Death on the Installment Plan (Ralph Manheim Translation) by Louis-Ferdinand Céline

Author:Louis-Ferdinand Céline [Céline, Louis-Ferdinand]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literature
ISBN: 9780811200172
Publisher: New Directions
Published: 1952-01-01T16:00:00+00:00

The bastards push me around, they’re stronger… They’re pretty brutal… They drag me down the stairs… they won’t even listen to my mother… They push me into the room downstairs… I take the blows as they come… I’ve stopped resisting… I get some from everybody, especially in the balls… I can’t fight back… The wickedest of the lot is Visios… I get a kick square in the stomach… I stagger… I don’t double up… I stay put, glued to the wall… They leave, spitting in my face as they go… They lock me in.

I’m all alone… pretty soon I begin to tremble… My hands… my legs… my face… inside… all over… I have a lousy sick feeling, a panic in my kidneys… like everything was falling apart, coming off in shreds… like a hurricane was shaking me… My whole carcass is rattling, my teeth are chattering… I’m dead to the world… I’ve got a spasm in my asshole… I shit in my pants… My heart’s pounding so hard I can’t hear what’s going on… I can’t make out what they’re doing… My knees are knocking together… I stretch out on the floor… I don’t know what’s what… I’m scared… I feel like yelling… I haven’t knocked him off, have I? Shit! To hell with that… But my asshole is opening and closing… A spasm… it’s awful.

I think of Papa again… The sweat’s dripping off me and what’s left is cold… I swallow it through my nose… I’m bleeding… The cocksucker scratched me… I wasn’t very rough… I’d never have expected him to be so weak, so mushy… It’s amazing… It was easy to squeeze… I remember how I was kneeling there with my fingers locked in front… the slobber… and the way he suckled my thumb… I can’t stop shaking… I’m trembling all over… All you’ve got to do is squeeze!… My face is twitching all over… I groan! Now I can feel every one of those bastards’ blows… I’m scared shitless… It’s my asshole that hurts worst… It keeps on twisting and tightening… It aches like hell.

Shut up in that room, stretched out on the tiles, I kept on trembling a long while, banging against everything in sight… I bumped into the clothes cupboard… it sounded like castanets… I’d never have thought I could have such a tempest inside me… The jolting was unbelievable… I flapped around like a lobster… It came from way inside… “I’ve knocked him off!” I said to myself… I was more and more sure of it, and then for a moment I heard something like the sound of steps… people talking things over… And then they were pushing the bed upstairs…

“That’s it! They’re taking him away…” But a minute later I heard his voice… That was him all right!… He was only punch-drunk! “I must have bashed his head in,” I began to think. “He’ll conk out later. That’ll be even worse…” He was still on my bed… I could hear the springs… Actually I didn’t know a thing.

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