.. 'You’ll be doing me a favor!.. and also Josette and Cle-mence! ’. Ah! that was the limit, I started gagging! 'Wh-wh-what?’ I said. He didn’t let me finish. 'I’m leaving tonight! I’m joining the 22nd in Saint Lo!’. Like that! Bang! No time to say ouch!. He grabbed me. strangled me!. In the stomach!. I couldn’t refuse him!..
'You’ll send me my share! You’ll keep your little fifty!’ That’s the way he talked to me!.. 'But keep an eye on Pauline,’ he comes back and says. 'She goes to sleep on blonds!
Break her ribs, you’ll be doing me a favor!. She’s not lazy, but you’ve got to reason with her a little!. Well, I’m going, pal!. Say hello to the boys. The train leaves at midnight! ’… 'Don’t get killed!’ I answered… And that makes two!.. I had a mean look on my face!.. The situation was getting worse… I sat down… I ordered a vermouth. Sluts!
.. They don’t let me breathe! along comes Poigne who sits down at the next table. I act a little deaf at first, she shakes me, calls me. Poigne, you know, from Piccadilly! the one who does the bar with her daughter, she starts plaguing me. 'Cascade, I’m counting on you!’. Another one!. She wasn’t listening to my opinion. 'Take care of my kid and her cousin! neither of them has a passport!.. I’m going to meet my guy in Fecamp, he’s been away for three weeks, he’s setting up a house in Brittany, I don’t know where yet, but it’s nice! ’ That’s how she begins. 'It’s for the Americans! You’re not leaving! Do me the favor!.. ’ 'Of course, of course! ’ I answered! Yours truly a sucker again!. I couldn’t refuse her either. Poigne’s a remarkable woman, not many like her, few like her in the wrorld! A real model for pimps!.. regular and simple and sociable, no sleeping around! Straight as a die, obliging and everything! I’ve known her twenty-two years!.. I said, 'All right, bring your slaves around!.. but watch out for the mixtures!.. I don’t want them spoiling my babes! I’ve got enough trouble holding ’em.. Vice is the death of work!
a little dykish, all right!. but too much is too much!’.. that’s how I talked.
'I agree, Cascade,’ she answers. ‘Beat ’em up! Don’t be shy! It’s all right! I know your principles! ’.. I said to myself, Good! War profits!. Now are they going to let me the hell alone?.. Still and all they all ought to be gone by now, joined their ferocious outfits! Drums, trumpets and God damn!.. In Berlin right this very minute! Musn’t have any women dragging along!.. Phony fighters! Don’t be silly Nenette!. Along comes La Taupe!. Who does she talk to me about? Guess! Little-Arm Pierrot! He was just nabbed! Three years in the clink! Another bang on the head! And the lash, too! Good news! Little-Arm Pierrot! An angel! In the jug in Dartmoor! Could be! Since Friday! Damn it, they come whining to me again, that there’s not a guy around, that I’ve got to act as lawyer!. They’re counting on me!. his savior!. his friend!. his brother!. And so on and so on!. Another twenty-five pounds for yours truly! and I inherit again!. Two girls and cute! La Taupe and Raymonde!. Two hard workers!. My lucky star!. Promise made, promise kept! Bring the dames along! It’s Pierrot’s first slipup! Tough luck, I say! Things not getting better! His first muff! I can sniff trouble! No mistake about Pierrot’s women, with their vices and whatnot, if they make three pounds a day it’s the end of the world!
He’s passing ’em on to me cheap! I was the one who sold ’em to him. I know something about ’em!.. They weren’t broken in yet!.. I wasn’t going to say anything! a man in need… Of course!.. Still they cost three hundred quid all raw and I’m not talking about linen! Before I’d get my money back from the bitches, Pierrot’d be wearing a wig, he’d have made a pile of slippers over there on the moor! Beg your pardon! His women won’t have any more customers. I could fatten ’em up for twenty-five years! I know ’em, nothing’ll help ’em! You’d think they ate fog!. Dried-out string beans!.. Well, there’s got to be some like that!. It’s a pain in the ass to have ’em back! They’re just the servant-girl type! And what about Quenotte? Another fine yegg, the one who put ’em on my hands!. Boy do I remember that bird!. Came from Bordeaux! With that accent, and the way he hit the bottle!. Quenotte! boy! what a crook!.. His women were no better than he was!. That’s a type I don’t like!. women pickpockets!.. Business is business!.. Mustn’t mix one line with another! But watch out, I’m getting mixed up!. I’m getting lost, can’t help it!.. Then along comes Max.. He jumps at my neck. I was in the middle of thinking.
'I’ll take the saucers,’ he shouts. 'Listen to me, Cascade! Listen to me! I’m leaving tonight!’. Another one, I think. 'Where for?’ I ask. I’d stopped being surprised. ‘I’m joining up in Pau!’..
'In Pau?’ I laugh. Everyone at the table busts out laughing. 'Naked!’[2] His mug tight.
He jumps up sore! He starts raving. 'Dopes! Dopes!’ he yells. 'You gang of fairies! You got nothing in your pants! Rejected!. Aren’t you? Rejected!’
You’d think he was talking to me. Ah! that’s the limit!
But I wasn’t keeping him from leaving! Why’d he insult me?.. Another one for Alsace-Lorraine! It gives me a bellyache! Good-by! A bang on the bean!.. I didn’t want to hear the rest!. I cleared out. I jumped up from my seat! I tore out! right in front of me!.. Like all sixty!.. I thought I was saved!.. Keep quiet! I went into Berlemont’s.. Bob was at the bar with Bise… I didn’t want them to talk to me, I dashed through the alley with the tailor shops, came out on the other side, Soho. Who do I run into? You tell me! The one chance in a thousand!. Into Picpus and Berthe, his gal!. The one from Douai!.. I know her all right! she’s a ball and chain! A gift! I don’t want any! I say to myself he’s going to stick me with her! It’s my day, it’s the style!.. Bang! Doesn’t fail!.. He takes me in hand.. 'Ah, you loafer, you wouldn’t do that to me! ’… He wants to kid me along!.. He begs me!.. 'You’re the only one left and the Wops. they’re going to take the bread out of our mouths!. You’re our last hope! Cascade! they’re going to take away all our breadwinners!. If you drop your friends, they’ll be the only ones left and the Corsicans! We’ll be done for!.. It’ll be awful!.. It’ll be death!.. Doesn’t that get you?. Where’s your heart?’. It was sure as shootin’!. he was strangling me!..'What about you, you rats?’ I shoot back. 'Why’re you running away?. panic?’. 'You, you’ve got varicose veins and albumin!’ he answers. 'You can talk calmly!..’
I’d told him once.
'You, you’re all drunk!’ I snapped, 'and sick and dead, crazy drunk! You’ve been eating bugle!’
I wasn’t satisfied in the end.
He wanted to reason with me anyway.
'Don’t you understand the blues?.. That we’re in the dumps?. Don’t you realize anything?. The blues? Want me to make a drawing for you? We’re mopey! Don’t you get mopey?. Take a look at the guys around you!’ He mentioned Le Bubu, La Croquette, Grenade, Tartouille, Jean Maison and The Sharp. They left in order to get there!. That’s proof!..
'And my brother who’s on leave got the military medal.. He’s in the Cahors Regiment!
2
An untranslatable pun explains the outburst. "I’m joining up in Pau’’—