North by Louis-Ferdinand Céline Page A

tips, perfect! . . . they give me a slip, and on to the cashier . . . twenty marks . . . marvelous! . . . fully equipped for dizzy spells . . . light in the head . . . beginnings are always fun, even for lumpers! . . . delirious joy . . . finding the only department fully stocked with merchandise in this enormous empty store . . .
    Where can it be now? . . . what zone? . . . what's become of it? . . . that store without staircases? . . . I've asked around . . . thé people look at me . . . they think I'm nuts . . . they don't remember . . .

Me and my canes, Lili and Bébert, now we're tourists . . . better go find a hotel! this city has suffered all right . . . all those holes, those exploded streets! . . . funny, you don t hear any planes . . . aren't they interested in Berlin any more? . . . I didn't get it, but little by little I caught on . . . the city was all stage sets . . . whole streets of facades, the insides had caved in, sunk into holes . . . not all, but pretty near . . . much cleaner, I hear, in Hiroshima, neat, dipped . . . decoration by bombing is a science, it hadn't been perfected yet . . . here the two sides of the street still created an illusion . . . closed shutters . . . another curious thing was that on every sidewalk the rubble—beams, tiles, chimneys-was neatly piled up, no disorder, every house had its wreckage right outside the door, one or two stories high . . . everything numbered! . . . If the war ended tomorrow all of a sudden, they wouldn't need a week to put everything back in place . . . in Hiroshima it couldn't be done, progress has its drawbacks . . . there in Berlin, a week, and they'd fix it all up! . . . the beams, the drain pipes, every brick, already classified and numbered, painted yellow and red . . . which gives you an idea . . . a nation with an innate sense of order . . . that house is good and dead, one big crater, all its bowels and pipes outside, its skin, heart, and bones, yes, but the innards nicely grouped, in perfect order on the sidewalk . . . as if an animal in the slaughterhouse . . . a stroke of the wand! presto! . . . were to pick up its guts! giddyap! . . . and gallop away! If Paris had been destroyed, you can imagine the reconstruction crews! . . . what they'd build with the bricks and beams and drain pipes! . . . maybe two three barricades? . . .  if that! . . . and there in that dismal Berlin I saw men and women about my age and even older, maybe seventy or eighty . . . some of them blind . . . hard at work . . . . bringing everything back to the sidewalk, piling it up in front of every house front, putting on numbers . . . bricks here! yellow tiles there! . . . broken glass in a hole! everything! . . . no goofing off! . . . rain, sun, or snow, Berlin was never funny . . . a sky that will never smile . . . never . . . from Nancy on you've got nothing to look forward to . . . trouble and more trouble, Pharaonic labor, deep gloom, seven-year wars . . . thousand-year wars . . . now and forever! look at their faces! . . . even their rivers! . . . their Spree . . . that Teutonic Styx . . . the way it flows, slow, inexorable . . . so black and muddy . . . one look is enough to discourage several nations, dry up their laughter . . . we looked down from the parapet . . . Lili, me, and Bébert . . . A German lady comes up . . . she wants to talk to us . . . an animal lover . . . she wants to pat Bébert . . . his head is out of the bag . . . he's looking at the Spree with us . . . the lady asks where we come from . . . Paris! . . . we're "refugees" . . . she's a kindly soul, she knows how sad we must feel . . .
    "Oh, you'll have a lot of trouble with your cat. . ."
    I didn't know . . . she fills me in . . . "unreproductive" animals, cats, dogs, "without pedigree," are classified as "useless" . . . according to Reich Regulations they must be handed over immediately to the "SPCA."
    "Be careful at the hotels! on one pretext or another their delegate drops in . . .