The Song of the Flea

by Gerald Kersh

  *

  Pym was too angry to think of his lost riches and his poverty. He had an idea, a hotly vindictive idea. Before it cooled he made a telephone call and went to see Mr. Decimus Greensleeve, of Walbank, Greensleeve and Champion. Decimus was more colloquial, more familiar than his elder brother. Pym found him similarly detestable, but kept his voice under control and, clenching his jaws for fear that his face might betray him, said:

  “I feel I ought to tell you this, Mr. Greensleeve, in the interests of justice.” He smoothed the newspaper clipping on the desk. “There’s no doubt at all that Mr. Cicero Greensleeve is exploiting this for his own profit. I think you’ll find that in your poor mother’s play there are certain injurious passages. As you see, the publicity that is being put out now is not calculated to do you or your children, if you have any, the least bit of good.”

  “Have any? Three boys and two girls. Injurious? Ruinous! Trust Cis … Cicero, that confounded lawyer—trust him to sell his mother, and his brother, and his nieces! But I’ll nail him to the wall, the weasel—I’ll nail him to the barn door all right! He can’t do it. I know the law. You’d think, wouldn’t you, that your own brother would share and share alike. But not Cicero, oh no, not Cicero! Plain case of libel! I’ll apply for an injunction at once. I’ll put a stop to his little game.”

  “If I were you,” said Pym, “I’d be patient. Let it go a little further. Let them get in so deep that they can’t get out. Then, of course, you put yourself in a stronger position. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Yes, you do, you do. But what makes you tell me all this?”

  “I have private reasons.”

  “I’m much obliged to you. Is there anything I could do for you in return? I could put you on to a nice furnished flat. Or an unfurnished one. And, between you and me, there’s a housing estate going up at Gapton——”

  “No thanks, Mr. Greensleeve, I just thought I’d warn you.”

  “I’m much obliged to you, Mr. Pym, and if ever you want me to put you on to a good thing in the way of a house or a flat, or business premises, just give me a call and I’ll deal with it personally.”

  Then Decimus Greensleeve, having seen Pym out of his office, snarled a smile and, talking between his teeth, called his solicitor, who assured him that he had a watertight case.

  *

  Pym also consulted a solicitor, and asked: “How do I stand in this business?” He was talking to Shirley Brush, a sharp, bright old man with pendulous grey moustaches that seemed to snap like scissors when he talked.

  Mr. Brush said: “Morally, you’re in the right, no doubt. Legally, you haven’t a leg to stand on, as your friend Greensleeve says.”

  “No friend of mine, Mr. Brush.”

  “No friend of mine either. A manner of speaking. Take my advice, do nothing at all about it. At least, don’t go to law about it. If you don’t think I’m right, I can get you an opinion; but in my opinion that would be a sheer waste of money. You haven’t a hope, not a hope. Drop it. It’s a pity, but what can you do? Greensleeve has got you by the short hairs. Never mind. You’re a young man. You lived before this, without that play. You’ll live again. Pay no attention to it. Fiddle with the rights and wrongs of it, and you’ll only make the lawyers rich.”

  When Pym told him of the brothers Greensleeve old Shirley Brush rubbed his hands, chuckled, and said: “Now that ought to be amusing. They’re sure to jump at each other’s throats, if I know Cicero. By the way, about that hundred and fifty pounds. I understand that you did certain work on this play of Mrs. Greensleeve’s?”

  “I rewrote a few lines of dialogue.”

  “You rewrote it. At the very least, you rewrote the dialogue. Send in, at once, a bill for three hundred pounds.”

  “Don’t be silly,” said Pym, “I can’t do a thing like that. I ask you—send in a bill for three hundred pounds?”

  “I should if I were you. If I know Cicero Greensleeve he’ll go after you pretty hard for that hundred and fifty pounds. Incidentally, how much have you left of that hundred and fifty? A hundred pounds? Fifty pounds?”

  “Round about thirty pounds, I think.”

  “Thirty pounds! What do they do with their money? Well, be advised by me, Mr. Pym: send in a bill for three hundred pounds. It isn’t unreasonable. You’ve helped to make a marketable property, and you’re entitled to a fee. We can’t very well claim a cut of the royalty, much as I’d like to, but three hundred pounds is a reasonable fee. I think I may say (in fact I’d wager a small sum) that Cicero will settle for the hundred and fifty pounds you’ve already had. Yet I really think that it would be a nice thing if we could get three hundred out of him. Let’s send in a bill for three hundred pounds and chance it. What have we got to lose?”

  “Look here, Mr. Brush, I came to you because Mr. Steeple spoke highly of you—not that my business is worth having—just for a little bit of advice. I’m not going to get involved in a niggling little law-suit for a few hundred——”

  “—You’re not going to be involved in anything.”

  “Dear God, Mr. Brush, how I hate the Law!”

  “You hate it, do you? Do you now? How strange. I love it. It’s beautiful, Mr. Pym. Beautiful! It keeps your head clear. Study it: it’s rock-crystal through and through—ice-cold, full of light, hard, clean, perfect! Study it. Make your children study it. It’ll cool them off and make them solid. Oh, I assure you, as an artist you ought to love the Law.”

  “The idea is that you send this fellow a bill on my behalf, is it?”

  “That’s the idea.”

  “No. I don’t want to do it. I don’t play that kind of game. Let him have his few pounds back. To hell with him. I’ll annoy him if I can, but take nothing. Back goes his thirty pounds.”

  “Then he’ll sue you for the rest.”

  “Sue a stone for blood,” said Pym.

  “Mr. Pym, you’re a fool.”

  “How much do I owe you, Mr. Brush?”

  “How much do you owe me? I tell you what: I’ll settle for a lunch—a three-and-sixpenny lunch and a five-and-sixpenny bottle of wine at the Café Royal. That saves you money, because you’ll drink at least half the wine. Is that fair?”

  Pym said, smiling: “I see you’re not a businessman, Mr. Brush.”

  “Aren’t I? I don’t know. If I took half a guinea off you I’d spend it on a three-and-sixpenny lunch and a five-and-sixpenny bottle of wine and eighteenpence for the waiter. As it is, I make a good bargain. I have the lunch plus the pleasure of your company. I like writers.”

  “I am beginning to like lawyers, Mr. Brush.”

  “You know, between ourselves, I keep a diary. It’s my hobby. I put everything down in a certain code of my own, like Samuel Pepys. It is rather early to think of it now, but when I am old—when I retire—I mean to write a volume of reminiscences like that of Dr. Axel Munthe—the Scandinavin who likes birds. But my birds are pretty queer birds, Mr. Pym. Crows, buzzards, kites. Oh, I could tell you some stories! Well, does that arrangement suit you? I’ll settle for a lunch.”

  “Come along and have it then,” said Pym.

  “Oh no, excuse me. Work first, pay afterwards. To-day you lunch with me, Mr. Pym.”

  “Mr. Brush, you are the nicest lawyer I have ever met.”

  “Oh, there are lots of nice lawyers. The better they are as lawyers the nicer they are likely to be as people; because, don’t you see, it takes a decent man to be a decent lawyer, or doctor, or accountant, or whatever he may be. I understand the popular prejudice. But people just don’t understand, you know. They don’t understand that a man of law who loves his job is a kind of artist in his way.”

  “I don’t deny it, Mr. Brush, but I don’t necessarily like a man because he is an artist. I mightn’t like his form of art.”

  “Quite right too. There are bad great artists and good great artists. There is the Devil’s Advocate who likes fair play and knows the difference between right and wrong; and the Devil’s Advocate wh
o believes that the winner must be right. Come and have lunch.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  THEY had crossed Leicester Square, and were waiting for the traffic to pass at the corner of Wardour Street. A young woman looked at them with perfunctory professional interest. She was a slender blonde with langorous eyes and a heavy, sensual mouth, dressed with conspicuous austerity in funereal black. The hem of her skirt swung two inches above her knees, and she was wearing black silk stockings and high-heeled shoes, an imitation silver fox, a little black veil, and black suède gloves over which she had pushed two enormous silver rings. She was accompanied by a tall, dark, tragic-looking man with large, moist, bloodshot eyes, an uncovered head, and hair like the roots of an old tree.

  “Look at those two,” said Shirley Brush, pinching Pym’s arm.

  Pym looked, and started. The woman looked at him, recognised him, tossed her head, and looked away again.

  Then the road was clear. The blonde woman and the dark man made their way to the other side. Pym said: “My God, that was Annie!”

  “She looks to me like a very promising young tart.”

  “Yes, it is Annie,” said Pym. “Dear God, what the devil have I done now?”

  When Shirley Brush heard the story of Annie’s seduction, as Pym called it, he laughed heartily and said: “I see you’ve been reading your Victor Hugo. Now you can take it from me, my lad; no woman gets to be like that unless she positively wants to be like that. I’ve read my Les Miserables and I’ve read my Crime and Punishment, but I’d been in and out of the police courts before you wiped your mother’s milk off your lip, and you can take it from me….”

  “It’s very likely that you’re right,” said Pym. “Only I can’t help feeling, somehow, responsible.”

  “Oh, feel responsible by all means,” said Shirley Brush, “but be selective; know the rights and wrongs of it. Did you corrupt the girl? If anything she corrupted you. Did you seduce the girl? She seduced you. Does every woman who loses her innocence get herself up like that and rush out on to the streets?”

  “You speak like Proudfoot.”

  “Proudfoot? You don’t mean the Proudfoot who defended Shorty French, by an chance?”

  “That’s right.”

  “D’you know him?”

  “Yes. He’s done me more than one good turn.”

  “Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes. I fear the Greeks when they bring gifts. I do not trust Proudfoot, especially when he does someone a good turn. Take my advice: have as little to do with him as possible. He isn’t any good.”

  “But I hate to think of that girl….”

  “—Stop thinking of girls. Here we are. They give you a good lunch here for three-and-six, and a decent bottle of wine. You can eat cheaper and better in Soho, but there’s one thing about this place—you’re sure to see artists and writers. I like artists and writers. Look, do you see that man over there? Augustus John. Good Lord, what a noble head! And in the evening you are quite likely to see Epstein. This is what one comes here for. These are the things that really matter. The arts—the arts! Oh, if only I were a young man again!”

  Pym was depressed. He was thinking of Busto’s servant girl, Annie.

  *

  Aspirates came hard to Annie, so she threw them all away and, thinking of Greta Garbo, talked in a husky monotone. Foreigners, on the screen, have no aitches: therefore she had no use for the letter H, and was privately practising the substitution of Z for Th, so that she might say Zat for That and Zis instead of This. She was talking about Pym:

  “Did I ever tell you about when my father played at cards with that feller? That feller made my father drunk on champagne and then they played cards. They played cards all night and this feller kept filling up my father’s glass with champagne, so my father got so drunk ’e didn’t know what ’e was doing. My mother kept on begging ’im to stop it, and ’e wouldn’t stop—’e kept on drinking champagne and playing this game of cards, and this other feller, so ’e marked those cards with a pin, and so that’s ’ow my father lost all ’is money. I was only a young girl then, and I was asleep, see? I ’ad a lovely bed with eagles on it; and so my mother come in about six o’clock in the morning crying as if ’er ’eart would break, and so I woke up and I said: ‘Little mother, why are you crying as if your ’eart would break?’ And so then she told me about ’ow my father ’ad gone and lost all ’is money and ’er diamond bracelets and rings and a diamond tirara to this feller. ‘Katusha, we’ll ’ave to beg our bread on the streets,’ she said. So I says: ‘Stop crying as if your ’eart would break, little mother.’ And so I put on a pair of little blue silk slippers with pink pom-poms (seems silly, don’t it? I mean to say, imagine me in blue slippers with little pink pom-poms) and I went downstairs in my little silk nightdress, and there was this feller with a great big ’eap of gold and notes in front of ’im and there was my father banging ’imself on the ’ead with ’is clenched fist and shouting: ‘You villain, you villain, you’ve ruined me! Everything I ’ad is gone.’ So then this feller says: ‘I bet you I’ll cut you a ’igher card than what you cut for all this ’ere money against the roof over your ’ead’. So my poor father, ’e pulled out a whole lot of ’air out of ’is ’ead and ’e said: ‘You villain, you ’ave cast a spell over me. Curse you, go on then, cut your bleeding cards.’ Well, this other feller, ’e’d marked those cards with a pin, see? So ’e couldn’t lose, see? So ’e smiles in a smarmy way and says: ‘After you, colonel.’ My father says: ‘No, after you.’ Well then, this feller says: ‘All right, let’s toss for it.’ So then they toss, but this other feller, ’e’s got one of those double-’eaded pennies, and so ’e wins the toss; but anyways ’e’d marked all those cards with a pin—see? Well, ’e wins the toss, and ’e says to my father: ‘Don’t be silly, go on, you cut first,’ and my father trusts this feller and cuts first—and little did ’e know that this feller ’ad marked the cards with a pin. Well, my father picked up the King of Clubs, see? And then this other feller makes out ’e’s all worried, see? And my father says: ‘I will bet you anything you like that you won’t beat this one in a ’urry!’ Well, so this other feller says: ‘As between gentlemen, let it be a fight to a finish. But what will you bet I don’t beat your King of Clubs?’ Well, so my old man, my father, looks up and down and left and right, and backward and forward, and ’e sees me shivering in my little lace nightdress by the sideboard, and so my father says: ‘I bet you my daughter,’ and ’e cuts a Ace of Diamonds—’e’d marked the cards with a pin. Well, so then my father ’e’d lost everything. I clung to ’im and said: ‘Oh daddy, daddy, please don’t cry!’ But ’e went upstairs and got a gun and shot ’imself through the ’eart. I always kept the bullet. I forgot where I put it, but I got it. And my mother went out of ’er mind. So then this other feller picked me up and took me to a couch and ravaged me like a wild beast. So can you wonder I don’t speak to ’im? I mean to say, can you wonder? That night! Shall I ever forget the ’orror of that night? The things ’e done you wouldn’t believe, and it’s left a scar in my soul”

  The tall, dark, melancholy stranger said: “You will have the goodness, dear lady, to excuse me, please? I have of English only a few phrases. Will you be so kind as to repeat again and have the goodness to speak a little more slowly?” He looked at her with agony in his bloodshot eyes and took a little red dictionary out of a waistcoat pocket. “Now, please?”

  “You know what? I thought you was a foreigner the minute I ’eard you talk. It’s funny ’ow you can tell. Are you a Russian?”

  “Please?”

  “You … Russian?”

  “Ah! No, dear lady, I am French. I am French and you are English.”

  “I like your ring,” said Russian Katty.

  “My ring?”

  She pointed to an enormous signet ring on the fourth finger of his right hand and said: “Nice!”

  “It is my arms.”

  “Your coat of arms?”

  “My arms. The arms of my
family.”

  “You got a family? ’Ow many children? I was a only child and my father——”

  “Please. Not children. Not coat. Arms. You see?” he said, showing her the spinel seal, engraved with pigs’ heads, mailed fists, falcons and oak trees, and picking out the blunt lettering of the motto with a long fingernail. “Attempto. That is me.”

  “Attempto,” said Russian Katty, “that’s a nice name. It sounds sort of Spanish.”

  “Pardon me, please, my name is Armand de la Tour de Percé.”

  “’Ow d’you spell it?”

  “Please? Will you have the goodness, if you please, to speak a little more slowly? I have only a few phrases.”

  “Me—Katusha,” she said, touching her chest with a forefinger. “You——…?”

  “Ah!” The gentleman found a little leather case and took out a card. He was the Vicomte de la Tour de Percé.

  “Are you a Viscount?” asked Russian Katty.

  He nodded and said: “You will drink a glass of champagne with me?”

  She nodded and said: “Where?” She did not want to say too much. Here was another dream.

  “I live at the Hotel Sargon. I have a suite. Dare I hope that you will do me the honour?”

  She nodded. They rode to the Hotel Sargon, Berkeley Street, in a taxi, and a waiter brought a golden bottle of champagne in a silver bucket. She closed her eyes. To dream was to live; to awaken was to die. She knew that in a few minutes, or a few hours, she would open her eyes in Wardour Street, and American Henry, looking at her as if he wished that his eyes were hooks with which he might tear her asunder and uncover hidden banknotes, would say: “Come on, kid. For you own good—gimme! … Don’t give me none of your fairy tales. As a matter of fact I happen to know you got hold of a foreign steamer outside the Café de l’Europe in Leicester Square; so don’t try to hold out on me. We got to hustle, honey, we got to hustle. We got business propositions elsewhere … so let me hold it for you….”