Texts

It was he, Courtail des Pereires, who had obtained the second driving license for racing cars issued in France. Over the desk we had his diploma in a gold frame and his photograph as a young man at the wheel of a monster, with the date and the rubber stamps. The end had been tragic . . . He often told me about it.

"I was lucky," he admitted. "Take it from me. We were coming into Bois-le-Duc . . . the carburation was perfect . . . I didn't even want to slow down . . . I catch sight of the schoolteacher . . . she had climbed up on the embankment . . . She motioned to me . . . She'd read all my books . . . She waved her parasol . . . I didn't want to be rude . . . I threw on my brakes outside the school . . . In a minute I'm surrounded, fêted . . . I take a drink . . . I wasn't supposed to stop again before Chartres . . . another ten miles . . . The last control station . . . I invite the young lady to come along . . . 'Climb in, mademoiselle,' I say . . . 'Climb in beside me. Come along.' She was cute. She hesitated, she shilly-shallied, she coquetted some . . . I pressed her . . . So she sits down beside me and off we go . . . All day long, at every control station, there'd been cider and more cider . . . My machine as really humming, running fine . . . I didn't dare to make any more stops . . . But I needed to bad . . . Finally I had to give in . . . So I throw on the brakes . . . I stop the car, I stand up, I spot a bush . . . I leave the chick at the wheel. 'Wait for me,' I sing out, 'I'll be back in a second . . .' I'd hardly touched a finger to my fly when so help me I'm stunned! Lifted off my feet! Dashed through the air like a straw in a gale! Boom! Stupendous! A shattering explosion! . . . The trees, the bushes all around, ripped up! mowed down! blasted! The air's aflame! I land at the bottom of a crater, almost unconscious . . . I feel myself . . . I pull myself together . . . I crawl to the road . . . A total vacuum! The car? . . . Gone, my boy . . . A vacuum! No more car! Evaporated! Demolished! Literally! The wheels, the chassis . . . oak! Pitchpine! All ashes! . . . The whole frame . . . Oh well! . . . I drag myself around, I scramble from one heap of earth to the next . . . I dig . . . I rummage . . . A few fragments here and there . . . a few splinters . . . A little piece of fan, a belt buckle. One of the caps of the gast tank . . . A hairpin . . . That was all . . . A tooth that I've never been sure about . . . The official investigation proved nothing . . . explained nothing . . . What would you expect? . . . The causes of that terrible conflagration will remain forever a mystery . . . Almost two weeks later in a pond, six hundred yards from the spot, they found . . . after a good deal of dredging . . . one of the young lady's feet, half devoured by the rats.

"For my part, though I can't claim to be absolutely certain, I might in a pinch accept one of the numerous hypotheses advanced at the time to explain that fire, that incredible explosion . . . it's possible that imperceptibly, little by little, one of our 'long fuses' shook loose . . . When you come to think of it, it would suffice for one of those thin minium rods, shaken by thousands of bumps and jolts, to come into contact for only a second . . . for a tenth of a second . . . with the gasoline nipples . . . The whole shebang would explode instantly! Like melinite! Like a shell! Yes, my boy, the mechanism was mighty precarious in those days. I went back to the place a long time after the disaster . . . There was still a charred smell . . . At that critical stage in the development of the automobile, I might add, a number of these fantastic explosions were reported . . . almost as powerful! Everything pulverized! Horribly scattered in all directions! Propelled through the air for miles! . . . If pressed for a comparison, the only thing I can think of is certain sudden explosions of liquid air . . . And even there I have my reservations . . . Those things are commonplace! Perfectly easy to explain . . . from start to finish . . . beyond the shadow of a doubt. Whereas my tragedy remains an almost complete mystery . . . We may as well admit it in all modesty. But what importance has that today? None whatever. Fuses haven't been used in ages. Such speculation only impedes progress . . . Other problems demand our attention . . . a thousand times more interesting! Ah, my boy, that was a long time ago . . . Nobody uses minium anymore . . . Nobody!"

-- Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Death on the Installment Plan, tr. Ralph Manheim (New York: New Directions, 1966), 335-37.

One day Uncle Édouard got the brilliant idea of going up to the Genitron office to sound out the possibility of a little job for me. He had another reason, he wanted to consult him about his bicycle pump . . . He'd known de Pereires a long time, since the publication of his seventy-second handbook, the one that people still read more than any of the others, that was most widely distributed all over the world and had done the most for his reputation, his fame: How to equip a bicycle in all latitudes and climates for the sum of seventeen francs ninety-five, including all accessories and nickel-plated parts. At the time of which I am speaking this little manual published by the specialized firm of Berdouillon and Malarmée, on the Quai des Augustins, was in its three-hundredth printing! . . . Today it is hard to conceive of the enthusiasm, the general craze that this piddling, insignificant work aroused when it came out . . . But around 1900 How to Equip a Bicycle by Courtail-Martin des Pereires was a kind of catchism for the neophyte cyclist, his bedside reading, his Bible . . . Still, Courtail never ceased to be shrewdly self-critical. A little thing like that didn't turn his head. Naturally his rising fame brought him bigger and bigger mountains of mail, more visitors, more tenacious pests, extra work, and more acrimonious controversies . . . Very little pleasure . . . People came to consult him from Greenwich and Valparaiso, from Colombo and Blankenberghe, on the various problems connected with the "oblique" or "flexible" saddle . . . how to avoid strain on the ball bearings . . . how to grease the axles . . . the best hydrous mixture for rust-proofing the handlebars . . . He was famous all right, but the fame he got out of bicycles stuck in his craw. In the last thirty years he had scattered his booklets like seeds throughout the world, he had written piles of handbooks that were really a good deal more worthwhile, digests and explanations of real value and stature . . . In the course of his career he had explained just about everything . . . the fanciest and most complex of theories, the wildest imaginings of physics and chemistry, the budding science of radio-polarity . . . sidereal photography . . . He'd written about them all, some more, some less. It gave him a profound feeling of disillusionment, real melancholy, a depressing kind of amazement to see himself honored, adulated, glorified for the stuff he had written about inner tubes and freewheeling . . . In the first place he personally detested bicycles . . . He'd never ridden one, he'd never learned how . . . And on the mechanical side he was even worse . . . He'd never have been able to take off a wheel, not to mention the chain . . . He couldn't do anything with his hands except on the horizontal bar and the trapeze . . . Actually he was the world's worst butterfingers, worse than twelve elephants . . . Just trying to drive a nail in he'd mash at least two of his fingers, he'd make hash of his thumb, it was a massacre the minute he touched a hammer. I won't even mention pliers, he'd have ripped out the wall, the ceiling, wrecked the whole room . . . There wouldn't have been anything left . . . He didn't have two cents' worth of patience, his thoughts moved too fast and too far, they were too intense, too deep . . . The resistance of matter gave him an epileptic fit . . . The result was wreckage . . . He could tackle a problem in theory . . . But when it came to practice, all he could do on his own was swing dumbbells in the back room . . . or on Sunday climb into the basket and shout "Let her go" . . . and roll up in a ball to land when he was through . . . Whenever he tried to do any tinkering with his own fingers, it ended in disaster. He couldn't even move anything without dropping it or upsetting it . . . or getting it in his eye . . . You can't be an expert at everything . . . You've got to resign yourself . . .

-- Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Death on the Installment Plan, tr. Ralph Manheim (New York: New Directions, 1966), 331-33.