn’t let ’em get away with anything!’

I agree with him.

'Neither one of them!’

'Of course not! ’

'Who’s the young one? with the arm like that?’

'He’s one of the war casualties, Inspector! A boy who’s suffered a lot. A victim of the present horrors!’

'Is Boro a victim of the present horrors too?’

He’s getting sarcastic.

'That’s his tenth offense!. And I’m sure it’s not over! He still has bombs!. I’m sure he’s still making them!. You know something about it, don’t you, Mr. Cascade? You associate with awful people! Gallows birds!. An abuser of freedom!. I’m ashamed for your sake, Mr. Cascade!’

'Oh! Inspector, if I may say so! the quietest man in the Borough!.. where there’re still some pretty bad eggs! Just between us, Inspector! let’s admit, without any hard feelings!’ That’s a stone for his garden.

'I don’t want to see them in the pubs any more!. Neither of them!. You get me?’

He doesn’t look as if he understands..

He’s obstinate!.. A swine!.

All the same, God damn it, I protest!..

'Still and all, they’re not anarchists! ’

'Damn you, Cascade! What do you need?’

'The young one’s not an anarchist!.. He doesn’t know what it is!’

He disgusts me! What a stupid accusation!

'We’ll see about that, Mr. Cascade! We’ll see!’

Stubborn, the louse! He was getting nasty!.. better not insist!.. Soon as you cross him he gets vicious. All his whiskey goes to his nose!.. Couldn’t touch him then with kid gloves!. And yet he’s got dough!. I know what he’s been costing me for fourteen years!.. He was able to build himself a house, I’m telling you, and a nice one! with my handouts!.. It’s a hell of a long time I’ve been greasing him!. In exchange he’s nabbed me only twice!.. And for two jail terms where I was perfectly innocent!.. Just plain unjust! A clean alibi! A shame! It was Tatave’s women who’d given the guy a shakedown!. Not mine! Ah! Not at all! He knew all about it, the louse! Only I owed him for a dozen matters! That squared him!.. He’d never been able to pin anything on me!

.. Had to get me!.. For honor’s sake!.. I think he’d have lost his job!. They all kidded him at the Yard! That was in Pretty-Eye’s time! Ah! there were out-of-town jobs in those days!. Boys, things were moving then!. They did a cottage a week!.. in cahoots with the maids!.. They’d bring back three or four hundred pounds!.. That was youth for you!.. They’d jump from one town to another!.. Those maids were the death of their bosses!.. Pretty-Eye, some good-looking kid!. Only the swellest homes!. Practically invited guests!. You realize?. Matthew was boiling in his pants!. all pissed up!. I had to take the rap for Tatave!. It couldn’t last forever!. He even warned me!. Got to get you, Cascade! Got to get you! Put in eleven months for Tatave!.. seven and four.. That was my share!.. I saved Matthew’s honor for him! I lost thirty-five pounds!. So I know the guy a little!.. We’ll settle accounts later on.. There’s nothing lost I’m telling you! For the time being I was nice! Didn’t want to sour things!. I shifted the conversation!. I said to him, 'Inspector, I see you’re putting something on Chatterton. It’s a good horse!. I’m not denying it!.. but. after all!..’

'Have you got something better, Mr. Cascade?’

'I sure have!. It seems to me!’. never come straight out with it in England. they think you’re scatterbrained!. 'If I may say so, I’d put something on Micky instead, Inspector! After all, there’s a better jockey up, isn’t there?…I’m not giving you any advice, Inspector!.. bear that in mind!.. I wouldn’t allow myself!.. Look, I’m putting six down for you!.. But on Micky to win! All or nothing!.. ’

He looks as if he doesn’t understand me!.. I lay down my six pounds!.. Bim! Bam! he sweeps up all the tokens! Like that, no gabbling! and bye-bye!.. I see that he catches on without a word! Total loss six pounds!.. because of you, you big fatheads!.. you! for your damned extravagances! Otherwise he’d have taken me away!.. Just an act! hot air! Just a song and dance in his pocket! Blackmail pure and simple!.. That’s the crap I’ve got to take! And you’re the cause of it!.. I can tell it to you straight to your face! Isn’t it a damned pity? Isn’t it a perfect shame that at my age I’m still knocking around for ass-holes like you?.. My gang?.. My gang?.. So it seems! Ah! hello, my gang!.. Pianists who raise hell in Mile End at four in the afternoon!. Swell! my gang!.. Yours!. God damn it! In a jam for stinkers like that! Ah! it’s awful! I’m telling you!. Justice is dead! I saw the cop in a stew!.. He was saying to himself, 'I’m waiting for you, Cascade! If you don’t cough up, you’ll get it in the neck!.. I’ll yank you in and whoops!. love!.. ’ He was picking on me!”

"You’re too good-natured, Cascade!.. You’re too good-natured!”. Angele was at it again!. a downpour. big sobs!.. hearing such stories, all the troubles of her poor man!

She can’t resist!. She leaps to his neck again! She hugs and kisses him wildly!. She gets another smack. She plops down on the couch again..

"I lose out every time!.. That’s my affair!.. I always get it in the neck!.. But I want you to stop giving me a pain in the ass!”

That’s Cascade for you!.. He lets it out! and now right away it’s poetry!..

For don’t you see that every day I love you more and more?

Today more than yesterday And less than tomorrow!

He reels it straight off.

"I learned it, you know, in Rio!”.. and oops! he flies off the handle again.

"I’ve been getting the dirty end of it, guys! I don’t dare stick my nose outside! Things are bad, boys!.. Things are bad!.. Cascade here!. Cascade there!. They want me!. They’re looking for me!. Maybe I stink?. All the dicks sniffing at me!.. And her, always yowling!.. In manilla I lose like all sixty!. At the races my nags dash backwards.. Only girls keep coming in!. There I’ve got all I want!. I’ve got to admit!..”

Berthe and Mimi were enjoying it, sprawled in the cushions choking with laughter.. Berthe, the skinny green-looking one, and Peg-leg Mimi were beneath the lamp splitting with giggles..

"Either they’re yowling or nagging, they can’t keep quiet!”

They were getting on his nerves.

"Go get the Calva! You hear me, Mimi?”

He was sending Mimi downstairs. The two of them bounce down.. Angele was sobbing with her head in her hands from the clout she’d just got, she made the whole table shake.. Cascade didn’t want to look at her.. He turned his back on her on purpose, sitting astride his chair, that’s the way he grouses… He was rocking. He was burning up inside..

At bottom, he’s proud, no doubt about it, that Matthew let him have it as if he were a big shot… it puts him up there with the real moguls!. Even so, for his six pounds!. He doesn’t give much of a damn about the six pounds!.. doesn’t come to much these days! Us, his gang! and some gang!.. Gives him real class!. Not just an ordinary guy!.. Arranging things was a little weakness of his.. He’d have gladly forked over a hundred pounds to take on that kind of weight!. With his stable?. A hundred pounds more or less!.. And ten and twelve and a hundred fifty? What the hell was that?. Matthew had taken him!. Especially with the reinforcements!. We sure were living in style!. Open house!.. fat of the land at the Leicester.. piles and piles of food!

Phonies, spongers and tramps!. A real perpetual parade!. A real boarding school..You didn’t know who or why. Someone always dropping in!. bringing others along.. pals traveling through.. girls arriving… no more chalking it up in twenty-five pubs!. always just because he was a big-timer… he didn’t know from where or how… he always settled right off!.. Man’s reputation! And then the races and the Derby where he bet damned high.. and poker with the sky the limit and the cost of medicines. That came to something! Beauty care, hairdressers, settings, all the little whatnots for women who didn’t deny themselves a thing, fancy-priced massages, Houbigant perfume! and heavier expenses, hush money for the cops who were snotty and blackmailers and devoured his money, one after the other, six, seven pounds at a clip! weekly! monthly! just in so-called small fines! In the theatres up to a dozen pounds! Week-end dough for the big jobs! And it was never enough! In short, a whale of an outlay!

It kept dribbling the hell out in all directions! Especially since the year 1914–1915 when it had become a real massacre, a gold rush, a parade of profits, since the suckers were just handing it out all over the place! Cascade was positive. Dough had to keep rolling in or he’d fold!

"The war! the war!. It’s driving ’em wild! Just take a look at ’em!.. They don’t know what they’re crapping about!.. They want all the dough!. Then they don’t want anything! They all want to leave! They can’t see straight! Their pants are on fire! Their dough’s on fire! Just take a look at my pimps! They did the damnedest things, committed crimes to bring their girls to London… If you’d said to them a year ago, 'Pal, got to beat it! Be heroic! Go back to the Bastille! Business is dead! London’s finished! ’.. they’d’ve called you King of the Loonies!. Today trumpets and tata!. You tell ’em, 'Get going, soldier-boy! Bullets a penny a dozen! Up and at ’em!’ Off they fly! They’re all raving bughouse! They can’t stop running! Just tearing off like mad! Does it make sense?.. You tell me!. They leave their women and kids behind!.. They won’t have ’em for all the money in the world! Completely nuts!.. Making dough hand over fist!.. and a couple of sure-fire rackets, besides!.. Gold galore right now! It’s being spoiled that’s killing ’em!. Pity the poor pimp! He can’t stand being stuffed with dough!.. Take my word for it!

I’m not scratching!. 'Tatave, you make me sick! your woman’s bringing in twelve pounds a day!.. It’s a crime to kill the golden goose! ’

'You!’ he says. 'Look who’s talking!. You got it easy!.. You got your albumin!

'Albumin or not! You’re just plain dumb!’ It drives me haywire listening to ’em!.. I can’t take any more of it!.. It’s not Verdun, it’s the Somme! and so on and so on!. and citations, look, like him!. You’d think they were kids!. In school! That they’d swallowed cannon!.. and they claim to be smart Frenchmen! Ah! damn my balls! I’m going to explain to you!. They read the papers too much!. Oh, I eat up all the articles! and quack quack! and parrots!. Do I read them? shitzoff! the magazines and their crap!.. That’s what sends ’em off their nut! the jabber! the jabber!.. Do you read the sheets, you, huh?. Admit, Boro! admit, you dirty yegg!.. In the first place, I’ve seen you!. You start drooling!.. Here’s my penny! The Mirror¹….the Sketch¹….the Star¹ please!.. What crap.. Look, you can look around here, you’ll never see a single one of ’em around!. Even in the toilet I won’t have ’em!. I tell the girls, 'Just let me see one of ’em here and I’ll clout you!’.. You can look all around! You’ve got a mug like a client! I want you to be less idiotic! All the same it gets you! no stopping you. War here!. War there!

.. Keeps eating you!.. Indeed, Madame!.. Victory here!

.. Victory there!.. Offensives!. Cannon fodder!. They need it!.. Send back the bones! the goo! the mug! all for nothing!.. What’s there to write about?… I see just one thing in war!.. It means raising hell and making dough! Just have to lie down to get it!.. It’s women’s work!.. I’m not victory!.. I’m not defeat! I don’t disembark!. I’m no offensive!. I’m no retreat!. I have a good time, that’s all!.. What’s the difference! Not just a laughing matter!.. They pay for being dumb!. The proof is that they run away! the faster the better!. They get scared, in my opinion!. Just that!. Blind fear, that’s all!. You half-wit! I’m not scared, damn it!.. I don’t need a travel permit! I get along by myself!. The hell with Matthew! and the rest of them!. and Marshal Haig! and the Czar! and Poincare! and the Lord Mayor, too! All in the same bag! I want to cash in, me too! Ah! timid! They’re having a good time! Let’s us too! All right with me!. They’re bloodsuckers! All right! I’ve always said so! I’m known! I’ve got my card! You go look me up in the records! I’m just a poor fish! Not a general!. I don’t want to bother anyone! Here’s mud in your eye!.. I could cash in more! My girls are enough for me. I could make munitions! I got an offer!.. Bigger dopes than me are rolling in dough!

or drafty condoms!. or fake cardboard shoes!.."Victory Pumps!” It’s not hard.. but me, my business is tail! All right, good! I’m staying in it!. Yes, Majesty!. So what’re they handing me?… I had three girls, all I needed.. plus Angele of course. now they slap a dozen on me!. What kind of business is that?…Will you tell me?…I don’t read the papers! I’m not bats!.. Even Little-Arm Pierrot realizes!.. Now he’s in jail!.. He knows I talk straight!. no beating about the bush!.. It’s straight stuff or they get your hide! I’ll let him have his Clemence back!.. But it sure gives me a pain in the ass! I didn’t ask for anything!. It’s not an ordinary traffic!. I’ve got a dozen on my neck!. I’ve got to arrange for a house like Pepe the Hump! Where should I go?.. Tell me, you grafters!.. You all read the papers!. And I see you like cognac!. I’m so glad!. So I see!.. And you smoke my cigars, don’t you! Cuban tobacco, bear in mind!..Ah, you’re not letting yourselves get depressed!. Ah! that’s delightful.. Everything to keep up the morale, gentlemen!.. It’s a mug’s game! Quite right! you’ll get out of it!. So!.. Boom! Morale’s everything!.. My old man, who was in the war of 1870, who was a cabinetmaker in Bezons, always used to say to me, ’Sonny, watch out for the omnibuses’… He was the one who got run over by one!.. You see what use it is to be careful!.. Catastrophe!. The poor world’s full of syph! Luckily there’re some free men!”

We’d had three drinks, we were beginning to feel pretty warm.

"Mimi!. Mimi!. Bring up the Burgundy! I don’t want these gentlemen to leave on an empty stomach!.. And the sausage!. and the headcheese!. I want the gentlemen to have a bite!. I can’t ever do enough for them!. Kidders!

.. Wise guys!. Real characters!. Matthew kept telling me that!. They’re genuine artists! And he knows about those things!. The kind of men you don’t meet often!..

” 'Artists! Mr. Cascade!’ Boro! Boro! sing me my song!. So I can really see if you’re an artist!.. Or I won’t talk to you any more!. for ten years!. That’s how I am!. Come on, the Dark Waltz. and all the girls in the chorus!.. To the victory of the little guys and the bathhouse boys!.. Ah! Ah! need some imagination! Wilhelm’s listening to us.”

There was a small Gaveau in the corner, with some notes missing. Boro obliges. he starts off!. They get going in chorus! they’re ripping along!.. The Knight of the Moo.. oo. oonl They’re so off-key that we’re all splitting!. The yowling doubles!. makes the windows creak!. and what feeling!. Big Angele’s bellowing the loudest. There’s pain in her voice. She’s sobbing, she’s so unhappy!. Because she’s upset that her man’s so nervous..

He shouts to Mimi again!

"Burgundy, Mimi!. Burgundy, sweetie!”

The drinking’s not over! he yells down the stairs again.

Mimi was downstairs in the basement kitchen goosing around with the others. You could hear them all clucking away.. They were having a great time!

"She doesn’t give a damn what I say, that trollop.. just doesn’t give a damn!. Mimi! Mimi! you hear me?. Tell Joconde to come up!.. Boys, she’s got to read the cards for you! You’ll see something!. You’re going to have a belly laugh! Joconde’s a real circus! Boy, she’s something!. Cards!

Cards!. Hands!. You’ll split!. My wench used to believe in cards! She used to say to me, 'Darling.. ’ In any case, I don’t believe in it!. Not a bit of superstition in me!. But I get a kick out of watching Joconde! She’s right once in a thousand! it’s the real thing with her!. She even knows the Tarots! Since the cradle. All kinds of cards! Life! Past.. Future!. A hell of a character! You’ll get a look at her face!

She’s not from Seville for nothing!.. They’ve got it in their blood!. I brought her back in 1902 from the Castilian Exposition!. Her name was Carmen. I call her Joconde! And, well, she’s still around! Leaves today! Comes back tomorrow! In the kitchen!. She takes a little outing. she comes back!. She says to me, 'Good-by, Cascade!. You’ll never see me again!’. It doesn’t worry me!. Three days later my beauty’s back! Faithfulness in person!. The same song and dance for twenty years!.. Gypsy to the core!.. steals, cheats, lies, everything!. She drinks only water! It’s not from booze that she’s batty! It’s something worse. Got to see her castanets too!. Some workout!. Hailstones!. You’d think it was hailing!. You don’t see her fingers!. I never ask her for anything. She brings me a pound. two pounds!.. Sometimes a fiver!. No discussion!. I take it all!. so does she!.. A gypsy!”

"Joconde’s busy!” someone answers from downstairs.. "She’s preparing the rabbit for this evening!”

Mimi yelling from the bottom of the stairs.

"Damn it! tell her to get going! We’re waiting! Are we going to wait all day?”

"Coming, darling!. My sweet Precious!”

What a cooing! coo-coo-coo!..

It’s Joconde cooing like that.. from downstairs… all the way in the back..

"And all the cards! Don’t forget anything, Precious!.. And not the junk! You hear me?. The real stuff!. Luck, Baby!”

He tells us about it. "It’s a passion of hers! She’d cheat with Deibler.” We bust out laughing!

There she comes, scaling up, Carmen has annunciated!.. she sniffles.. she spits.. wheezes..

"Sacro mio!. .. Sacro mio!.. Quouelle casa!. craouha!”

The two. three. four flights!. Finally she emerges! Ah! what a vision in laces!.. He didn’t lie!.. She clutches the rail, gasping. she’s all in!. A short-winded doll!. a plaster cast!.. black eyes!.. embers!.. Chantilly lace… furbelows!. velvet flounces!. a whole train!. and her skirts full of medals!. in tiers. they jingle! little bells!.. they chime soon as she moves! More lacework.. narrow waist!.. all of it with spots!.. more spots! grease! dust!

sauces!.. In her ears barbaric pendants that almost drop to her shoulders.. She’s choking after the rail.. Suddenly she perks up!. Here she is! She’s giving us the once*over! She plants herself!.. she grumbles!..

"Greatness av my life! ”

She’s defying us!.. crap like us! It’s an outrage! She’s flaring up, puckered, twitching, lips twisted, violet, black.. from looking at us with anger.. towering rage..

"You wanta me, Cascade?. You wanta me, pimpa?”

That’s what she calls him.

"Get the cards, baby-doll!’’

That’s an order.

"In front those roughnecks?”

"Yes! And shut up, slut!”

That gags her. her innards are tied up in knots… she starts coughing!.. and coughing!..

Ang£le stands there not saying a thing.

Carmen sees her.

"And that bitch?”

Angele lets out a shriek.

"Cascade, throw that pig out! Back to the doghouse, you hag!.. back to the doghouse! If she stays another minute!.. I’m going to clear out!.. I didn’t come from Rio to be made a fool of!.. I already find seven floozies on the bed! Do I have to stand that lunatic besides? The idea! Good-by!. I’m no angel. Goo-oo-ood night! ”

They’re off!.. The doll starts choking… she shakes the whole place. She’d better rest. better sit down there on a step.. she’s going to faint!..

"Dumb bitch! ” she chokes.. "Dumb bitch!.. and you haven’t seen everything! Just wait for the thirteenth! You’ll have thirteen in your bed!”

She’s having a high time, a little cracked!. dizzy'. she suddenly lies down… she can’t sit up!.. she’s squirming and convulsing on her belly!.. What a time the other kids are having, in seventh heaven!. The way they giggle!. They’re all over the place!. On the cushions! the rugs!. cackling. kicking up! They’re twisted into one another with delight!.. the old ones, the young ones, big necking!.. It’s like a movie!.. life in a castle!.. and pretty loose! They hand around glasses, bottles, first the Calva and then the sausages. There’s no crapping around!. Everything goes!. The old-timers yell at each other!

Boro goes back to the piano.. The chorus starts up again.

"The Knights of Misfor-or-or-tune!” The girls tuck up their dresses.. they unhook themselves to breathe easier.. They slap their thighs.. wild laughing!.. cheeks all red.. Some are thin and some chubby!..

Cascade starts getting sore, he’s riled, they tickle him, pull his hair.. Not a bit of respect left!..

"What! My women! And you too, you tramps? Trying to get in my hair?. Well I’ll be damned!. If that’s not the limit!. Where’ll it all end? Bughouse!. The grandmothers worse than the brats!. The world’s cracking up!. It’s the sidewalk of vice!”

Suddenly the fun’s over. They’re all in!. Everyone’s crying. He stands up, indignant, sits down again astride. he mops his forehead..

"So it’s only a joke? Gentlemen! Just wait a minute! Peace!

health!. Now Mimi the foie gras! the rillettes, the olives!.. I see the gentlemen are still hungry!. Boro!.. Boro!.. Play "The Golden Wheat,” Boro! You hear me?” But the girls preferred "The Poet”.. "A poet told me!” All right, "The Poet”! "That there was a sta-a-a-ar!”. But they got no further… Everybody started squabbling again!.. about Angele!..

Some were for!.. Some against!.. about the airs she put on. etc.. etc.. If she had a right to make faces!. that she wasn’t very polite!. The whole coop was clucking away!.. It made a wild racket. jabbering so you couldn’t hear yourself!.. The two of us would have liked to talk some more with Cascade!. About our brawl with the cops!. to explain what happened. After all, it was serious!. about the rioting and violence… I didn’t want things to get nasty… If the cops were getting shitty with me… it meant someone must have done me dirt. tipped off the Special Brigade… It was teeming against the windowpanes in sheets, cats and dogs, it was pouring buckets, winter wasn’t far off. I’d been in London four months. four months already! It wasn’t always comfortable because of the nosy bodies! Still it was better than across the Channel!. much better than taking a beating with the 16th Cavalry. croaking wet every day from Artois to Quercy. counting if you still had all your limbs in every foxhole.. barbed wire everywhere, waiting for you!. Good-by!. I’d had three years of it!. my youth knocked around in the army!. it had ended pretty badly with the Viviani business! Hail Deroulede!.. I brought back my bones and the mortgage! holes everywhere!.. my arm twisted! Just a hunk of flesh left. maybe enough for them to yank me in again! The little game wasn’t over!..War hooks on!. You’ve got to watch out!. Wars keep going. My ear got a lousy screwing too. A buzzing inside!. whistling!. Like that, a bullet… In a way it’s alarming. the whistling’s hell on sleep. My leg dragging along.. Not much to joke about.. The little pimps made me smile. They’d eaten up the hokum!

it turned their little heads!. I didn’t say anything!.. That’s experience!. I knew!. No need to boast!. They were children in a way!. "emancipated,” my ass!. They’d learn somersaults over there in the sectors!. Everything that wasn’t in the papers!. It wasn’t enough to talk out of the corner of your mouth and chew the fat!.. They’d see the rest of it!.. I was all right at Cascade’s!.. I was staying put!.. It looked magical to me after what I’d been through!. The others would see! the guys who were steamed up would get over it!. they could all argue as much as they liked, life at the Leicester was all the same a real treat. Too happy, that was all!. Leave that?. Youth is crazy!. Go looking for slaughter, crazy contraptions, poor sucker! eat gunfire!. You rot in the water.. trench mud. your dome full of gases.. Here’s to your health, Meatballs!. I love you!. Wacky with duty!.. And taratata!.. Shit! I wasn’t going to wise them up!.. Never wise up a dope! There’s the bugle, men!.. They’d have argued with me!. Aah!. Information’s no use!. They want a change!. Bon voyage!. They’ll be dead before I do it again!.. When it was full of customers outside. Just think!. Right near. full of traffic!. And they were throwing away all their chances!.. The streets jammed! full of dough!. The girls never stopped. It was a real circus of customers, couldn’t pick a pin up!. a merry-go-round, a crowd of lovers! Shaftesbury, full! Tottenham! full!. the kind of thing they never dreamed of!. Right side by side, in a hurry, continuous! easygoing! happy-go-lucky, Tommies, Sammies, Boys, my balls! sweating whiskey and little presents!.. Sidewalks made of gold, that’s a fact!.. Just had to lie down to pick it up.. Cascade wasn’t exaggerating a thing!.. Those were the palmy years, the end of 1914, T6, T7!. The take had never been so good. The pimps had it wonderful! and there they were evaporating!.. They were slipping away!. Nitwits!. Their bunions were burning ’em!.. Whooping cough and panic! They were getting their knapsacks ready!. They were storming the consulates!.. Bedford Square was full of ’em!.. Rarin’ to go!..

Stung all at once!.. Bamboozled by the newspapers!.. Cascade stuck to his guns!.. They’d gone off their nuts!., In the frenzy!. the wind of glory!. The girls all up in the air!. in distress!. That was the result of it!. The hurricane had left him a queer heritage!.. He was still complaining!.. Twelve pieces. Twelve items! all at once! Everything for Cascade! Ah! some joke!. Maybe it wasn’t over yet!.. Now how to handle it?.. Ship the whole lot of them to the Leicester?.. With Angele in charge?. that was the most practical thing. Whoring right at the corner. right nearby!

.. not a hundred yards away!.. You couldn’t want any better!

.. fine location for a boardinghouse. The six floors all continuous!. Leicester Street. Leicester Square, W.l..You could see the people on the sixth floor going up from the door. big spacious premises!. for treating friends right!.. hygiene on every floor.. French bidets.. gallantry everywhere! toil and honor!.. the motto! The whole basement all a well-stocked kitchen, a dream! Nothing petty at Cascade’s.. Open and generous house! hot dishes at all hours.. day and night! No woman can deny it! London’s the proving ground for hustling… the delicate ones are always coughing! Murderous sidewalk in winter!. Tuberculous fog!. Have to eat things that stick to your ribs.. Not titbits and noodles.. Boy, oh boy! everything! solid stuff! choice quality!.. When it came to grub, Cascade wouldn’t trust anyone! He did the marketing himself three times a week. He’d bring back the tastiest things he could find, the plumpest poultry, turkeys just right! perfect fowls! the kind of leg of lamb you don’t see any more!..So that the platters’d sizzle in the oven! superfine mutton. when he found woodcocks we’d have a dozen!.. Baskets so loaded that the maids dragged along the stores.. and special butter!.. and in blocks!.. Never a question of economy. The Table first!.. That was the boss’s other motto!. nothing cheap on the table!. Fine fruit!. The best peaches in all seasons! That accounted for his success!., The Leicester Boardinghouse had lots of other advantages.. Centrally located for appointments, near the Regent, two minutes from the Royal, the Exchange of the business, the pimps’ favorite spot, but no fakes, no small stuff!.. Get it straight! the ones who know how to handle things! Class! the laws of the trade! The real established procurers who go back ten, fifteen, twenty years! The big shots of the profession!..

Shame on the small-timers!. on the little guys!. they’d get the cockiness knocked out of them fast! eliminated one two three!.. Should’ve seen them when the gambling started, the big poker games!.. the stiff betting!. laid out at the first call!.. washed up!.. wrung out!.. curtains!.. You never saw them again!.. Where things were treated seriously at the Royal from 4 to 6.. Buying, selling, discussing, all the refunds… In the promenade of the Empire, which was the gold mine of the trade, a woman cost three pounds, just for the doorman’s percentage.. and the same amount for the cops.. That gives you an idea right away.. Cascade had five working for him alone, often more, Lea, Ursule, Ginette, Mireille and little Toinon who went out only with her mother.. They were all just resting when we arrived.. They were waiting for the theatre hour to start the grind. the 8:30 standees. And we dropped in just at the right time! in the midst of the teasing and cuddling!.. Especially around the gossip being peddled.. those who’d just lost their husbands… who’d been widows since morning. the nervous guys who’d joined up!. They were planning little kitchy-kitchy teams.. They were consoling themselves as best they could.. The cognac was helping things along fine!.. they were all hitting it off together!.. It put new heart into Cascade to see them all getting along…

He was looking forward to some quiet. Cascade adapted himself quickly, not Angele! naturally! She was tight-lipped and suspicious! and not keen about vagabonds. Cascade was offhand, impromptu. even on the afterbeat. he’d suddenly get playful, just like that. That’s why he’d quickly forget about raw deals.. you could disarm him by laughing.. women as well as pimps.. Some bitches, of course, as everywhere, told awful stories about him and his girls! and about his woman!

A number of these vicious slanders dragged at his ass, but they weren’t his headaches!.. He’d box their ears for them every now and then. Jealousies, treachery, but didn’t dare grumble about it when he was around. From the Royal to Soho, from the Elephant to Charing Cross, he claimed respect. He’d get into a jam from time to time, the cops would come down on him for form’s sake, like that fairy Matthew, but just to show that it was normal, that the Law was for everyone, that every big shot had to take it and that even Cascade took his turn. It was a sacrifice, that was all!. They weren’t tough with him. They seldom pestered his girls, at the Yard they thought he was regular, they knew that he was a square shooter, handling his affairs right, his women going home at reasonable hours, never abusing their patience, never strutting around the clubs, never using bad language. The English cop is mainly a loafer, down on everything, as I’ve said, war or no war.. Mustn’t complicate his life.. Otherwise you’re in for one hell of a time. Cascade really had an experience of things English that was rather special! Knew all the angles! Never away a single day in his twenty-five years in London, since his leave in fact, his three years in Africa, in Blida, except for his two trips to Rio, always on the job.. actually a sedentary man.. and just a little broken English.. maybe twenty or thirty words… at most… no facility of speech… He admitted it himself..

All the ass-work at Cascade’s came from France, except the Portuguese!.. and Jeanne Jambe, the blonde, who was born in Luxembourg..

As for his health, he was graying around the temples, he had his albumin, but he was still pope at the table and the bottle and elsewhere, too! he wasn’t much of a shot any more at the rifle ranges, but he was always a man with real class! in everything and for everything! He’d still pick up girls, and slick ones, show girls!. real cookies! He hung around stage doors.. Just so, for the hell of it! Innocent-looking!.. and more than his share. And no worrying about conversation.. just wild laughing and pantomime!.. giddy and gallant!.. He used to waltz like a prince in Angele’s heyday!..He didn’t dance any more because of his varicose veins!.. But all the same, two or three dances while he was on the make!. It’s true he liked skirts, his little weakness, his venial sin. Couldn’t stand drips, the grocer-pinochle type.. though they were pretty frisky when it came to tail.

And I’d like you to know he was always ticklish about respect, not familiar, even when he was high, even at the "Whoremarket” with the men… a pretty low dive where they gulped down vitriol by the pitcherful and tableful. Ah! better not lack any with him!.. The young ones would snicker a little. they’d make little digs. They’d learn what’s what right away!.. He didn’t tolerate impropriety, he was a chief and that was that!.. Cordial, pleasant, but touchy… A smudge on his honor!. Never women’s gossip. His word was all!. And never aggressive! even drunk!. even staggering!. never held grudges!. only, and get it straight, if there was any impudence, a tiger! lightning!.. let it be the Strong Man of the Market, the Cannon Man of the Ternes, the Terror of the Corsican Heath, the Swallower of Flaming Pythons, the big Dinosaur in a cap, he let him have it straight in the kisser, and clean, and then and there!.. and in front of everybody! and no arguing, no nonsense!.. let them see what law and order mean! good manners, politeness! It often started when they made cracks about his rings, about his "Brazilian six-carat” and his "knight’s sapphire,” two magnificent stones. They made some people jealous. The little hoodlums thought they were too showy, they asked him whether they were heavy? Whether they didn’t twist his wrists? He didn’t tolerate wisecracks, when they repeated it two or three times, the smacks started flying… As for his lock of hair, that was something else.. then he was the one who was aggressive.. he’d start things. he wanted exclusive rights. He didn’t want to see another like it, a spit curl smooth as himself, in any pub in the neighborhood. He’d fly right off the handle, had to get his competitor out, he’d have ripped up the joint and the spit curl with it!

But there was no real harm in all that. I remember that he was respected, even by his enemies, even by the worst bulls of the Yard, who were nevertheless low cheap bellyachers, greedy and jealous. I’ve said that he was well thought of, the man was certainly imposing, but there were also the presents, that was his generous side, he scattered gold right and left. Matthew would turn up from time to time with his District Constable, a matter of not being forgotten… to see whether things were going properly.. whether the Boardinghouse was in order.. whether the "license” was in the frame. whether everyone was "registered,” with photos, fingerprints and everything!.. that it was wartime! Be careful!.. He knew the rigmarole!.. it was always reeled off the same way!.. They’d arrive as serious as can be, like that, right after lunch.. looking as if they had a lot on their minds! as if they were after something! a nasty trick! as if they were some phenomenal pot of roses!.. and then bumpitty-bump-bump!. It was only a tin can and eyewash!.. Just that the squeeze was late, and so the sudden concern.. The thing was arranged as usual with the little present. They’d leave happy and spoiled, except for the two or three rough times.. That’s how life went.. But now. no more of that!. the tune was different!. Cascade felt it all, that it wasn’t all easy sailing now that the guys were leaving. Not by a long shot! Take it easy! He wasn’t having any pipe dreams!.. He didn’t find it much fun inheriting eleven girls all at once!. It didn’t thrill him at all!. even if there’d been ten times as many, it wouldn’t have turned his head!.. Don’t get any wrong ideas! For the women it wasn’t the same thing! It’s the moment that counts with them!. All they had to do was drink and smoke! And yowl! And guzzle! And not a damned thing more! there was no more discipline.. they were cuddling together all over the beds as consolation for their sorrows, and their endless sobbing! the widows were managing fine together, there was nothing terrible after all, it wasn’t as killing as all that, the work went on, you just had to see the bright side of things.. and then write often to the men and send them their packages.. arrangements were made.. They’d write once a week.

"We’re widows, Cascade! We’re widows!”

They came sitting on his lap, announcing the fact, nibbling at his mustachios. also wetting him with tears!. so that he’d share their sorrows.. And then another swig! Calva and little cakes!.. Cascade didn’t want them to smoke… no end of arguing! he thought it was plain awful, damned whorish..

“You’ll have teeth like horses! yellow and repulsive! Your customers’ll never get a hard-on! I’d never screw you if you smoked!” And then he asked for the cards again. He was getting back to Joconde..

"Well, you going to work on them, sweetheart?”

He was getting impatient.

"God damn it! You going to start?”

"Why don’t you kizz me any more? Because your zlut is looking at you?”

She let that one fly! right in Angele’s mug! and in front of all the women! Did they laugh! Angele couldn’t let that go by! It was too much of an insult in front of everyone!

"What was that? What was that? You old bitch! You come up here to insult me? You old shit! you old punk! you old rag!. Scram before I throw you out! I won’t take any of your crap! You scum! Back to the sewer!”

That was Angele, red hot! she was wild!. Some of the girls were for, some against! what yelling in both camps!

"She’s got a right! ” some were saying..

Hearing that made Carmen jump!

"A right! a right! a right shit! I’ll show you her right! ”

Steaming away at the nostrils..

"I’m going to turn her inside out! ”

The crying stopped dead!.. Angele was a fury! She set herself against the buffet and was going to jump on the old hag! to tear her hair out then and there!

"Just a little, a little!” the girls were saying. They were working them up. Always standing up for rights!

"A little!.. A little!.. A little what? I’ll show her the rights of my ass! Come on, you witch! ”

That was provocation!

Cascade jumped between them. That got Joconde real excited! she got wilder!

"I want him to kizz me or I won’t do them! ”

That’s how she was talking about the cards. she was showing them!.. spread fanwise! she was fanning herself with them! swaggering!. Cascade didn’t know where to stand!. or what to do, or say!. He’d lost all patience! Then the explosion!

"Gentlemen, this has been going on for twenty years!.. And I’ve been putting up with this kind of nonsense! ”

He was calling us to witness.. Jealousy and pigheadedness!

"I’ve had enough! Bah! I’m getting the hell out!”

His mind was made up.

Then the big hysteria broke loose!.. Angele threw a fit, she was foaming, and with a nervous laugh!.. Boy, she started snorting! and twitching!.. she couldn’t stop.. She was ripping her clothes, shrieking, tearing at herself, kicking in tears, on the floor! at her cruel man’s feet!. What a Trafalgar!.. Her bun came off, and flew apart… He was walking in her hair, tangled in it!. What screams! He didn’t know where to stand!.. She yelled worse!

"My jewel! my darling! my love! Don’t do that! Don’t go away, Cascade!. Don’t go away!. I’ll be nice! Stay with your girl! I beg you, Cascade! I beg you! I won’t pester you! It’s her!. Listen, pet!. Kiss them all! But not her! Not that hag, you hear! Not that hag! She’ll give you the jinx! I know! I know! Take all the girls!. Lay them! I want you to! I’m giving them to you! Wah! Wah! Wah! But not that hag! Oh! not the hag! Oh! dear heart, that! my angel! I couldn’t! I’ll kill her! I’ll find girls for you! Say I’m jealous! Wah! Wah! Since you enjoy it! I’ll bring you one every day! I’ll pimp for you if you want!.. But not that bitch, you hear! not her!.. I’ll get you some from outside! I won’t deny you any pleasure!. but not the bitch! not her! You’re driving me to the limit! You’re breaking my heart! But don’t go away, my darling!”

"You, my jewel, you’re a pest! There! You hear me?. There!. you slut! ”

She bucked right up and awful and let him have it!

“Just look at that broken-down wreck! That grandfather with one foot in the grave trying to cheat on me! He’s a fine one! Who took him out of the gutter? Who’d have rotted away in jail? Who’s he putting on an act with now?.. with a dead mutt! Yes, Madame! you old slob! exactly! if that’s not enough to make you puke! Just look at her!”

She points to Joconde..

Immediate laughter on her side.. Cascade doesn’t look too good!..

"Monsieur wants her to read the cards! That old low-down punk! Monsieur isn’t satisfied now with his vices! now he wants futures!. He’s after minors!. Monsieur Fresh-Meat!. I’ll read the cards for you!.. It’ll be something!.. Let me tell you!”

"Shut your mouth! Come here, Carmen! Here, my little baby! Whoops, darling, in my lap!”

The old one doesn’t wait to be begged!. She dashes forward!. there she is!. some sight!. The two of them necking! Hoop la! Hoop! dada! Perfect love! Fade-out!

What an effect! What a trance! The girls laughed till it hurt!. they were choking! they roared!. they were peeing in their panties! They were splitting so that they couldn’t hold themselves in!

They were yelling at the top of their lungs.. "Encore!.. Encore!” and then the lyric:

Your big gentle eyes

Have enchanted my heart!

For the rest of my li-i-i-ife!

Li-i-i-ife!. that sets it off! Got to get high all together! They’re off-key! floundering! miaowing! roaring away! enough to crack the windows!.. The voices get together again, they start over! Boro gives them the key. he’s an angel when it comes to the piano! never an impatient oath!.. First it’s for Victory!.. They scream it a half-dozen times! Toasts with real cognac! not cheap rotgut! No! sealed, signed six stars from the cellar of the lords at the Savoy. genuine stuff! got it straight from the wine-waiter! They call him Monsieur Gustave, Dry Gustave! A tall, pale chap who comes every Thursday or Friday to be whipped by Mireille.. No whipping unless he brings cognac! That’s the condition, sometimes she sulks at him for a whole month when he’s stingy! Dry Gustave would turn thief for his whipping! Mireille can sting! Ought to see the whip she carries around!. It’s something different from English brandy, that paintshop mixture!.. The bottle goes right around, the lords’ brandy perfumes your whole character! heart, guts, everything!.. Life smoothes off!.. enterprising decisions.. Everyone trying to be most gallant!

.. Even Boro, who was rather orderly when it came to girls and screwing, who was rather for music, took his broad in his lap and was giving her a workout! he was playing with one hand! looking jaunty! Cascade with the good cognac in his belly wanted everything patched up. no more sulking!.. no pigheadedness!. He wanted Angele to dry her tears, to joke and sing with spirit!.. They’d read the cards together!..

"Come on, Chick! Come on, Chick! Come!”

She wouldn’t have it!.. Didn’t want anything! Didn’t want to laugh! She was all tied up inside and that was all!.. She was yelling any old thing at him!.."You cuckold! You decrepit old prickhead!” She wanted a fight.

"You boloney! Men like you! A pound a dozen!” That’s what she said. "Give me the red wine, Veronique, red wine! ”

Veronique was clubfooted, squint-eyed and redheaded, she did the stations… A very nice girl, rather discreet, obedient. Veronique gave her the bottle… Cascade jumped up, he wouldn’t have it!.. Ah! he suspected what was up! He knew about her and bottles! She was going to let her have it in the mouth! He grabbed hold of her on the run!. She resisted.. She clung, she scratched! A kick in the schnozzle! she toppled over, sprawled out, and yowled.. Joconde sees her chance, her rival on the floor! throws herself on top with all her weight! she wants to rip her face apart!.. She’s a man-eater! Got to bleed! Cascade’s forced to jump in!.. Joconde’s yowling louder!..

"You filth! I don’t have a wig! Do your damnedest, you bitch! ”

More challenges!

She’s mounted on Angele and screaming in her ear, "I don’t have a wig, you filth!. Pull on it! You skunk!

"Wait with the wig! Wait, you tramp!”

Joconde’s choking!. Hooked up together like that!.. But Angele’s stronger, she twists the old one’s arm, she flattens her on her back!.. Now she’s on top.. Biting her cheeks with her fangs, like that. grr! and grr!

The old gal’s waving her arms, squirming. Angele grabs her again full of blood!.. She’s going to turn her upside down.. bang her head..

Cascade still wants to separate them! he dashes forward to save the bottles! he trips! upsets the table! all the glassware! Crrash!

The old one gets away, tucks up her skirt, capering about, dashing between the tables. the girls run after her!. she gets away, jiggling, fluttering, it’s wonderful to watch! stumbles, stops! She stands there, planted. she winks. she takes out her castanets. Ah, it’s a big challenge!.. And stamps her heel!. she’s a fury!. it’s a dance!. a trance!. her fingers all nerves!. her hands quivering all over!. crackling, spluttering!. small. small. tiny. still smaller.. grains. grains. mill.. even still smaller. trr!. trr!..

grainy. grainy. rrr!. that’s all!.. silence!. and.. tzix!. she’s off again!. The devil’s tail!. the tail’s caught!. trr!. rebounds!.. hup!. her whole train!. and roundabouts! and twirls! bounding like a panther! at the end of the room! her train running after her!. over there!.. hop it!.. she’s here!.. a kick at her furbelow!.. hup! sweeping off! Angele’s foaming. That’s the limit! She can’t take any more!

"You won’t do it, you punk! You won’t do it!” she screams!

And she stands there motionless, staring popeyed. Just hypnotized!. And then, hup! Without time to say oof! She’s up in the air! she sprang up! a knife in her fist! I see the blade!

Plop!. she launches out!. plunges it sideways!. Plup into the old one! right in the ass!.. in the old one’s ass! What a shriek!. It cuts through everything! tears everything!. the walls!.. the blinds!.. the street! They must have heard it from the square. They fall over one another!. I look at the door there wide open!. I take another squint!. Matthew’s standing there!. in the doorway!. No one saw him come!. He saw a real show!. Joconde sure bounded!.. with the knife in her ass! She’s jumping all around screaming.. she’s running all around us!.. she’s yelling "Help! ” She’s squeezing her ass in her two hands. flying all around!. all around the table!. Ow! wow! wow!. all around us!.. She’s miaowing!.. We’re nice and quiet!.. We look all right!. Not a peep out of Matthew!. Cascade bolts like lightning!.. He runs after Joconde!..

"Where’d she stick you, tell me! The bitch!.. Where’d she stick you, tell me, Mimine?”

"There! sweet darling!. there!. Ow! wow! ouch!”

And she starts sobbing and sobbing away!..

She stops running all the same!. She lifts up her skirt.. She shows him her ass.. all bleeding!.. How it’s flowing from the wound!. how it’s trickling!. All the girls lean over to see better. What it looks like? two lips like a mouth! right in the buttocks.. and how it’s bleeding!..

They start discussing it again..

"Don’t cry!”. Cascade’s consoling her. He kisses her.. coddles her.. rocks her.. Right away she starts yelling as loud as she can! Angele’s standing there flabbergasted. she’s sniffling… sobbing… doesn’t know what it’s all about! she drops her knife. plock!. the sound it makes..

They’ve got to decide now!. Got to take her to the hospital! Cascade’s giving orders. Ah! it starts all over!. at the word hospital!..

"I want to die here! ” she roars.

"You won’t die here, you slut!”

She doesn’t insist.

"I’ll die wherever you want, darling! But kizz your unhappy little girl!”

Has to kiss her again.. She’s bleeding all over the floor.

Her wound keeps trickling. We take a look at it..

"You’ve got a pretty ass, you know, you little rascal?”

He’s the one who thought that one up… He tries to make her laugh… so she’ll let herself be convinced quietly… so she’ll leave without a fuss… so she won’t bellow in the street while they’re taking her..

"Look! look!” says Cascade. "Look! You’re not the only one with a nice ass! ”

He’s unbuttoning himself!.. Some idea!.. He lets down his pants so we can see!. He shows us his can!. that it’s tattooed on both buttocks!. a rose on the right. a wolf’s face on the left!. A face with long teeth, just like that!.. and over it. "I bite everywhere!”. tattooed in green. You can’t say it’s not funny!. It’s some show for Matthew standing there in the doorway.. still saying nothing.. Cascade hasn’t noticed him.. he’s too busy on the floor on all fours!.. wiggling his can, jigging. with his little polka..

Matthew didn’t budge… He had a good view… I didn’t dare move either.. The old gal finally burst out laughing.. He managed her!. Ah! he’s a scream!..

The Queen of England Fell on her fanny Dancing the polka At the Opera Ball!

He was singing at the same time!

Good humor was restored!.. The old gal was still whimpering a little.. But between smiles.. and she was ready to leave..

"Boro!” he says… "and you, Foxy!.. You’ll both take her! ”

He’s buttoning his pants.

"You’ll ask for Clodovitz! London Hospital! Dr. Clodovitz!

Will you remember? You’ll say I sent you! Mireille, go get a taxi! You hear me, Mireille! And you two guys! Snap it up! Clodovitz knows me! He knows me! He knows what I need!.. And don’t screw things up! That I’m around!. And I’ll be there!. I’ll drop by! in a couple of days! Get going! He’ll understand me!. Clodovitz is a friend!. Clovis!.. Go on, baby-doll! we love you!. Go on, get a move on!”

He was shipping her off!..

She was still holding her behind, she was squeezing it in her two hands!.. She was groaning again!..

"Good God! It’z not zat!. God damn it!”

Now she didn’t want to leave any more! Boy! some shitty mess!

The blood was dripping all over again… the floor!.. the rugs, all soaked!..

Oop! Cascade spots the inspector! Ah! all the same!.. He saw him!. What a gasp!. He starts jabbering right off..

"Oh! I beg your pardon, Inspector! Excuse me! I didn’t see you! Wouldn’t you think there’d been a crime?. What would people imagine? Oh! Inspector! Oh! Just look at that!.. Oh! I’m very upset!”

All of it, of course, jokingly. But Matthew wasn’t laughing… he was standing there planted in the doorway.. not a word out of him yet. not even "Well Well!” as usual.. Absolutely nothing. a wooden pole!

"Angele go get some towels! And the cotton!. There’s some downstairs in my drawer!”

Angele stood there dreaming. Whack!.. she’s swept away! A slap!. lifted out of her chair. she falls back!.. Badaboom!. the whole stairway!. she tumbles down three flights!. That wakes the girls right up!. they’d been watching fascinated like dopes! They wrap up the old gal in the tablecloth like a sausage.. turned over.. laced up. and the towels. the pads. all the same it’s bleeding!. Angele brings some oilcloth.. they lay the old gal on her belly. They swathe her like a baby.. It’s still a good joke..

Matthew’s frozen, he watches it all:. a pope!..

He doesn’t move..

"The cab’s here! ” Mireille announces.

We’ve got to go down now.. Boro and me.. Cascade slips us a pack of bills, a fistful, just like that. It’s to arrange things.. The old hag’s still bawling too loud.. She demands her little remedy!.. Otherwise, she won’t go! Blackmail! Mireille dashes off again to get some!.. It’s a whim, got to give in!.. needs her remedy!.. Cascade hardly knows what to say to fix matters up… so that the guy’ll say something after all. Mr. Conscience! who’s been there an hour, who hasn’t said anything. A log!

"Believe me, if you like, Inspector! But I was insisting that someone read the cards for me! Well, I got it!.. I’ve got the question. the answer!. Look! catastrophe!”

A little joking, to loosen him up..

"Ah! Inspector, you’ve witnessed a nasty family scene!.. You walked in! as if by chance!. What do you run into?.. Lunatics? Positively!.. Lunatics! I’m very sorry, Inspector!.. Really!. Please excuse me!”

Not a word.. Wooden… He lets him talk..

"The cards! the cards! of course!.. But Angele’s a terror!

Did you see, Inspector? By yourself!.. What a character!.. I don’t have the last word in my own home!.. It’s really no life!. I’m not exaggerating a thing!.. And all these girls besides!.. All these kids they shove on to me like that!.. Bang! My arms loaded!. And me so peaceful!. quiet!.. Is that a life?… You know me, Inspector. I get pushed into complications! What kind of business is that? I ask you?” The Inspector still speechless.

"We’ll see later on! We’ll see! Who’s at fault, responsible. They say it’s Wilhelm! I wish it were!. In any case, it’s never me!. You know that, Inspector!. Everybody’s mind is topsy-turvy!.. It’s awful the way people’re going batty!.. I’m not going to look for the whys and wherefores!.. I’d go off my nut too, just hearing them!.. You too, Inspector!.. I’m convinced!. I’m sure it worries you!.. With all due respect!.. Look, Inspector, I’m not making any comparison.. Let’s get that straight!.. It’s obvious. But I’m sure that in your family, Inspector, you’ve got trouble, too!.. Ah! I’d bet!. The events affect everybody!. With all due respect!. It’s obvious! Of course!..But the circumstances affect everybody, don’t they?. everyone gets it according to his station. and the toughest situations! the worries, the ups and downs aren’t only for poor people!. Ah! that’s a fact!..

it’s a real fact! So it is! Just look at the men!. Ah! I won’t say any more. That's war, Inspector!. That’s war!. It’s a subject that makes me terribly sad! There you’ve got the sadness of Life!. And how unhappy everyone is!. And how that kind of thing ages you!. If only they noticed it. An hour’s like a year!. The things we’ve got to go through!.. Ah! it’s no exaggeration!.. You’re reasonable too, Inspector!

It’s really bad luck!. You won’t deny it!. I’m not making any comparison. Of course! It’s obvious!”

While he was jabbering away like that, occupying his attention, we fixed the old gal up, she could just about stand.. supported under the arms. with the oilcloth in her ass, the towels, ail tied up tight. outfitted for the trip!. "Forward, Madame!”. We walked in front of Matthew. he moved aside a bit.. Not a peep out of him… He was listening to Cascade clacking away..

On the stairs. more shrieks!. our chippy wasn’t feeling well! she screamed at every movement!.. We stopped and started a dozen times.. Downstairs, another session!.. We had to lift her.. get her into the cab.. people gathered around. get her among the cushions. so she’d be all set. Damn it!. there was already a crowd around. We started at a snail’s pace. we’d asked the chauffeur to drive "in low”! forward! Tottenham.. the Strand.. and the East streets.. That wasn't where the hospital was!. At the other side of Mile End!.. A real journey! Luckily it was already dark.. She’d stopped yelling except at the bumps.. The air outside did her good. she almost kept quiet. We’d propped her up pretty well. "It won’t be anything,” I said to myself. "It won’t be anything. It’s not much of a wound.”. I knew about wounds…We could have taken her to the Charing Cross nearby, the other hospital much closer! The most practical thing to do. But Cascade wouldn’t hear of it.. He’d forbidden us!.. to him Charing Cross Hospital was just a cop’s hangout. He stuck to the London.. All right, the London!. Giddy-ap, horsie!. It was some haul!. It was at least a two hours’ ride at the rate we were going!.. London’s big. It’s fifteen or twenty towns laid end to end! the same road as for the docks.. Fleet Street, the Bank, Seven Sisters.. then the Elephant, and the Port East.. Cascade trusted the London. London Hospital!. He had confidence only in the London. It was all right with me. with Joconde too! It seems it was very serious.. that you could count on the pal, the Clodo medico.. the Dr. Clodovitz in question.. that they’d known each other since their army days.. Never a slipup. the injured went through like clockwork!. nothing indiscreet… no gabbing… In the hands of Dr. Clodo.. London Hospital. They must have hit it off perfectly. Had to remember the guy. Clovis like old King Clovis and the Vase of Soissons.. Maybe it wouldn’t work out so easily.. Maybe Cascade was kidding himself a little!.. He was often optimistic. We’d see!. The streets. the little lamps!. There aren’t any before the Elephant. you start imagining things just looking at them. things dance!.. thousands.. thousands.. the way they unwind. dangling that way… in a daze. The ride reminded me of the 16th. the patrols.. the platoons. tup! tup!. tup! tup!. the rhythm. the irons. I knew something about that. the night tup! tup!.. but mustn’t forget the guy!. — Ah! Clovis. Clodo! Clodovitz!.. Clovis like the Vase of Soissons!.. Boro’d already forgotten!. Good thing I’ve got a memory..

w

" Then Clodovitz saw us coming, he made a kind of sour face. got to admit it. The nurse went to let him know that someone was asking for him very specially… He was in the back of the hospital treating an emergency case.. according to her… I rather think he’d been sleeping… He arrived drowsy, he looked bleary, he was rubbing his eyes. All the same he was pleasant, we could see he was explaining matters so that the old gal would be taken before the others. Two men put her on a stretcher. We waited outside. in the vestibule, that is. We weren’t alone. Even at ten at night it was full of families and people.. whispering together..

They put our maniac to sleep, they sewed up her buttock, it didn’t take long. They put her into a common ward. We still hung around.. Eleven o’clock, then midnight… We could see her in her cot, with her face all purple.. drooling all over the place..

As soon as she came to, she started raising a row, demanding her Cascade. They gave her another injection, she went to sleep again, it was one in the morning. Clodovitz wasn’t the boss, not even the important doctor, he was just a second-stringer at the London Freeborn Hospital, almost without pay, there were several like that who drudged away at all the thankless jobs, especially at night, on duty, Clodovitz almost every other night! Especially the foreign doctors who were interns at the London, that helped them get a start before they set themselves up.

I got to know Clodo well later on. It’s true that he was obliging, eager, you might even say zealous, only he’d falter for a moment, he was vague with words, had to tell him right away what you wanted, to put it on the line. had to know how to handle him…

The London, in the East End, wasn’t a swanky hospital at the time! They were waiting for donors who had to be begged!

It was written on all the doors that they were waiting for them, and pretty badly. in pleading terms! The philanthropists took their time. On the other hand, the corridors were full and so were the vestibules, every hour of the day and night, crowds, mobs, of all ages and origins. whispering horrible things, how they all felt on their last legs, and that they’d rather croak there, sitting on the tiles, then be sent home to suffer again. They wanted a bed or to die! That was the kind of thing you heard. Not to speak of a hundred little children outscreaming each other all over the place.. after their bottles and toys. the vestibules full of their whooping.. the chairs full of their muck everywhere… It wasn’t at all big enough for the patients squeezed against the doors, there were always some waiting outside, filling the sidewalks, the streets.. Still, it was an enormous place, a big lengthwise joint, wards and wards, with God knows how many windows, as far as Burdget, almost the other avenue.. The donations weren’t rolling in, only poverty kept coming. What a crowd! even in winter, in the rain, for admission!.. Lined up hours on end!

.. They caught the rest of what finished them off spitting out complaints and catarrhs! I always saw crowds being refused. It was very warm inside, naturally, from October on, a furnace. The undernourished are always cold. Coal’s not expensive there, they use it for everything..

They cried to be admitted, they cried again when they left.. they didn’t want to go away.. they were comfortable inside, they even were delighted with the ordinary food, red cabbage with mashed peas..

It was a dense crowded area, all Poplar, Lime and Stepney, all the surrounding neighborhoods, and Greenwich opposite, naturally, for medicine and surgery. In short, the whole East End, I’m talking of those days, from Highgate to the Docks, look at that mob, the jamming! It was so full when we came that if we hadn’t known Clodo, we’d never have been taken in with our Mamma! Even in the dark night, cuddling together shivering, they’d noticed our getup, and right away insults! Ah! a furious line! We came parading, bluffing them all! An enormous mob, take it from me! People who’d been there since morning trying to get in, one fellow even came to let us know, bellowing right in our faces, just like that, damned sore, that he had a double hernia! that he’d been waiting there for three days, while we with our cab and our dressed-up doll and her behind, we gave him a swift pain in the ass! it was no use explaining to him. It was a general chorus, a frightful agony!

They didn’t want to let us in! In order to get out we had to get a lantern and show them the blood, the towels, the dressing on her ass, which was dripping all over, that they were real clots!.. They moved aside a little, but they were grumbling, rough, ready to bite, we walked past the insults, we came to the ticket window, we immediately asked for Clodo.. Luckily!.. Dr. Clodovitz! Boro was the Soissons business all over again! We barely escaped getting tossed out.

Later on, over the years, I often passed by there, in front of the London Hospital… It still has pretty much the same walls, the same raspberry and yellow color, the same soot everywhere, the same enormous window cage from Commercial Road to East Port, only the people have changed a lot. The crowd, the mugs, the gait all surprise me, I no longer recognize them. They’re not the same noisy squabblers, bullying tramps. still a few bedraggled women. not many youngsters. No longer the same bums. they now discuss things soberly, they’ve taken on vocabulary.. They still gabble away in the fog about their varicose veins and their aches and pains…but not so peevishly.. They’ve stopped smacking each other in the puss if someone gets ahead of them.. they hardly swear any more.. the very neighborhood’s been changed.. I mean just before the war. the one of 1939 until doomsday..

It’s the population moving, if you think about it. There’re almost no sailing vessels, that’s what brought the real savages, they were the unmanageable ones, the real horrors. yellow-skins. blacks. chocolates!. hell-raisers!. They often came about their injuries, they had them on all their fingers.. one dressing, another… on their feet, too, and their bodies.. they’d start a riot over a trifle, at the door of the hospital, they’d bleed at the slighest provocation, rip each other’s guts out the way you’d say hello, especially from the Islands and from America! real wild men, from the tropics, from the Sunda Isles, from the equator colonies, and from the North too, have to be fair.. At bottom, they were all man-eaters.. all that on the "entrants” line. That made a mixture of yelling, terrific gales of laughter. with the cockney housewives and the drunken bullies of the neighborhood, the peg-legs, the whisky cirrhoses, the fistulas, the broken heads, the dyspeptics, the lumbagoes cut in two who squalled about everything, the albuminous, their little bottles, the finical bellyachers, the anti-everythings, the death-dodgers, the people with little pensions, the choking asthmatics, all of them corralled, roped in, pushing one another, squeezed against the door.. Often there was entertainment… an interlude… a minstrel.. with his clappers, his mouth noises, the whoah-whoah blackface! and a mandolin!.. the popular tunes!.. He’d pick up a couple of pennies.. he’d beat it… I did that later on… a button~up tailcoat, all kinds of colors, a real carapace!.. I think performers of that kind are still around.. Whitechapel likes hoofers, they drew a crowd quickly, but they cluttered up the street, stopped the trolleys, then the cops would swoop down, everyone would be pushed against the walls, women, legless cripples, one-armed men, spitters. It would break up fast!

The days when there was too much fog, when the frost spread out the crowd, the line wound round La Vaillance.. there was a permanent session in the pub.. One man would keep two others’ places. They’d go to warm up a bit around the liquor. They’d have a sniff of cherry punch. The ones who still had a penny would treat themselves to a small glass of beer together, the others pretended to be having something, it created a constant coming and going between the bar and the street when the weather was stinging cold..

Naturally there was always a slightly carbolic smell at La Vaillance. inside the pub..

They’re not the same men today, the same clientele, as I’ve said, there’s decorum… the neighborhood’s making progress.. Poverty’s going in for furniture.. They were already looking for white wood, they’ll soon be fixing up cozy-corners, one fine day they’ll be having their nails done.. Unless it’s all smashed at the time I’m writing, gone up in smoke beneath the bombs, the peccadilloes and the whims! Naturally I’m no longer up-to-date, we’re separated by the events, in ten years I won’t recognize the place! The streets, the walls were gloomy in those days, I mean the buildings. The house-fronts were coated with soot, the goo trickled.. should’ve seen the way it came down from the port, the docks, the factories… the clouds kept bringing in smears, coal tar.. gusts, tornadoes of it in winter, and sticky mists, a real affliction. It was sticky inside the hospital, too, and dark, the walls, even the beds, the drab almost yellow linen. The odors stuck in my nose, the urine, the ether, the coal tar, and the honeyed tobacco. I still get a whiff of them. Once you’re used to it, it has a charm.. Only the operating room was nickel-plated, whitewashed, gleaming, even blinding, coming from outside.

As soon as there was a bit of mist you couldn’t see the big hospital, yet it was a building that had bulk and breadth… It melted into the surroundings, you had to go near it, almost touch it. It was painted like fog with some yellow and raspberry added. It’s a slimy depressing mess from October on, gets into everything, mixes up everything, your head, things, makes you gently dizzy so you don’t know what time it is and that time is passing and night falling. It rises up from the river, sweeps in from the end of the neighborhood, takes in all the landings, docks, people and trams.. makes everything hazy and stumpy..

Days when it really streams in you can’t see the hospital from La Vaillance, the pub opposite.. when it comes steaming out, in enormous torrents.. You just catch little gleams… it blinks a little in the windows.. and the big yellow lantern at the door.. It’s almost blotted out already.. It’s not a bad thing for your worries.. they drift away… it leaves you quiet. I can’t help saying that when I die I’d like to be left on the sidewalk as is, just like that, all alone in front of the London… let everyone go away.. you wouldn’t see any thing happening. I think I’d be carried off gently. That’s my notion.. faith in the gloom… It hasn’t any basis, of course. Ah! good thing I’m aware of it. I’m joking, it’s just an impression. brief futility.. an idle thought. Boy!

^^nce her ass was sewn up, Joconde was impossible! there was no holding her!. All the way to the end of the common ward you could hear her roaring out awful curses against Angele, that snake in the grass, whom she wanted to finish off right away, to go home and pound her to a jelly once and for all. Good thing she couldn’t do anything! she lay stiff in bed, wrapped up from her neck to her heels… in bandages, cotton. wasn’t allowed to move..

She stank of iodoform, she sickened the whole ward more with her stink than her screaming! Never a second’s silence. The nurses, who weren’t prudish, snapped right back at her, hung on till they got the last word.. That caused some awful sessions. Always thinking about Angele, that ghastly hag, she boiled in the sheets. /'That fart! that fart!” that’s what she called her, brooding away. "Murdering an arteezt!.. The jealousy of that bitch!. Zlut!. Oh! woe eez me!”

The suffering patients protested right and left. that they were fed up with the noise..

There were all kinds of patients around.. but mostly women of the neighborhood, housewives and maids, some waitresses from the bars, and some Chinese, too.. and also two or three Negresses, women under treatment.. most of them for the belly.. breasts, and also for the skin.. running sores, ulcers, chronic cases. Joconde wasn’t in for long, but all the same at least twenty-five days like that on her back, that was Clodovitz’ opinion, absolutely motionless. He came by at least three or four times a day to examine and check. He came to look at her drain, whether it was running… He was as attentive as could be.. Recommended by Cascade, that wasn’t to be sneezed at!.. Clodovitz wasn’t old, yet he already looked rheumatic, sickly, shriveled up, and his joints full of arthritis… He even made the patients laugh at his aches, he made dry, ropy, creaky noises at will..

"Ah! if you had my knees,” he’d answer when they complained. "You’d see something! And my shoulders! And my back! Boy! What would you say then?.. And I’ve got to go running around! I don’t lie in bed!”

Rushing through the wards, up and down the five flights, three times a day, he’d ask on the run how things were going. And that nose of his! unbelievable! out of Punch and Judy! it dragged him along! He’d lean forward everywhere, over everything, nearsighted as a dozen moles, his big popping eyes rolling under his glasses. As soon as he’d start spouting, it would all shake rhythmically in time with the words, nervous by nature, his ears would wiggle too, sticking out, wide-open, wings keeping his head up, but gray, like a bat’s. He was really pretty homely. He scared certain patients. but a kindly smile, ah! no denying it! a kind of girl’s smile, never brusque, never impatient, always ready to be pleasant, to make himself agreeable, to put in the right word, in the teeth of destiny and fatigue!.. a word of comfort, a compliment, to the worst wallowing pissy flattened-out bellyacher, all delicacy with the worst down-and-outers! with the most snarling tiresome sluts.. rotting and peevish, the dregs of the "chronic” wards, where the others, the "staff” doctors, practically never set foot. there were some pretty queer customers, hard to imagine such perfect wrecks, who nevertheless were pests for months and months. some for years it seems.. who fell away piecemeal, bit by bit, one day an eye, the nose, a ball, then some spleen, a pinky, it was a kind of battle with the big bite, the horror inside gnawing away, without a gun or saber or cannon, that rips a guy’s whole works apart, that drills away at him piece by piece, that comes from nowhere, from no sky, and one fine day he no longer exists, skinned alive, cut up nibbled with ulcers, just like that, with little squeals, red hiccups, groanings and prayers and awful pleading. Ave Maria! Sweet Jesu! Jesus! as the tenderhearted English sob, the elite of sensibility.

And what an assortment, a choice, a whole world, a calamity bazaar, departments for everything, for the stomach, heart, kidneys, bowels, the eight and fifty common wards of the London Freeborn Hospital! Especially during the winter months when there was coughing!. terrific coughing! at least ninety-three wards! with catarrhs all over, besides the street accidents which came up in series. often ten or fifteen at a time. mornings when the fog was too thick..

In the wards themselves it was dark from late September on, except for two or three hours in the morning, and then very close to the window, the high guillotines, it came from the river in big dense waves, it penetrated the whole building, it choked the gaslights, the lamps in the corridors, it brought in a smell of coal tar, the coal smoke from the port, and then the echo of the ships, the movements on the docks, the cries..

Clovis fortified himself for the checkup with an enormous oil lantern, a "mail coach,” when someone called him as he passed, he could hardly see, but heard well, he’d come very close to the bed, he’d light up their faces, it made a white circle all around, the face of the suffering chap stood out in the darkness, he’d lean over against him, he’d speak to him in a hushed voice. "Sh! Sh!” he’d say. “Sh! old boy! Don’t wake anyone.. I’ll be right back! I’ll give you your little injection!.. Soon be over!.. Soon be over!”

The same words to each sufferer.. and from one ward to another. on all floors. "Soon be over!”. It was a kind of quirk of his.

He did lots of injections in the course of a night, lots and lots!.. among the women and the men… He was so nearsighted that I’d hold his lantern for him up against it.. right against the buttock… so he’d dig the needle straight in.. not sideways or crossways..

After about two weeks when I’d been coming to see Joconde, we became such pals that I did the injections for him, with camphor, morphine, ether, the usual things, and he’d hold the lantern for me. "Soon be over!. Soon be over!”. the refrain.

With my trick paw I got the knack of the injections right away, a trick paw’s automatic, the patient feels nothing… a puff..

That’s how I got a start, a little on the sly like that, at the London Freeborn Hospital with Dr. Clodovitz, in my professional career. I learned to say, just like him, immediately, everywhere, "Soon be over!” It became a kind of habit, a sort of quirk.. All kinds of awful things have happened since the Freeborn Hospital! here, there, good, bad, horrible, too, you can be sure of that. You’ll judge for yourself. Without any definite idea.. Simply in the course of things. it’s fine already!. Soon be over!..

w lie spaced each other by two minutes. We were on the lookout along the streets.. Orchard Street, Weberley Commons, Perigham Row.. First Boro and then Rene, the little deserter who had impossible papers, his photo in all the newssheets, and then Elise, the "crazy peddler” who’d jumped bail, with a gang of plain-clothes men after her, since for years she’d been handling harmless little opium pellets all through Maida Vale and the West End, without getting into trouble, and then she suddenly went in for hashish without telling anyone, because of the war. That’s what the Yard didn’t excuse, variations of habit!..

It was bound to end in trouble. They were watching us, unluckily. Even at the hospital with Clodo, where after all I was very quiet, where I was useful as a kind of nurse lending a hand when there were too many people, it started smelling fishy.. Joconde had done us harm.. She’d been telling things about her personal worries and her troubles at the Leicester that were just plain crazy.. Since she spoke a bit of English and the place was lousy with blabbering chambermaids, it took on real proportions.. loafers who hadn’t a damned thing to do but screw things up even more… it became risky and dangerous.. They spoke of kicking us out, pure and simple, and Clodovitz first of all… a foreign doctor, an extra, just good enough for the night shift. The Management had their eye on him… He was in bad odor but since they didn’t pay him much, even for the backbreaking work, awakened ten, fifteen times a night, they weren’t at all sure of finding another intern so utterly devoted, neither troublesome nor a drinker, just a little queer in his ways.. The management hesitated about giving him his week’s notice.. Just about hesitated.. Fired would have been a catastrophe… He had such queer papers, such suspicious stamps on them that they weren’t fit to be shown.. Diplomas that were even more weird!.. but the way the fellow had got there, happened to be in London, was still the biggest mystery!. Ah! a dead duck if they bounced him. He’d be washed up! For some time they’d been picking up "aliens,” as they called them, every day, who were less doubtful than he…

Clodovitz knew all about it.. he’d mention it to me occasionally, he didn’t think it was funny..

Cascade had promised to come soon to see what was happening.. After three or four days, not a sign.. Suddenly someone phoned. that he was on his way!. tell him to shake a leg… we had a thing or two to tell him..

The date was for six o’clock at the Dingby Cruise, the old lunchbar in the middle of the docks, a little to the west of the hospital, right on the edge of the river..You could get there by the bank or the maze of alleys all around that led to it from Commercial Road, from between the "Stores,” the high warehouses. That was really the prudent way of coming and going..

So there we were. We were waiting for him. The boss of La Vaillance had also come to see us. But he didn’t talk much, he was wary, he kept his distance, a scalded cat.

"I want to speak to Cascade!”. He wanted to talk only to Cascade! Stubborn, disagreeable.. Cascade hadn’t arrived. It was a rush hour, the tables were filling up, the change of shifts, the bunch from the cranes, from the holds, naturally they made a lot of noise, mainly because of their brogans, the place was all made of wood, all crosspieces and daub, it resounded. The slot machine and the dice added to the din… in short, a general racket all around..

Ah! chug! chug! there’s a car! It’s Monsieur, after all!.

"Hello, men! ”… he calls out.

"Hello Monsyoor! ”… they answer.

It wasn’t any too soon.

"How’s it going, Brainstorm?”

He’s talking to me.

"Does it still hurt?”

He points to my head.

"Still does! Still does! Monsieur Cascade!”

It bothers him that I’m having trouble with my head, he talks to me about it every time.

Anyway, Clodo starts explaining to him, that we’ve made him come, etc.. etc.. to tell him about Joconde!. that she’s not behaving herself at the hospital.. that she’s shooting her mouth off..

"And how’s her ass coming along?”

"That part’s all right! ”

"When the ass is all right, everything’s all right!”. he answers.

That’s the only effect it has on him..

"And what about Angele?” we ask.

"She went up to Edinburgh! She’s on business, boys! Placing Biglot’s two girls!”

"Biglot’s?”

"Yes! Biglot’s! That’s right! ”

We can’t get over it..

"A man who’ll be forty soon! He’s beating it, too! The sap! yeah! yeah! He’s off for the infantry, Ladies and Gentlemen, the infantry! Yessiree! Ah! I don’t want to think about it any more! But what about Joconde? Some class, huh? I didn’t lie to you, did I? Estocadero! And Pfft! What a spurt! Youd’ve thought she was a quarterback! Whtt! What zip! Lightning! Eh?.. Lightning! ”

"Don’t you want to go and see her?” we suggested gently.

"Ah! Hell no! She can croak! ”

That’s how he answered. He’d had enough! Fed up!.

He didn’t want to get mixed up in that again!

A bit selfish!

"Listen, boys, I know what I’m going to do!”

He was off again on his pet subject.

"I’m going to buy me a trombone! I’m going to get into the parade, too! I’ll drop in to see you around noon!. You’ll see me, pals! You’ll see me! I’ll play my music all by myself! For those who don’t want to leave! I’ll be the anti-recruiting guy! Get that! I’m going to start a society! The 'I-ain’t-having-any-Boys’! If this continues, guys, I’m going to learn English!.. I want to find out what they’re batting about, the hokum they’re filling ’em with! since it’s driving ’em all crazy!.. it must be terrific! I’d like to listen to their line! Men are just plain morons, eh?… I know ’em all right! ”

Ah! he sat there gaga!

It was really pretty amazing!

Over his glass, deep in thought. thick stout..

Prospero Jim, the boss of the Dingby, comes up, he talks… he sees things Cascade’s way.. the crime of the newspapers!.. always the papers!.. He never reads them either!

.. and the movies!..

"Say, did you see the newsreels? Trenches in one place! Boches in another! Look at my helmet! Oh boy, am I brave! Am I dead! It’s a joke! Me telling you! Mmph! Bah! For their mugs! Bull-shit!”

It made them both mad just to think about that crap!

They were getting upset just talking about it!

"I love you! I love you!” Cascade said, in imitation!.. "You’re right! They’re infants!.. yokels spoiled by good cream! stuffed with butter! Too much yum-yum!”

I listened to them jabber… It still wasn’t any of my business… I could have stuck my word in! I was keeping my mouth shut!.. When it comes to experience, every man for himself! I’d been to school! I had a bellyful of dearly acquired knowledge!.. and especially in my ear! A tiny bit of hardware left! but it added up in whistling!.. so that I couldn’t sleep!.. and enough migraines to make me bark, the way they tore at me like pincers, revulsed my eyes by force… so that I’d squint for hours. In short, real terrors. Ah! no! I had mine!.. I thought of my father and mother peaceful in their shop, in the Passage du Verododat, having a good time being pitied by all the neighbors because their son had been so badly wounded, whimpering… I thought of all I’d seen from one hospital to the other. Dunkerque. Le Val.. Villemomble. Drancy. and also me, myself. How they get the injured on the operating table. whisk ’em up again!

perk ’em up again! They stitch up the main business and off you go!.. Hop to it, Humpty-Dumpty! Three cheers!.. You’ll be in the next whirl!. In the nick of time, straight as a bullet! On the spot for the big offensive! You can have the joys of the Charred Woods! You won’t be cold this winter, my merry hero!.. There’ll be sport around there!.. I guarantee it!. Not a minute wasted!. Try to be quick soldier-boys!

.. You won’t look much at the pieces! It’s not a nice thing for a man to do!..

I was thinking about all that. I didn’t say anything! Cascade was still talking. He was glad someone was listening to him… He was producing his effect.

"The sergeant, the one with the ribbons, comes up to me! He stops me, he hands me a line! Boy, what a sour grouch!”

The thing that happened to him.

"Me! I’m telling you, boys!.. Can you imagine that! What did he take me for? He wanted me to follow his parade! to go with him to the Recruiting Station! Just get that!. 'French!’ I said to him. 'French are you?’ he’d pulled a boner! What a face he made! Nose to nose! Started sucking his stick! Did he look dumb! Boy, everyone was splitting! You should’ve seen the crowd! Smack! A sock! Shot right in! Ah! angry! Trench rascal! rascal!’ he calls me. The crowd’s against me.. I wasn’t sticking around! Just think! A thousand against one!

.. Good-by!.. Off like a shot! I wish you’d seen the Recruiting Sergeant’s mug! What a slick getup on the guy! Boy, some swanky tunic! What a nifty can to go to war with! The Jerries’ll have a good laugh! Boy, you see everything! Twirling his stick and woo-woo!”

Cascade was having a great time!.. So were the customers all around him. What a brilliant talker!.. and even the boss of La Vaillance was forgetting his troubles..

"That’s a sergeant for you! you realize? All right, I’ll shut up, Prosper! I’m driving myself crazy! Just thinking about it!

… Hand me the poison! Their bedbug juice! ”

He poured himself a big whisky-fizz… He treated everybody, generous, absolutely..

"It’s for everyone! You hear me? I didn’t come for nothing! They talk to me about sickness! About God knows what!.. about croaking! God damn it! I want to laugh! That reminds me of Little-Mouth Jeanne!.. I picked her up, you know, in Santos!.. I took her for a ride! I put on a real show! I was out with her all afternoon in a high-class landau! I wanted her to enjoy herself, have a good time. What heat, pals! like that!.. A plaster furnace, boys!.. I wanted to go one better. I made the driver stop at a bar, the finest saloon in the town! It was called L’Origone, a swell club! I wanted to put the finishing touches on!. Along came a torero, with his guitar, you know! Whango! He cops my gal! Just like that! Bango! Just time enough to look at her! He sized her up! She fell all over him! That’s what it cost me to be a sucker! He just blotted me out! He took her off on his arm! I blew up! Boy, I’m telling you! I jumped on the grease-ball! I smothered him!

I broke two of his molars for him! He runs to the cops!

My first breadwinner!. Santos is all railings! The prison’s right in the open air! Both of them came to see me! On Sundays, just to get a laugh! to make a damned fool of me! arm in arm!.. You get what lousy punks they were?.. Me on the other side of the bars!. I put in six months! Ah! youth!.. I was twenty, that explains everything! That cured me of taking rides, I’m telling you!.. The only thing to do is break their ribs. You’re nice? You get it in the neck!. Down the drain!.. I love you!.. I didn’t want to show my strength! She was the boss! She sent me back to the kitchen! Get that, my boy!..You with the fruit salad! You toy-soldier! You listening? You don’t know everything! You don’t read that kind of thing in the papers!”

Prospero was in full agreement.

The customers around, those with tattoos, the men from the pier, the fellows with big arms, they nodded, they didn’t understand a thing. Prospero translated some of these practical remarks into English… It made them guffaw with liquor.. Their glasses, their lips, their mustaches were full of it.. They were clinking and cackling.. shaking all the glassware with noisy jokes to the health of their crony, so generous, such a philosopher!.. They were so dazed with the malt gin and the stout and the thick clouds of tobacco and the cut-plug besides and the fatigue of loading that it was a waste of effort explaining to them what it was all about. They didn’t understand anything.. But they wanted, after all, to toast the gay dog who did things so handsomely! who treated the whole crowd.. who gave you a shot in the arm with a one-two-three and whisky-fizz! and "sailor’s vitriol” which was one of Prospero’s secrets that turned your mouth inside out as soon as you were hit by the first drop that would have melted all the fogs from Barbeley Docks to Greenwich just breathing at them, with that horrible breath! across thirty-six Thameses. But you had to hold on to the bar! It knocked you clean off your feet.

“For he's a jolly good fellow"… the whole crowd took up the famous chorus, sent it booming against the windowpanes! the menagerie was roaring! The smoke was getting so thick you could have cut it with a knife.. made everyone teary, close his eyes, stinging and blinking, red, burning with sooty pepper.. and lots of other smokes besides, more pungent ones, filtering in from all over the river, sulphur, coal, saltpeter, getting everything sticky, blotting everything out, even the gas, the lamps, giving you queer looks, funny faces, molasses heads, pasty-looking through the blur. The pubful of bellowers all dim-looking.. the whole mob of howling phantoms..

For he's a jolly good fellow!..

It was starting again… the whole bacchanal.. and then a big pull for the war, the popular refrain, the song of the day that was all the rage at the Empire..

Hide your trouble! Hide your bag!

And sing! sing! sing!..

Even Cascade barked out “Sing! Sing! Sing!" to beat the band! At just that moment along came Boro who’d been in the back, playing cards. He came up to us.

"Where are you coming from, Fatso, eh?” Cascade shoots at him.

"I’m coming from bed, boss! Here’s to your health! At your service! I’m not coming from jail like a lot of other guys,” he adds.. discreet allusion.

"But you’ve been there, let’s be honest, Monsieur Boro!” "And no less than fourteen times for my honor! Monsieur Cascade!.. Forrr my ideas!.. I’d like you to know! And I'm prrroud of it! I expect to again if necessary!”

A terrible accent and thundering rrr!

"Go on! Go on! Don’t boast!”

"Never do, Monsieur Cascade! I never do! You hear me! for peempping!”

Telling him off!

"No one’s asking for your opinions, Monsieur Borokrrrom! Since you’re so distinguished, it's your papers we’d like to see! ” "Why here they are, Monsieur Cascade!”

He rummages around deep down in his pockets, he digs out a whole litter, booklets, wallets, bits of passports, all patched up, full of grease-spots..

Cascade examines them, returns them.

"Oh! Oh! you’re not difficult, my fine bandit! All that record’s yours? Pretty bad, Boro! Pretty bad!.. And what about yours, Monsieur Jinx?”

He’s talking to me.

"Let me have a look at your sweet little papers! May I?”

I take mine out. He unfolds them, hands them back to me.. He frowns..

"But you’re not in velvet either, Monsieur Jinx! They came looking for you, too!. All right. Let me explain!. They want you at the Consulate!.. Sure! Sure!.. You can see why!”

"Have you seen the posters?. You who read all the Mirrors.. That’s all they’re talking about at Berlemont’s. All men in the class of 1912. They’re all being called back!.. rejected or not!.. And what about you, my dear Clodovitz? Dear doctor! dear scientist!”

He spots him.

"Let me have a look at your rags!.. Ah! I’ve already seen them, of course! Ah! but so long ago that’s all!.. I miss them! I miss them!. They were so funny two years ago!. Do you still have them with you? Fine! You're hatching them, so to speak!. They’ve made little ones! Clodovitz!”

Clodovitz dives down, his linings were full of them, some a bit genuine. some all fake!. Erasures everywhere. his passports were a scream! flim-flams! jokes! He himself admitted it!

"They’re too scratched up, that’s all!”

He explained the reason..

"Well, fatheads! You’re getting along all right! You’re going to be taught another tune! Artists! that’s a fact! But as for the fake papers!.. Ah! Mother of God! my ass could do better!.. Some people think that’s going some! Proof? Clients! amateurs and serious ones!.. Take Matthew, he wants you! There’s the amateur! He’s been asking for you everywhere!.. He’s all worked up about your fake papers! He came back to see me day before yesterday!. on purpose!.. just for that! I welcomed him in! ’Inspector!’ I said to him just like that. I’m not shy. ‘You look preoccupied!’ I took the liberty of saying. I know he’s as phony as a rat. and when he comes in good humor it’s even worse!. It’s a trap!.. I go straight to the point… I take out the Calva… He sips it. he sits down. That’s all!.. Still not a word. I want him to warm up!.. I take out the cognac. and then the big glasses!.. It’s coming along!.. I see his head!.. He says 'Myum! Myum!’ He sucks his tongue!. Hell, I’m in a hurry!. I look as if I’m trying to find the corkscrew!. the little one in my pocket.. I rummage around!.. I search in my pockets!.. all just an act!.. I take out a handful of pound notes. bang! like that! on the table!. I get up.. I start going. ’I’m going to take a leak!’ I say. I come back.. they’re not there!.. The conversation gets easier right away!. It loosens up!. There’s confidence.. A lot more ease!.. Ah! I’d done the right thing! He had a thing or two to tell me!.. I might have thought he wanted to bluff me!.. But he shows me his warrants. It was a serious matter. It concerns you, and in detail!. Better get a load of what I say!

You, Jinx, he wants to see you again. The Consulate’s asking for your certificate. right away!. and fast!. it’s getting hot!.. And you, Clodo, it’s the Home Service, they’re fed up with your mug. And that makes two!. you’ve got to go back to Folkestone!.. to the Polack quarantine!.. that’s where you belong and not elsewhere!. And you, Monsieur du Boro, who are so delicate! It’s the 'Scots’ who want you. and the Yard besides and right away!. They’re disgusted the way you act up!. That’s the way they talk! You’ve got to get your junk and beat it within five days!.. They don’t want to see you again!. If not, you’ll get it in the balls.. and overalls with a number on them!. maybe a touch of the cat too!.. That’s the news!”

I hoped that Cascade was stringing us along, that he was handing us a line like that just to throw a scare into us.. just to give us an idea of his connections, all the same it wasn’t just talk!. There must have been some danger. no doubt the cops were nervous, and greedy and shrewd. Ah! but we mustn’t let ourselves be taken in!. Both of us started getting excited too!.. We squawked about violating our rights!.. unheard-of injustice!.. that you could see the streets of London full of worse-looking bums than us. much more suspicious and dirty! hoodlums!. terrors!. out and out apaches!

.. that there was no name for such downright unjust dishonesty!

And then we had to stomach the fact that probably he was the one who was squealing to the cops.. that he was getting rid of us treacherously!.. We weren’t feeling so hilarious!.. It’s true that he looked pleased, as if he were wiping his hands of us!.. Ah! it was fishy!

"You’re jealous, that’s all! Admit it!”

That’s what we said.. and then his whole pack of nonsense! that he seemed to be getting a kick out of the jam we were in! That he seemed to be damned cynical! That he didn’t have much honor!

Oh! my, oh my! the way he shot back!

"Me! you fags! me listen to that?”

He was choking.

"They’d have been whipped to death! Croaked in jail! sausage meat! if I hadn’t greased Matthew only yesterday! They keep ruining me!. And I keep saving their lives!. They’re meat for the police and in cahoots! That’s the way they treat me!”

More indignation, he takes out a package of pounds, sterling and tens.. only big bills, a whole fortune! He crumples them in his fist. wipes the whole table with them! on purpose in disgust!.. just to show us! He sponges up everything! the liquor spots!

"There! you rats!. Is that what you want?”

He throws them at us like a dishmop. like a red rag..

"Are you satisfied?”

He’s humiliating us.

"No, Cascade. No!. Look. Just think about it!”

"It’s all thought about, God damn it! Your papers are toilet-paper! They’re recruiting you, they’re locking you up! It’s only natural! It’s all thought out! And they damned well mean it!

.. There’s a war on!.. Ought to hear the way they talk!.. I’m not the only one, you know, who gets ’em sore.. Everything’s getting their goat!. Even dough!. You can shove it down their throats! just like that!.. They’re back again.

They show their teeth again!.. It’s crazy, there’re no more limits!.. ‘There’s a war on!’ all they can blurt out!. The war!.. A fat lot of good it does you! Just a lot of crap! Cop or not!.. Pimp or jerk!. God-damned crazyness! Those who can stay out of it don’t stay out! You get rough with them? they’re not satisfied! They don’t know what they want!. Shit!

No more good manners! Lousiness by the yard!”

Ah! all the same he was just kidding!.. You could see he was teasing.. that he was stringing us along… A bogeyman! A natural-born rascal!

In spite of everything, I wasn’t sure… I only had a half hard-on!.. Boro was grinning green around the gills.. Clodo couldn’t find his eyes the way he was goggling behind his glasses! he was so jittery that his glass kept jumping out of his hands!.. all because of the terror of being kicked out of London! Damn it all! It wasn’t a dream!.. We all had good reasons for staying in London! serious and personal ones!.. It made Boro stammer!

‘‘You?.. You?.. think so, Cascade?”

‘‘I don’t think so.. It’s as if I were there! ”

It was a horrible kind of joke..

Around us the customers weren’t a bit worried.. They were taking advantage of the windfall, they were having a free drink! Cascade was treating!.. They didn’t understand the reasons, why we were getting so excited!.. Why we were so worked up about the posters! about cops’ gossip!.. why we were on pins and needles!.. You couldn’t explain it to them.. we kept repeating that there was a war on. The war, that didn’t bother them! They’d never have signed up. They were only good for the docks! The rest of it was none of their business…

Load.. unload!.. that was all! Period! and that’s that!..

Dockers! Dockers! That was all!.. Commercial or war goods.. No other job! That was what their destiny was like!.. They wouldn’t have changed it for anything in the world!.. They seemed like vagrants, pigs, drunks, pitiful, dazed, in rags, yet we were the real bums after all! The real outcasts of circumstance! Suckers and cannon fodder! Nobody was asking the English guys for anything.. The army? out of the question!.. All they had to do was continue sordid and comfortable, lugging their load! and that was all! Gentlemen, to the hold! No one asked them for anything. Us, that was a horse of a different color! We were on the ‘‘French-frog” lists marked riff-raff everywhere! Men of original sin! born for battle! numbered clowns the whole carcass! Donkeys, scrap iron! Pretty bad! Bad I say!.. A fellow’s only five liters of blood!