L'Église

The first act places Bardamu in colonial Africa, where he is investigating disease and hygiene for the League of Nations. He encounters sick Africans, colonial administrators, medical officials and Europeans whose ambitions often seem remote from the suffering surrounding them. Doctor Gaige dies, leaving Bardamu to deal with both the practical consequences of his death and the young African boy Mamadou.

The action then moves to New York. Bardamu enters the backstage world of the Quick Theatre, where he encounters Vera Stern, dancers and performers while seeking Elisabeth Gaige to tell her that her husband has died. The abrupt move from epidemic disease to theatrical spectacle establishes one of the play's recurring contrasts: death and bodily misery exist beside dance, entertainment and beauty.

In Geneva, Bardamu returns to the bureaucratic world of the League of Nations. His experience in the field has little value within an organisation governed by reports, committees and institutional language. He clashes with Yudenzweck and other officials and is pushed out.

The final acts take place in working-class suburban France. Bardamu treats people who have little money and few prospects. Pistil, whom he knew in the colonial world, reappears as a physically ruined alcoholic. Janine falls in love with Bardamu, while Bardamu remains attracted to an ideal of physical beauty represented above all by dancers.

Act I — Africa. Bardamu is stationed in Cameroon as a physician attached to a League of Nations health mission. His nominal purpose is to investigate epidemic disease and colonial sanitation. Instead, he encounters a landscape dominated by sickness, exploitation and administrative absurdity. Doctor Gaige is already gravely ill. Pistil drinks heavily. Officials such as Inspector Clapot represent the colonial medical hierarchy, while the local African population bears the consequences of conditions the administration claims to be managing. Gaige dies. Bardamu is left with the knowledge of his death and with Mamadou, the young African boy associated with Gaige's household.

Act II — New York. Bardamu reaches New York and goes to the Quick Theatre. His immediate task is personal rather than institutional: he needs to tell Elisabeth Gaige that her husband has died. Around her is an entirely different world — dancers, entertainers, theatrical entrepreneurs and people pursuing money, attraction and success. Vera Stern and the other performers introduce Bardamu to a world in which bodies are not diseased colonial bodies but bodies trained and displayed as spectacle. Mamadou is also present, creating a direct thread between the African and American acts.

Act III — Geneva. Bardamu reports back to the League of Nations. Céline turns the organisation into an extended bureaucratic comedy populated by delegates, secretaries, typists and administrators. Bardamu has seen disease and death directly, but the institution processes such realities through paperwork and official language. Yudenzweck becomes the clearest representative of this institutional mentality. Bardamu does not fit into it and loses his position. This is also the act containing the line later chosen by Jean-Paul Sartre for the epigraph to La Nausée: Bardamu is described as a man of no "collective importance," merely an individual.

Act IV — the Paris suburbs. Bardamu is now practising medicine in Blabigny, a working-class suburb. Instead of international public health, he treats individuals who are poor, sick, frightened or socially marginal. The scale has collapsed from global institutions to individual bodies. Pistil reappears, physically deteriorated by alcoholism. Janine becomes emotionally attached to Bardamu.

Act V — the bistro-clinic. The final act centres on a bistro that has effectively become an improvised clinic. Pistil is dying of cirrhosis. Janine declares her feelings for Bardamu, but Bardamu cannot return them in the way she wants. His conception of attraction remains bound to physical grace and beauty. Then Elisabeth appears and dances. Janine's frustration erupts and she produces a revolver, threatening Bardamu. Yet the play finally shifts attention away from violence and toward Elisabeth's dancing, around which the other characters gather. The ending replaces institutional speeches, illness and argument with bodily movement.