The Song of the Flea

by Gerald Kersh

  “I owe you more than I can ever repay, Proudfoot,” said Pym, firmly now but fervently; “I hate to think what I should have done without you.”

  “It was nothing—nothing at all, Pym, my dear fellow,” said Proudfoot, coming to earth and appearing as a Son of Man. “I am flattered, my dear fellow, that a man like you should come for help to a man like me. Well, I suppose even an eagle or an albatross comes down to rest for a moment on a ruin or a rotten derelict. But you were saying that you were fed up, fed up to the teeth, Pym. Why? I’ve known you for two years or more, and nothing ever seemed to shake you. My poor friend, how you must have been suffering!”

  The resolute mouth relaxed a hair’s breadth and some of the whiteness went out of the fighter’s knuckles. “It’s so difficult to explain. I don’t think I know how to explain. But I owe you an explanation of some sort, Proudfoot. I owe you ever so much more than just an explanation——”

  “Have you got any money?”

  “I’ve got nearly five pounds,” said Pym, taking the money out of his pocket; “please have it.”

  “My dear fellow, I wouldn’t dream of it. Well, I might borrow thirty shillings. A loan, mind. You have already been far too kind. You insisted on my taking that five pounds as a fee—as if a fee were necessary! I’ll borrow thirty shillings, since you’re so insistent, and remember,” said Proudfoot, still watching Pym’s face, “remember that you are not indebted to me for anything whatsoever.” He read dog-like gratitude in Pym’s lifted paw, and went on jovially: “I’ll tell you why I asked you whether you had any money. It’s getting on for five o’clock. Until you were so kind as to lend me thirty shillings I had no money. I was going to say that the public house in Covent Garden Market will be opening now, and that if you liked we could take a walk in that direction and you could—if it were perfectly convenient—buy me a drink. But you’re tired.”

  “Indeed I’m not tired, Proudfoot, and I’d love to buy you a drink.”

  “No, no; you must be exhausted after all you’ve been through … Oh, well, all right, since you insist, let it be as you say. And on the way you can tell me all about it.”

  They went on tiptoe to the outer door. “Quietly, if you don’t mind,” said Proudfoot; “that’s right. Come along now.”

  Pym laid an affectionate hand on the old man’s shoulder, Proudfoot smiled in the dark: the spaniel was grateful: it was being taken for a walk.

  After a minute or two of thoughtful silence Pym said, striking himself on the thigh with a merciless hand (the slap and the jingle of small change in his trouser-pocket sent a stray cat bounding in terror across the street): “I must get my typewriter and go back to work, Proudfoot, by God I must! I haven’t much more to do. I’ve got to finish. I can get my typewriter, I suppose?”

  “Oh, yes. It is necessary only for you to establish your right to it by application to the Police Commissioner, and you will get it back from the pawnbroker without any trouble at all, and it will cost you nothing.”

  “Oh, by the way …” said Pym.

  It was too dark for Proudfoot to see Pym’s face between the lamp-posts, but Proudfoot (like Busto) had ears trained to turn sound into pictures. Something in Pym’s voice informed him that the clenched hands had unclenched. “By the way, what?”

  “I forgot to ask: what happens to Win—Miss Joyce?”

  “It’s difficult to predict these things with any degree of certainty; but, to hazard a guess, I should say that she’d probably get—taking all things into consideration—something like three months.”

  “What!”

  “Oh yes, she’ll get off lightly, in spite of the fact that one or two similar little affairs have been hushed up before. You see, although she has no previous convictions, no actual convictions, she’s not unknown to the police. But the old gentleman, her stepfather, has a lot of money. The argument will be: silly, thoughtless girl. Taking all in all … let me see. She has been in very bad company—a pimp, in point of fact, called American Henry or something of the sort. He has just served three years for burglary. You know what these people are: if he had been romantic enough to take the blame, he would have got it in the neck. He was not. He said, without hesitation, that he had got the typewriter from the young lady, who had given it to him to pawn. When she was questioned, she told another tale, and by that time you had already charged her with the theft of the typewriter. On the one hand we have … well, let us not bother about the one hand or the other hand. Yes, I should say something like three months.”

  “Three months,” said Pym, shocked and fascinated, “three months in prison! What on earth will she do?”

  “Oh, pretty much the same as they all do, I suppose. Keep regular hours, do a little work, keep out of mischief, stop smoking and drinking and fornicating, and have a little time for reflection on a hard, clean bed, without too much rich food. I will wager the thirty shillings I have just borrowed from you that she will be vastly improved physically by the time she comes out. Do you know what? They always are: it’s a fact. A little discipline does them good. I used to know a manufacturer of window frames who went to prison for twelve months for defrauding the Inland Revenue. When he stood in the dock he was as flabby and unsavoury a wreck as I am now. He was about the same age, too—somewhere around sixty. When I saw him rather less than a year later, he looked ten years younger. It is good for them, my dear fellow, good for them!”

  Sadly, not without bitterness, Pym said: “That sounds strange, Proudfoot, coming from The Mouthpiece.”

  Proudfoot was not disconcerted. He laughed lightly and said: “My dear fellow, what’s strange about it? Has it occurred to you that my clients were seldom if ever liable to less than ten years’ penal servitude? I never involved myself in petty larceny and misdemeanours … until now, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

  Pym’s cheeks were red and hot in the cool darkness as he said: “I’m sorry, Proudfoot.”

  “Sorry, sorry, sorry!” said Proudfoot. “That’s your trouble, Pym—that is your curse. Sorry! If you are to be the man you are meant to be you must stop being sorry. You must be hard, Pym, hard! Great men are not sorry. It is nothing but conceit, this perpetual sorriness of yours!”

  “You’re always right, you’re never wrong, Proudfoot. But great man are sorry—I mean, they do feel pity.”

  “Very well. Go on.”

  “The greater the man, the deeper the pity,” said Pym.

  “All right. ‘The greater the man, the deeper the pity.’ Very good. ‘Let us now praise famous men.’ Since you are a writer, let us talk about greatness in its relation to Pity. Come on, Sorry—I am going to nickname you ‘Sorry’—come on, Sorry Pym, name me a few pitiful great writers.”

  “There was, of course, Shakespeare,” said Pym uncertainly; “and there was Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Dickens——”

  “—That’s enough. Add, if you like, Balzac and Zola. Add whoever you like. All great writers know pity. I put it to you that if Charles Dickens had gone on as you are going on he would have lived and died in the blacking factory, labelling bottles, with Oliver Twist unborn—for the simple reason that he would never have snatched enough time to write it! My dear fellow, you must realise that pity, material pity, pity in four dimensions (I include Time as a dimension) is a life work in itself. Who was more full of pity than Dostoevsky? What did he do? Did he stay in Siberia, busily pitying? Oh no; oh, dear me, no! He got out of it, married a reliable typist, smacked his innocent children’s heads if they dared to cough or sniff in the flat while he was putting pity on paper, and sat down and wrote Crime and Punishment. You mentioned Shakespeare. At your age, Shakespeare was already a man of power. ‘The greater the man the deeper the pity’ were your words, I believe?”

  “Yes, that’s what I said.”

  “I agree,” said Proudfoot, and paused before hammering in the last half-inch of his argument.

  “Well, then——”

  “—The greater the man the profounder the pity. The pr
ofounder the pity the sharper the pain of uprooting it. The sharper the pain the harder to bear. The harder to bear the stronger the man. The stronger the man, the greater the man, writer, businessman, or what you will. Detach yourself!”

  “Detach myself! How?”

  “My dear fellow, with only a little time to call your own—left alone only for a little while—could you, or could you not, do what you have set out to do?”

  “I believe I could.”

  “You know you could. I agree with you when you say ‘the greater the man the deeper the pity’, but if you are to be great you must see your subject from a distance. You must listen to me, Pym, because although I’m old and wretched and shabby and broken and altogether ridiculous, I am not a fool, and I was on the way to being great (comical though it may sound, coming from me) before you were born. You must see life from the proper distance. You do not see a landscape when you are lying on your face in a bed of stinging nettles, any more than you hear an orchestra if you push your ear into the mouth of a trombone. True, if you wish to paint a landscape, you must first learn the shape and feel of a nettle or a blade of grass; and you appreciate music better if you know the potentialities of all the instruments. Again, before you portray a human being you must see the articulation of his bones. But the whole, Pym, may not be viewed except from a distance. You are too closely in contact with things, especially with people, at the present moment, and you must go away to a quiet place, and put your head in order, and lick some of the salt out of your wounds, and settle down to work; as other great men have done.”

  “You’re right, Proudfoot—you are right, I know. All I want is to be left alone. The point is, one has to eat and keep a roof over one’s head. A formality, perhaps,” said Pym, laughing, “but necessary.”

  “Quite simply, then, you must get hold of some money,” said Proudfoot.

  “I like the ‘quite simply’.”

  “Oh, but you can.”

  “How?” asked Pym.

  Proudfoot said: “Now, I don’t want to say too much at present, but a day or two ago I met an old friend who has a project in which I am interested—I think profitable, when it matures a little. I’ll tell you about it. You have lent me thirty shillings, and been very kind on previous occasions,” said Proudfoot; “and, as the saying goes, I’ll cut you in if all goes well. But you do realise, my dear fellow, that the time has come to detach yourself a little—to be hard?”

  “I do, on my word of honour I do, Proudfoot. But …”

  “Oh, enough of my chatter, my dear fellow. Tell me about yourself.”

  “The trouble with me——” Pym began.

  “Ah!” said Proudfoot.

  They were at the door of the Jackdaw of Rheims.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “THE trouble with me——” said Pym.

  “Rum. At this hour of the morning rum is the best thing. Rum for you?”

  “Whatever you like. Anything.”

  “Two rums,” said Proudfoot.

  “I’m only supposed to serve market people at this time of the morning,” said the barman. “Are you market people?”

  “Well …” said Pym.

  “Yes,” said Proudfoot firmly.

  A costermonger in a tight brown overcoat and a cracked bowler hat said: “You’re a bloody liar.”

  “Perhaps——” said Pym.

  “Pay no attention,” said Proudfoot.

  The costermonger’s pink, drink-thickened face glowed in the cigarette smoke like a setting sun in a wet sky. He was sullen and angry; heavy, strong and dangerous. A little, quick, dry woman, whose hat brushed his chin, touched his wrist with a tiny hand and made a gesture that reminded Pym of a fly cleaning its front legs. “Now then, Nat,” she said.

  “Shut up! Keep your snotty nose out o’ this. Wodger mean—‘pay no attention’? Eh? Goon. Wodger mean?”

  “Leave people alone,” said the barman.

  “Yes, come on, Nat.”

  “Shut your bloody mouf! Put a bloody sock in it or I’ll shut if for ya. ’Oo said ‘pay no attention’? You? You dirty bastard! I’ll knock your bastard block orf!”

  “Go on and do it,” said Proudfoot, smiling. “I know your kind, my friend. I defy you to touch me, you sodden loafer! Here—look—here’s my face. Touch it—just touch it! I dare you to! You miserable cur. Go on—hit me, knock my ‘bastard block’ off. Here it is.”

  Proudfoot folded back his upturned coat-collar and offered his face to the costermonger, looking into his eyes.

  “Nat!” said the little woman.

  “Oh, shullup!” The costermonger looked away from Proudfoot, saw Pym and said: “What’s the matter with you?”

  “Are you asking for trouble?” said Pym. “This gentleman is my friend.”

  “Now then, Nat—stop it, for Christ’s sake, can’t you?” cried the little woman.

  A fruit-salesman wearing an Old Etonian tie and a tweed cap muttered: “Turn it up. Ignore ’im. You don’t want no trouble with Nat.”

  “‘This gentleman is my friend,’” said Nat, with savage mockery. “‘This gentleman is my friend.’ Well, I tell you what you can do with your friend. You can go and —— your friend, and —— your mother, and —— your father, and —— yourself. See? That’s what you can do. All right? Well, go on, then. I told you what you can do, didn’t I? and do it, you dirty-rotten, twanking son of a nore! Go on—go on and do what you’re told!”

  “Good Lord!” said Pym, mildly astonished. He was looking at the ceiling in the abstracted manner of a man making mental notes.

  “Come and sit down,” said Proudfoot, pulling at his sleeve.

  “All right,” said Pym.

  “If anybody said that to me,” whispered the fruit-salesman, “I’d ’ave a go if ’e was Jack Dempsey. I’d do ’im if I ’ad to do ’im wiv an iron bar—I’d do six months for ’im, so ’elp me Jesus Christ Allbloodymighty!”

  “He didn’t seem to annoy you,” said Proudfoot, sitting next to Pym at a little round table.

  “Not much, no. I really don’t mind a great deal what people say to me. Why, do you?”

  “No, not a bit. You were wise not to get into a fight with Nat the Terror, though. He’s one of the madmen that don’t know when to stop: a violent creature with no regard for the consequences of anything he does,” said Proudfoot. “Shall we have another rum?”

  “By all means, Proudfoot. I’ll get it. Just let me swallow this. Now, what was I saying? Yes: the trouble with me, as I was saying——”

  Nat the Terror made the glasses jump as he struck the table, and the tip of his nose touched Pym’s cheekbone as he shouted: “You’re a dirty bastard of a f—d pig! I told you what to do. Don’t sit here! Go and —— your —— ing mother!”

  The little woman took hold of Nat’s sleeve and drew him back a pace or two.

  “Pay no attention,” said Proudfoot.

  “No, but this is very interesting,” said Pym.

  “I’ll shut your mouf for you,” said Nat, with a knowing smile, and knocked the little woman down with a backhanded swing of his right fist.

  “This is what comes of interfering——” Proudfoot began to say; but Pym did not hear. He rose, kicking away his chair and shouting “No! No! No!” in a strangled, husky voice. The barman, with a mallet in his hand, was lifting the hinged flap of the bar and advancing with the sophisticated trepidation of an old soldier.

  “Now look what you done!” cried Nat, holding up a cut knuckle, “you ’oring cow, you interfering bloody bitch!”

  The little woman sat up unsteadily, retching and spitting a lingering, gummy string of blood. Then Pym leapt upon Nat and struck him with all his strength in the middle of his face. “Women? You hit women?” he shouted, and struck again. Nat fell back upon the bar. “Leave him alone—leave him to me!” cried Pym to the barman. Hurling himself against Nat he fell with him into the street beyond the swinging doors of the Jackdaw of Rheims.

  “This is going to be
a bundle!” said the fruit-salesman, leaving his beer undrunk and rushing out. Even the barman followed him.

  Nat feinted with his left hand, struck with his right and knocked Pym as he staggered back. Pym’s heels struck the kerb, and he sat down on the pavement. Nat jumped on him, but Pym, rolling forward, caught one of his ankles in a terrible grip, so that Nat fell on his face and they were lying together in the gutter. Pym remembered that a coster lived on his feet and one might break his ankle, so he relaxed his hold; and then Nat kicked himself loose and stamped on Pym’s face with a heavy boot. He had the legs of a man who pushes loaded barrows. Something clicked: there was another red sunset flavoured with salt and Pym was standing up, keeping away. He hit hard with his left hand. Nat came on. Pym skipped away from a swinging boot, and still Nat came on. The back of Nat’s hand scraped his nose. A hand took hold of his throat. Pym bowed his head, found a finger, and bit it with all his might.

  “Biting, by Christ!” said Nat. “Biting!” Nat dragged himself away. He and Pym stood face to face.

  “Let’s call it a day,” said Nat.

  “No!” cried Pym, landing a shattering right-hand punch on his chin, and Nat fell on his back “A woman? A woman? You’d strike a woman, would you?”

  “Woman, you bloody fool? Woman? That’s Lil, my wife. She’s not a woman!” said Nat the Terror, rising. “But okay, you asked for it.”

  He bobbed his head, hunched a shoulder, drew back his left hand and aimed a kick at Pym’s groin. Pym stepped aside and hit him four times before he recovered his balance. Nat fell into a mess of horse droppings and cabbage leaves, but came up with a nail-studded batten from a broken crate, indignantly shouting: “Foul me, would ’e?”