Fowlers End

by Gerald Kersh

  So I said, “I don’t know. I’m not sure.”

  “Bubble-and-squeak,” said he, “is the best thing for the working classes, the bloody loafers. Listen: I know a man, Meyer the Buyer, so on account of bankruptcy he went to South America.

  Nobody’s enemy but his own: put all your assets in your wife’s name, by all means, but if so don’t be caught miv your hand down the knickers of a Welsh servant girl. Notmivstanding. Meyer the Buyer went to South America miv a cargo of surgical boots. Well, the black men there eat bubble-and-squeak from their mother’s bveasts, and at the age of fifteen they can put a grand piano on their back and run up to the top of Mount Everest. Miv a raw onion for dessert naturally and as much water as they want to drink.... Now in show biz we always try a project out in the provinces. Lavenheim, new as you are, I want to give you a chance to make good. Call me ‘pal.’” I said, “Pal.”

  “That’s the way I like to hear a man talking!” he cried, with enthusiasm. “Call me ‘pal’ and I’m your pal. But call Sam Yudenow a bastard—don’t do it!—and oh, believe me, it’s like the Indian proverb! ‘Who gets a toe-rag by the tail can’t dismount.’ Thank you, Daniels. All night I was thinking. Miv any product the main thing is a good title. My bubble-and-squeak turns out bright green. It seems like the contractor to the War Office—Hacker the Breaker’s second cousin—so he discovered that this dehydvated cabbage is kind of white. Well, so this contractor’s son is studying for a dentist, and he gives this advice: ‘Put in a little bit copper sulphate. That’s what makes tinned peas green.’ A fool to himself, Hacker the Breaker’s second cousin—generous; to a fault. He shoves in a couple sacksful. And believe me, Laveroff, many a good man now living on the fat o’ the land off of total disability would at this very moment be pushing up poppies. Or at best the Unknown Warrior.... Now, you know what a hamburger is, I dare say?”

  “As I understand it,” I said, “a hamburger is a sort of rissole between two halves of an artificially inflated bun.”

  “Genuinely inflated,” said Sam Yudenow. “Now, what do you say to a lovely bubble-and-squeak in a roll? Don’t interrupt, please, I’m coming to the title.” He drew a deep breath, slapped me on the back, and shouted, “Greenburger!” and looked eagerly up at me. “Say something.”

  I said, “I’d have to be pretty hungry before I ate one of those.”’

  “I knew you’d get my point,” said Sam Yudenow. “I tried it on my chauffeur, and his belly came up like a football. So say we charge twopence apiece? I even got the subtitle for you: ‘A Good Blowout for Twopence.’”

  I said flippantly, “Why not put a penn’orth of the muck into a paper bag, with printed instructions, and sell it for sixpence?”

  Sam Yudenow paused, thunderstruck, but quickly said, “This I thought of too, but first... you got to learn to swim before you can float. I want Costas should make up a few dozen Greenburgers, we should give ‘em away for one penny apiece Friday and Saturday. Look at Woolworth, look at Henry Ford. Only here’s the secret: first let the mixture swell, then dry it out golden bvown. Underdo that mixture, and the salt o’ the earth washes it down miv a glass o’ ginger pop; it swells in his stummick and he bursts, and I’m the sufferer. The most filling penn’ orth they’ve ever seen. Contains copper salts for anemia. And why am I taking you into my confidence like this? Because you got an honest face. I want to leave a few sacks o’ dehydrated cabbage miv you to keep in the genevator room. Deal it out two pounds at a time. Scales you won’t need; put it this way—an old film can filled flat to the brim, call it two pounds. In show biz, a showman shouldn’t be ashamed to take a tray round his neck and go up and down the aisles shouting, ‘Oh, Lovely Greenburgers!’—et cetera. Or, ‘Sizzling Hot!’ Never mind what’s sizzling hot. You sell the sizzle. And believe me, son, I won’t forget you. This is Sam Yudenow’s reply to the talkies. In your spare time, write up a nice little piece and send it to the Daily Film Renter or the Times; and if it comes out buy me six copies and write out a chit.” Then he was busy with his chauffeur, the cross-eyed, clubfooted man who was loaded like a Turkish porter with a mountain of small sacks. Beating him with his hat, Sam Yudenow was driving him toward the generator room.

  I shouted after him, “Hey! I must go into town this afternoon to get my luggage.”

  “And confidentially,” said this unforgettable character, “regard your wages as raised by ten bob a week as from next January. Only don’t tell a soul. Stick by Sam and Sam will stick by you.”

  “I say, I must take an hour or two off to get my things.”

  “Naturally. Get ‘em. Dock yourself two hours—no, come on, what’s a couple hours between friends?—take your time, dock yourself four hours and make me out a chit in triplicate. Don’t blame me, blame the capitalist system. They’re responsible for so much taxation in this country. You’d be surprised.... Greenburgers! Ah!”

  He was full of the glory and the dream. He went on, with that silly kind of smile on his face which is most often seen curling the mouths and lifting the eyebrows of spiritualists, Christian Scientists, clergymen accused of hatchet murders, and other ecstatics. “My boy, miv a good lawyer anything can be done. But the law of nature you can’t get away from. And what is the law of nature? Nothing is ever wasted—don’t chunk it into the dustbin until it’s hopeless. But while there’s life, there’s hope. When in doubt, put it on a shelf. Let me tell you a little story. My father was in the provision business—fish—and he was strong as a lion. Believe me, like Golliwog—” I suppose he meant Goliath—“In those days round Billingsgate Market, believe me, you had to be. Blame the law of nature. Well, so one day he lifted up sixteen stone of haddock and got a hernia. He won the bet, but he had to go and buy himself a tvuss.

  “So. In Billingsgate, six in the morning, you can buy anything—a watch and chain, picture postcards, anything. Well, so my poor father goes in for a brandy, and much to his surprise he sees his poor inside coming out. So, naturally, he is taken aback. Then comes in a loafer, one of the salt o’ the earth, what they called him Tommy Tea-Leaf. Miv education this Tommy could have been respectable—he was so dead clever he could take the shirt off your back while he was talking to you, and you’d never know it. But he didn’t know how to apply what the Lord gave him, so he simply went around pinching things mivout discrimination. This particular morning—Tommy always came straight to Billingsgate to flog what he’d knocked off the night before—so he turns up at this pub miv a marble statue of a Roman king, a complete set of the ‘Complete Works of William Makepeace Thackeray,’ and a tvuss still warm. He’d got it off a girl at the Alhambra, who’d had one too many, in the open street, pretending to dance the polka miv her.

  “My father bought the whole lot for five bob. The ‘Complete Works of William Makepeace Thackeray’ was worth that much in itself, for wrapping up fish—there was a shortage paper at the time. The statue was classy—solid marble—we touched it up miv a bit paint here and there and it was lifelike. The tvuss fitted like a glove, and my poor father wore it twenty years. Wait a minute! So years and years later he passes away. I kept that tvuss. Believe me, anything can come in handy. Years pass. I make my first deal for my first show, I agree to put a hundred and twenty pounds down. I don’t have a hundred and twenty pounds. Naturally, I was occupied in my mind, uncomfortable. I went away thinking, and just as I stepped off the curb—like Ejilah in the Bible—I sneezed, coughed, hiccuped, and farted all at the same time, and ruptured myself. So I took my father’s tvuss from the wall, and there you are. And I wore it twenty years until horsehair came out of the pad. Waste not, want not. So let it be with Greenburgers.... And as for that little suggestion of mine about putting the stuff into little bags—think it over, Lavender, think it over. Always remember never to forget it takes two to make an idea—be advised by me, I’ve had hundreds of ‘em. Me and Hacker the Breaker.

  “Just to give you an example, during the war, so there turns up a Belgian refugee miv a formula for boot polish, and as luc
k would have it, his name happened to be Spiton. Now I’m a busy man, Laveridge, and I can’t stand here all day long chattering. The long and the short of it is me and Hacker the Breaker got the formula for a fi’-pun note, miv the man’s name thrown in. This was my anspiration, because the indigredients of this polish came dear. But the name Spiton was worth its weight in gold: ‘Spit-and-Polish’—’Spiton Polish.’

  “Do you begin to follow me? Alas, because I was ruptured, I couldn’t fight in the trenches—besides which, in case you didn’t notice, I got catarrh—otherwise, believe me, I’d have been only too delighted. But some of my best friends were millingtary men. Moishe the Goniff got a govmint subdizzy he should open a cap factory, to give you one example. But Hacker the Breaker’s brother-in-law, Harry the Go-Between, what dealt in hides and corned beef—he would have got a knighthood only there was a sabotage, and they got mixed up—from him I got a little secret: Miv hoot polish, the thing to do is apply sparingly, but use a lot of spit. Therefore, my ‘Spiton Polish’ we produced for twice the price in a half-size tin, miv instructions to use saliva on a rag. In big letters, in red: warning! on account of double strength of this polish, use sparingly! save for victory! And it went like hot cakes. Unfortunately, because of the cost of the indigredients, we had to leave out wax, et cetera, so it dried up to a little nut covered miv green fuzz. Get what I mean, kind o’ style? Whereas, if the working classes had been ejucated then like they are now, so they should have imagination, we might have sold them empty tins miv instructions purely and simply to spit and apply elbow grease. It’s spit and elbow grease that polishes. Boot polish is a lot of eyewash. So what, for example, is to prevent you trade-marking a name like Elbow, cutting up a bar cheap castile soap wrapped up miv a man in a beard? elbow grease—apply sparingly—4d per cake. You’re laughing. Go on, laugh. Laugh! They laughed at Einstein, they laughed at Epstein, and even at Weinstein they laughed—and you and I should both be in his position! So I got ideals—what’s so bloody funny? You take all the shine off a thing, Laventry. You ain’t got no Covered Wagon in you.... Greenburgers! Does that word sing a song in your heart? It don’t? Then see a doctor; a doctor see, a telescope he should put to your chest. A lonely giant I turned out to be.... As for my idea of putting Greenburgers in a paper bag for fourpence, don’t try and pinch that, Lavender—I changed my stragety. A little box, miv a celluloid window. Believe me, nowadays nobody buys anything in a bag. It looks cheap. You were right to correct me; but we could add ‘Spices,’ separate, in a scvew of paper—wax paper—pure wax paper. Blue or green?”

  “Pink,” I said.

  “White, for purity. Miv the same printing job you can stamp the spices wrapper miv pale blue lilies. On the front, a motherly woman in an apron miv a dish in one hand and a ladle in the other. Fourpence? What are you talking about? Sevenpence!... There’s a woman does charring for my wife. Give her a bit rag she should blow her nose and a matchstick—if necessary, a hairpin—she should get the wax out from her ears; lend her a comb—the kind you can boil afterwards—and put her on a bib; goose her so she laughs—she’s very ticklish—and get a quick picture. Make a cutout. Get two, three layabouts to smell a fried sausage. Get a cameraman to shoot the expressions on their faces— hold the sausage on a string just above their heads, so their eyes roll—then click! Make a montage—cut a block! The camera never lies, and what does it cost? Nothing. Can you wonder, with ideas like this, I can’t sleep?” “No,” I said.

  Then Copper Baldwin appeared with an expression for which I can find no other words but melancholy satisfaction on his long face. From some vantage point—he had the strange gift of being able to merge into his surroundings, thereby cloaking imself in invisibility—he must have overheard the whole conversation, because he said, “As if I ain’t got trouble enough already with the plumbing!” He winked at me and jerked his head. “Perfumed lady to see you, Mr. Laverock.”

  My heart did not know what to do with itself: it leapt up, sank down, and described orbits. Perfumed lady: I thought of my mother, who used lilac, and of June Whistler, who, if she could not find an appropriate perfume in one of the multiple chemists’ shops, exuded it by effort of will.

  “What perfume I didn’t say,” said Copper Baldwin. “She’s waiting for you down in the orchestra.” Sam Yudenow being now out of earshot, he whispered, “Miss Noel. It would appear that she got blotto and slept under the drums.” He cleared his throat and went on in a haughty, superior kind of tone: “You’ve read your Russians, I dare say? You can’t repent unless you’ve sinned. Right? I mean, a child’s repentance ain’t worth a fart in a colander. Whereas ... Well, anyway, the Russians ‘ad something there. If you’ve got any conscience at all, the worse you sin, the better you repent. The deeper the repentance, the firmer the purpose of amendment—so up you go: by which token my father ought to be well established in ‘Eaven by now. What I mean to say is, Miss Noel is down in the orchestra with the ‘orrors. Between you and me, Dan, she kind o’ defiled herself. Do me a favor, as manager o’ this gaff, and go down and talk to ‘er. I rely on shock effect. Nothing personal, you know; only you might kind o’ shame the poor bitch, if you get what I mean. It’s all right, I’ll clean up. Do be a pal, kind o’ talk to ‘er, and I’ll get a pot o’ strong tea. Will you please?”

  “Of course I will,” I said.

  “She is sort o’ fragrant,” said Copper Baldwin. And so she was, with a fragrance that I can only describe as something like meat boiled in spirits. She did not smell of herself but of an aftermath—a predigested smell, and she was sitting in some mess of her own creating as far away from the piano as she could possibly get, crying her poor heart out. It touched my heart. I did not know how to address her, so, on that wheezy old piano, with my nine fingers, I attempted to play the Moonlight Sonata—whereupon, as if I had stretched her like an accordion, she became a person in one piece. Then Copper Baldwin, whose timing was perfect and who must in any case have been looking at the whole operation and listening to it from a distance, came down with his tea. He took one look and one sniff and left me alone with Miss Noel.

  Poor lady, she wept, while she wiped her nose on whatever came to hand and apologized for weeping.

  I said, “Oh, come now, Miss Noel, please don’t cry. I give you my word, there’s nothing to cry about. What’s the matter? You’ve taken to drink? Oh, please, I beg you, don’t let it distress you. Put it this way: in distressing yourself you distress me.”

  “Not for the world!” she cried.

  “Well, say for example that we do. Let’s just say. Can’t you see where it leads? It makes a trail of evil. Get me? You must go your way down, and if I have any love for you, or any loyalty to you, what can I do but follow you, trusting in God? Oh, my dear Miss Noel,” I said, “look at yourself. Can you imagine the taste of a rotten stomach, a bloated liver, and I don’t know how many yards of intestines packed with corruption—all this translated into what I can only call an effluvium? Oh, my dear Miss Noel, please stop to consider!” I played a few chords of Schubert. “You are worthy of so many higher things. You have no right to go to the devil the way you are going,” I said. “Now look here, I will stand by you.”

  She cried, so bitterly that I was sorry I had spoken; but presently, taking a double handful of air less than a foot in front of her nose, she seemed to catch hold of some vagrant bit of herself. Then she spoke like a conscious woman.

  She said, in the most woebegone voice I have ever heard, “‘Stay with me, Beauty, for the light is dying—my dog and I are old, too old for roving’—what am I talking about?”

  I said, “My dear Miss Noel, it seems to me that you are talking sense out of place. That means to say, making no sense. You are in the Pantheon, Fowlers End, and must conduct yourself accordingly. As your manager, it is my duty to see that you do so. And by God, so you shall!... Now look here, my dear, I have only nine and a half fingers, and rusty at that, but while Copper Baldwin brings us a cup of tea I will play you a sort o
f rendering of something I remember while you tell me about yourself and why you condescend to go under yourself. Speaking for myself,” I said, “I am, Miss Noel, a protagonist of good old freedom, and I loathe and despise anybody who wants to strangle freedom, in the state or in the individual. Now listen to me—what are you, Miss Noel, but a kind of state? There is a sort of tyrant dictating to you at the present moment. Isn’t that so? He makes you do what you don’t want to do. Aren’t I right? Yet you obey him. You do, every minute, against your better judgment, don’t you?”

  She said, “Yes.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Would you do me a very great favor?”

  “If I can, Miss Noel.”

  “Then will you please go away?”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “I made messes and I smell. I’m filthy.”

  Always the one for a bit of metaphysical discussion, I said, “Meaning: if I go away there will be no mess, et cetera? That my absence will cleanse you? No. The muck, such as it is, will still be here. You’ll still be here, double dirty. You’ll make a whole rigmarole in your poor head about what you think I saw and multiply the dirt like the grains of wheat on the chessboard—swamp yourself with it. Come now, Miss Noel; what you have inadvertently dropped on the floor is nothing in itself. Everybody’s full of it. It’s only a matter of keeping it in its place and putting it where it belongs. Somebody told me once that dirt is only misplaced matter. Be that as it may, in general; in this particular case, if that’s all that’s on your mind, it’s nothing Copper Baldwin can’t shift with a bucket of water and a mop. The real significance of it is what it left behind when it came out—I mean, shame.”