Rigadoon by Louis-ferdinand Celine

Author:Louis-ferdinand Celine
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781564781628
Publisher: Dalkey Archive
Published: 2011-08-02T18:22:35+00:00

At last! the train! . . . I can hear you saying: all he does is take trains . . . anyway, here it is! . . . seems it's the last train from Hanover to Hamburg . . . if you call it a train . . . a coke engine hitched to ten, maybe fifteen open-work cars . . . cars? not exactly . . . no walls, no doors . . . more like platforms . . . the worst of it is that they're all full . . . war materiel, mostly . . . I think . . . enormous searchlights under tarps . . . nobody stops the passengers from climbing on . . . they've just got to squeeze in . . . it's the last train on the line . . . then they're going to rip up the rails for strategic reasons . . . that's what they're saying . . . they seem to know . . . rumors aren't always wrong, that's what's so frightening, that shred of truth . . . but even if it wasn't sure they were going to discontinue the Hanover-Hamburg, even if it was only probable, we couldn't take the chance . . . heave-ho! . . . not so easy, but we make it! . . . we're wedged between an enormous spool of cable and some other huge object, a dynamo, I think . . . pretty tight squeeze, but not too uncomfortable . . . Lili, Bébert in his musette bag, Felipe, and myself . . . we've only got each other to keep us warm, nothing to put on, lost it all in the hostilities and under the brick slide . . . well, pretty near . . . our knapsacks and duffel coats . . . buried in bricks . . . I think, I'm not sure . . . I won't claim we were naked, no! . . . but that's what it felt like in the rain and wind . . . besides, it was coming on winter and we hadn't had anything to eat since the smashup . . . I think all our stuff was buried under the bricks, I'm not sure . . . I'm not saying we were stark naked, no! . . . but nothing to eat, not a thing, no coffee, no bread . . . the other people on the other cars haven't anything either, I can see the positions they're in, they've climbed on, hoisted themselves like us, not a peep out of them, they're only trying to keep warm like us, but in clusters of ten or fifteen . . . men and women . . . in between spools of barbed wire, steel girders, and more searchlights . . . all this equipment for Hamburg? at the tail end, it looks like, they've even got pieces of railroad cars . . . quarters, halves . . . that we're toting along with a regiment of searchlights .

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