North Read Free

but take it from me, the right time to have been born is 100 b.c.! . . . the stories we tell are a bore! . . . our plays, more yawns! and the movies and TV . . . disaster! what the people want and the élite too is Circuses! the gory killl . . . honest-to-God death rattles, tortures, guts all over the arena! . . . no more silk-and-something stockings, false tits, sighs and moustaches, Romeos, Camellias, Cuckolds . . . hell no! . . . Stalingrads! . . . tumbrils full of lopped-off heads! heroes with their cocks in their mouths . . . you come home with your wheelbarrow full of eyes, like the Romans . . . no more little gilt-rimmed programs! . . . the real stuff, blood and entrails . . . no more of your rigged brawls . . . no! the Circus will put the theaters out of business . . . the forgotten fashion will come back . . . all the rage! . . . three hundred years before Jesus! "at last! at last!" What a novel that will be! I'll start right in . . . evening dress required? hell no! "The vivisection of the wounded"! . . . That's it! so much art, centuries of so-called masterpieces, all for nothing! swindles! crimes!

    ° See glossary

"So you call yourself a chronicler?"
    "Exactly!"
    Without a qualm? . . ."
    "Don't exasperate me!" I can still bear Madame von Dopf . . .
    "I assure you, Monsieur Céline, if my husband had lived, we would never have had Hitler . . . that disastrous man! . . . intelligence without will comes to nothing, don't you see? . . . but will without intelligence? . . . disaster! . . . Hitler! . . . don't you agree, Monsieur Celine . . ."
    "Certainly, Madame, certainly!"
    God knows the guests of the Simplon in Baden-Baden were Gaullists, out-and-out anti-Hitlerites. . . ripe for the Allies! . . . with the Cross of Lorraine in their hearts, in their eyes, on their tongues . . . and none of your small-time flops, none of your demented down-at-the-heel shopkeepers . . . oh no! . . . plush addicts every last one of them, four star, two three chambermaids to every suite, sun balcony overlooking Lichtenhalallee . . . the banks of the Oos, that little brook with its genteel lappings, bordered by rare trees of every kind . . . silver-haired weeping willows trailing their branches . . . a hundred feet long . . . in the water . . . three centuries of fancy gardening . . . the Simplon only took people from the very best families, former reigning princes or Ruhr magnates . . . owners of steel mills with a hundred . . . or two hundred thousand workers . . . still . . . I'm speaking of July '44 . . . very well supplied with food, and very punctually . . . they and their hangers-on . . . butter, eggs, caviar, marmalade, salmon, cognac, Mumm's extra . . . airborne shipments, dropped by parachute on Vienna, Austria . . . direct from Rostov, Tunis, Epernay, London . . . the wars raging on seven fronts and all the oceans don't interfere with their caviar . . . the super-squashery . . . Z-bomb, sling, fly-swatter . . . will always respect the delikatessen of the high and mighty . . . You won't see Kroukrouzof eating monkey meat in this world! Or Nixon feeding on noodles or Millamac on raw carrots . . . the tables of the high and mighty are a "Reason of State" . . . That's how it was at the Simplon . . . everything they needed! . . . on every floor assassins dressed like waiters carrying compote with maraschino . . . For those people, I don't have to tell you, money was no problem . . . guests and flunkeys thought nothing of putting ten fifteen millions on a single card at the "Mark Exchange" . . . and Christ, were they in a hurry to unload that stage money! . . . to buy something with it, anything . . . but where did the stuff come from? from right next door, from Switzerland . . . and via Switzerland from the Orient, from Morocco . . . and the prices! . . . whole wheelbarrows full of marks! . . . okay . . . okay . . . but what about the layout? . . . A whole floor of the Simplon was fixed up . . . genuine merchants! . . . curled,