The Song of the Flea

by Gerald Kersh

  He had never before had two rooms, a kitchen, and a lavatory all to himself.

  Now was the time to work.

  He put a sheet of paper into the typewriter, lit a cigarette, and settled himself. He adjusted the margin with the meticulosity of a biologist with a microscope, and began:

  The …

  Two hours later he was still sitting at the little oak table, with five sheets of paper torn out and thrown on the floor between his feet. There lay The, on top of an In spite of. There was an Although, a Notwithstanding, and an As he walked … The house sounded empty. The typewriter made too much noise. The table vibrated, the vibrations went into the floor, and the rafters drummed out a, pas de charge at the end of every sentence. Pym felt something of the terror that overtakes the forester on a lonely plain. He went into the kitchen and decided that he did not love it now as he had loved it at first sight. The lavatory worked or did not work as the mood took it. He opened a tin of strawberries. They were pulpy, insipid, and soaked in thin syrup; a mass of pips and purple mud. He poured the rest of them into the lavatory and pulled the chain. Somewhere in the bowels of the house something groaned; a pipe made a sucking noise, and the pan regurgitated a wad of newspaper upon which, still legible, was printed an advertisement for washing powder. Pym pulled the chain again. Sweating and shaking he watched, while strawberries and syrup, water and paper and excrement rose up and up. He rushed into the kitchen, picked up a saucepan and returned in a panic. The tide was still rising. He turned back his shirt-sleeves and waited. From an incalculable distance came a gurgle and a groan. The water receded, Pym pulled the chain again and everything disappeared. He smoked a cigarette before he went back and he pulled the chain quickly and sidestepped, half expecting that something horrible, something very old, would leap up to disgust him. But nothing happened. The cistern tinkled like a cistern in a Persian poem, and the water at the stained mouth of the outlet was crystal clear.

  Pym said: “Ah!” He went to the bedroom, undressed, and returned with a book and a cigarette. Having finished the cigarette he put out a hand, fumbled found nothing, and groaned like a damned soul.

  He had remembered everything but toilet paper. The book was only a sixpenny book with advertising matter at the back. All the same, Pym did not like to mutilate books. He went to bed in a bad temper. One of the springs of the divan had grown loose—it protruded from the middle of the mattress. Pym rolled away from it and slept. Later, when the night was darkest, he awoke with a pain in the side. Another spring had come up to meet him. Exploring the bed with his hand he found that it was full of wayward springs. He remembered that he had forgotten to buy a clock. There was no moon. He wished he had never been born. In the morning, when he awoke, looking about him, Pym was convinced that he had talked himself into renting the most detestable flat that man had abandoned since all the sons of God shouted for joy.

  He took the half-filled packet of damp salt out of the kitchen cupboard and hurled it out of the window, and he rolled his five rejected sheets of paper into a tight ball and threw that away too—into the lavatory, where, he felt, it belonged. Later he had to dig that ball out with his bare hands.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  A FEW days later, anxious for a pretext to leave his barren work-table in that sickening, that utterly hateful flat, Pym went out and telephoned Rocky Gagan. He said: “I’m sorry to disturb you so early”—it was ten o’clock in the morning—“but in case anything materialised in the matter of that little play I thought it might be best to let you know about a change of address.”

  But before he could spell out his new address Rocky shouted: “You lucky old so-and-so! Give me the address of your astrologer, Johnny, old boy old boy old boy! Tell me where I can find one of those lucky stars you got yourself born under! Ah, Johnny, you old fox you old fox you old fox!”

  “What’s the matter with you?”

  “What’s the matter with me? Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! D’you hear that, darling? Johnny wants to know what’s the matter with me!”

  Pym heard a thin, querulous voice say: “For Christ’s sake stop shouting, you noisy oaf!”

  Pym knew that Rocky had clapped one of his heavy, loose hands over the mouthpiece of his telephone, because that great voice, finding its way through an accidental chink between two fingers, sounded like a gramophone playing through a blanket. It said:

  “Oh, shut up!” Then the hand was lifted from the mouthpiece and Rocky Gagan roared into it: “Why, Johnny, old boy old boy—you old wolf, you! You old red fox! There you are with the option money still in your pocket, and here we are … sorry, darling, here Sissy is taking up the option. And you know what that means to you, don’t you, Johnny?”

  “You mean to say you’ve decided to put the play on, is that it?”

  Sissy Voltaire’s distant voice said: “Oh, for Christ’s sake, idiot—tell the man to come and talk about it at a civilised hour, for Christ’s sake!

  Rocky said: “I tell you what. Look here, Johnny, come around at …” There was a muffled noise. “… Could you manage to come around about half past eleven?”

  “Quarter to twelve, lunatic!” said Sissy Voltaire in the distance.

  “About quarter to twelve,” said Pym.

  “Call it ten to, and be on the safe side … Excuse me a moment….”

  A quick hand rang off. Pym could see the flat near Park Lane. There was Rocky, naked, and Sissy Voltaire dressed only in slippers. There was a breakfast table elegantly laid but ignored. Only the coffee cups had been used. Under shining silver domes fried eggs were becoming flaccid and cold, bacon was going limp, and toast was already hard and cold. Two or three sectors had been picked out of a split grapefruit, in which a spoon was still embedded. This was a well prepared grapefruit with a cherry in the middle. The cherry had fallen into the spoon, which was full of pale juice and crystallised sugar. Sissy Voltaire was on her way to the bathroom to bathe and paint herself and compose herself to graciousness. Rocky, smoking a cigarette, stood and watched. He listened. He was waiting for the click of the bathroom lock, and for certain other sounds that satisfied him that she was sitting still for a few minutes. Nodding his big head Rocky crept to the table and swallowed three of the eggs, four rashers of bacon, a piece of toast, and the contents of one of the milk jugs—all in forty seconds—replacing the domed covers in a circular, hovering way, so as to make no noise. For Sissy Voltaire hated people who ate heartily in the morning.

  *

  At ten minutes to twelve Sissy Voltaire said to Pym: “Darling, I do hope you will forgive my beloved oaf here. He has talent, you know, darling. I shouldn’t be surprised if he had genius. But—oh God!—Johnny dear, poor Rocky’s had such a rotten time of it. I do so want you to understand. He’s had such a filthy time of it … hanging about dirty little Hippodromes and Empires, and filthy little provincial places. He’s had to struggle so hard, you see, Johnny, my love, and he doesn’t quite, as yet, belong to our sort of people. I do so very much want to make something of him. Even if I didn’t happen to love him, I’d still want to do something for Rocky. He’s so naïve. He’s such a helpless idiot. He relies on me for everything, every penny. And this play of yours ——”

  “—Not mine, madam, as I’ve already told you.”

  “Well then, this play—this play then. It happens to be perfect for poor Rocky, and I don’t mind toying with it myself, if only for poor Rocky’s sake.”

  There was a broken saucer near the door and a broken cup by the window.

  “So, Johnny darling, your option is taken up.”

  “What does that mean?” asked Pym.

  Rocky shouted: “Why, Johnny, you old fox you old fox—as if you didn’t know, Johnny, old son—you get a hundred pounds down and five per cent of the proceeds. And that means to say that as long as the play runs you can’t possibly draw less than fifty pounds a week. You see we—that is to say Sissy—Sissy’s got the Pegasus Theatre. Whaddaya think of that, Johnny boy, eh? The Pegasus! The Pega-bloo
d-sus! If we only take a thousand a week you’re on a nice steady fifty, fifty-pound note every week. Two thousand gets you a hundred a week, Johnny, old son old son old son! Three thousand——”

  Sissy Voltaire said: “You notice, Johnny darling, how generous my poor idiot is with other people’s money. Shut up, fool!”

  “Did I say something wrong?” asked Rocky, with one foot in the air. He had started to dance. Sissy Voltaire’s voice stopped him as the crack of a whip stops a half-trained pup. He was beautifully dressed, now, in bottle-green hopsack, cut to emphasise the bigness of his chest and the littleness of his hips. Aware of the menace in Sissy Voltaire’s voice, glancing from the broken cup to the shattered saucer, Pym—tactfully, as he thought—said: “I like your suit, Rocky. Where did you get it?”

  ‘This suit of clothes, old man, come from Penhaligon in Savile Row. Look at that lining——”

  “Oh Christ, what a vulgar beast it is! Yes,” said Sissy Voltaire, “look at the lining by all means, Johnny darling. He wanted a yellow suit with red stripes. Have you ever heard anything like it in all your life? But, yellow! And red stripes, Johnny darling—but red! Dear Rocky, he can’t ever forget that he isn’t saying: ‘Who was that lady I saw you with last night?… That was no lady that was my grandmother’ at the Barking Palace. He needs watching, don’t you, darling? I have to do every little thing for him—he’s just like a little baby, or a savage … aren’t you, little Lillybums? I daren’t let him out of my sight.”

  Blinking uncertainly at Pym, Rocky said: “It’s a fact, Johnny, old boy. I don’t know what I’d do without Sissy. She’s got all the brains and all the taste in this family.”

  “But to get back to the play,” said Pym.

  Sissy Voltaire waved a hand and went on: “I daresay I should have come around to offering you rather better terms, Johnny, because you’re Rocky’s friend, and I hope you’re going to be my friend too, because I like you. But let it be as Rocky said. It’ll make him happy, the darling. Won’t it, Snuggles? A hundred pounds advance and five per cent. But there are four or five passages, not more than sixty or seventy lines of dialogue, that have got to be rewritten. You said you’d do that, didn’t you, Johnny darling?”

  “I’ll do it with pleasure. But always remember that it isn’t my play. I don’t want my name connected with it in any way. It may belong to me as a property, but all credit goes to Mary Greensleeve.”

  Rocky roared: “You should worry, you old fox, you! Take the cash in hand, old son old son old son. Once you’ve got a successful play Hollywood’ll jump arse-over-tip to give their shirt off their back for the film rights—ten thousand, twenty thousand, thirty thousand——”

  “—In which case, of course,” said Sissy Voltaire crisply, “I am entitled to thirty-three and a third per cent. That’s perfectly fair, don’t you think?”

  “I suppose so,” said Pym, as calmly as he could, although he felt his hands shaking. “I’m quite sure that whatever you say is right. Tell me, exactly what do you want me to do?”

  “Johnny darling, you have only to sign the agreement, draw your advance, alter those few lines, and sit back and put your royalties in your pocket.”

  Pym said: “I’ve done less congenial jobs in my time,” and then he began to laugh.

  “All right, then. Rocky, Miss Sweet swore she’d have copies ready by half past twelve. You see, Johnny darling, I had a few copies made, because I had a Thing about this play. Something told me. Rocky, put your hat on, your black hat, and run around to Miss Sweet and pick up two of the copies. You can put those black-stitched kid gloves on, you baby, since you seem to have set your sweet little heart on them, but please, lover, for my sake, not to carry that stick. He went out and bought himself a yellow cane with an ivory skull and cross-bones on top, Johnny—what would you do with a child like that? Hurry, and don’t come back without those copies. Johnny’ll wait.”

  Rocky Gagan went out. Pym’s heart was touched: he thought of a kicked mastiff.

  *

  “Tell me all about Rocky,” said Sissy Voltaire. “You’re such old friends. He likes you so much. I do love true friendship. Tell me all about it.”

  “Why, Miss Voltaire——”

  “—Unless you call me Sissy I refuse to talk to you.”

  “Why, then … Sissy, there isn’t anything much to tell, that I know of. We’re not such intimate old friends as that, you know. Old acquaintances, you might say. Rocky’s a very nice fellow, and more than that I really can’t say.”

  “Johnny, come here and look me straight in the eyes while I ask you something,” she said, beckoning.

  Pym went and looked her straight in the eyes. “What do you want to ask me?”

  “Are you telling me the truth?”

  “I am.”

  “Tell me, hasn’t Rocky been in love with an awful lot of women?”

  “I give you my word, I don’t know anything at all about it,” said Pym, “and even if I did know (which I don’t) I couldn’t talk about my friend’s affairs. Could I?”

  “Johnny, my darling, you’re nice. I like you. You won’t be disloyal to your old friend—my darling Rocky—but you’re taking the nicest way you know to tell me that he’s been in love with lots and lots of women. Thank you, Johnny darling—I appreciate that. Oh, but I do, I do!”

  “I tell you,” said Pym, cold with anger, “I tell you once and for all that I don’t know anything at all about his private affairs. I wasn’t his intimate friend.”

  “So he lied to me then. He told me you were his best friend.”

  “Oh, Miss Voltaire, Miss Voltaire! Don’t you understand the way people talk? Rocky’s just a big exuberant sort of baby. I really believe he thinks everybody’s his best friend. Surely, Miss … surely, Sissy, you understand people well enough to understand that? When Rocky calls me his best friend it means no more than when (for instance) you call me your darling Johnny. It’s a way of talking.”

  “Oh, I see. You think I go around dearing-and-darlinging every Tom, Dick and Harry. That’s your opinion of me, is it? I’m sorry to hear it. Yes,” said Sissy Voltaire bitterly, “oh yes, that’s the way things go. You see me here, living in what your nonconformist conscience would call Sin, with poor Rocky. But he’s more like a son to me than anything else, Johnny darling. Ah, you see? It slipped out. I’ll take it back. Mister John Pym. I’ll remember that. Mr. John Pym, I’m a lonely, ugly old woman.”

  “You are a very beautiful woman,” said Pym.

  “One of the reasons why I took a liking to you, Mr. John Pym, was that you looked so bloody honest. You know, I don’t meet many men who strike me as being honest. Now you know, I’m an honest woman.”

  “I’m sure you are.”

  “Are you, Johnny? Are you really? Are you truly and honestly sure? Because I am, you know. Too honest for this rotten world. Tell me, when did you first begin to think that I was honest?”

  “I don’t know,” said Pym, looking at the electric clock on the mantelpiece. “I daresay Rocky will be on his way back by now.”

  “I don’t think so: I made a mistake; Miss Sweet didn’t promise those copies for twelve-thirty, she promised them for half-past one, and it’s only a quarter to one now. I forgot. So relax. Pour us both a drink. Rocky will wait. I told him to wait.”

  Pym brought her a drink. She said: “Sit down and tell me all about yourself. You know, I’ve been thinking about you. Do you have a hard time of it too?”

  “No, not very.”

  “And tell me now, honestly, did you really and truly love this Greensleeve woman? I don’t know why it is, but I’m almost jealous of her somehow. Johnny darling—I beg your pardon, Mister John Pym—d’you know what? I think … Sit down here, please; I feel so old and lonely this morning … I think your life is the most wonderful kind of life in the world. You do things; you make things, and I admire you for that, Johnny darling. I could kiss you for that.” She kissed him on the forehead, and continued: “But tell me; how d
o you like my new perfume?”

  She presented her red head. Pym sniffed at it and thought of something he had never seen: a private dining-room in a gay restaurant in Moscow in the year 1900, at nine o’clock in the morning, when unwashed cleaners came in to open the curtains and clear away the evidence of an orgy. There was a smell of hot feet, vases of dead lilies into which guests had thrown cigarette butts, alcohol, oranges, armpits, sandalwood, soap, cigars, fish, femininity, spice, stale leather, urine, and incense.

  “Magnificent,” he said.

  “I’ll tell you what I like about you. You’re good, good and honourable. You tell the truth and shame the devil; and you don’t know what that means to me. Tell me, Mr. John Pym, do I disgust you?”

  “Very far from it.”

  “As an act of charity, Mr. John Pym, could you bring yourself to kiss an old hag like me?”

  Pym kissed her hand.

  But then the outer door opened and closed with a bang. With the speed of a quick-change artiste she adjusted her dress sat upright, picked up her glass, crossed her legs, leaped back, and laughed as Rocky Gagan came into the room with two buff-covered typescripts in his hand. Sissy Voltaire said: “Oh, Johnny darling!”

  Rocky said: “Here’s the masterpiece. I was reading it again in the taxi, and I cried like a child.”

  “Miss Sweet works fast,” said Sissy Voltaire.

  “That reminds me: she said you said you wanted this stuff by one-thirty. You said she said twelve-thirty,” said Rocky.

  “She said twelve-thirty,” said Sissy Voltaire, stamping a vicious little foot.