Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Céline Page A

pal, and good luck!"
    "Good luck to you too! Maybe we'll meet again!"
    We each went back to his own war. And then things happened, and a lot more things that it's not easy to tell about now, because people nowadays wouldn't understand them anymore.
    If you wanted to be respected and looked up to, you had to hurry up quick and pal up with the civilians, because they were becoming more and more vicious as the war went on. I saw that as soon as I got back to Paris. It also became clear to me that the women had ants in their pants and that the old men were talking big, and their fingers were all over the place, in assholes, in pockets ...
    The civilians back home were infected with the idea of glory, they picked it up from the soldier boys and soon learned how to bear up under it, bravely and painlessly. Nurses and martyrs by turns, mothers were never without their long dark veils and those little diplomas the Ministry never failed to send by special messenger. In short, the home front was getting organized.
    At a well-conducted funeral, you're sad too, but you think of other things, the will, your next vacation, the widow, who's a good-looker and said to be passionate, and your plans for continuing to live a great deal longer by contrast, and maybe never dying ... You never can tell.
    And as you follow the hearse, everybody lifts his hat to you. It's heart-warming. Then's the time to behave properly, to look dignified, not to laugh out loud, to gloat only internally. That's permissible. Everything's permissible internally.
    During the war, instead of dancing on the mezzanine, you danced in the cellar. The boys had no objection, in fact they were all for it. They demanded it as soon as they got to town, and nobody thought it indecent. The one thing that's really indecent is bravery. You expect physical bravery? Then ask a worm to be brave, he's pink and pale and soft, just like us. For my part, I had nothing to complain of. Actually, thanks to the Médaille Militaire I'd won and my wound and all, I was about to lose my innocence. They'd brought me the medal while I was in the hospital convalescing. And that same night I went to the theater, to let the civilians see it during intermissions. A triumph! Those were the first medals seen in Paris. It floored them!
    That was when I met little Lola from America in the lobby of the Opéra-Comique, and it was thanks to her that I really found out what was what.
    There are certain dates that stand out after months and months when you might just as well have been dead. That evening at the Opera-Comique with my medal was a turning point in my life.
    Lola made me curious about the United States, because of the questions I started asking right away and that she hardly answered at all. When you start traveling that way, you never know when or how you'll get back ...
    At the time I'm speaking of, everybody in Paris wanted a uniform. Practically nobody was without one, except neutrals and spies, which to all intents and purposes were identical. Lola had a genuine official uniform, and it was really natty, decorated with little crosses all over, on the sleeves and on the tiny cap that she perched at a rakish angle on her wavy hair. She'd come to help us save France, as she told the hotel manager, to the best of her humble ability but with all her heart! We understood each other right away, but not completely, because the transports of the heart were beginning to give me a pain, I was more interested in the transports of the body. You can't trust the heart, not at all. I'd learned that in the war, and I wasn't going to forget it in a hurry.
    Lola's heart was tender, weak, and enthusiastic. Her body was sweet, it was adorable, so what could I do but take her all together as she was? Lola was a good kid all right, but between us stood the war, the monstrous frenzy that was driving half of humanity, lovers or not, to send the other half to the slaughterhouse. Naturally this interfered with our