All right! things are coming along!. tea, a little snack! I carry it in! it gives a man a lift! I’m going to serve Monsieur and Madame!
Ah! I’m perfect in my line! I know how to manage things in families! All smooth sailing now! They’re just as sweet as pie! The way they go for my sardines! Ah! I’m quite a hand when it comes to broiling them! It’s a real lover’s snack! Ah! I join right in! I enjoy the whole thing! Every time he squeezes her she winks at me, wiggles and gives me the eye! at every kiss! she’s got the devil in her belly, the old buzzard!
"Come on! ”… I’m needling him.. "Let’s get going! ”
It’s true, it’s time!
"You’re right!.. Get started, young man! I’ll be right with you! ”
Ah! he’s got to make up his mind! They’re not going to neck around forever!
"Pepe! my green robe!” he orders.
And make it snappy! She goes to get the beautiful robe.. it’s in still another trunk… a shot silk with little mimosa seedlings.. she rummages about, digs it out, she dresses him, powders him, primps him.. now his hat!.. the umbrella!.. We’re all set!
"Say, take down the address!”
Already forgotten! I look for the Times clipping. I copy.. he repeats slowly…"O’Collogham! Colonel!.. 41 Willesden Green.. Willesden Mansions.”
That does it! He tries hard to remember it!
"All right! All right!”
And then he looks me over.
"Your shoes are disgusting!”
That’s true… He sighs..
"Your grooming! after all!”
I distress him.
He throws me some cloth… to brighten me up… a piece of kimono..
"Your appearance, young man!”
That does it.
"Ah!”.. he’s thinking things over.. "You’ll let me speak, won’t you?.. You won’t interrupt me?”
Oh no! 'by no means.. that I promise!
Pepe wants to kiss him again… a last embrace!
"Come on! Let’s get going! ”
He pushes her off… No more time… He dashes down the stairs.. I’m at his heels.. I’m following!
We hurry along! But Pepe won’t have it! Ah! she hangs on! bawls! miaows! she doesn’t want to stay there all alone! she wants us to take her along!
"Ah! I should have locked her in! ”
It’s too late.
Outside, people immediately form a crowd.. that makes another scene.. we never can escape it! we argue with Pepe! she’s doing it on purpose so that people’ll look at us! she just won’t understand anything! we reason with her, Sosthene kisses her!.. She just won’t understand.. that it’s about the mask business!.. finally it penetrates a little.. she gives in but we’ve got to pamper her!.. that’s the condition.. she wants to be coddled!.. Sosthene knows her.. she walks part of the way with us.. just to the corner.. Aldersgate.. the end of the tramline.. Ah! that’s where.. to the tobacco and candy shop!.. we have to buy her whatever she wants!.. goodies, all her whims… in the showcase, then at the counter.. first a big box of candy, then two Havana cigars. then three bags of marshmallows, then a bottle of eau de Cologne.. Ah! that just about does it.. No! she still wants some toffee.. she’s a bloodsucker!.. In order to pay we have to take out all we’ve got! all our coins! Sosthene and I! There’s just enough! just! She’s taking my last pennies! Ah! finally she’s ready to go home.. but it doesn’t satisfy her.. she leaves in a sulk.. she doesn’t even say good-by..
Bus 29! ours! that’s us! Shake a leg! He tucks up his robe!
.. we jump on!
THE END
Translated by Bernard Frechtman and Jack T. Nile
In GuignoVs Band, first published in France in 1943, Celine explores the horror of a disordered world. The hero, the semi-autobiographical Ferdinand, moves through the nightmare of London’s underworld during the years of World War I. In this distressing setting, he meets pimps and prostitutes, pawnbrokers and magicians, policemen and arsonists. He sees social and physiological decomposition as these processes unfold along parallel lines of development. The illusions of existence are nakedly exposed.
The narrative erupts in Celine’s characteristic elliptical style. His splintered sentences and scatology reflect his fury at the fragmentation of experience and at his own impotence in the face of it. Out of his rage, he forces the meaninglessness back on itself, and the exuberance of his struggle triumphs in the comic exaggeration of satire. Ultimately, his subject is not death but life, and he responds to it by a strengthened commitment to the sensual and concrete. His hallucinatory world is so vividly realized that it does, indeed, challenge the reality of the reader’s more conventional world.
Caver design by Gertrude Huston
