[55/81] Communism is the great hobbyhorse, nay the great war-horse of the Jews.

There’s only one way for us to get out of this fix: we would do well to knock them off of that mount, which they use to leap over us others.

The bluffing Jew, the dirty stupe, the slacker, won’t even know what to do with communism once he gets it. He’ll trash, he’ll botch up the whole deal. He can’t help himself, that’s his nature. Social justice for the Jew? For him, the con man, the Pharaoh, the tosser of magic powder, the Universe’s own natural-born pimp, the hysterical satrap discharged from the Orient, the bastard involved with every mystery, the incompetent at every trade, the parasite of every epoch, the impostor in every shady deal, the maladroit goof turned gangster? This is supposed to be the New Man? Um, excuse me? That would certainly be droll, that would certainly be a miracle. It would be the first time in the history of the world that the Jew would have been seen to have quit with his slogans, his shady deals, his conspiracies, in order to take a place among the common lot, hawking his wares on an equal footing, regularly, reasonably, slogging through like everybody else. But that’ll never happen! Such a thing will never come to pass! It’s completely contrary to his nature! As Moses’ own shit, he belongs to that class of super-deluxe caca, the buddy of all the other kinds of shit, through Moses, for all Eternity! That is why he is rotten, and an agent of rot. There’s only one truly authentic element in the depths of his trashy being; and that’s his contempt for us, his hatred, his fury to see us topple even further into the communal [”/82] grave. Why does he await the coming of communism? In order to squeeze us in ever more closely, to wind the garrote ever more tightly, the closer we get to the Jewish prison.

He’s all for the workers, yes, but all under him! And why is that so? It’s his fancy, you know! his caprice, his apotheosis as a false nigger. Since there is a L’Ouverture within every Jew, I would expedite the lot of them, if I could, to Santo Domingo, and the Caribbean Islands. That would be a good climate for them, and once they’ve seen what communism amongst their cousins has done for those islands, they’ll no longer be wanting it in Palestine.

Should there be any marrow left within the depths of the French carcass, such would be the moment to try the same thing here, strictly amongst ourselves, that famous amulet of communism, that universal panacea, before the Jews can inflict it upon us, without asking our opinion, as a triumph for them and a torture for us. As an elementary precaution, the Jews should be absolutely excluded, otherwise it’ll be a catastrophe, it’ll be a tumble into the abyss, into the Cabalistic herpetarium, into the hells of afterthought.

[56/83] It’s not enough simply to want to have at the Jews,¹ I can tell you that right now, it’ll be used against you as a joke, as a sort of beating on the drum, unless you grab at their lines of support as well, lest they strangle you with them. Such is the measure of the task, such is the measure of the man. All of the rest is nothing more than an endless rehashing, such as you find in all of those so-called ferociously anti-Semitic newspapers, enough to make you sick. What are they looking for, in the end? I ask you. What is it that they want? To install their own precious selves, at their leisure? into the Yids’ positions? That’s a rather meager program. He who stands to profit from the idea is an enormous bastard already, and don’t you believe that that isn’t so. In any case, make no mistake, from the way that they’re blowing that trumpet, they can go on tooting that tune for decades, for centuries even, and never give rise to enthusiasm among the French masses, sufficient to advance the issue by a hair. First of all the Frenchman doesn’t give a damn, he is thinking only of coal, of unhappiness, of his own coal, his own personal unhappiness, his own little personal lump of coal, and of nothing else. He doesn’t give a damn about anything else, and when it comes to ideas, he doesn’t want any. He’s cold, he’s chapped. All of these preachy-preachy newspapers are optimistic about things. A newspaper has to be that way, that’s their required uniform, their traditional posture, their routine rotating rumble. It’s necessary to give the impression of being sure [”/84] of oneself. Of seeing stars in the black sky. What a cramp today’s conditions must be giving them!… They have to play it up, they have to prostitute themselves, they mustn’t hesitate for a single minute… There’s a bubble, get it before it bursts… They mustn’t tarry, they’ll get bogged-down… There’s a bubble, there it goes…the masses observe it, they observe everything, but they have no desire to get up and go after it, they’re afraid of getting their faces busted.

These odd ducks are most comical, they scratch themselves a little bit… That doesn’t go anywhere!… They’re fed-up… For several months now they’ve been trying to bring animation back to some dead meat…de Gaulle will see these hard-hearted types if he comes through here!… He’d be left with no doubt that the French are frigid in their enthusiasm!… He’d become disheartened in no time at all… Adèle is dead, she’s no longer moving… What is it that Adèle wants? …the Nation? some cheap cuts of meat? …candid appraisal? …naturalness? …moral order? …anathemas? …subscriptions? …violence? …tickling? …some great legal proceedings? …some great poets?… Ah! the old cow no longer knows…she stands in line, she emits her death rattle…she returns home, she rattles some more… What she has are “Demands”…unto the very last molecule in the depths of her pineal gland…She has a passion for nothing save rattling…and for the black market…where do they have some butter? hard candies? spuds? to the Tobacconist’s! …where the Lady behind the counter, who’s from Coutances, says that she saw some German soldiers—not her, but her niece—truly too horrible a spectacle, who had drowned in the sea standing up, and had washed ashore like that, their boots having filled with water.

(¹ By Jew, I mean anyone who can count just one Jew among his grandparents, just one! [author’s footnote])

[57/”] There’s nothing more to it than that. It’s sad. Those sensationalistic newspapers are embarrassing themselves, pulling out their hair in anguish, to see themselves so kept in quarantine, shunned by the French masses. Although they effect plenty of swagger, this matter has not caused these political divinators to reflect upon the fact that they are incapable. They have a hobbyhorse, they ride upon it, they gambol about, they are on top, they don’t see what is going on down in the street. May they catch it right square in the face, some fine day, courtesy of one of those frightful tornadoes. You don’t have to be some great astrologer in order to foretell such things. Whether during the easy times, or during times of want, their entire career depends on it, they will continue along, with the Jews over here! [”/85] and the Lodges over there!… But that doesn’t interest the public!… Less and less so, it can be said! Thus they brave the adversity, they go against the flow, they howl, and incite the subscribers… “The movement is becoming stronger and stronger…our crowds are becoming more and more excited…in the cities, in the countryside…our masses are entering into effervescence! they are demanding the death of the Masons! …of the Jews! …and their creatures! who have rendered France into such a state! Into this all-too-atrocious a position!… Wrapped in these wretchedly soiled sheets!…”

But that’s not so! hair-pullers! the masses demand nothing of the sort, the would just as soon holler “Long live the Jews!” since the Jews know how better to promise the masses the Moon. All of that accomplishes nothing, our Apostles tell us, one mustn’t remain in a condition of defeat, one mustn’t accept the spirit of the vanquished. A newspaper is made to turn things about, it’s a leaflet of hope that gets sold, it doesn’t hurt anybody in its shouting of “Christmas is coming!” It’s a quick dose of hypnotherapy, à la Coué. Perhaps the honest thing to do would be to take an accounting of things oneself…

The people aren’t Jewish, they’re Judeophilic, they’d rather have at the bourgeois type, the bourgeois whom the know so well, their ideal, their model, their immediate boss, who lives in the county seat, village, or hamlet as they, who speaks, if possible, the same dialect as they, who’s their French brother who has succeeded. The Frenchman is a fratricide, not someone who would off the Jew for a dime. The Jew is not at issue, anti-Semitism is a canard, the low-ball invention of the bourgeoisie and its henchmen, to distract the attention of the poor people, to get them to cast their all-too-legitimate fury against the innocent. But the people will not march, they know all too well just what that entails! they are enlightened! “The Jew is a good man, a man to be spared, a man persecuted by Nazi capitalism, a man who they’ve tried to smear with their racist jabber. The anti-Jew is a hoodlum, an enemy of the proletariat, a fascist goon of the bosses, the big-shots, the trusts, the Wendels.”

And there you have it, and that’s all there is to it.

It all comes back to the question that’s going around. The great question of the present day. The Jew is mysterious, he has strange ways, he’s an internationalist, he plays the part of the indigent, he has [”/86] his secret accounts, he has more-or-less of an accent, and therefore prestige. Meanwhile as for our blood brother Arsène, who has gotten ahead as a woolens merchant, “Jerseys and macramés of all types,” who was born on the Rue des Bézives three doors down from the Post Office, now tell me about someone who’s become a dirty bastard, who now goes about in a sports car, has a villa by the sea, who has a governess for his two children, now there’s someone who’s really intolerable! a real bastard to be done away with! As for myself, it wouldn’t bother me at all to see that. So you want some communism? Yee-haw! Laridon! Serve it up hot! You will tire of it before I. I’m not going to defend Arsène the bourgeois, the cruddy, disgusting, neo-Hymie, Tartuffe, low-down “putter-putter.” Never! Keep that wretch away from me! His example is a poison to everybody. This has needed to be done for a long time now. Neither Caliban nor Ariel, he’s a dungheap that lets nothing grow. A rotted-out Aryan isn’t worth any more than a Jew, and maybe even a little bit less.

None of this puts us ahead by very much at all…what is to be done about the Lion of Populism? No one knows any longer, how to make it work… One would like to dope it up a little bit, to make it a bit more dashing, to give it an appetite for great things, a taste for worthy sentiments…what it wants is to have at the bourgeoisie, that’s what it’s been promised, that’s what excites it… It goes into complete melancholy when it’s deprived of its dinner… The Lion of Populism doesn’t want your trifles! neither your pale parsleys, nor your bubbly ideals, it wants red meat and it wants it hot, [58/”] replete with all that bourgeois capital has to offer, some fat meatballs, some fat pieces of rind… Oh! He is a bounder… He even wants to taste some mink, and some crocodile clogs for Madame at 1,225 francs a pair. He wants all of that, he wants it all, it’s been promised to him since May of ’36.

No one is able to mobilize him, either for war or for peace. He is crafty, he is avid, he is slavering, he’s one of the worst ones in the cage, he no longer has any respect for anybody, he’s no longer fit to be seen. He’s become an incorrigible beast. He wants to devour his bourgeoisie. But nom de Dieu, let him have it! This has been simmering for twelve centuries now! It’s now or never! Do you want to see any more such catastrophes? The Jew has set the thing up, too bad for you, too bad for us! Perhaps his tastes will pass from the bourgeois to the common, if he [”/87] can just wait there until then…so long and maybe longer and maybe longer still… Then he will see just what this happiness consists of!

That’s the way it is in the candy-makers’ shops, the young ladies, the new salesgirls aren’t forbidden to taste the merchandise. On the contrary, they’re encouraged. “But take some! take some more! Dive into those beautiful bowls! Have your fill of them!…” At the end of eight hours they don’t want any more, they’re cured for life. They know what candies are.

Despite its pretensions to the contrary, the bourgeoisie isn’t the entire History of the World, it’s but a passing moment. Pretty soon it’s going to have to be consumed just like all the rest, upon that day when it becomes completely ripe. It mustn’t expect impossible things, unjustified extensions, unwarranted delays. The time will suddenly arrive, the fateful hour will sound on the horologe. At twenty years society marries-off its daughters, at 1942 years society consumes its bourgeois. They are waiting in the feedlot until the payment is made. They are even being held in reserve. It’s the least that one can do for them. Their suffering will begin in just a moment. They are at the beginning of the loss of everything.

[59/88] For the people, Communism is the means, the scam by which illicitly to accede to the bourgeoisie, by way of a general free-for-all. To leap into that life of privilege and peace of mind, one of the Baptized once and for all.

The Future Bastion of the Man of the People is his own little pavilion of 500 square meters of ground, meticulously walled on all four sides, with running water and drainage if possible, where nobody can come over to bother him. All of it given the notary’s seal. Such is the dream of a housewife, the dream of a woman, the dream of a decadent people. When the women come to dominate to such an extent, that the men come to dream the same way that they do, then it can be said that the game is over, that greatness is dead, that the entire country has become girly, in war as it has in peace. It has nothing left to defend save for a few petty mannerisms, the males have nothing left to do but to resume their role as wreckers, becoming dirty in all of their former tom-foolery, and abolishing all of their visions.

Will there be any yellow man? black men? white men? racially pure? racially complicated? Will it be that the whole thing will perish upon consummation? It’s quite possible, it’s even probable.

It will always be a matter of men and slobs, of the dominant types who don’t run off to ask their grandmothers what to think about life, and who have the dispositions of bears.

[60/89] More bloody stupid than the French? Truly that is impossible, isn’t it? And true above all of an intellectual? Literally a madman once he begins to bullshit like a Jew. A masochistic snob: “There’s no such thing as race! There’s no such thing as the Jew! I’m all for that! And fart-farti! And fart-farta! I know all that! I’m a champion of skepticism! Ah! Gobineau, what a naïf! Montandon, what a comedian! And Michelet, what a sell-out!” How I’d like to blow you up while you’re in full bullshit mode, you buzzard! astounding phenomenon of a hundred thousand cannons firing forth a hundred thousand spurious canons! and always against all reason, against your own interests, against your own blood, and always for the greater glory of the Jew, and his apotheosis, his genius, his preeminence above all doubt. There’s always some little Jew there in the corner, beaten-down, sardonic, grasping about…espying the goy in torment…approaching him now once reassured…seeing the mark so hot and bothered…laying a hand upon the handsome dummy! …encouraging him, bugging him, caressing him, smoothing down his hair, backwards…and forwards…gloating… Ah! that good Aryan is always the same, always so consistent, always ready to give pleasure to his Jew! Ah! how frank he is! Ah! how dedicated he is! Ah how loyal an adjutant he is, unto the death! And how he throws himself back into action, the handsome dummy, reinvigorated by that oh-so-warm embrace, of humanitarian understanding.

“Eh! Nom de Dieu! There’s no such thing as race! And there is no longer any such thing as the Jew, Bordel sang! Just what exactly is a Jew? [”/90] What an outrageous tale! What a filthy abomination! What a load of Fascist crap! Is it not the shame of our era, still to see such dinosaurs? dripping with the blood of their victims! all sticky with the hearts of the Apostles! trampling, grinding, tearing to pieces the very substance of truth! that luminous and musical flesh!”

The little Jew becomes intoxicated on it! He goes into increasingly violent ecstasy, he’s practically transported straight out of his frock! suddenly to see that oh-so-excellent, oh-so-well-spoken man! so ardent! with such fine enthusiasm! with a fervor that the Jew’d never seen before! being so forcefully certain that there is no longer any such thing as race! he’s transposed by it, into a mad inebriation! Inextinguishable, reinforced from above, he’s now witnessing the triumph of his jabber! he can now go about happy-go-lucky! singing over his cups so as to lose his soul…

“At me! Look! at me! me! me! me, I tell you! tell you! tell you! hippity-hop, and hoppity-hip! This race here! …that race there! that race which! which! which! which! …isn’t! isn’t! isn’t! isn’t!…” though for him there is one unique race after all, the race of “me! me! me! me! me!”… One having eighteen million pussies by itself alone.

[61/91] All of this I can certainly understand, that it’s a very beautiful thing, indeed distinguished, indeed exceptional, indeed refined, to research and to discover your race, to place some value upon your lineage, and upon the spirit and beauties of ethnicity. Hey! hey! This is what sets us apart from the common herd! your copy of d’Hozier perfumes you well! We tease ourselves with the notions of fine breeding! elite selectness! the exclusive club! where are we going?… All of this is to take us away from our miseries…

Just what do you find about the “French Language,” such as it is, that’s so valuable that it needs to be preserved? If Le Monde were to be deprived of some quintessential beauty, would it be headed towards extinction? Is it all well and good for everything to be gummed-up under Afro-Asiatic copulation? Perhaps…

Alas, I’m ashamed to own up to it… What do I see?… How do I feel?… It’s no longer any great thing to pander to the crowd, to bring it to a boil… It’s nothing at all…all it takes is just a tone, a little furtive smile, of gaiety, scintillating at its source, mischievous in its foam, viscous in its flow through the glen…

O joy of which I admire, be quiet and listen! don’t tarnish this oh-so-fragile happiness, as fantastic and frail as childhood, eternal, fairy-like at heart, by letting it become a laughing matter with you… It’s that precious magic which arises from the soil, and from those things and those people who’ve been born thereupon…

Come hither… Come yon…listen up…

[”/92] Die, cackling foolishness! shrewish Fury of imposture! Stinking wino harpy!

Come hither…understand this…skylark filing across the heavens! Gay! Gay! ever higher! straight into the blue! at once most nimble and quick! completely enchanting our day…free brave speedy delicate…bringer of joy…furtive amongst the stars up above…pale against the morning sky… Here you have that excellent gaiety! lighter than anything else! …the best thing we have…the thing that I prefer above anything else…no longer stiff like a ruffled collar…but flashing, like Italian…gaiety above all! Gaiety is everything! I want songs and I want dances… I don’t care about the reason… Why should I care about the intelligence, the pertinence? the design? I no longer do! Nor does the Universe… It is to my chagrin nay my vexation, that Caesar spoke of a people whom we are no longer! “They made promises, they laughed, all is told.” So much the pity!

Why should I care about that preachy-teachy, underhanded rabbi, Mr. Ben Montaigne?… His isn’t the kind of joy that I’m after, fresh, coy, mischievous, moving… I prefer quite a few over him… Couperin of The Cuckoo… Christine of the doublets… Gervaise of the wankings!… I’d like to die of laughter, but lighthandedly… Bellay is dearer to me than Racine, for the sake of two or three verses… I want to cry a little, but while dancing… I’m with the “standby” troupe… The sobbings of Iphigenia bore me… Hermoine is obscene and self-referential…

Dark and pornographic stories.

Mr. Montaigne is no longer lyrical, and that in my eyes is a great crime. He puts together his dissimulative Talmuds, his fat manuals for the “Ideal Jewry,” self-defeating in their tedium, and their cowardly captiousness, with a hundred thousand fine reasons substituting for one… Horrors!…

[62/”] The grand necessity is to be touched…divinely relieved…of one’s handicaps, so grim and worrisome! …immediately taken away! …into the sky! upon the ever-changing clouds passing by!… Let’s not talk about it any longer!

I no longer have any need for sermons, but to be delivered along with all those who are of the same blood as I…no longer wanting to live without caprice…frivolous and unreasoning… Petty is he who berates us! Dancing is what we want to do! None of us is well-endowed for reasoning…but quite rightly quick to laugh and to dance just the same…to the music that makes us soar… The enthusiasm [”/93] is set off by next to nothing…by the jetting of a skylark across the blue…to the tiny joy that it evokes…up high, for us, way way up high…our gaiety stolen, living in fear…heavy burdens of shame arising…brooding…

Ah! keep those torrents away from us! Those avalanches of wisdom!… Alas! …we are drowning beneath Knowalledge [sic]!…

We are bloating and dying under it all…

Let our gaiety be extinguished and the very gods themselves shall grieve…

Aye! the heavens would then become very heavy…

We would rather live without the knowledge… We would like to die of laughter…as frivolously…as possible…

Shall our Destiny continue to bring us shame? …sour reasons, bitter mumbling…

[63/94] Only gaiety will save us, not the factory! neither the plan for this, nor for that, nor the grumblings of oafs, nor the stratagems of supercilious half-bred ruffians, patch-repairs in brick of gunmetal “Eifeltowers,” Trusts and Concerns, great [sic] Taylorist calamities, delirious Pyramids, stinking jumbled mastodons, crushing our lives statistically under Flood-and-Thaw Amalgamated, and delectations of paranoia. Death to all kilns and chimneys!

Let us indulge, and celebrate our music, ours! which will make us sail beautifully above the horrors of the Age in a good and fresh and easy flight! as we like it! our caprice! fifes! clarinets! roll of the drum! Let us embrace one another! No more mercy for fat paunches! For sourpusses: sacrifice! dog medicine!

The musicians of our choice! damn me! must finish-off the dance! Who will pay? Why, the rich, of course! They have come unto us from the depths of the ages, expressly in order to regale us, to cheer us up through their largess! Do you doubt it?

[64/95] Ah! let us find our gaiety once again! where is she hiding? Concealed beneath the coins? Let us share them! Ah! the Universe will be surprised when it learns that the French are sharing money! That’s never been seen before! Ah! let us find our gaiety once again! Ah! let us fly to the sacrifice! Ah! No more moping mugs! be gay! be gay! let us polka! everything’s to be shared!… Why are the people who have lost their francs laughing and singing? Chubby fellows! chubby fellows! the question has been answered! Harpagon has been hung!

Ah! I am certainly a rather fervent partisan of social justice. Justice must prevail, and right now, not in ten years! Nom de Dieu! It is going to cleanse the atmosphere, and purge it of spitefulness! Justice must be made to prevail, and the oppressed avenged, not because it would please them, but because it is the balm, the cure, for the jealous, the envious, the financially enraged, in sum everyone of today, of that entire society in which nobody any longer has any ideas outside of moolah, the bourgeois in not getting cleaned-out, the poor man in how to crown him.

It is the universal malady, and it is necessary to operate on it with a single fell stroke! to incise the abscess its entire length and breadth! so that it can discharge, and no longer merely be talked about!

Insofar as one has failed to make Finance transparent, one has done nothing serious, but merely a vile cauterization over the rottenness, black market and company, fruitless fussings, clarinets…

[”/96] It is neither discussion, nor the moral order, nor the Police, nor more elections, which will get anything done. It is Big Money upon which it is necessary to operate, to empty its pockets, to open it up, and to bring everything into the sunlight. It’s hygiene without patchouli, to scrub-out the ass end of Welfare, after which she might present herself favorably. Such as she is there’s an infection, a rather discouraging hideousness, of which the more one laughs at it, the more there is truly nothing there at all.

[65-8] …

[69/105] The Jew is afraid of nothing… He is afraid of only one thing: a Communism without the Jews.

Happiness without Marx and sons… That alone is the end of the world…

It’s the reversal of evaporation. It’s the explosion of the Sun. It’s the suicide of the Green Bean.

[70-1] …

[72/109] France does have her problems.

Pretty soon she is going to succumb, due to the Jews, the Masons, England, military defeat, mad Celtic querulousness, stodgy pretensions, hatred for one another, capitalist egoism, et cetera, et cetera… She is going to succumb due to her lack of petroleum, cotton, copper, and grain…

And ultimately she is going to perish primarily because she doesn’t produce enough children, wherewith you have the ovum at the center of the problem: no more children, no more France… At the current rate it’s a most simple matter, that in twenty years there’ll no longer be any young people…we won’t have anything left but a bunch of old geezers, lumpy emphysema sufferers… This problem must be solved at the same time as all of the others… France the eternal will have been vanquished…by bestial stupidity in discourse, by bloody madness sounded on the clarinet… There’s no sense wracking your brains over it… There’s no longer any need for a Prime Minister, the problem of asylum for the old geezers is a function of the Economy…some suppositories…some lime-tree blossom… Thus you have arrived at the end of the line. It’s a poverty of life-force… It’s the hen who no longer wants to lay… Ah! what a depressing conjecture! With which thoroughly to confound the various Senates. Of course a Family Code exists! But how anorexic and death-rattling a Code it is! I don’t believe that it could give anybody a hard-on…

[”/110] But that’s actually what it’s supposed to do… So much paper, so little enthusiasm. It must be made accessible to anyone… You speak of a dashing history!… Nothing but heartbreaking catastrophes… Verduns for nothing… Glory goes to dried-up old prunes… Taxes for the benefit of the English, and the Kikes…always with the Austerity for the French…the shoes are never for us! …always for others!… Salute! You’re too disgusting for beasts. You speak of how fine things are at present… You speak of a joyous future…with so much work, so many sacrifices, and so many dastardly deeds hidden from view… That program doesn’t elicit any erections… Have you added it all up? We have already sweated out four hundred billion francs in order to get us where we are…on our knees…at the bottom of yet another escarpment… This was one more grand project thoroughly sponsored by the entire elite, the finest flower of all of Higher Masonry…reinforced by a lot of boom! kaboom!…

What a bunch of swooning ventriloquists!…

What sweet vows of joy! what effronterous assurances! And as for the men? Practically the same…still drooling from the corners of their mouths… Is this how we’re all going to recommence?…

Just one moment! If you will permit me to scratch a little bit…if one might ask just where it is that you intend to ride your newly-mounted hobbyhorse…if one might ask just who it is who’s supposed to play the pollywog in your new adventure? These are the things that interest us… Just what piles of manure are you brooding over?… The champions of the world when it comes to starvation?… Are we supposed to beat the Russians…and the Berbers…in the Great Steeplechase of Austerity?…

Forewarn us now…

Is it still necessary for you to have children?

Aren’t old geezers good enough for you? Ah! That won’t work! You’d be better off admitting it. Confidence has gone into hiding, and the children along with it, they remain hidden within the depths of your guts.

The stuff of life is no longer there.

[73/”] This is apparent in everything, in our facial expressions, in our abrasive manners…

Credit is dead, once and for all.

Without security there is no family! No more lightness, no more grace, in our movements, in our hearts…

Without children there is no more joy.

[”/111] How does one bring the confidence back in these cantankerous people, ill-tempered just for fun, ill-at-ease with everything?…

I believe in another Code for the Family, one which is much more deeply-rooted, more robust, and well more generous, not in a code for querulous, shriveled-up old condoms. But no! But no! A real code which would include everyone, the people, property and pets, the children and the old geezers of France, into one single family, the Jews excluded, be that well-understood, a single family with one father, a respected dictator. A family respectable by definition, in which there will no longer be such things as bastards, Cinderellas, carrot tops,² reformatories, or “Welfare kids,” and where the same soup will be served to all; where there are no longer children born to wealth, and plump, while others are starving little waifs, where some are not finding amusement, while others are being crushed underneath. It will be a society no longer constructed along the same lines as our own, which ought to be obliterated, like a dog that’s become too vicious, of which one desires to be relieved.

Everyone will go to the same school! In the joining together of families, all of the families will become, in essence, one big family, with equality in terms of resources, law, and fraternity. Everyone will receive the national salary of one hundred and fifty francs per day, maximum, except for the Dictator, who’ll get two hundred in order to do him a special honor, with the understanding that in return for his “extra” pay he’ll be hit upon to recall the events of his life, more often than he would like, whereupon he’ll bullshit like a sneak-thief, such being the role of fathers of family.

Everything has to be rebuilt? that’s perfect! But it mustn’t get lost along with the prostates, rather it must begin with childhood, through childhood, for all of the children. It is there where the racism will commence, and true communism as well, with childhood and nowhere else, through a universal kindness, and the desire that every family be fine, healthy, robust, Aryan, pure, redemptive, and quickened by beauty and strength, not just your own little family, your own two, three, or four kids plus yourselves, but your entire family most French, the Jew excluded be it understood, cast out towards Palestine, the Devil, the Moon.

People aren’t giving a damn about other people’s children! They think it enough simply to raise their own! Everybody reckons midday from his own front door! It’s necessary to cease this hideous practice once and for all! let such egoism [”/112] become incomprehensible when it comes to the cradle. It’s necessary for the children of other people to become almost as dear, almost as precious to you as your own, and for you to think of them as well, as the children of the same one big family, your own, that being all of France. Here then is the happiness of the country, the true social upheaval, that of moms and dads all around. Anything else is nothing but bullshit, fantastical formulations, Chinese knickknacks, pompous buffooneries, wild-eyed, absolutely contrary to Nature, and which can only end in catastrophe.

Racism is all about the family, and the family is all about equality, where it’s all for one and one for all. It’s the little poops who don’t even have their teeth yet, who get the bigger ones to feed them their soup. From this common point of reference there are no longer any bastards, any pariahs, any stinkers, of the one nation, of the one race, nor any longer any spoiled brats, any little masters. No more exploitation of man by man. No more wretched of the earth. All of that is past. No more slackers, no more pimps, no more gang lords, no more men having two or three stomachs.

Marxism will be completely foiled, it’ll have been relieved of its strongest suite: the cold-heartedness of man.

The family will rekindle everything, for no longer will it be money that unites it, but race, and no longer will it be money that divides it, for there won’t be any. The entire country will be recreated by the family for one hundred francs per day.

[74-94] …

[95/142]

S.O.S.

No more prevarication! No more equivocation!

It’s the communism of Labiche, or death! That’s just what I said! And not in twenty years, but right now! If a communism can’t be arranged for us, our own kind of communism, one suited for our own kind of spirit, then the Jews will impose their own. They are just waiting for the day when everything falls into their trap, and then they’ll put an end to that Jesus! to the casuistic corollaries, to the twisting of tails, to the wankings out of vain scruples! It’ll be a completely different tune that’s being played! one in accordance to the Learned Elders of Zion! in the Valley of Tortures! you’ll be telling me what it’s like! …from within a devouring terrarium, replete with centipedes, rattlesnakes, and fat buzzards, in which there won’t be enough scraps of our carcasses left after feeding the entire menagerie, still to make it through to the other side, to see the conclusion of the festivities.

Avail yourself of the Jew as a buddy! Burn some gasoline! That is to say, run! there’s not a second to lose! it would be by miracle if you could only set his hair! even half a head! …one individual! …one hair! …one sigh!…

[96-8] …

[99/148] Ah! It’s been a severe winter…that much can be said for it…the Seine is clinking with ice cubes… I expected as much… I saw the whole thing from the Pont de Bruyères…if the wind doesn’t whistle there!… Nature is not kind to people in need… A nor’easter!… A stiff one! …the little mountain of Argenteuil is completely iced-over…along with its windmill… It’s decked-out with a great mantle of snow…its train scattered about…enveloping the houses, powdering the roofs…dampening down the waterfront…forming great clots in the water…with great eddies twirling upwards around the pylons… Ah! It’s been a severe winter! a sheet of white covers the plain unto the far embankment, motionless way off in the distance…a Russian cheek against the wind from the steppes…whistling dancing whirlpools of flakes and powders…

A factory, fully armed against the cold, brandishes its four tapering towers at the sky, taller than the clouds, in full flamboyance…tomorrow will be even colder still…it’s in the air, in the reddishness upon the horizon, that great dissipater of illusions…by the crest of Mount Valérien…

Oh! some weirdo bicyclist, standing on his cranks against the wind, is suddenly overcome by it all, winded atop his fork, snot-nosed, wheels rendered immobile, four leeks in his pannier, just uprooted, dancing ding-dong…to rivulets of inundated potholes, and puddles between the cobblestones.

[”/149] He can’t go on any longer, he dismounts, he sniffs it back mightily, he wipes his nose. He turns his back to the wind. It takes him by the head, he doesn’t dare go on, on account of the cold. Ah! it’s necessary to go on just the same! As for myself, I have things to do, I have my responsibilities waiting for me on the other side, it cannot be denied… They are waiting for me, not one but twenty people! …maybe even thirty… Ah! I’m getting myself cut across the face as well by this trenchantly-edged atmosphere, arriving at top speed straight from the glacier… I go past the cyclist.

Here comes my colleague Divetot, just now approaching, going the opposite direction… He’s going home from the office… I always enjoy having a word with him…above all he’s an excellent man, one might say very distinguished…even a savant in a sense… He’s finished making his calls…he’s distributed all of his goods…now it’s my turn, to take over the nurse, to take up the sponge…to do no one harm…to take care of everyone in his misfortune. Ah! It’s neither accommodating, nor a good location…in light of the scarcity of transport…the penury of the arrivals, the bottleneck in medical supplies…the milk which is no longer coming at all…because the railroads have largely broken down, no longer having the means to fire up their boilers…the choo-choo of the Northern Line is no longer able to descend…and the woo-woos of the Western Line don’t want to understand anything, and no one has seen them in weeks…medicine has become scarce just as the patients are no longer able to eat…

Ah! Divetot also tells me that all of this has become truly arduous…and this from a very levelheaded man! …that the parents ultimately come to the realization that there was no longer any canned milk to be had…above all the sweetened milk that used to come from Switzerland…the parents weren’t thinking about Switzerland, they didn’t give a hang about Switzerland, it was their squab that concerned them, they’d wag him right under your nose so that you could see how cold he was, how pale he was, and that he had a cough, and that he was listless…in view [100/”] of the fact that there hasn’t been so much as a cube of carbs in the entire canteen for over six weeks…and that this couldn’t go on forever… That not even baby formula would be able to fix everything, not even that Dessessartz which is so perfect, what a godsend! easy to handle, calming, the irreplaceable remedy…but as for recovering at the North Pole!…

And the old geezers who freeze to death more quickly than anybody else…given that they are almost frozen already… [”/150] those who were so content with their herbal teas…how are they going to be warmed back up? …along with their rheumatoid lumbago teas? …and their constipation cures?… Such are the problems that exceeded human capabilities… Divetot was fully of this opinion…good intentions aren’t enough! …neither in science, nor in relationships… fatalities were occurring…severe and terrible…

I am always happy to see Divetot… I don’t run into him often enough…he’s an excellent advisor, affectionate, truly a man who wears his heart on his sleeve, in addition to having a certain Literary sensibility, and rich experience. He’d always give me a lift back when he could still use his car…alas, all of that’s in the past… People aren’t too proud to go on foot now…that much can be said… It’s been rigorous…people chat about one thing or another out there on that bridge, in that nor’easter… We doctors, we do the same… … I am wont to keep an eye on things…general political impressions…he wasn’t loath to doing the same himself… … Divetot’s always been kind to me…and I hope that the feeling is returned…I draw his attention…to an idea that’s occurred to me… … “Don’t you get it?… Taa!!! …tooo! …tooo! …tooo! …tooo! …tooo!… Taa!… Taa!… … That’s the tune! The Call of the Swan…the call, my friend! the call!…

“That’s magnificent, Ferdinand! magnificent! Sumptuous music!…” He never would contradict me… “But tragic!… I find it tragic! isn’t that so… Ah! isn’t that so?…”

Sensitive Divetot, oh-so-sensitive! …and benevolent! …truly a man of quality!…

“Yes,” I added…“it’s all in the air!…”

“Oh! Ferdinand, are you quite sure?…”

He was somewhat dubious of this…

“Destiny, Monsieur! Destiny!…”

His doubt was making me angry. I finally grew impatient…

[”/151] “Do you see that down there? …the plain… … Charlebourg?… … from linden to linden…eh?… la! fa! sol! …la…si…do! …tooo! …tooo!… … Tooo!… Tooo!… … tooo! tooo!… Phantasms! that’s what they are! Phantasms!…”

We were both laughing when we parted, … blinding us… We grew further and further apart…with a lively step… I followed my course straight into the squall… He called out to me again from a distance, across the snow… “The goodies are beneath the sphygmomanometer!…” We kept our own little stash there…“in the left-hand drawer!”

That’s exactly the way it’s been with everybody…a mob’s been waiting to see the doctor…truly a faithful clientele…one, two, three, four prescriptions…and then a Goodie…that’s the rhythm…one…two…three Goodies…then a prescription!… Such has been the cadence all winter long…fewer and fewer prescriptions…more and more goodies…each time a quarter…a half-liter… I’ve had to do an enormous amount of begging… The telephone sends me into a panic…in that it might ring, and there won’t be any more…that I’ll have handed out all of the milk in the city…in response to the mounting pressure of the fewer and fewer prescriptions…and the more and more goodies…twenty-five pieces of sugar…a little bucket-full of carbs…that the misery won’t come to an end…that it will completely recover all-too-soon…that it will grow…and then medicine will be at an end…there’ll be nothing left that it can do…

[101/”] One, two, three little swaddlings in a row, each one shaking with whooping-cough…cocooned within their woolens…and then an octogenarian with her unemployed niece…they live together in a small house…the old woman never ceasing to tremble…she’d been that way since last Sunday…when she’d tried to go out…to go to the pump…the way she trembles isn’t natural, it’s an unbelievable shaking for such a frail carcass…she was making her whole chair tremble…as well as my table…and the walls…and the door… I looked around a bit to see where she could be put…she was almost singing, [”/152] almost crying out, she was shaking so from her catarrh, her violent emphysema... She’d been trembling that way for three days and nights…she was shaking everything in their shack…she can no longer sleep at all…she keeps her niece awake… They live in a small house made of wood… “Ib madeb myb coldb worseb outsideb!” She decidedly didn’t have her teeth any longer…“bbut binside I’b stillb coldb!…” She’s got the trembling that never quits… It’s like that when you’re eighty years old… Once you get it, you have it for good… It’ll take you, and it’ll never let you go… “Ice is building up on our walls…she’d be better off dead than to suffer like this…” her niece said, explaining things to me…she’s stubborn, her mind’s completely made up, she’s demanding either coal or to rest in peace…she was done with my advice if I couldn’t warm her back up…she didn’t want any more of my poultices, nor of my massage therapies…with alcohol…however amicably proposed… She doesn’t want any more gentility, what she wants is coal and bread… “Auntie isn’t sick, she is hungry and she is cold, that’s what…she won’t stop trembling until she gets some coal…” It’s black carbon that she wants…the kind that you burn in stoves…and then after that a little sugar and milk… I didn’t want to have it on my conscience… I let go of another twenty-five kilos… It’s not at all according to regulations… I outdo myself in trying to stretch them…

I am haunted by the telephone…

Still more mothers and then daughters and then fathers and cousins…the devastated, the sure of themselves…those who limp…who cough…who twitch…who hang in there more dead than alive… Ah! I take them all in, with a smile, pleasantly…and with my abilities… I have an overcoat as well…you could die of cold out there in the waiting room…the freezing point comes and goes at will…blowing right around our partitions… A frigid wind most sly…

Time to go! I’ve done more good than harm…night is falling, now shading out both people and things…they have all gone off to suffer elsewhere…at home… I wasn’t able to detect more than one…or two…in the whole hospital… Finally the telephone rings… I’m jolted! I leap!… It’s a catastrophe!… It’s nothing! …only the names of some deceased…those for my [”/153] evening round…they surely had the right to leave it all behind…to quit us for a better place…to have done with our false company…“dead,” make that alive!… I am going to look into things…if they were wise…very wise, impeccably… I will deliver them their ticket…the ticket for their burial… I deliver them as well… Nothing gets past me… I am sworn unto God… One of the deceased lived quite a ways off!… Right by the limits of the commune…towards the very bottom, practically on the plain…it’s well-known…it’s often a hassle to find…especially now when all of the lights are off… Rue des Bouleaux-Verts…there it goes! …a slight rise…a passage… Rue des Michaux…turn to the left…then a footpath… There it becomes a matter of zigzags…one can easily lose one’s way… “Venelle des Trois-Sœurs”…it’s a little bit further still… “Impasse du Trou-de-Sable”… Further along, down below, at the end, is Villemomble… The wind has picked back up, and it’s a stiff one…it sweeps across the plain, it roars, it whips about… I don’t leave my footpath…beware!… It’s no longer there…further down…things sideslip…it’s all covered-over with ice…the fields are flooded…enough to break the back of someone who gets mixed-up with it… This is truly the butt-end of the world…ah! now I’m getting closer… “Rouelle des Bergères”… Oh! the cold…it comes at you full blast…blowing like God’s own thunder!… The snow frosting over your glasses…this War is truly wretched, these are the days of damnation… Nature has become deranged, the proof being that she is making men die out here in a freezing fog…

[102/”] I’m sure that this must be the place… I peer about in the blackness… I try to recognize where I am… Ah! a response!… It’s the neighbor…the next door down is the one that opens…here it is!…

“But she’s not here, Doctor…”

“She’s not here?… But I’ve come to record a death…”

“A death?… She simply hasn’t come back yet!…”

“Hasn’t come back?…”

“She’s not dead…she’s not among the departed…”

“We had been notified otherwise…”

“Ah! There’s been an error…but it’s not ours… It’s her neighbors’… She could be seen every day… … She takes off like that every now and then…she says that she gets bored…”

“Then who turned in the report?”

“Oh! I wouldn’t know anything about that!…”

[”/154] “How long has she been gone?”

“It couldn’t even have been a couple of weeks… Quite often she’d leave for an evening…but seldom has she been gone for so long…she’s her own kind of person… No amount of cold couldn’t keep her in! …nor the wind nor fog! …she’d head out and then that was that! It was the music that dragged her on…how she talked about it!… We couldn’t hear anything…when she’d come over to find us, she was singing…you immediately knew what she was going to say… “I’m going out, my children!” Ta! …ta! …ta! …and like that she was gone!…”

“At her age?…”

“She was in admirable health! …she’d tell us whenever she went out for a walk…she always notified us…and then she was on her way! …eighty-six years old! …just like that, all alone…no dog, no cat…with her cane, her mantilla, and also her lantern!”

“Even in the cold?”

“‘Neither the cold, nor the drizzle, nor for all he’s worth the D’vil!’ once she’d hear her song in the air, the matter was decided! She’d quite politely say goodbye, and then hurry off despite her age…she could be seen going across way over there, all that distance…and then at the very furthest end of the plain…she’d disappear…it was said that her little light had puffed out!… She was well-traveled, she’d talk about it afterwards… She had put in an appearance…in China…in Indochina…and even further out…the stories she’d tell… She didn’t want to stay at home any longer… saying that she couldn’t breathe here any more…that it was making her die just that much more quickly… Especially since the War began…with all of the windows kept shuttered… She wanted to see her friends once again…saying that they were over there…over there? …just where that was, was never actually known! …for that, she’d cross the plain every evening towards midnight…she’d hear that music…in her own head…and say that things were ‘gay over there where they live!’ …and that they ‘were having so much fun’… She lived in her house by herself… But she wasn’t unhappy…the Sister often came over to see her…she didn’t want for anything… She’d grab her lantern and then hop! it could be pouring buckets! she was on her way! forward march!…”

“At her age that’s amazing…”

“It wasn’t necessary to follow after her… She’d head off towards Gennevilliers… She’d return in about three or four hours…sometimes sooner…she was always very friendly…but she followed her own idea… This mania was her amusement… ‘They’re having fun over there, you know… they [”/155] aren’t bored for a single minute!’ …that’s what she’d say about her friends… That was her idée fixe… She got a kick out of saying that… She was always talking about her friends… But we never saw any of them…no doubt they didn’t even exist… One day she forewarned the sister… ‘My sister, some day they are going to take me away…and that person isn’t going to be me… It will be somebody else…” A whimsical statement, you may well consider it! She said the same thing to the milkman…we didn’t pay it any attention, because there aren’t any real people at that age! …they are somewhat like children… And then finally she’s no longer there…but I don’t believe that it’s anything very grave… She was one of a kind, that’s all!… Moreover she was well-known! nothing bad would ever happen to her…she’d tell stories about it! …she was always chattering…and then all of a sudden she’s fallen silent…and gone just like that…finally, isn’t it so? …she’s simply not there! …if she’d had an accident en route, she’d be in the hospital!… If the Germans had seen her out there with her lantern…they would have brought her back to her place… That’s [103/”] already happened once before… No, so help me, I’m not making that up!… She was well known! …once her music came over her, one might say that she comported herself like a young woman! …no one could hold her back… Oh! I’m confident that she will return…”

“Oh well, I’ll pass by this way every now and again…”

“All the same, my poor Doctor, it seems that they’ve disturbed you over nothing!…”

“Oh! that’s no big thing…fortunately it’s not too late in the evening!… I still have two or three visits to make…”

We said our good-byes…

I set off straight-away, to notice the “blows and injuries,” and then the dead…the truly dead, the dead like everybody else in this world, things that don’t even make a ripple.

The next day I ran into Divetot, but I didn’t tell him everything…

… TOOO! tooo! TOO! TOO! too! taa!…taa!…aa…aa!… … La! …fa! …sol! …la! …si! …do …la… Do! …very good…very good…I [”/156] don’t ask for anything better… I’ve said it before, on other occasions… Perfect! The message?… I don’t give a shit!… Perfect! … Taaa! …tooo! oo! oo! oo! ooo!… … …Right here!

And it’s not over! this is just coming into its stride! of that I am certain!… …

[104/”] I understand!… Ah! there is as yet no end to the suicides!… I am yet to see their zenith!… … [”/158] …

Notes:

² Alludes to an inevitably superfluous, and therefore wasted, part of something otherwise desirable.

³Would properly refer either to the Bishop of Durham, or to the Archbishop of York. P. 84.