The Song of the Flea

by Gerald Kersh

This, he decided, was a good, intriguing title for a story about Covent Garden Market. ‘Bloodshot Celery’ is Covent Garden for rhubarb, and ‘Naughty Boys’ are Savoys. Pym made it rich and slangy, racy and crisp, and finished it by five o’clock.

  Then he pulled Mrs. Greensleeve’s box from under his bed and took out the typescript of her play. Looking at it, Pym shook his head and smiled a little. Upon its soiled manilla covers the dreary history of That We May Not Weep was written in blotches and stains: a guilloche of teacup-rings, a cuneiform inscription by someone who was cleaning a pen-nib, a black constellation of ink blots—one of them was shaped like a huge exclamation-mark—from an ejaculatory fountain-pen, and a cloud-bank of finger-prints … all the hieroglyphics and symbols of contemptuous rejection. Pym knew them well. He sighed, opened the typescript at random, and read:

  VICAR (thunderstruck): Woman! You know not what you do. This is madness, raving madness! You are insane, Phyllis, insane! You—you—you are out of your mind! I am your husband, the father of your children.

  PHYLLIS (calmly): That is the reason why I am going away with Frederick.

  VICAR (in a voice of thunder): Take off your hat and coat at once, or I will restrain by force!

  PHYLLIS (gripping a small bronze ornament): Try it, Edward, if you dare … Ah! You are a coward, I see, as well as a fool!

  VICAR (grinding his teeth): Harlot!

  PHYLLIS (smiling): Hypocrite!

  VICAR: Adultress!

  PHYLLIS: Idiot!

  VICAR (weeping): Can you bear to leave your children?

  PHYLLIS (laughing): Yes: I don’t like them.

  VICAR: May God forgive you!

  PHYLLIS: You mean may God damn me. You bless as a matter of form, and curse me in your heart. (Provocatively.) Will you forgive me my trespasses as I have forgiven you who have trespassed against me?

  VICAR (infuriated): Damn you——

  PHYLLIS (lightly but coldly): You see what I mean. (Putting the bronze ornament back on the mantelpiece and arranging her hat in the overmantel mirror) … Good-bye, Edward.

  VICAR: You will die in the gutter like a common prostitute.

  PHYLLIS: Your much-vaunted Christian charity should not allow such things to be, Edward. Are there no jails? Are there no workhouses? Why the gutter?

  (The clock strikes four.)

  Once and for all—good-bye, Edward.

  (Exit.)

  Pym slapped the typescript shut and walked slowly to Park Lane. “The poor old lady,” he said. “Her and her poor old play.”

  *

  Sissy Voltaire was a little red-haired woman with feverish black eyes. She filled the drawing-room with a faint, pungent, disturbing odour that might have emanated from hot iron, dead flowers and pepper. Slender and, in the dim pink light, still beautiful, she came forward, dancing rather than walking, and took Pym’s hand in both of hers, crying: “And this is Johnny whom Rocky is always talking about! Sit down, Johnny dear, and have a drink. Darling! Give Johnny a drink. He’s terribly sweet,” she said, opening her mouth an inch and a half and clinging by suction to Rocky’s chin, hooking one sharp-nailed hand over his left ear so that he let out a yelp of pain. “Mwa! … that’s what I think of you. Kiss me.”

  Rocky kissed her cheek.

  “Properly! … That’s better. Now you can go and get Johnny a drink … He’s an awful idiot in many ways you know, Johnny, but so sweet in other ways. Ah! isn’t he sweet, then? Mmm? Little great big silly sweet? Mmm?” She bit Rocky’s finger. “I want to eat him, Johnny, he’s so sweet.”

  “Hey!” cried Rocky, “that hurt!”

  “Ah, darleeng, darleeng! Naughty Sissy bit naughty Sissy’s dray big Rocky Mountain? Bad, bad Sissy!” She slapped herself sharply on the wrist and pretended to cry. “Boo-hoo! … naughty Sissy sorry … Do you like your whisky like that, Johnny dear? He’s so thoughtless … but so sweet——”

  “—No biting,” said Rocky. “Cigar, Johnny?” He wiped lipstick off his chin with a silk handkerchief and rubbed his bitten finger.

  “Well, thank you, yes; I will have a cigar.”

  “And I don’t blame you, Johnny, old boy old boy. Triple Coronas, by God! They cost——”

  “Rocky!”

  “Sorry, Sissy darling.”

  “Who’s mummy’s dray big little tiny baby? Silly Rocky! … He’s an awful idiot, really, Johnny. But, you see, I happen to love him. Isn’t he a pet?”

  “Oh yes, yes, indeed, Miss Voltaire. Certainly he is. A pet—that’s right.”

  “I’m so glad you and Rocky are such good friends. There’s something so lovely about true friendship. Tell me, Johnny, has he had an awful lot of women?”

  “I couldn’t say, Miss Voltaire.”

  “Call me Sissy, Johnny. No, on your word of honour now, tell me——”

  “Cut it out, for Christ’s sake!” said Rocky. “Let’s have a look at that play, Johnny old pal.”

  “Let us change the subject, by all means,” said Sissy Voltaire.

  “I’ve got it,” said Pym, “but I don’t want you to imagine that I have anything to do with it. It was written by an old lady named Mary Greensleeve——”

  “But that’s charming, Johnny dear! Mary Greensleeve! One thinks of a fluffy, pretty little blonde thing in a frilly flowery dress. Mary Greensleeve … how sweet!”

  “I should imagine that’s exactly what she used to look like,” said Pym.

  “Did you have an affaire with her?”

  “Good God!” said Pym, “no!”

  “I see you did. Nice Johnny! Go on.”

  “Miss Voltaire! The old lady was over seventy years old, and not much over seventy pounds in weight——”

  “The older the fiddle the sweeter the tune, eh? The nearer the bone the sweeter the meat, eh, Johnny?”

  “Here’s the play,” said Pym, rising, “and that’s all there is to it. Now you must excuse me—I have to go.”

  “No, by Jesus, no, you won’t,” said Rocky. “Pay no attention to Sissy. She likes to pull your leg. She likes getting your goat. The more she can hurt you the better she likes it. Sissy, you let my pal Johnny alone, do you hear? He’s a guest in my house.”

  “A guest in whose house, darling?”

  “He’s my guest,” said Rocky.

  “In your house?”

  “My guest in your house. Your house, but my guest … I’m sorry, Johnny. She’s got one of her moods on. Sissy, cut out the drinking for to-night,” said Rocky.

  She half-filled a tumbler with whisky, drank most of it in three gulps, and threw the dregs into Rocky’s face. He wiped himself with his silk handkerchief and said nothing; sat back in a velvet easy-chair and looked sullenly at his feet, while Sissy Voltaire refilled Pym’s glass and her own. She was still smiling wistfully: her expression had not changed.

  “Rocky was telling me about your lady-friend’s play,” she said coolly in a measured voice. “I adore the plot, you know, for certain reasons. Certain reasons. Do you believe in Fate, Johnny? Or God—call it God. Do you?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Johnny, you know that my husband is a Baptist, I suppose?”

  “No, I didn’t know. But——”

  “A tobacco-broker, a millionaire. Does that convey anything to you, Johnny?”

  “I’m sorry: I’m afraid it doesn’t.”

  “I left him for that,” she said, pointing.

  “Oh, cut it out,” muttered Rocky.

  “—Because I love him, love him!” screamed Sissy Voltaire. “Oh, Rocky, lover of mine—oh, Rocky!” She threw herself down and wept on Rocky’s knees, untying his shoelaces with wild fingers, and caressing his ankles. “Take everything, only forgive me!”

  “Sure, sure, sure I forgive you. Only be a darling girl and cut it out.”

  “Be a what?”

  “Darling girl.”

  She got off her knees, laughing. “No, no, don’t go, Johnny,” she said, pulling Pym back from the door. “Rocky—dearest, d
arling Rocky—get us all another drink and let’s look at this.”

  Sissy Voltaire opened the typescript and, after a quick, narrow-eyed glance, started to read the play aloud. At first she read perfunctorily; but soon, having involved herself in the adultery of the vicar’s wife and her passionate love for the worthless actor, she melted and changed shape like wax in a mould; and at last, when she—sick at heart and forsaken—said: “Oh dear me—poor Edward! If only he could see me now, I’d have made him happy. ‘In the gutter,’ he said. Edward is among the prophets … But oh! I have been so happy …” Rocky shook open another silk handkerchief and cried like a boy, snuffling and gulping, gasping and protesting: “I couldn’t hold back any longer, Sissy darling—you broke me down.”

  “But what does Johnny say?” she asked.

  Pym said: “I never thought much of the play, as a play, until I heard you read it. You make it sound wonderful.”

  “But what’s the matter with the play as a play?” said Sissy Voltaire.

  “Well, frankly, I don’t know. People don’t talk like those people talk.”

  “I suppose,” she said, “you know how a vicar talks when his wife tells him that she’s going to run away with a small-time comic?”

  “Well, no, I don’t.”

  “Or what wives say when they die in gutters?”

  “Yes,” said Pym, “I know what they say then. They say: Designer infinite! Must thou then char the wood ere thou canst limn with it?”

  “Johnny could hot up the dialogue in places,” said Rocky.

  “Of course he could. He must, you clever darling!” cried Sissy Voltaire, gnawing at the lobe of Rocky’s right ear. “Eh, Johnny dear?”

  “You don’t really mean to say you want this play, do you?” asked Pym.

  “An option, certainly,” said Sissy Voltaire.

  “But, Miss Voltaire … Rocky … I didn’t write the wretched thing!”

  “Shut up, Rocky! Tell me, Johnny darling, whose is it, then?”

  “It’s my property, I suppose,” said Pym.

  “—In which case we’d negotiate with you for an option, eh, Johnny darling?”

  “Will you forgive me?” asked Pym. He had drunk too much whisky. “I am somewhat overwhelmed. If we could talk about this to-morrow, or the next day . . You were so wonderful, Miss Voltaire, that I can’t quite gather my thoughts just now. So——”

  “—Take your own time,” said Sissy Voltaire, making a little pink almond-shaped mark on Rocky’s throat with her lips; “—take your own time, Johnny darling … Oh, Johnny, doesn’t he taste nice?”

  “I don’t know, ma’am: it must be a matter of taste. I never tasted him,” Pym said, while Rocky grinned and winked from his stuffed chair.

  “What’s your address, Johnny darling?”

  “I’d rather ring you, if you wouldn’t mind.”

  “She’s jealous, eh? I daresay she has good cause to be. Rocky would ask for you, you know.”

  “If I may I’ll ring you.”

  “Aha, aha! It’s you who are jealous, is it?” said Sissy Voltaire. “Oh, men, men! But this other woman—Greensleeve: tell me something—have another drink before you go and tell me something. Was she awfully good in bed?”

  “I couldn’t possibly know, Miss Voltaire; and even if I knew I couldn’t possibly answer such a question,” said Pym, stiffly.

  Kneading the loose flesh of Rocky’s forehead, Sissy Voltaire said: “Would you terribly much mind going now, then, Johnny? We’ve got to dress, if you’re sure you really don’t terribly mind.”

  “Johnny’s a bohemian, like me,” said Rocky, starting to get up. But Sissy, who had unbuttoned his shirt and was exploring his ribs, said:

  “No, don’t move, Rocky.”

  “Give us a tinkle, then, Johnny, old pal old pal old pal, okay?”

  “Yes; and thank you so much,” said Pym.

  Half-turning as he closed the door, he saw that Sissy Voltaire had let herself slide supine on the thick carpet between Rocky’s feet. She was kicking off her slippers and Rocky was anxiously running his fingers through her hair, doing something to his nose with his disengaged hand. “Say something—do something!” said the woman’s voice. “Tell me something! Oh, love, love!”

  “Look, wait just a minute,” said Rocky.

  The servant closed the street door, and Pym was sucking in the comparatively healthy petrol-vapours and dust-clouds of the sooty, dung-strewn street.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  BY ten o’clock next morning Pym had finished another article in which he described with feverish gusto the Caledonian Market, that clearing-house of the junk of the world. He was dazzled by his own brilliance. Reading and re-reading the descriptive passages, Pym was convinced that no one in his right mind could fail to be impressed; for here was the real stuff, the honest-to-God dope—one could almost taste the rusty iron, the green brass, and the twelfth-hand plated cutlery. One could smell the derelict beds, sofas, and stuffed chairs and feel the dull edges of the unwanted notched sabres and tulwars on the stalls. At least, Pym could smell and see and feel these things, and hear their tinkling and grinding and clanking and creaking as he read aloud to himself what he had written about them. So he was in a good humour. He had paid another week’s rent and still had a few shillings in his pocket. Something—some instinct—told him that the Features Editor would fall on his neck and take him out to lunch. In the Café Royal the Features Editor would say that the time had come to stop fiddling about with piddling little articles here and articles there, and get down to something regular—one story a week for certain, twelve guineas and expenses. Pym felt lucky this morning. He knew that the worst was over.

  In the passage he looked at the dusty baize-covered board, criss-crossed with pinned down lengths of dirty tape into which Busto stuck his tenants’ letters, if they had any. This board had been bare for the past three months, except for a little buff “Final Notice” from the Income Tax collector addressed to Thomas Dobkin, Esq., who was in prison for stealing books in Charing Cross Road. He, poor fellow, had believed that he had evolved a new technique. He would walk about with a book of his own under his arm and pretend to browse around the shelves, with what he fondly imagined to be the abstracted look of a scholar and a gentleman. In due course when he thought no one was looking he would put the most expensive-looking book he could find under his arm next to the volume he was so ostentatiously carrying. Then, blinking owlishly like the absent-minded professor of fiction, he shambled out, vaguely nodding to everyone and talking to himself under his breath. But Dobkin had been watched: his was a discovery, not an invention. His trick was older than Charing Cross Road. They caught him creeping out of the medical department, absent-mindedly hugging two enormous volumes on gynæcology, which not even a strong man could have picked up without premeditation, for they weighed fifteen pounds. The other volume, his stock-in-trade, was a Greek lexicon. Since he had previously been found guilty of absent-mindedly exploring the overcoats in a cloakroom, and forgetfully keeping the contents of the pockets, he got three months. But he was proud of his Income Tax Demand, and left it there for all the world to see.

  This morning there was a clean new envelope on the board. Pym was surprised when he saw that it was addressed to him. It was a heavy, long envelope cut in the American style. His name and address were beautifully typewritten in green. In the top left-hand corner was the name of a company: THURTELL HUNT, MAYERLING & CO. LTD., Publishers, 302, ADAM STREET, ADELPHI. This was die-stamped on expensive paper, pale-green paper.

  Pym’s heart beat itself against his ribs like a mouse in a wire trap. He tore open the envelope—it was a pity to spoil it, but it had to be done—and took out a large sheet of beautiful pale-green paper that crackled like a new banknote. No jobbing printer had worked on this letter-heading: it was tasteful, costly, magnificent. You could read it like Braille by running your fingers over it, it was printed in such rich relief. There again was the name and the address, with
a colophon ingeniously composed of an eye inside an ear. There was a telephone number. On the left there was a list of directors:

  Chairman: THOMAS PAINE SHERWOOD.

  Directors: E. Fury (American).

  F. T. O. Proudfoot.

  T. I. von Mayerling (Czech).

  Doctor O. Weissensee (Austrian).

  “Oh! Oh!” said Pym, reading the beautiful green typescript. It said:

  MY DEAR JOHNNY,

  You may or may not remember our conversation concerning a project in which I was interested and from which you might derive some benefit. You will observe that I am one of the Directors of Thurtell Hunt, Mayerling & Co. Ltd., Publishers, of 302, Adam Street, Adelphi. I am happy to tell you that I can now offer you lucrative employment, if you are still in need of it. Would it be convenient for you to telephone me any time before one o’clock or after three any day except Sunday?

  I am,

  Yours as ever——

  PROUDFOOT.

  Pym felt a cold breath on his neck. Busto was peering over his shoulder.

  “Am I in your light?” asked Pym. “Would you like me to strike a match or something? I’m glad private correspondence interests you.”

  “I can’t read,” said Busto. “But you don’t wipe your behind with that stuff.” He jerked his thumb at the letter. Then Pym saw big black smudges on the envelope where Busto had been feeling it. Busto, who had an instinct for the cost of things, was impressed by the costliness of the paper.

  “Ah-ha!” said Pym mysteriously, putting the letter in his pocket. “Ah-ha!”

  It was as well to be respected by Busto. Who could say when it might be necessary to bluff him into staking another couple of days of grace before he called you? Busto shrugged and Pym went out, whistling through his teeth. He was at once excited and depressed, elated and nervous; as a man is, sometimes, when he feels that something tremendous is going to happen. Soldiers feel like that on the eve of a battle; young brides feel like that when the key clicks in the chamber door and the groom’s embarrassed fingers twist the link button of his hired cutaway coat.

  He was confident that the Sunday Special weekly feature was as good as settled. On his way downstairs Pym had intended to go directly to the Features Editor and settle the matter. But now he told himself that it would look better if he appeared nonchalant, or at least not over-anxious. He went to a telephone-booth and made an appointment to meet Proudfoot in his office in half an hour.