Free Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Céline

terraces around the Porte Maillot.
    We headed for Saint-Cloud along the riverbank, shrouded in a dancing halo of autumn mists. As we approached the bridge, some barges loaded to the gunwales with coal and lying low in the water were thrusting their noses under the arches ... Above the fences the park deployed a great fan of greenery. Those trees are as vast and gentle and strong as dreams. But trees were something else I distrusted, ever since I'd been ambushed. Behind every tree a dead man. Between two lines of roses the avenue, rising gently, led to the fountains. Outside the kiosk the soda-water lady seemed to be slowly gathering the evening shadows around her skirt. Further on, along the side paths, great cubes and rectangles of dark-colored canvas were flapping, carnival booths, which the war had taken by surprise and suddenly filled with silence.
    "It's been a whole year since they went away!" the soda-water lady told us. "You won't see two people here in a whole day now ... I come out of habit ... There used to be so many people! ..."
    That was all the old lady knew, the rest of what had happened was a blank to her. Lola wanted to go and look at the empty tents, one of those funny sad impulses. We counted about twenty of them, a long one full of mirrors and a lot of small ones, candy stands, lotteries, even a small theater traversed with drafts. There was a tent in every space between the trees; one of them, near the Grand Avenue, had lost its flaps, it was as well ventilated as a punctured mystery.
    These tents were leaning close to the mud and fallen leaves. We stopped near the last, the one that was bent lowest, it was pitching on its poles like a ship in the wind, with wildly flapping sails ready to snap the last of its cables. It swayed in the rising wind, a sheet of canvas flew up above the roof and flapped and flapped. The old name of the stand was written on the front in green and red letters; it had been a shooting gallery, the Gallery of the Nations. There was no one to take care of it now. Maybe the owner had gone shooting with the rest of them, with his customers.
    What a lot of bullets the little targets in the stand had taken! All of them riddled with little white dots! A wedding, that always got a laugh out of them: tin figures in the first row, the bride with her flowers, the cousin, the soldier, the groom with a big red face, and in the second row the guests, who must have been killed a good many times when the carnival was still operating.
    "I bet you're a good shot, aren't you, Ferdinand? If the carnival were still running, I'd challenge you ... You are a good shot, aren't you, Ferdinand?"
    "No, I'm not a very good shot ..."
    In the last row behind the wedding, another row was daubed in, the town hall with its flag. People must have shot at the town hall, too, when the gallery was working, at the windows, they'd open and a bell would clang, and they even shot at the little tin flag. And they'd shot at the regiment marching on an incline nearby, like mine on the Place Clichy, this one was between the pipes and the little balloons. People had shot at those things for all they were worth, and now they were shooting at me, yesterday and tomorrow.
    "They're shooting at me, too, Lola!" I cried. It slipped out of me.
    "Let's be going," she said ... "You're talking nonsense, Ferdinand, and we'll catch cold." We descended the main avenue, the Avenue Royale, toward Saint-Cloud, avoiding the mud. She held me by the hand, hers was tiny, but I couldn't think of anything but the tin wedding at the shooting gallery up there, which we had left behind us in the shadow of the trees. I even forgot to kiss Lola, something had come over me, I felt very funny. I think it was then that my head became so agitated, with all the ideas going around in it. It was dark when we got to the Pont de Saint-Cloud.
    "Ferdinand, would you like to have dinner at Duval's? You like Duval's, don't you ... It would cheer you up ... There's