The Song of the Flea

by Gerald Kersh

  “And how’s your father and your mother?”

  “Oh Christ, pretty much the same. You know what they are,” said Boysie bitterly. “I was expecting a letter from Mr. Redbird—you know, the Holborn Hippodrome—and the old man forgot what address he gave. I didn’t want to bother Redbird—I mean to say, it makes you look such a bloody fool—so I just came to enquire. It all falls on me. You don’t know what it is to have idiots for parents.”

  “That’s a nice way to talk about your mother and father!” said Pym.

  “To hell with them. I’m roughing out a few ideas for an act of my own, the dog act; with a stooge and a lamp post.”

  “The dog with black spots and long ears, eh?” said Pym.

  “That’s right. It’d be a good idea, I thought, to pad the dog-suit out big, turn him into a cock-eyed sort of spotty mastiff, and get one of those midgets that are always loafing about Charing Cross Road to do the stooging. Whadda you think?”

  “I do not think,” said Pym.

  “I daresay I could put something your way if you like. I could probably use some of your stuff later on. Think it over.”

  “I’m infinitely obliged to you.”

  “Oh, that’s all right. Been scribbling anything lately?”

  This was too much. “Scribbling!” said Pym, “scribbling! Sarcasm is wasted on you, you unnatural child.” And he picked Boysie up by his coat collar, bent him over one of his knees, and smacked his bottom, saying: “… Scribbling … scribbling …you little dog … with black spots! Scribbling! … You pachyderm … you abortion … you precocious … imp! Ttris’ll … teach you … to respect your elders … and betters. Now run away and play dogs.”

  Boysie ran away. Busto, who had been looking on with sour approval, said: “You wanna glass a-wine?”

  Pym said: “That’s kind of you, Busto, that really is!” He had given some thought to the nature of Busto, and knew that shillings were his stars and pennies the red corpuscles of the blood of his heart; and wine cost money—even the Lunatic’s Broth that Busto drank. “No, you really are very kind. But you must come out and have a drink with me.”

  “Okay. Some other time maybe,” said Busto. “Good night.” And he went downstairs to make ready for the perils and the dangers of the coming night. Looking at the Mona Lisa, he prayed:

  “Vergine Santa, tu sai tutto, io le faccie le so leggere sai? E so benissimo che tu sai tutto! Va bene? Sissignora, prendo la tua parola, e t’affido tutti i beni miei. Se mi fossi incontrato con una donna come te, ti avrei gia fatto mia moglie … Figli, o non figli … e perche no?”

  It meant: Holy Mother of God. You know everything. Lady, I can read faces, and I know that you know everything … Okay? Lady, I’d take your word for anything. I’d trust you with all I got. And if I ever came across a girl like you I’d’ve married her myself, kid or no kid … Why not?

  An all-knowing God, knowing his Busto, must have found such a prayer acceptable.

  *

  It was nearly ten o’clock when Pym reached the Duchess of Douro. The saloon bar was empty. The barmaid was reading a little paper-backed novel. The landlord was reading the evening paper. “Can I have a piece of bread-and-cheese and a pint of beer and some pickles?”

  “Haven’t seen you for quite a time,” said the barmaid.

  Pym, who had slipped off the high wire of tight-strung exhilaration after he had torn up the letter, was falling, now, into a deep and dangerous darkness. What the hell is the use of anything, when there are such people in the world? he said to himself. “I beg pardon? Did you say something?” he said to the barmaid.

  “I said it was a long time since we’d seen you.”

  “Well, you don’t seem to have died of a broken heart in the meantime. The place doesn’t seem to have shut down. You’ve survived. And if you never saw me again as long as you lived I wouldn’t mind betting that you’d live to your dying day. I hope you haven’t been lying awake at night thinking about me. You don’t look as if you’ve been losing your appetite on my account.”

  “What’s the matter with you? Got the rats?” asked the barmaid.

  “I beg pardon. I didn’t mean to be rude.”

  “That’s what it is,” said the barmaid, giving him his beer, bread-and-cheese and pickles, “that’s what it is. You’ve got the rats. Rats, rats, long-tailed rats with eyes like pale green gooseberries. That’s what it is.”

  “That’s what it is. Rats. Millions of rats. And I don’t mean the nice rats—the brave, clever, honourable rats with long teeth and long tails.”

  “Well, cheer up, dear—we’ll soon be dead.”

  “The sooner the better,” said Pym.

  “What’s the matter, duck? In love?”

  “The answer to that is Yes and also No,” said Pym.

  The barmaid was a motherly woman. She gave Pym a newspaper and said: “You eat your nice bread-and-cheese and drink your nice beer all up, and look at the cartoon. That’ll make you laugh.”

  Pym began to read the newspaper. War was on the way; blitz-war of unimaginable frightfulness. The Old Man was whetting the scythe. Things were happening in Southern and Central Europe—things to turn the stomach. A woman had been sent to prison for six months for burning her two-year-old son with a red-hot poker because he wet the bed. A man in one of the Home Counties had been fined for beating a dog to death. An American heiress who had inherited forty million dollars had bought herself a Russian Prince: he had insisted on a marriage settlement of half a million dollars a year. Four negroes had been strung up, drenched with petrol, and burned in Georgia. The police were looking for the person (unknown) who had raped and strangled, or strangled and raped, an eight-year-old schoolgirl. Four people had perished in a fire.

  Pym said: “Good God Almighty! Created in God’s image! The highest form of life! The last word in civilisation! You can keep it.”

  “D’you think there really will be a war?” asked the barmaid.

  “Yes,” said Pym.

  “D’you think there’s anything in what they say about bombs wiping us out of existence—poof!—just like that?”

  “I shouldn’t be surprised. I hope so.”

  “D’you think the balloon’s going to go up pretty soon?”

  “Yup.”

  “I must say I don’t like the look of it. Do you?”

  “Nup.”

  “Oh well, cheer up—we’ll soon be dead.”

  Pym turned two more pages, and came to the little oblongs, the fillers-of-space, in the badlands of the newspaper on the frontier of the Sports Pages. Pym started and cried: “Hey!”—and pointed to an inconspicuous paragraph stuck between two grey curtains of sensational bad news that hung from jet-black rods of sombre headlines. It told how Russian scientists had discovered living organisms in the depths beneath the old Polar ice. “Hey! Look at this!”

  “What is it now?” asked the barmaid, with an anxious hand at her throat.

  “Didn’t you see this? Good God Almighty, doesn’t anybody ever read anything? Just look and see! See for yourself! Look!” he shouted, jabbing at the paragraph with a violent finger. The landlord came over to look, and the barmaid leant forward, twisting her head to read.

  “D’you mean that?”

  “Certainly I mean that!”

  The landlord looked at the barmaid. The barmaid raised her eyebrows, looking at the landlord. Pym said: “Now this is what I call news! Drinks for everybody—drinks all round! Don’t you get it? Some scientists go to the coldest, deadest, the most desolate place in the world. They go into the cold. They go into the cold in which nothing can live—do you get that? And then they drill down in that primeval cold, into that ancient, primal ice, and what do they find? Life! Living things! Almighty God, why do they tuck that away back here? Why isn’t this a front-page headline? Life!”

  Then he slapped the barmaid on the shoulder with such force that she fell forward and knocked over his glass, which emptied itself over his knees. But he laughed and s
aid: “Isn’t that a wonderful thing? In that bitter cold? Under all that ice, after all these years? Life, by God!”

  Rubbing her shoulder, the barmaid said: “It’s all right. He didn’t mean no harm.”

  “You’ve had enough. You go home now,” said the landlord.

  So Pym went back to Busto’s and worked until dawn, thinking of the marvellous life that survives the frightful cold under the ice in the dead places of the world. Then, after a short sleep, he put on his best suit and went out to talk to Joanna Bowman, and as he walked he whistled a defiant tune.

  *

  LONDON AND PERCÉ, QUEBEC, AUGUST, 1947

  Copyright

  This ebook edition first published in 2013

  by Faber and Faber Ltd

  Bloomsbury House

  74–77 Great Russell Street

  London WC1B 3DA

  All rights reserved

  © The Estate of Gerald Kersh, 1948

  The right of Gerald Kersh to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly

  ISBN 978–0–571–30457–8