The Song of the Flea

by Gerald Kersh

  “As a matter of fact,” said Win, “since we have in a way been friendly, I came to say good-bye to you.”

  “Siddown,” said Fabian. “Whaddya mean, good-bye? I don’t get that good-bye. I don’t like the sound of good-bye. I Don’t Like The Sound of Good-bye. I wrote a song about that once. Where d’ya think you’re going?”

  “Oh, I thought it might interest you to know: my stepfather’s dead and, as a matter of fact, he’s left me all his money.”

  “Good for you, kiddo, good for you! I couldn’t be more pleased, so help me God, if he’d left it to me. How much?”

  “Oh, about fifty thousand pounds.”

  “Did you say pounds? Did I hear you say fifty thousand pounds? Is there that much money left in the world?”

  “I suppose there must be. I’m going to the south of France. As a matter of fact I thought you’d like to know, so that you could set your mind at rest and know that I’m not going to be a nuisance to you any more.”

  American Henry Fabian sweated again. His face was wet but his mouth was dry, and he had to drink some water before he could say: “Jesus, I wish you all you wish yourself, Win honey. But hell, I wish you wasn’t going away. To hell with your lousy god-damn money. To hell with it! What I want is you. Okay. Well, hell, I guess you got a right to walk out on me. I guess I’m no good. I never brought you any god-damn luck, honey, I guess. I’m glad you got a break. On my mother’s grave, I couldn’t be more delighted if it happened to me. But I want you to know I’m sorry about the way I treated you the other day. Don’t think unkind thoughts about me. I was just all wound up. And I want you to know, wherever you are, that I’m with you in the spirit, kid: in the spirit I’m with you; because if you want to know—there’s no harm in saying it now—you’re just about the only woman I ever had any sort of deep feeling for. Jesus, I’ve known one or two dames! But you … Oh well, skip it, skip it. Good-bye, kid, and good luck.”

  He held out an open hand, which Win prepared to take, languidly, with a drooping wrist. “It was so nice having known you,” she said.

  “I can’t ever forget you,” said Fabian, “only say you forgive me.”

  “Silly! But of course!” said Win. Then his little wiry hand snapped at her wrist like a mousetrap and, jerking her towards the divan, he said: “Something to remember you by. Jesus, kid, just this once, for the last time before we part.”

  A few minutes later Win said: “Oh, Harry, you know you really were awfully wicked to me, as a matter of fact.”

  “What d’ya think I was apologising for, honey? I didn’t sleep for three nights after I was sort of rough with you. You know what? You’ll laugh at me if I tell you.”

  “Tell me what, Harry.”

  “You’ll laugh at me.”

  “I won’t, word of honour.”

  “Scouts’ honour?”

  “Um …”

  “I wouldn’t ’ve said this, but I got so god-damn miserable that d’you know what I did? I swallowed a whole bottle of aspirin tablets, so as to kill myself. But they didn’t work, and here I am, honey, loving you more than ever, and there you are going away forever. Jesus, Jesus Christ, I wish to hell I was dead and buried! Listen, honey, d’you remember a song called ‘What Good Am I Without You’? I more or less wrote it. It says what good are days without sunshine, what good are skies without blue, but all alone on just nothing what good am I without you? Jesus, honey, I wish to hell you didn’t have to go!”

  “As a matter of fact, Harry, I think I’m going to sort of miss you. I do like you when you’re nice, as a matter of fact.”

  “You’ll miss me! Jesus, that’s funny! She’ll miss me. I won’t miss her—oh no! You know what, honey, now we’ve got together again I don’t want to let you go. What the hell! Why the hell shouldn’t you and me go together? Just you and me. Christ, but I could show you a good time!”

  “Do you really want to?”

  “Do I really want to?”

  “All right.”

  “Now I’ve found you again,” said Harry Fabian, “I’ll be god-damned if I let you go. I’ve got some money too. You and me, we’ll go and have dinner together to-night, and you stay right here with me. Okay?”

  “Yes.”

  They talked seriously of economics. After dinner, in the taxi that was taking them back to Wardour Street, he said:

  “And one thing more, kid. For the love of Jesus don’t trust these god-damn old-fashioned chiselling lawyers. You can take it from me for a fact—I know ’em, and they’re no god-damn good. They put on an act. I know, and you can take it from me they put on an act. They try to look like Queen Victoria; they make themselves to look dead respectable so as to get your confidence. ‘Oh, pray, dear lady, allow me to do your business for you’ … and before you know where you are, bonk! They’ve got you in their power, and all you’ve got is down the drain, swish, like that! Bang it goes. Cupp? Scabbard? Did you ever hear of them before? I thought not, and no more did I. Cupp and Scabbard! Now look, if you want a proper lawyer, go to Luck and Marmora. You mark my words, I wouldn’t mind betting every god-damn cent I got in my pocket that this guy Scabbard is going to start trying funny business. Investments. You’ll see. Now Jackie Luck could pull you out of a hole full of mud and you’d still be clean. Cupp and Scabbard! Jesus, honey, you got no business sense. Did it occur to you to ask who he was, this Scabbard? Did you look at his papers, this goddamn Scabbard? Honest to God, loveliness, you’re the sweetest kid in the world but you ain’t fit to look after yourself—you’re too gentle and trusting. Listen, kid, you know how crazy I am about you. I guess that was why I got tough with you that time—because I was so crazy about you. Me, I don’t want nothing. That business deal I was telling you about, so it came off, and I’ve got dough. Why don’t you let me look after you for a bit till you find your own feet? Oh, I’m not on the chisel, remember! I got dough of my own. Look——” said Fabian, thrusting a hand into his hip pocket. “—Well, never mind. But listen, kid, I’ve handled big money in my time, and I’m a business man. Why don’t you let me sort of advise you?”

  When she was with Fabian, all the strength went out of Win. He had betrayed her, and dealt with her as dirt. Therefore she loved him. She said: “I’ll do whatever you say, Harry darling.”

  “You won’t regret it, honey, I swear on the grave of my mother. Okay,” said Fabian, briskly, “you’ll do whatever I say. I say you and me go home first of all.”

  She giggled and pressed her nose into his ear.

  “But look, loveliness—let’s you and me make kind of a sort of honeymoon of all this. Don’t let’s go to that dump of mine. Let’s just you and me be alone together in a decent spot. Let’s go to a real hotel. I sort of want to see you where you belong, if you get what I mean…. Oh look: it’s too late for me to cash a cheque, and anyway I’m kind of impatient to be all alone with you, if you get what I mean. Have you got any dough on you, by any chance?”

  She opened her bag and gave him a handful of pound notes, and they passed the night in a second-rate but heavily carpeted hotel near Piccadilly.

  *

  She worshipped him. Fabian, to Win, was everything that a man should be—quick, clever, adroit, elegant, ruthless. He took her to meet the solicitor, Jackie Luck, who was also known as Lucky Jack. He, too, was a fascinating man. Unlike Scabbard, he was young and gay, and he had a Ronald Coleman moustache. Luck wore a black coat and striped trousers, but, unlike Scabbard, he wore his coat tight and his trousers loose. He cracked jokes and took Win and Fabian to lunch, and they drank champagne and old brandy. When they talked to Luck about Mr. Scabbard he was non-committal. In an enthusiastic voice he said: “Ah yes, there you’ve got a good solid, old-fashioned firm. I daresay your stepfather must have had a high opinion of them Miss Joyce. Of course we all have a high opinion of Cupp and Scabbard. Speaking for myself, by the way, and I don’t know what makes me think of it, I have a passion for old boats. Just for my own amusement I like to play around in smooth wa
ter (you must come to my place at Maidenhead some time), to play around in smooth water with little sailing boats; good old slow sailing boats. I wish you’d come and spend a week-end one of these days. Any time about three weeks from now. I have to go to New York on business for a few days. But of course, if I want to go a long way fast, much as I love the old sail I won’t rely on it for that! Oh no. For quiet backwaters, yes. But in a rough sea … What was I saying? Oh, yes; Cupp and Scabbard. They’re a good firm, an old firm, well-established and still floating. But … However. Coffee?”

  Thus, Jackie Luck took charge of Win’s money, and she went with Fabian to Monte Carlo. There, in the lobby of the Hotel Tataresco, Fabian saw a slender blonde whose face, he thought, was not unfamiliar. She was dressed in white, and wore emeralds, and she looked at him in passing as a motorist glances at a milestone. She was accompanied by a languid middle-aged man in a blue blazer with gold buttons.

  Fabian asked the porter: “Who is that lady?”

  The porter said: “That is la Vicomtesse de la Tour de Percé, monsieur. The gentleman is Monsieur le Vicomte.”

  Fabian gave him a fifty-franc note and went away, angry. “Vicomtesse!” he said, gnashing his teeth, “Vicomtesse! After all I done for that girl!”

  That night he and Win went to the casino and lost a large sum of money. Win was worried, but he said: “The hell with it, loveliness! Lucky has just bought us some Iceland Rayon. We’re in on the ground floor. They got a sort of moss, better than silk. And then there’s a guy, a scientist, so he’s discovered a way of getting the gold out of sea water. Now let me tell you….”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  SO dreamy Annie the servant girl, and the Vicomte de la Tour de Percé, and the spiv Fabian, and the slut Win achieved their heart’s desire. But Pym was still in trouble.

  “What the hell am I to do?” he asked Shirley Brush, with a helpless gesture, “what am I to do?”

  “I told you what to do, and you didn’t do it,” said Shirley Brush. “I warned you, and you paid no attention. You wanted to be heroic. It’s an expensive business, being heroic. It’s beyond your means. All right; take the consequences. If I told you once I told you fifty times exactly what would happen if you acknowledged indebtedness to Cicero Greensleeve. I warned you, I pleaded with you; but no. You said: ‘I don’t play that kind of game. Let him have his few pounds back.’ I asked you how you were going to let him have his few pounds back, but you wouldn’t listen. You thought he’d be satisfied with the thirty pounds you had left. You don’t know much about men. I warned you that to attack was the best way to defend yourself in this case. I told you so. I say it without shame: I told you so. And this,” said Shirley Brush, angrily shaking a typewritten letter, “this is the result. Well, now what advice can I give you that you’re too heroic to take?”

  “Do you mind if I look at that letter again?”

  Brush threw the letter across the table and said: “Learn it by heart. Have it framed, for all I care.”

  Pym shouted: “The man is a pig! What he says here is, good God, that he is in receipt of my letter enclosing thirty pounds on account of a hundred and fifty pounds I owe him. ‘In receipt’—Christ, how I hate lawyers! I don’t mean you: I mean the way they talk. And this intolerable squirt goes on to say that he considers himself as being in no way indebted to me for my unwarrantable interference in the matter of his deceased mother’s burial. You get that ‘deceased’—legal caution! Otherwise people might think that he was a party to having her buried alive. Unwarrantable interference! What a swine! What would happen if I went along to his office and——”

  “—And gave him a punch on the nose? Well, he could get you for assault. I daresay you’d get away with a fine of forty shillings.”

  “I haven’t got forty shillings!”

  “Then keep away from Cicero’s office and if you meet him stick your hands in your pockets.”

  “But I can’t pay him.”

  “Then don’t. He’ll sue you. When you get into court, offer half-a-crown a month.”

  “I haven’t got half-a-crown a month!”

  “Oh, he’ll do his best to make you find it. You’re in a queer position, don’t you see. You might, of course, claim an agent’s fee for handling that play. We might try that.”

  “Would that be of any use, do you think?”

  “You never can tell. It might. In any case it would give us time.”

  “Time for what? Time to do what?”

  “Time to think and time to breathe.”

  Pym cried: “I don’t want any time to think! I don’t want any time to breathe! I don’t want anything to do with these bastards! I will not put myself in the position of a tout—I’ll be damned before I play bloody lawyers’ tricks … I beg your pardon.”

  “That’s all right. But what will you do then?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll pay him his dirty money.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know. I only need time to pay.”

  “Then let us drag the thing out and dispute it point by point; play for time—time to think, time to breathe, time to pay, whatever you like to call it … time, breathing space.”

  “And get in deeper and deeper,” said Pym. “I’m going to owe you a bill too, remember.”

  “I won’t press you for that.”

  Pym said: “I seem to be under some kind of curse. Whatever I do and wherever I turn I seem to find myself under obligations to people. I’m always in debt for money, or indebted for favours. I’m sick and tired of it. I hate it. I won’t have any more of it. I’ll fight this my way. I’ll give that pig his money, and if I can’t I’ll go to jail. I’d rather be in a stone jail with four walls than be as I am. And how am I? In a maze—a thousand prisons. All right, I’ll go to prison.” Pym remembered that night in Bow Street. “I’ll be locked up behind a door with a little shutter in it … in a nice little quiet cell. All right, I’ll go to prison—and I can tell you that that would be an escape as far as I’m concerned!”

  (As Pym said this he thought that Breaking Into Prison would be an excellent title for a book.)

  “Better think it over,” said Shirley Brush.

  ‘There isn’t anything to think over. If I can pay, I’ll pay. If I can’t, I won’t,” said Pym. “Even Greenslceve can’t get blood out of a stone.”

  “No, because there isn’t any blood in a stone. But he can get sparks out of a stone. He can knock the fire out of a stone. He can get a groan out of a stone. He can make your life a misery. Why not be sensible and fight fire with fire—set a thief to catch a thief, and let me handle Greensleeve for you? No need to worry about fees; I can wait; I always do. One of these days you’ll pay me with interest.”

  “No thanks, God bless you. I think I’d rather get out of this silly mess on my own.”

  “You’ll pay, or you’ll fight, if you start any silly business on your own.”

  “I’ll pay and I’ll fight!”

  “Young man, young man,” said Shirley Brush with sadness and affection, “I see that you must dree your weird alone. Plough your lonely furrow, then. But … between friends … from an uncle, as it might be … let me lend you a few pounds.”

  Pym could not speak, so he shook his head and shook the solicitor’s hand. Something had him by the throat. People were such pigs. People were such angels. He gulped, and grinned, and waved a hand and went out.

  God set me free! he said, pinching away a couple of starting tears. Make me straight and strong, O Lord! Cut me loose from Pym! I am an ox with as many masters as there are men and women in the world—a castrated slave with sawn-off horns, and nothing but blind and hopeless yearnings that remind me of what I am not … Then he thought of Proudfoot, and of all the wise things that Proudfoot had said so solemnly with his hand on his book—and his book of newspaper cuttings; and falling into a sullen anger against himself Pym cursed himself for a fool. Reason, coming out of the hole in which it slept with one eye open, pounced like a s
pider and said:

  Come, come, come now! What’s the use of being angry? What does your puerile rage contribute to the wretched condition you have imposed upon yourself? Yes, imposed upon yourself. You want to be a Creator. You want to make great works. You are held back by grinding poverty. Yet every opportunity that comes your way you cast aside. You are half-way through a novel, probably a successful novel—certainly a novel that will open certain doors. Thirty pounds, carefully laid out, would see you through to the end. But what do you do? Not only do you throw away your thirty pounds but you involve yourself in a hundred and twenty pounds of debt into the bargain. You are no Creator, you poor fool, because you are soft, and the Creator must be hard. In the case of a man of genius the end justifies the means. Your stupid, your pigheaded fussiness over tiny points of honour is nothing but vanity, mean and selfish vanity. You believe that you have it in you to enlighten and entrance the world for five hundred years. You believe that you can make goodness interesting and beauty popular, and you aspire to the dignity of a Standard-Bearer on the left-hand of militant Truth. Yet you drop everything for a whim; a fancy, a Boy Scout’s conceit. You are unworthy.

  Pym said to Reason: I see the point in what you say. I don’t know exactly how to answer you, but although you are right, I’m convinced that you’re wrong. I obey my instincts, and I am as God made me.

  Reason said: God did not make you to obey your instinct, Brother Pym, but to follow the Instinct beyond your instincts. Go on then, follow your instinct. Go to Cicero Greensleeve’s office and strangle him—go to the cemetery and dig up the rotting corpse of old Mrs. Greensleeve and throw it into the arms of Decimus Greensleeve saying: “Pardon me, I have unwarrantably interfered with your mother’s funeral arrangements; allow me to hand her her back to you”—Go to the hospital and jump into bed with Joanna Bowman … Go on, follow your instincts because you are as God made you! Go ahead, follow your instincts into the gutter, down the drain, along the sewer, and out to the open sea, and take yourself and all that God gave you away into the dark with the rats and the dung and the abortions wrapped in newspaper. Vain man! You have been given the power to make things. But no; you want to be a hero. As if I did not know that you have got it all out of books, cheap romances! … Well, all right. You have had your little blind man’s holiday. Now wake up and listen to me. You can go to Proudfoot at this very moment and get two hundred and fifty pounds for writing that woman Weissensee’s silly book. And with two hundred and fifty pounds you can go away and write two masterpieces.