The Thousand Deaths of Mr Small

by Gerald Kersh

  Nothing Charles Small desired ever had or ever could happen.

  CHAPTER XII

  IT was the same with poor old I. Small. He was marked and foredoomed to perish squealing, like a stuck pig. One Sunday morning he said to his wife: “Millie, the time has come—we got to face facts.”

  He had picked up this phrase from an old shoemaker whom he occasionally employed—an argumentative Freethinker, an audacious revolutionary who talked in such a manner that he made one’s blood run cold. His name was Lizzard, and he had devoted some fifty of his seventy years to what he called “Meetings”. He had all sorts of jargon on the tip of his tongue, and was always ready with some startling proposition, such as: “There are two classes in society, Mr. Small. One produces but does not accumulate, and the other accumulates but does not produce.’ And: “There is such a thing as Evolution.” And: “The time has come to act, not to talk.” And: “A fact is not called a fact for nothing. Therefore it must be faced. Let us face facts!” He went on like this all day, his lips bristling with bright iron brads under his grizzled beard, talking, spitting out nails, hammering them in, gasping, misquoting and singing all at the same time, lively as a leprechaun. “… The spectre of war is haunting Europe!”—bang bang bang—“You have nothing but your chains to lose, Mr. Small, and all the world to gain!”

  “Chains?” asked I. Small, looking about him. “What do you mean, chains? What chains? Where chains?” He touched his Watch-chain to satisfy himself that it was not yet lost. Then, somewhat sadly, he said: “You’re bleddywell right. I got nothing but my chain to lose. And what’s that worth? Three pounds?”

  Banging so furiously that he had to shout to make himself heard, Lizzard shouted: … “Common ownership of the means of production!”

  Remembering that if you were “common” you spat on the floor, picked your nose, scratched yourself, and slept with your socks on, I. Small said, firmly: “Means, yes! Common, no!”

  “The social system——” said Lizzard, scraping away with a rasp, “the social system——”

  “—Listen,” said I. Small, gravely. He had a hazy memory of policemen with big moustaches arresting Socialists. “Listen, Lizzard, don’t use that word in this house.”

  “What word? Repeat it to me!”

  “Social,” whispered I. Small.

  “Another lackey of the bourgeoisie, eh?”

  “Say it in English, Lizzard. I haven’t had your education. I don’t talk French. You’re in England now, not in France.”

  “The ruling classes——”

  A bell tinkled upstairs. I. Small put on his coat and hurried out of the underground workshop, pausing only to say: “Mind you, Lizzard, you’re not bleddy far wrong about my chain to lose, but did I asked you to poke your bleddy nose into my business? It’s my chain. Get on with your work!”

  Yet he was influenced by the erudition and the eloquence of Lizzard. Sometimes, after supper, reading the evening paper, he looked up and said portentously: “Aha! So that’s what they are, the ruling classes!” Or: “Um-um! The skepter of War is haunting Europe already!” Or: “More taxes! My last chain they want to take away from me! The time has come not to talk, Millie, not to talk the time has come!” Once, reading a headline: Facts In The Mexican Case, he shouted: “Do you see? Facts! Face them!”

  Now, throwing down a wire spike-file of bills, he said, “Face facts, Millie, whatever else you do.”

  Then he twisted and pulled his coppery moustache until it was taut as a telegraph-cable and said: “Well, Millie, I’m sorry to say I done my best. I done my best, I’m sorry to say. Now what I’m going to do goodness only knows. Rent, rates, taxes, gas, milk, bread, and here’s for £8.10s. leather. And stock—stock! Oi! The plumber, 25s.——”

  “—And whose fault was that?”

  “Beggar the bleddy fault, you, me, him, her, it, that—whatever it is—a pipe bursts, so what does she want I should do? Drownd myself?”

  “So that’s what he is.”

  “So what’s what he is, beggar it? Listen, Millie, the business is a failure.”

  “Whose fault is that, Srul, answer me—whose fault?”

  “Face facts,” said I. Small.

  Tragically, Millie said: “It’s my fault, it’s all my fault, I made a mistake. I thought I could make something of you. It’s my fault. It was a mistake. You can’t make a purse out of a sow’s ear. Well, you can’t lie down and die. You must do something. What do We owe?”

  “Nearly a hundred pounds.”

  “And what have we got?” asked Millie, with terrible calm.

  Loosening the fourth button of his Waistcoat, I. Small pulled out his massive gold watch-chain—the sort of chain they used to call a Double Curb Albert. It was an impressive chain, worthy of a ponderous repeater; but one end of it was clipped to a five-shilling Waterbury watch, and from the other there hung a little gun-metal matchbox. Having detached the watch and the matchbox I. Small let the chain fall on to the table and said: “Na!—I got nothing but my chain to lose.”

  “What are we going to do? To have to go and ask Father for money—I’m so ashamed!”

  “Who’s asking her father for money?” screamed I. Small kicking the sofa.

  Millie wept copiously. Her body was shaken by sobs of such violence that I. Small thought of a careless washerwoman shaking a half-wrung sheet. She writhed and twisted, with a dull slapping and a slow intermittent hissing, while drops of dirty water seemed to sprinkle the table, as she cried: “I knew it would come to this…. I knew it would come to this…. Oh what are we going to do, oh what are we going to do? What is going to happen to the children?”

  Now, I. Small, humiliated and angry, started to say Beggary!—but, being of a compassionate nature, and seeing that his wife was genuinely wretched, he stopped himself short at the first syllable, so that he said: “Beg——”

  “That’s all he’s fit for. To beg,” said Millie, gathering to her bosom her five-year-old son and her two-year-old daughter. “Get him a barrel organ—buy him a monkey—that’s what he wants! Here——” she held out little Priscilla at arm’s length. “Take her, go on, take her out into the street, hold your hat out and cadge for coppers. Oh oh, oh!”

  She cried out so dolefully that the children, already terrified, began to scream. Charles, in spite of his puny stature, could make a noise like a klaxon. Priscilla, when she cried—which was almost all the time—raised a scratchy, intermittent shriek reminiscent of bats in the twilight; a sound so high-pitched that it was felt rather than heard; but it sent its vibrations into every nerve. As for Millie, who could put the passion and agony of Ruth and Naomi into the search for a mislaid matchbox and the sullen rage of Jonah into a dissertation upon a misplaced crumb of cigarette ash—she surpassed herself. She began by emitting a noise such as one might make by squirting a fine jet of water, under enormous pressure, into a resonant zinc pail, and ended by going off like a geyser. If she had made noises as horrible as this over a broken egg-cup, what unexplored heights and depths of sound would she explore now? Even the honking and squeaking of Charles and Priscilla made I. Small’s scalp tighten so that the hair at the nape of his neck stood on end. And this was nothing. The orchestra was merely tuning up.

  It was more than I. Small’s weak flesh and thin blood could bear. He ran out of the room, snatched up his hat, put it on back to front, went, panting, into the street and walked aimlessly, lashing about with an imaginary walking-stick, until the heart in his breast, like a well-battered punching-ball, rattled itself quiet. By then he found himself in Langham Place. He pushed his hat away from his forehead, shoved his hands into his trouser pockets, and walked on, slowly and resolutely, trying to think, to make a plan.

  When he reached the other end of Portland Place he realised, with a horrible sinking of his knocked-about heart, that if it came to thinking he had nothing to think with, and that he could no more make a plan than a monkey could make a watch. So he turned and walked back, and all that he could
say to himself was: I wish I had my stick. Without his walking-stick he did not know what to do with his right hand; he liked the feel of that stick, and found pleasure in the smart tap of its ferrule on the paving stones, but he dared not buy another—he would never hear the end of it. Twice he had been tempted; once by a snakewood stick with a silver band, and once by an elegantly polished stick of pimento wood. But, standing with his nose almost touching Cox’s window in Oxford Street, like a hungry urchin at the window of a pastry-cook, he heard a voice saying: So, that’s what he is, Piccadilly Johnny! There could be no bread in the house, but he’s got to rush out and spend his last penny on walking sticks. Why doesn’t he go and get an eyeglass, while he’s about it? What does he care if his children go in rags? …

  Indignantly framing something beginning with bleddy, I. Small stepped off the kerb opposite the Langham Hotel, and then a large motor-car stopped with a strained outcry of brakes while, above the parp-parp-parp of an exceptionally powerful horn, an imperious voice shouted: “Why the hell don’t you look where——”

  I. Small, who had not been alarmed by the proximity of the car or the blasts of the horn because at that moment he did not care whether he lived or died, turned with a great start at the sound of the voice, and cried, half sick with emotion: “Is it you? No, it can’t be! Can it?”

  “Why don’t you look where you’re going, does your mother know you’re out? Why, you——Why, may I drop dead if it isn’t Srulke Small! Srul, wie geht’s?”

  “Shloimele—Sollyle—to see you is … is … is … oi!” I. Small was strangled with joy. Half incoherent in his most lucid moments, he stood in the gutter, gibbering, trying to find something good to say.

  “Get in, schlemihl,” said Solly Schwartz, opening the door.

  “In a motor-car he’s riding?” stammered I. Small “Whose motor-car?” And he touched with the tip of a finger the polished brass of one of the headlamps, and felt the machine quivering and straining like a thoroughbred horse before a race. It was a large, luxurious Renault, brilliantly enamelled, high and roomy, coquettishly bonneted.

  “It’s mine, schmerel,” said Solly Schwartz. “Get in, Srul. Have a ride.”

  I. Small, who had never ridden in an automobile, climbed into the car with trepidation. When, after three fumbling attempts he closed the door, and found himself sitting next to his old friend, a great happiness came up from somewhere inside him so that he caught the hunchback’s neck in the crook of his arm and kissed him three times on the cheek, saying: “Schloimele … my little Solly! This is … this … I got no words!”

  “Ah, it’s nice to see you again, Srul, you old schlemazzel! Where would you like to go? I bet I know where you’d like to go.”

  “Where?”

  “You’d like to go and have a snack and a glass of beer at Appenrodt’s, that’s where you’d like to go,” said Solly Schwartz, pulling levers and busying himself with little knobs. The car began to move. I. Small, terrified but curiously exhilarated, sat tense. His heart was beating painfully, but he was happy.

  “Solly, are you sure you know the way you should work it?” he asked, when they missed a four-wheeler by half an inch at the corner of Great Titchfield Street.

  Solly Schwartz laughed scornfully, and in a few minutes they were in Piccadilly.

  “I know you’d rather go to Appenrodt’s for old time’s sake,” said Solly Schwartz, and I. Small sighed and said:

  “That’s right, Solly, old time’s sake, no?”

  “A snack, a drink, a chat—yes?”

  I. Small was silent. He had so much to say, but, when he came around to trying to find a Way to say it, he felt as a lawyer might feel who, called upon for documents, discovers that some blind idiot has shaken up the contents of his filing cabinets in a big black sack—miserably enraged, impotent, apologetic. When they sat at a table, face to face in the light, he gripped Solly Schwartz’s hand again and said affectionately: “How smart he looks! What did you pay for that suit?”

  “Eight guineas.”

  “What do you mean, eight guineas? For God’s sake, Solly—motor-cars, suits for eight guineas, pearl tiepins, kid gloves, silk veskits…. How comes, tell me?”

  “It’s nothing,” said Solly Schwartz, with an impatient gesture. “How has it been with you?”

  “So-so,” said I. Small; but it would have taken a stronger will than his to hold his misery under the surface of his face.

  While they were eating their ham and drinking their big, comfortable mugs of Munich beer, Solly Schwartz said: “Come on, Srulke—give it a name. What’s the matter with you? You’re in trouble? Tell an old friend. You’re Worried. What is it?”

  “Who said so?” said I. Small.

  “Out with it, Srulke—come on, what’s up?”

  “Nothing…. That’s a nice stick you got, Solly. Where do you get it?” He picked up from between Solly Schwartz’s feet the most wonderful walking-stick he had ever seen. It was cut out of some rare Wood that resembled red ivory, and the head, secured by a ring of gold, was cunningly carved out of the monstrous tooth of some aquatic beast. The craftsman who had shaped it had carved it into the likeness of a crocodile. The stick could not have weighed less than three pounds.

  “Like it, Srulke?”

  “Who wouldn’t?”

  “Good. It’s yours, Srulke. Take it.”

  “What do you mean, take it? I couldn’t take a thing like this!”

  “Don’t be silly, I’ve got plenty of sticks—I’ve got seventeen walking-sticks,” said Solly Schwartz. “I want to make you a present. Take it, Srulke, and hold your jaw. Hoi, waiter, let’s have some more beer. Drink up, Srulke, and tell us what’s the matter.”

  There were tears in I. Small’s eyes as he stroked the crocodile on the walking-stick and said: “Nothing. You mustn’t give me a stick like this. By my life and yours too, Solly, I won’t take it!”

  “Shut up. Don’t argue with me, Srulke—I don’t like people arguing with me. Take it and be quiet, or are you trying to annoy me? … Now I asked you a simple question, schlemazzel, and all I want is a simple answer. What’s the matter with you? Things are bad?”

  “They could be better, Solly, and they could be worse.”

  Solly Schwartz had grown masterful in the past three years, and his temper had not sweetened. His Punch’s-face was almost malignant as he said: “Give me a straight answer, will you? Everything could be better, everything could be worse. You’re short of money, that’s what it is, isn’t it?”

  “Who said so?”

  “Well, you’re in Mayfair, aren’t you? What more do yon want?”

  “Beggar Mayfair,” said I. Small.

  “You wouldn’t take my advice, would you?” said Solly Schwartz, appearing, with his tight, sunken mouth, to bite a mouthful of beer and drink a forkful of ham. “And I should have patience with you!”

  “Solly, what’s the matter?” said I. Small, miserably, bewildered, “what did I say? What did I do wrong? What are you so annoyed with me for? The business is a failure: all right, don’t we all make mistakes, Solly? For God’s sake …” Suddenly I. Small became angry: “… Wherever I go must it be always the same thing? In the house, out of the house, upstairs, downstairs; what do they want with me?” The beer was creeping into his veins. “What do they want me to do? Grow wings? Fly?”

  Solly Schwartz said to the waiter: “Bring two more beers,” and gripping I. Small’s wrist in his swarthy right hand squeezed it until the bones seemed to crack, saying: “Don’t get excited.”

  “He’s got a hand like a pair of pinchers,” said I. Small, rubbing his wrist; and he seemed to fall into a reverie. Arranging his moustache with the back of a forefinger he looked straight in front of him in his bewildered, thunderstruck way, at six empty glasses on an adjacent table. He gazed so intently that his eyes crossed and the six glasses became twelve, the twelve became twenty-four, forty-eight, ninety-six, a hundred and ninety-two, three hundred and eighty-four, seven hundre
d and sixty-eight … they multiplied, shifting, iridescent like soap-bubbles in a loose lather until they filled the restaurant. He stared, hypnotised. Then a waiter whisked the glasses away, and all the bubbles burst, and there was Solly Schwartz grinning at him out of a blue drift of fragrant cigar smoke.

  “Excuse me, Solly; all of a sudden it went to my head.”

  “Head! You haven’t got a head, schusterkopf! Come on now, I’m asking you a simple question. You’re in debt. How much?”

  “What difference does it make? What’s the use of talking about my troubles? Let’s talk about old times, Solly.”

  Solly Schwartz snapped like a dog as he said: “Keep your old times. I’m finished with old times. I want new times. I was asking you a question. Don’t answer if you don’t want to. But listen, Srul, there’s a saying: the shoemaker should stick to his last.”

  “My last what?”

  “You should have stuck to your trade,” said Solly Schwartz.

  “You didn’t, did you?”

  “I’m different. You, you were born a schuster and you’ll die a schuster. So you ought to live a schuster. You ought to have taken my advice when I told you to get a machine and go in for the repairing on a proper scale. But no, the schlemihl has got to take a shop in such a back alley that even the policeman on the corner never heard of it. Who goes into a back alley to buy a pair of boots? … Mayfair! If you’d done what I told you you wouldn’t be chewing there like an ox, worrying your guts out about—how much is it?”