by Gerald Kersh
Large, gloomy, well-groomed New Yorkers looked over factory sites. Absalom booked a passage on the Megalomania. Relish was about to meet Relish. A waiting world held its breath, confronted at the end of the centuries with an impending answer to the ancient conundrum of the irresistible cannon-ball and the immovable post.
In the spring of the year 1928, Absalom Relish landed in England.
Shortly after he landed, Ab Relish visited his brother Matthew at Clodpuddle. It was a momentous thing, this meeting of the two strong men, who had gone down their diverging roads to their different destinies. Light came face to face with darkness; Order met Anarchy. Matthew could scarcely recognise his twin brother in the person that now confronted him. Absalom had become lean. He had none of that Relish embonpoint—that neatly rounded abdomen and that soft duplication of the chin which lends dignity to the gentleman of middle age. Feverish activity had planed Absalom down. His eyes—unlike Matthew’s, which time had rendered more prominent and delicately tinged about the balls with yellow and red—were of a distinct blue. In receding modestly to display the fine shining pink of his scalp, Matthew’s hair had run to a profusion of adorable little curls at the nape of the neck; Absalom’s, unlike that of his biblical namesake, was cut short. A habit of non-committal lip-pursing had formed Matthew’s lips into a rosebud; Absalom’s mouth slammed like a closing door as he bit off flying splinters of brutally direct speech. Absalom was dressed like an ordinary man, in grey; Matthew would have felt stark naked without his cutaway coat, white slip, stiff cuffs, high collars, cravat, pearl pin, watch-chain, white spats, long woollen pants to absorb the perspiration, gold studs, and pince-nez on a black ribbon.
They looked dissimilar enough; but as soon as they began to converse, you would have said to yourself: “Not only are they not brothers; they are strangers and enemies from two different worlds.”
“Do you expect, like the Prodigal, to be welcomed back to the Fold?” asked Matthew.
“Listen, Matt: to hell with your fatted calf—the only fold I’ve come back to is the bill-fold.”
“I understand that you propose to establish the firm of Zenz in this country.”
“That’s right.”
“To poison the stream of British commerce with your American methods of publicity.”
“Uh-huh.”
“It is you—you, a son of the House of Relish!—of whom I have heard in connection with advertisements which the vilest coal-heaver might blush to hear mentioned.”
“ ‘Smell Clean’? Feminine hygiene, armpits, and all that stuff? Sure, that’s mine.”
“And you come here?”
“Why not?”
“Leave my office.”
“Just a minute. I’ve got a suggestion. I’m coming back to England to sell Zenz Pickles. And I will sell ’em. I’ll stuff ’em down the public throat in double handfuls. Get me? That means war. You’ll go under. Now listen, Matt; you’re a hundred and fifty years behind the times. Zenz is prepared to make you an offer. Sell out!”
“What?”
“You’ve got money. Sell out; retire. You’re finished.”
“How dare you?”
“Look at the way this business is run. Haphazard, slack. It’s all very nice, playing at merchant princes; but you’re living on the past. Your pickles have got a reputation. All right. I can explode it. You can’t fight me. You’re too much of a mug to use the right weapons to fight with. Look at your publicity! It makes me sweat blood. ‘Eat and Enjoy Relish’s Pickles, Warranted Absolutely Pure and Unadulterated.’ Where are your eyes? How did you come to miss the Vitamin angle, for instance? ‘The Five-Vitamin Pickle’—hell’s bells!—Vitamins A, B, C, D, E, conclusively demonstrated by graphs! Buy a couple of Viennese doctors:—‘Professor Splots, the Eminent Health Authority, says . . .’ See? Health! ‘Sunlight on the Breakfast Table’—‘Restores the Tissues like a Ten-Hour sleep!’—‘You May Not Be Able to Afford A Six Months’ Holiday—But You Can Afford To Eat Relish’s Pickles.’ Vitamins, see? Or Slimming! ‘Eat less Starch: Eat More Relish’s’—give away a free diet-sheet: ‘How to Keep That Girlish Figure.’ Illustrations: ‘Before’: picture of somebody with a bust down to here”—Absalom placed his hands in the region of his umbilicus—“ ‘After’: picture of somebody with a similar face, with a figure like Evelyn Brent. You can get models to look alike. Hell, when I worked that slimming angle, I worked it with two pictures of a woman who had got dropsy. Smack it into ’em! You don’t sell pickles by saying ‘Eat and Enjoy Pickles’. That’s a thing of the past. Tell ’em they can’t live without Relish’s Pickles! They can’t have babies unless they eat Relish’s Pickles! Organise baby shows, with free cabaret and tea; chorus of fat, healthy kids: ‘The Relishy-Wellishies’. Sponsor boxers! ‘On my Right Knockout Floorboards!’—and up jumps Knockout with RELISH’S PICKLES FOR HEALTH AND STRENGTH in letters a yard high on his dressing-gown. But don’t sit there picking your nose! Why——”
“This is disgusting! Get——”
“—there’s a pickle-angle in everything. Get pickle-minded! Pickles make you sleep; pickles make you wake up. Look at your pack! What the hell is it supposed to be—a model of the Leaning Tower of Pizzer, or what? Didn’t you have the sense to stick the muck in a jar that could be used as a flower-vase, or a highball-glass, or a milk-jug, or something? Look at your label! It looks like nothing on earth. And no carton. Why no carton? Why not a carton that the kids can play with? Hell, I was doing a Felix the Cat pack years ago. Why not a book of recipes? A lot of paper. What does it cost you in the long run? Damn all; but look what it gives you to talk about! Oh, hell, you’ve got no idea. And I tell you, once we get going, you’ll stand as much chance as a bug in a gearbox——”
“Sir! Before I ring the bell and ask my secretary to show you out, let me tell you one thing: England is not America. We shall fight you, and drive you back. You shall not take the bread and butter out of our wives’ bosoms. We have the market, and what we have, we hold. You think that the British public are fools——”
“Just like any other public. They’re bigger mugs than they used to be, because they think they know more. Once a sucker has read a few newspaper articles about vitamins and ductless glands, he’s easier to play than before—he’ll take the shirt off his back to pay four and sixpence for a bottle of formaldehyde and water, or something. You got to keep on giving ’em new angles. One day it’ll get down to pickles being good for dressing wounds, making mud-packs, getting grit out of the eye, and bleaching collars:—‘A Jar of Pickles Accidentally fell into the Washtub. . . . Judge my Surprise when Archibald’s diapers emerged as White as Driven Snow . . .’ Hell, why not? One teaspoonful of . . . No.”
“Get out!”
“Okay,” said Absalom. “You’ll see.”
“Tiddlebotham, show this person out.”
“Remember—we’re all smart Alecks until our time comes. All right, I’m going.”
It was dog eat dog—war, war to the knife!
Absalom flung himself into the organisation of the English branch of the firm of Zenz. He worked eighteen hours a day. His office became a kind of dump, ankle-deep in a chaos of showcards, posters, displays and pickle-jars; a wild confusion, of which he alone knew the secret. A map of the British Isles covered one wall, bristling with little red flags that were to mark the spread of the Zenz anarchy. Another wall bore an immense sheet of graph-paper, which, Absalom had determined, should soon be scored diagonally by a red line running up at an angle of about forty-five degrees. Absalom sat at a large desk by the window. Papers and sheets of cardboard encroached upon him, like virgin jungle over-running a clearing. Stripped of his coat, and belching smoke as he gnawed his way savagely down cigar after cigar, he seemed never to stir from his seat. Perhaps he derived some nourishment from the tobacco-leaf that he swallowed: he seemed to take no other food, except slippery elm tablets, cedarwood (he ate two pencils a day, sucking the lead before throwing it away, with the zest of an old lady su
cking a fish-bone), and warm milk. He worked in a kind of delirium, and rarely stopped talking:
“Where’s your imagination, you sissies? Public interest—gimme interest—oh, for the love of God gimme something that’ll hit ’em in the front teeth! Show me one more ‘Eat and Enjoy’ crack, and I’ll stuff it down your throat . . .
“Oh, Pete? Is that Pete? Listen, Pete, I’ve got a honey of an idea. Curious Oaths. Yes, Oaths; you heard. O for Obsolete, A for Ass, T for Tonsils, H for Hell, and S for Stupid. Got it? Get me a list of peculiar old English oaths still in use about the country—you know, things like ‘Shiver my Timbers’, and ‘Well I’ll be Gormed’, and ‘Gord Stuff me Gently’, do some research, and work up some sketches, and snap into it, and have half a dozen at least ready by to-morrow midday. Yes. Shut up. Good-bye . . .
“Hey, what in the hell is this? A jar? Get out of my sight. The place for a thing like that is under the bed, not in the shop window . . .
“Now listen, Professor Schweinerei-Ochsenschwanz; not a cent more than five hundred do I pay. You gimme dope about vitamins in my pickles, and sign it, and I pay you five hundred. Professor Yix would do it for three-fifty and he’s a bigger celebrity than you. Only I want a long name. So don’t get ideas or it’s no deal . . .
“Hey, Mick! Get photos of that footballer, Hugginham, kicking a vegetable marrow over Saint Paul’s Cathedral after a feed of pickles, will you? And ask the Duchess of Blick how much she wants to be photographed at her dinner-table surrounded by the Blick Plate, with a jar of Zenz Pickles on the table: she ought to take a thousand; Salsabianca is going to put the brokers in at the Castle for the hairdressing bill . . . Get going! Oh, and, Mick—get me a ballet-dancer. Approach Turnova. ‘Sylph-like Suppleness on Zenz Pickles.’ ‘If it were not for Zenz Pickles, I would never have lived to dance in Ballet . . .’ You know. ’Bye . . .
“Whaddaya call that? A poster? Gimme colour! Gimme life! Hand me any more about little boys raiding the pantry, and I’ll tell you what you can do with it . . .
“Hey, Pete, here’s a line: ‘Our Onions Are Odourless’. Something about the strengthening quality of the onion—in South America, any peon can carry a grand piano up to the top of Mount Popocatepetl without stopping for breath, because he lives on a straight onion diet. We have a secret process of preserving the virtues of the onion and abolishing its smell. You know: ‘The Onion Builds You Up Physically—Don’t Let It Tear You Down Socially’ . . .
“Hallo, Yankelovitch’s Theatrical Agency? Yankelovitch? This is Ab Relish. I want thirty-five fat little girls. . . . No, you mutt; for an act. What do you take me for? I’m going to call them the Zenzy-Wenzies. They better look healthy . . .
“Hallo, is that Blue Peters? Listen, Blue, I want you to compose me a theme-song for the Zenzy-Wenzies. Something sprightly. Yes, I got a lyric:
“Zenzy-Wenzies bright and gay,
Bright at work, and bright at play,
Eat Zenz Pickles every day——
Happy Zenzy-Wenzies!
“You’re telling me it’s good? Hah! All right; get on the job, Blue—some sort of hot variation on ‘Pop Goes the Weasel’. And you might work out another one, more suitable for adults:
“Hold that Zenzy!—Hold that Zenzy!
Hold that Zenzy!—Hold that Zenzy!
“You know: ‘Tiger Rag’. Never mind about that, though. Gimme kids! Let me have the child until he’s seven, and you can keep him for the rest of his life. I’ll make them kick their mothers on the shins and scream their tonsils through the ceiling for Zenz Pickles . . .
“Great big jars! Give ’em a lot of jar!
“More Pickles for the money! . . .
“Blended Pickles! . . .
“Zenz Blends! . . .
“Zenz!”
In less time than it takes to tell, the public was stunned, bewildered, swamped, flooded, and swept off its feet in a pickly cataclysm.
The House of Relish wheeled itself into the combat with a hoarse bellow; but it was as if the Fat Girl of Peckham had gone into the ring with Jimmy Wilde. Relish’s arose from their long sleep with the creaking incertitude of Rip Van Winkle. Fifty thousand pounds were placed at the disposal of a reputable advertising agency, with strict injunctions concerning the dignity of the firm. A letter was unearthed, from Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton, which said: Most Divine Lady, my arm gives me much pain; I long to see your sweet face once more. My Lady Dumdora called on Saturday night, with a jar of most excellent pickles. Relish’s, which did much to alleviate the Fever. . . . GOOD ENOUGH TO NELSON! cried Relish’s; but quick as lightning came the Zenz riposte:
EVERY GREAT MAN SINCE CÆSAR KNEW THE ZENZ BLEND
Such a claim might have seemed fantastic; but Absalom, with minute historical data, indicated that the Zenz recipe had been in existence for fifty-eight generations. Now in fifty-eight generations, one has had the astronomical number of 288,230,376,152,121,344 ancestors—actual fact, disgusting to consider—so that it may not unreasonably be assumed . . .
ZENZ ADDED FIRE TO CLEOPATRA’S KISSES!
WILL ADD FIRE TO YOURS!
288,230,376,152,121,344 ANCESTORS CAN’T BE WRONG
THEY MADE YOU WHAT YOU ARE TO-DAY!
At this, Zenz sales soared until the graph looked like the red trail of a skyrocket, while the Relish graph descended in sickening jerks, like steps leading down to the river.
Matthew became green and white in the face. By 1932, he had wasted away until he weighed scarcely more than fourteen stone. His eye had lost its calm; his hand shook so that his port tossed like an angry sea; his appetite, also, had so woefully declined that it was with difficulty that he managed to eat his four square meals a day, and it was observed with profound regret that he who once had wielded a trenchant knife and fork now turned with distaste from the eleventh course at dinner, after he had eaten scarcely more than a couple of soles and a roast chicken at luncheon. It was obvious to all the world that his heart was breaking. Suppressed grief was causing his neck to swell; unshed tears were causing his blood-pressure to rise. It came to be whispered: “Poor Matthew has met his master; it is breaking him up. . . . Yet what a great business man he used to be, before his brother came back! How gentlemanly was his deportment! With what dignity could he cough!” He was already spoken of as a figure pertaining to a glorious but obsolescent past. . . .
Meanwhile, Matthew’s son, Horace, flying from the screaming Sabbatical sopranos and Sunday morning ballad-singers of London Regional, could not turn the dial of his radio without being knifed in the ear-drums by the penetrating voices of the Zenzy-Wenzies, boosting Zenz pickles over the air from Radio San Marino. Zenz propaganda masked by hot jazz, low comedy, and juvenilia, burned itself into his brain until he succumbed to it. Horace was a true son of his father, and could wear a black coat with the best; yet he was young, and therefore impressionable. He finally found courage to speak to his father about the matter:
“Father, don’t be offended, but I’ve been thinking——”
“You been what?”
“It seems to me that since Zenz is cutting our throats, and nothing that we can do can touch Uncle Absalom . . .”
“Well?”
“Don’t you think you might make friends with him again?”
“Never. Don’t suggest such a thing again.”
“But, Father . . .”
“Not another word!
“Silence!” roared Matthew at the top of his voice, “your uncle is my enemy!”
“But all the same, it seems ridiculous to be enemies when you might be so much better off by being his friend. And after all, he is your brother.”
“I would starve rather than be friends with that man. He comes here and steals our market, takes the bread out of our mouths, and you—you—you——”
“Father, don’t excite yourself!”
“You suggest—you dare to suggest that we, we, should—gggh . . . gggh . . .” Matthew inserted a finger under his collar, became black in
the face, spun round like a top, and fell down dead.
He was buried in the Relish vault: the last of the old order.
Absalom looked gloomily at his nephew.
“What did you say your name was?”
“Horace.”
“Pah. What are you going to do about the business?”
“Continue with it. Perhaps, Uncle, we might be friends?”
“Yes, I suppose so. Bah! You better combine with us. It’s a pity, but there it is. . . . Ah!” Ab Relish sighed very deeply.
“What is a pity?” asked Horace.
“This is—all this combining. Hell, if I had been you, I would have spat in my eye: I would have said: ‘Uncle Absalom, you are the son of a bitch, and I’ll fight you tooth and nail, biting, gouging, and concealed weapons not barred! Friends! Bah! Friendship! Combine? What does that mean? It means to say there’s nobody left to fight. It simply means to say we sit down on our fannies and grow fat bellies. What’s the good of that? And you say ‘Combine’. I’m ashamed of you. To-morrow morning, you take off that black coat, and get the village blacksmith to unrivet that collar, and you start in the cleaning rooms. Any arguments? Hey?”
“No, Uncle.”
“No, Uncle. Of course not, you sissy, you! Why not? Why didn’t you smack me in the mouth and say: ‘Who in the hell do you think you’re ordering around?’ Mouse! Pah! I got to combine with you. You ain’t big enough to fight. Oh hell, hell, hell, I’m fed up. Friends! Friends! Gimme enemies! Gimme enemies: then I can enjoy life.”
“Pickles . . .”
“Pickles . . . I’m fed up with pickles. There ain’t a soul left to stand up to me. It’s time I quit.”
“Retired, Uncle?” asked Horace.
“Retired, Uncle! I mean, quit pickles and start a fresh line; something really competitive; something with a little excitement . . .”
Dustin—the Broken Man
They brought Dustin back after forty days and forty nights. He had an air of awful dejection, of emptiness and utter weariness.
All deserters have that look when they are caught, or when misery or conscience makes them give themselves up.