FROM JOURNEY TO THE END OF THE NIGHT (L.F. CÉLINE)

 

While he spoke to us thus, in a low voice, his wife and two daughters, plump and luscious blondes, seemed in perfect agreement, with an occasional word... In short, they were throwing us out. Sentimental and archaeological values ​​floated among us, suddenly vital, for there was no one left in Noirceur to challenge them... Patriotic, moral, stimulated by words, phantoms that the mayor tried to capture, but which immediately vanished, overcome by our fear and our selfishness, and also by the pure and simple truth.

 The mayor of Noirceur made exhausting and moving efforts to convince us, passionately, that our duty was, without a doubt, to get the hell out of here at once, with a clear breeze and all hell to pay, less brutal, of course, than our Commandant Pinçon, but just as determined in his kind. 

The only sure thing we could oppose to all those powerful men was, without a doubt, our humble desire not to die or burn. It was not enough, especially since such things cannot be declared during war. So we headed off toward more empty streets. The truth was, everyone I'd met that night had revealed their souls to me.

 "I'm so lucky!" Robinson commented as we were leaving. "You see! If you'd been a German—and you're a good fellow, too—you'd have taken me prisoner, and everything would have turned out all right... It's hard to get rid of yourself in a war!"

"And you," I said, "if you had been a German, wouldn't you have taken me prisoner too? Then perhaps you would have been awarded his military medal! His military medal must be called by a strange name in German, isn't it?"

Since we still didn't find anyone on the road who wanted to take us prisoner, we ended up sitting on a bench in a small square and ate the can of tuna that Robinson León had given us been pacing and warming himself in his pocket since morning. The cannon could be heard very far away now, very far indeed. If only the enemy had only been able to stay on their own and leave us alone! 

Then we continued along a canal and, beside the half-unloaded barges, urinated in long streams into the water. We still led the horse by the bridle, behind us, like a very large dog, but near the bridge, in the ferryman's one-room house, also on a mattress, another dead man was lying alone, a Frenchman, a commander of mounted chasseurs, who, by the way, bore a striking resemblance to Robinson.

"He's so ugly!" Robinson remarked. "I don't like dead people..." "The strangest thing," I replied, "is that he resembles you a little. He has a long nose like yours, and you're not much younger than he is..." 

"Fatigue makes me look that way; Tired, we all look a bit alike, but if you'd seen me before... When I used to ride my bike every Sunday!... I was a pretty good kid! Boy, did I have some calves! Sport, of course! It also develops your thighs...

 We went out again; the match we'd taken to look had gone out. 

"You see! It's too late!"