by Gerald Kersh
One thing is certain, and that is that I. Small came home and found one of Appenrodt’s forks in his outside breast pocket.
At the conclusion of his terrific narrative he began to laugh, and his son laughed with him. When they stopped laughing he said: “Eat another egg, Charley.”
“No thanks, I can’t eat more than two.”
“Then shall I tell you what we’ll do?”
“What?”
“I’ll tell you what—you and me, let’s go to Kew. Go on, Charley, put on your new suit. Your other suit put on, and we’ll go to Kew Gardens. Hurry up.”
Young Charles Small dressed himself in a pepper-and-salt Norfolk suit, and they took a tramcar to Kew. Young Charles discovered, with astonishment, that he was beginning almost to like the old man.
They walked in the Gardens for an hour, visiting all the hothouses. Large white flowers aroused in I. Small a strange, strong, tender emotion: his eyes filled with tears when he looked at a Victoria Lily; and when he gazed up at the feathery head of a stately palm tree he struck himself on the chest and sighed—“Look at it, Charley. Look and … and … and take a lesson.” He stood several minutes before the bronze statue of the bowman, and started to say something: “That’s a … that’s a …” Poor man, he had no words. At last they left the Gardens. The teashops outside were advertising strawberries and cream.
“Do you fancy a strawberry, Charley?”
“I wouldn’t mind,” said young Charles haughtily; and so they went and ate strawberries and cream. I. Small pushed his portion over to his son. After the bill was paid they walked over Kew Bridge and stopped at a little fair-ground where there were swings and merry-go-rounds.
I. Small said: “What about a ride on the roundabout?”
Charles Small, at sixteen and a half, was above such frivolity, but it was obvious that the old man was dying to go up and down and around and around on the saddle of a spotted wooden horse; so he said, scornfully: “All right, Father, if you like.” Then they rode four times on the roundabout, and swung three times on the swings.
“Foolishness,” said I. Small, laughing. “Kinderspiel—baby-games! Tell me, Charley, are you hungry?”
“Well …”
“Let’s eat something, let’s.”
There was a superior sort of public-house across the road. They went in, sat down, and looked at the menu.
“What do you fancy, Charley, boychik?”
“Well I don’t know, what do you fancy, Father?”
“What does it say?” asked I. Small, whose eyes were getting weak.
“Well, there’s soup, cold ham and tongue, there’s——”
“Ham? I wonder what ham tastes like? Ham! What sort of a thing is ham, I wonder,” said I. Small. “I tell you what, just for a joke, shall we taste it—just a taste—just to see?”
“Why yes, I don’t mind.”
“Man to man? Not a word, eh? Just to taste?”
“By all means,” said young Charles.
“It’s nice to know what people see in it…. Ham! What’ll we drink? A nice glass lemonade? Or I tell you what—what’s the matter with a glass beer? Man to man, Charley, what do you say—a glass beer? In moderation everything is good. Even deadly poison in moderation is good. Too much of a good thing can be poison. Everything in moderation. A glass beer.” When the ham was served he said: “It looks like smoked salmon. What does it taste like to you, Charley?”
“Like ham.”
“It’s funny, but by me it’s like smoked salmon.”
They ate their ham, drank their beer, and became friends. When they had finished eating and had, between them, drunk a pint and a half of beer, young Charles said: “Father, tell me something about yourself—tell me something about your life.”
“My life,” said I. Small, startled. “What d’you mean?”
“Things must have happened to you. After all you’re middle-aged—more than forty years old. Why don’t you tell me all about yourself?”
Time passed before I. Small said: “… My father made boots for a Graf. In English, that’s the same as a Lord. Well, one day I had to take a pair boots to this Graf, and he got hold of me by the hair and shook me up and down and backwards and forwards, and I started crying, and he gave me a silver rouble … And … and … What do you mean, Life?” said I. Small, irritated. “Life! What time have I had for Life? What do they take me for, a Piccadilly Johnny, Life I should have?”
Then he said: “Charley, don’t take too much notice of every word I say. Would you like I should tell you? Then take a lesson from me. Listen: I’m ignorant. Man to man”—I. Small had taken a fancy to this expression—“man to man say nothing to nobody, man to man. I’m ignorant. You know more than I know. I know more than my father knew, rest his soul. And so it goes on, Charley, so we go, and there’s the world. Look at me. What am I? A nobody, a nothing. A nothing from nothing. A Schuster.”
I. Small said this with deep humility.
“I wanted you to go to school, Charley, so you should be something, not a nobody. Life! What do you mean, Life? What time have I had for Life? Didn’t I never have nothing more important to do? Life! You’ll have Life, please God. My child,” said I. Small, thrusting out his weak hands with their broken and blackened nails, “these hands I would work to the bone for you, man to man.”
Then the breast of young Charles Small contracted and squeezed his heart into the back of his eyes, so that he had to run away to the lavatory and cry.
When he came back he was sorry for his father when, furtively smiling, he said: “Listen, Charley, supposing your mother should turn round and say: ‘So where you been? What you done?’ What’ll you say?”
“I’ll say we went to Kew Gardens.”
“Yes,” said I. Small, uneasily, “I want you should always tell the truth. A liar is worse than a thief. A thief, he’ll steal your money, but a liar, a liar will swear your life away. Quidle right—I only want you should be honest. A liar is always found out. A tram for a few pence we took to Kew Gardens. Why not? What’s the matter with Kew Gardens? … Flowers, trees, water lilies—it’s good to keep in touch so a boy should know what’s going on in the world. What’s the matter with Kew Gardens, what?”
“Nothing’s the matter with Kew Gardens.”
“Tell the truth, Charley, and nothing but the truth. Only one thing I ask—don’t tell your mother, bless her, don’t tell her I went on the roundabout! To please me!”
“I shan’t say a word.”
“That’s right, Charley-boychik,” said I. Small, with relief, “never tell a lie. A liar is a rotter. You can never trust a liar. But there is no need to … talk too much. Man to man, we went in a tram to Kew Gardens. Enough is enough.”
“Oh all right, all right!” said young Charles, impatiently.
“What’s the matter, boychik? Didn’t you enjoy yourself?”
“Yes, yes, I enjoyed myself … I wish you wouldn’t call me boychik.”
“I won’t, if it hurts your feelings, Charley.”
“It doesn’t hurt my feelings!”
“Charley-boychik, are you still fretting about that other nonsense and rubbish, eh? Man to man?”
The expression on the old man’s face was such that his son saw him, then, as a dog unjustly beaten, lifting a placatory paw in supplication. He Wanted to stroke him, comfort him, fondle his ears and soothe him to sleep; but the best he could do was, touch his arm and say: “Don’t worry. It’s all right. I’ll be quite all right.”
“It was all for your own good, my little boychik. Believe me, your mother and me, we’re a little bit older than you. Your mother knows best.”
“Don’t worry,” said young Charles.
I. Small was dismayed to find his wife at home when they got back to the house.
“So soon?” he asked.
“Why, what’s the matter, am I in the way?”
“Tell me, how’s Ruth?”
“You should think yourself lucky I’m n
ot the kind of person to make a fuss about nothing. If I rushed into nursing-homes with every twopenny-halfpenny ache and pain—ha-ha! … They want to be pitied, that’s what they want. All right, as long as I know what they are.”
It appeared that Ruth, wrapped in a quilted sky-blue dressing-gown trimmed with swansdown, was sitting in a rocking-chair, eating chocolate cream, smelling flowers, and reading a novel by Charles Garvice which she was reluctant to put down. Trained nurses were dancing attendance on her and calling her “Madam”. There were dishes heaped with peaches and grapes; a bottle of Invalid Port. Crammed with the fat of the land she was lolling in the lap of luxury, pretending to be ill. Her husband had given her a pair of bedroom slippers made of white fur—probably rabbit. Ruth had not been seriously ill, and had told her that she didn’t need to be looked after—Millie was humiliated, angry and disappointed.
“But scraped! They scraped her?” whispered I. Small.
Millie indicated that Ruth had not been what she would call scraped. A spoiled fuss-maker might call it being scraped. She suggested that Ruth’s womb had been varnished and polished. “But where have you been?” she asked.
“Where have we been, Charley?”
“We took a tram to Kew Gardens, Mother.”
“I hope you enjoyed yourselves.”
“Well, Millie, it was such a lovely day … what does it cost, sixpence on a tram? What’s the matter with Kew Gardens?”
“What did you have to eat?”
I. Small said quickly: “We went to a tea garden, eh Charley? So we had tea, we had bread-and-butter; jam we had, with water-cress.”
“Is that all?”
“Strawberries and cream,” muttered young Charles.
“Quidle right—I forgot—strawberries and cream.”
“What else did you do?”
“Nothing, Millie, nothing at all—eh, Charley?”
Young Charles nodded.
“A bit of bread-and-butter and a strawberry—is that all they’ve had to eat all day long? Kill yourself to fill the house up with food for them, and the minute you turn your back they rush out to restaurants to eat goodness knows what, and goodness knows who’s been touching it. Leave them alone for five minutes and they neglect themselves. Them and their water-cress! Water-cress!”
I. Small said: “We had a sandwich—eh, Charley?”
“That’s right.”
“Where? What sandwich?”
I. Small said: “Where? What do you mean, where? In Kew, where else should I eat a sandwich?”
“What kind of sandwich?”
I. Small pretended to forget. He squeezed his head between his hands, slapped his forehead, and said: “… A, a, a sandwich. Eh Charley? What sandwich, Charley? Man to man?”
“Oh, smoked salmon,” growled young Charles, naming the first pink-coloured eatable that came into his mind. But he gave his father a contemptuous look that was meant to say: You coward—can’t you even carry the weight of your own little lies? Must you chuck your muck into my conscience?
I. Small blew his nose.
He had become a tremendous nose-blower. Confronted with a problem he took out a great handkerchief, shook it out of its folds, and blew into it, making a noise like a trombone. This stunning noise generally put an end to discussion. On such occasions, when I. Small paused for breath, he cautiously opened his handkerchief, peered into the folds, shook his head, and blew and peered again. What did he expect to find—pearls? Charles wondered.
On this occasion he trumpeted so violently that he sounded a sort of Call to Arms. Millie, that seasoned warrior, leapt into battle, crying: “What class of people makes a noise like that when they use their handkerchiefs? Who blows like that into a clean handkerchief? He’s got to blow straight into a clean handkerchief, this millionaire!”
Millie and I. Small had been quarrelling, off and on, for seventeen years about handkerchiefs. She had got it into her head that it was wickedly extravagant to blow one’s nose into a perfectly clean handkerchief. Then, as surely as the bang follows the flash, I. Small roared: “Then tell me, tell me then—what for is a clean handkerchief? What does she want I should do with a clean handkerchief—have it framed?”
Charles went to bed. He had begun to feel affectionately about his father; and at the same time resentful.
He remembers that he thought: Damn him, if the old man wanted to eat ham why couldn’t he just have eaten it and said so? If he didn’t want to say so why couldn’t he tell his own lie instead of sticking it into my mouth? … He’s not so bad. But oh, damn, damn, damn—why did he have to wait all these years until Mother’s back was turned before he let me begin to understand him?
Then compassion and contempt fought a tug-of-war in Charles Small’s soul until, after a short, sharp tussle, both sides let go in the same instant, so that he relaxed with a snap and went to sleep.
Oh, if only I could sleep like that now! says Charles Small, with a groan. What wouldn’t I give, to sleep the way I used to sleep when I was a boy of sixteen … sixteen from forty…. Good God, twenty-four years ago….
It is good, to sleep as a healthy sixteen-year-old boy can sleep, but looking back Charles Small decides that he would not relive his first sixteen years for an eternity of sleep—paradisiacal sleep full of erotic dreams in technicolor—not for any consideration!
CHAPTER XI
NOW, naturally, just as he is hanging trembling on the edge of sleep like a raindrop on the point of a leaf, Charles Small is disturbed by a stealthy sound. His wife is cautiously turning the knob of the door. Instantly he comes back, worse than conscious, to an exacerbated state of nervous tension. It is as if he has taken hold of the handles of a shocking-coil. An agonising shudder runs from his wrists to his shoulders and down his spine. He is sorry for his silly wife. But, having taken his two handfuls of self-pity and dropped his penny, he cannot control the mysterious current that shakes him—the strange, uncontrollable, quivering current of hate. He listens, closing his eyes and pretending to be asleep. The lock of the bedroom door, although it is well oiled, makes a little chirping noise. Hettie, with all the goodwill in the world, cannot move without making a noise—some silly little noise—she will swallow, gurgle in the stomach, hiccup. Even when she blinks her eyes her lashes seem to scratch the air like so many slate pencils. Now, by way of a change, she is overtaken by a need to sneeze. Opening his left eye half an inch, Charles Small sees her pressing her left forefinger against her upper lip. She is shaken by convulsions; yet she manages to make no more noise than one makes when one draws the cork of a medicine bottle: Bip!
Charles Small sits up, shouting at the top of his voice: “What’s the big idea? For God’s sake, what have I done to deserve this? When you don’t feel well do I deliberately come and make disgusting noises in your ear when you’re trying to get five minutes rest and peace?”
Hettie’s tremendous effort to hold back the sneeze has forced tears into her eyes. Now they run down her face.
“I didn’t——” she begins.
“—if you didn’t who did? And now what are you crying for?”
“I didn’t know if you were asleep, Charley. I——”
“—So you came to wake me up, to find out, eh?” Even as he says this Charles Small knows that he is being despicably cruel and unjust; but something stronger than himself has taken possession of him.
“Charley, darling, I brought you an egg beaten up in milk,” says Hettie. “And I wasn’t crying, Charley. I know it annoys you if I cry. Honestly, I wasn’t, because I know how it gets on your nerves. I got something in my eye. Please drink this milk. There’s a new-laid egg beaten up in it, and a little sugar. Come on, Charley darling, dear darling Charley, it’ll do you a world of good.”
Charles Small glares at her angrily, but not without pity. He sees that she is looking at him with yearning under her pink eyelids, and he says to himself, with a hard, short laugh: Aha, aha, here it is again! He knows what that look means: it means that she
wants to make love to him.
In every imaginable way, however, this woman is repulsive to him. He is bored and irritated by her sloppy adoration. He loathes her because she agrees with every word he says, however preposterous. He is sickened by the lingering touch of her humid hand. His heart sinks when he embraces her. On such occasions, it was necessary to close the eyes tightly and … one, two, three … back to everyday indifference and normal distaste.
She puts the glass by his bed, saying: “I’m sorry if I disturbed you, Charley. I tried to be as quiet as I could. Drink it if you can. I’m sure it’ll do you good. I won’t disturb you again.”
Then, after she has opened the door, he wants to call her back and say: Hettie, Hettie, my poor dear Hettie! Please forgive me. I’m not very good to you. You are very patient with me, and I don’t deserve it. I beg your pardon with all my heart and soul. Excuse me—I am not really a pig, although I behave like one….
He actually begins to say it: “—I say, Hettie.”
Startled by the changed tone of his voice, she stops, rigid, and says: “What is it, Charley?”
He pauses and, after a short struggle with himself, says: “Try and keep those children quiet, will you?”
“Yes, Charley. Have a nice rest.”
I suppose I shall go to bed with her to-night says Charles Small. Sighing in anticipation of this fortnightly function, he lies back and, searching his tired memory, decides that he will think of Lya de Putti…. He is rather partial to that woman of blazing passions who cannot shake hands, on the screen, without an orgasmic wriggle … he has never forgotten the way she kissed Emile Jannings in Vaudeville—it was like a woman, dying of thirst, sucking an orange. She is one of his small, select harem, which includes Cleopatra, Eleonora Duse, a lady with remarkable buttocks who once jostled him in a bus, and Mary Queen of Scots. But Lya is his favourite. He imperiously calls her into his imagination once a month. But he knows that if he found her in his arms in the flesh he would probably faint, or pretend to have a stomach-ache, or say that he had to go and see a man about a dog, or say “Let us just be good friends,” or cry for his mummy—in any case, nothing would happen.