The Thousand Deaths of Mr Small

by Gerald Kersh

  Lumpitt paused, and Solly Schwartz, feeling that he was expected to say something, said: “You don’t mean to say!”

  “Yes, I do mean to say,” said Lumpitt, doggedly. “Naturally, I was going to tell him to go to Hull and Halifax. But then the wife pinched my arm—poor lass, she was worried out of her life—and cut in first and said: ‘All right, Mr. Narwall.’ Naturally, she was right. What else was there to do? I didn’t have enough to start again on my own, and otherwise it would have meant hunting about for a crib, and eating up the little bit that was left. So I humbled myself. And I said: ‘All right, but I if work for you for mercy’s sake don’t let it be in Slupworth where I’ve been my own master all my life. Send me somewhere else.’ Then he said: ‘All right, Lumpitt, I will do what you ask since it means so much to you, because as a matter of principle I have always returned good for evil.’ And I actually said: ‘Thank you very much;’ but as soon as he was gone I ran after Phyllis into the shop-parlour and pushed my face into her lap and cried like a baby. And here I am, and that’s all about it. So now you know——”

  “—Yes, but when did he start canning peas?”

  “Eh? Oh, I don’t know. He got hold of it somehow or other, don’t you worry. You know the saying, We eat what we can and what we can’t we can? That’s Narwall for you, all over. Nobody knows the ins and outs of Narwall’s business.”

  “And there you are,” said Solly Schwartz, shaking his head sadly. “And I wouldn’t mind betting that he’s worth thousands.”

  “Thousands? Hundreds of thousands!”

  “Living like a lord in Park Lane, the dirty dog I bet you. Eh?”

  “Him? Oh no. You won’t catch him living in no Park Lane. He won’t leave Slupworth, where the factory is.”

  “I suppose he’s got his wife and family there?”

  “That’s right,” said Mr. Lumpitt gloomily.

  “If you’ll excuse the expression, he sounds like a proper bastard,” said Solly Schwartz, “a real swine.”

  “His wife is fifty thousand million times worse, I can tell you for a fact.”

  “My word! She must be a tartar! I’d hate to come up against her.”

  “Think yourself lucky you never have. She’s the wickedest woman in the world. Her name is Charlotte, but everybody calls her Jezebel. Oh, what a cow!”

  “It says on the label, W. W. Narwall,” said Solly Schwartz. “What does the W. W. stand for?”

  “William Wilberforce—you know, the man that freed the slaves. And there’s another good joke for you. All this is between you, me, and the gatepost, you know?”

  “It stands to reason, Mr. Lumpitt. But it does a man good, it eases his heart, to have a chat once in a while, doesn’t it? It eases his nerves, I always think. And you’re a bundle of nerves, aren’t you? Why don’t you let me take you out one of these nights, to the West End, just to get your mind off things; because your work is brain work, Mr. Lumpitt.”

  “I’m a married man, sir.”

  “Yes, but a change is as good as a rest. I shouldn’t be surprised if you’re irritable when you get home after your hard day’s work.”

  “A man does get over-tired, although God knows I don’t mean any harm when I drop a hard word here or there.”

  “And it’s all the fault of W. W. Narwall, the swine. Well, I’ll never buy another tin of his stuff as long as I live, and that’s flat.”

  “Hey, just a minute, Mr. Schwartz—remember, what I said was between you and me and the gatepost—I’ve got my living to make, and the more I push——”

  “—I was going to say, Mr. Lumpitt, that I’ll never buy another tin of his stuff again except from you.”

  *

  Solly Schwartz left the shop, exultant, saying to himself: Good. That’s what I wanted to know. W. W. Narwall That’s the man for me—a pig, a glutton, a crocodile; always hungry, never satisfied; a fresser-up of everything. The biggest firms are too big. They think they’ve got all they want. They think they don’t need to fight … as yet. If I go to one of them—me, a nobody—they’ll give me a polite kick in the bum. Narwall. Give me Narwall!

  He might have ridden in an omnibus, or a cab, but he preferred to walk: thus he defied his deformity. In three-quarters of an hour he was in Frith Street in Soho, kicking open the shop door of a metal-worker named Anselmi, a withered, leathery, tanned Italian who made cooking pots for restaurateurs—copper saucepans, frying-pans, stockpots, fish-kettles; all elegantly finished, brilliantly polished, and beautifully tinned. He looked as if he had made himself—dull hammered copper head and tin moustache.

  “Anselmi,” said Solly Schwartz, “I’ve got a job for you.”

  “Please, please!”

  “Do you see this?”

  Anselmi took Goodridge’s self-opening can in his hard, dry hand, and shook his head, saying: “What you call-a dis?”

  “Never mind. What I want you to do is, make me some copies of it. Oh it’s all right, I know you don’t make tin cans, Anselmi, but this is a special thing, see? It’s an invention, do you follow me? Look—this is the diagram. The tin is nothing, do you see? The thing is, this little business up here with the wheel. Do you grasp the idea, Anselmi? It opens itself. Does it mean anything to you?”

  “Clever!” cried Anselmi, looking at the diagram. “You think-a this?”

  “Don’t worry about that. What I want to know is, can you make me a few samples?”

  “Sure, certainly, but-a what for? Better get a tin”—Anselmi, glancing at his polished copper pots, twitched a contemptuous lip—“and make only the top.”

  “You’re quite right. But can you do it? I mean, this wheel-thing, and the way it goes round?”

  “You make-a this?”

  “Answer my question.”

  “Sure, I can make. You bring-a dem tins I make-a top. Howa many you want?”

  “Two dozen,” said Solly Schwartz. “How much are you going to charge me?”

  “Five-a shilling each.”

  At this Solly Schwartz became deathly pale and said: “What the hell are you talking about? What, five shillings? How, five shillings? Are you trying to make a fool of me?”—for a great dread had come down upon him—“Do you mean to say it’d cost five shillings to make a top for a fourpenny tin of peas?”

  “No, to you, four-and-sixpence,” said Anselmi patiently; and when Solly Schwartz stared at him with sick horror he explained, gently, with infinite patience: “Now look, look-a this saucepan. You want to buy-a this saucepan, it’ll gonna cost you twenty-five shilling. You can go around a corner to a shop and buy a saucepan to hold so many pints, for a shilling, two shilling. Why? In-a first place is this—look, feel-a weight—copper, solid! And——”

  “—To hell with your bloody copper!” cried Solly Schwartz, making harsh music with his stick upon the frame of his iron foot, “who the hell cares about copper? I don’t give a bugger for copper! I’m talking about tin cans, you … you …”

  “Mistro please, permit-a me a-finish. This good solid copper cost-a me a few shilling. But-a between the copper and this”—he struck the saucepan with his dry knuckles so that it rang like a bell—“is this!” He held up his gnarled right hand. “It is this, and the time of my life, that cost-a twenty-five shilling. But my saucepan, your children’s children they’ll-a use it. It-a last a hundred-a years, because——”

  “—Who the hell wants a saucepan to last a hundred years? Who the hell cares about children’s children? Let ’em buy their own damned saucepans! Where do you think it’ll get you? Making things to last a hundred years? Something to be used once, and then thrown away, that’s the idea! Something you can keep on selling and selling and selling, day and night. Take your bloody saucepan away and start talking sense for a change.”

  Anselmi patted the shining saucepan in a friendly, intimate way, and put it down, saying: “I was-a saying: I make this-a tin, it take-a time. That-a worth four, five shilling. In a factory, a thing comes down like”—he stamped on t
he floor three times—“and it’s-a done for a farthing. Use it, throw it away.”

  “Sorry, I misunderstood,” said Solly Schwartz, secretly ashamed. “For a minute I thought you meant to say that tin would cost five shillings apiece to manufacture.”

  “Oh no,” said Anselmi, laughing. “To make-a by machine, nothing. By hand, for you, well, four-a shillings.”

  “Right. I’ll bring you a dozen and a half tins to get to work on. Do you want the model or the diagram to work with?”

  “Model, please.”

  “All right. Oh, by the way, don’t try anything clever, you know, because the patent’s applied for, and if you want to be smart there’ll be trouble.”

  Anselmi laughed with a sort of kindly contempt, flipping the tin can with a horny forefinger. “Use it once, throw it away,” he said; and picked up the saucepan again, pointing to a stamped inscription below the rivets of the handle. “You see there? G. L. Anselmi. In a hundred-a years somebody she’ll make a minestrone with this, and she’ll read my name and say: ‘This-a man Anselmi, that was a good-a workman. Then she clean it, a-polish it, hang ’im up on a nail and sit and look at ’im because the more-a you use ’im the better she shine. Solid-a copper in ’ouse, mister, is better an-agold. A good-a woman, she’s proud of ’im. She light a lamp, there ’e is—one two three four five six, all in a row. ‘Anselmi done it!’ she says.”

  “But what difference could it make to you?”

  “Me la rideró nella tomba.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I laugh in my grave.”

  *

  Solly Schwartz hurried to the nearest branch of the Provincial Stores and astounded a salesman by ordering eighteen tin of peas—six of Narwall’s, and four each of three other popular brands. He put down his money, took his change, and picked up the thirty-pound parcel as if it weighed no more than a box of matches. Then he went to Vespasiano’s café in Frith Street to restore his energy with coffee and cake, and to think a little. Something was working in his head, fermenting like a distiller’s mash, and he beat a tune with a fork on his teeth while he wondered what that something was. He knew that it had to do with W. W. Narwall, so he tore open a corner of his parcel and pulled out one of Narwall’s cans of peas; and then he knew. He turned the can in his hands, looking at it with distaste, saying to himself: I can well imagine Narwall having to push this muck. If he didn’t have forty-eight counters to push it over, it’d stick on the shelves and rot. A starving man wouldn’t look twice at it.

  It was obvious that W. W. Narwall had exercised the strictest economy in his packaging. Solly Schwartz with his quick imagination, could see the old man (whom he visualised as something like a locust) standing over some provincial printer and haggling, niggling, nattering, droning on and on, rubbing his back legs together to make a chirping noise while he ate away the morale of his adversary. Looking at that label, Solly Schwartz felt that he was looking into the mind of W. W. Narwall. It was cheap, indescribably mean. This is what it conveyed: that Narwall had begrudged every inch of paper and every drop of ink—even in printing his own name—the typography was reminiscent of the handwriting of a miser who carefully writes small to save paper. As for the paper, its very colour was repulsive—the colour of German mustard with a tinge of green; evidently some wretched job-lot, otherwise unusable, disposed of with a gasp of relief. Solly Schwartz reasoned: Now if you stick a label on something, what do you stick that label on for? To hit the eye, to draw attention. Otherwise, why waste money on labels? Right. This label of Narwall’s—does it draw attention? Yes, it draws attention like dog-shit on the pavement draws attention—just long enough so you can avoid it—that filthy colour! And that’s a nice thing to stick on a shelf in a grocer’s shop. A part from the new tin, what that bloody fool wants is a new label. If you’re selling peas you don’t want to make me think of lavatories. If I’m buying peas I am thinking of peas—you crack a pod and out come nice shiny fresh green peas. In your mind there’s a picture. What you say doesn’t matter provided you’ve got a nice picture. A label, a label, a label! The schlemihls—they’d pay sixpence for a tin of dish-water if you put a pretty label on it and called it Nourishing Soup….

  And just as he finished saying this to himself, someone tapped him on the shoulder and said: “Hello, you.”

  Solly Schwartz looked up and then said: “Mr. Abelard—that’s a funny thing, I was just thinking about you.”

  In the half second between the touch and the recognition, Solly Schwartz had conceived another idea.

  Abel Abelard was an artist whom Solly Schwartz had got acquainted with one night when, having prowled the streets and poked his great beak of a nose into many sinister, dimly-lit doorways, he had stopped at Vespasiano’s for something to eat and drink, and—always insatiably curious—corkscrewed himself into a little group of men and women, unconventionally dressed, who were talking at the top of their voices about things he did not understand and men he had never heard of…. Manet, Monet, Pissarro, Sickert. Here, he felt, was another corner of the sky, something more to learn. It was impossible to know too much. He waited for a loop-hole of silence, and squeezed himself into it, saying: “I beg your pardon, ladies and gentlemen, but if you will pardon the intrusion, I heard you mention a certain name just now. Unless my ears deceive me, I believe I heard that gentleman over there mention the name of Rubens.”

  “That’s right,” said a fat, bearded man in a nankeen jacket.

  “Is he by any chance any relation of Mr. Max Rubens in the New Road?”

  He knew that he was talking nonsense, and that he was exposing himself as pitiably ignorant; but he knew that to the ignorant much is told. He was not a bit offended by the roar of laughter that followed. They made room for him and invited him to sit at their table, where, for two hours, they pitilessly made fun of him:

  “… Rubens of the New Road is a builder. The one I was talking about was a decorator.”

  “… You don’t, by any chance, happen to know a bloke called Theotocopuli, the one they call El Greco or The Greek?”

  “… Darling, did you hear that? He says he knows a man called The Greek who opened a restaurant in Dalston—isn’t he priceless?”

  “… By the way, speaking of Manet, have you any Monet? We could do with a cup of coffee.”

  He listened to it all, smiling, and ordered coffee and pastries for the company; after which they forgot him. But he kept his seat at their table and went on listening until the party broke up. Then a secretive-looking young man took him aside and said: “I say, I don’t suppose you could manage to lend me half a crown, by any chance?”

  Solly Schwartz looked at him quizzically, and saw a youthful, nervous face, with a tremulous chin scantily covered by a thin, threadbare beard. “Right you are then, catch hold,” he said, handing over half a crown.

  “I’m ever so much obliged. I say, you know we didn’t mean any harm, ragging you and all that? … I suppose you do know that we were ragging you, or don’t you? By the way, my name’s Abel Abelard.”

  “Good-night all,” said Solly Schwartz, and limped away, leaving behind him an uneasy doubt as to who had made a fool of whom. He had a rare knack of making people feel uneasy, that hunchback. Walking home, he thought: Six coffees with cream. Twelve ba-bas. Plus half a crown. They got a coffee and a cake and a laugh from me. We’ll see who comes out winning.

  Now, smiling at Abel Abelard he said: “Sit down, I want to talk to you.”

  “What about?” asked Abelard, nervously fumbling at his light beard.

  “Have some coffee.”

  “Well, yes, if you like.”

  “A bit of cake?”

  “Well, I don’t mind if I do.”

  “Or perhaps you’d like something more substantial—ham and egg, egg and bacon?”

  “I wouldn’t say no.”

  “Cigarette? Have a cigarette—they’re hand-made.”

  “Oh thanks awfully. You’re ever so kind. I say, loo
k here, I don’t suppose by any chance you’d care to lend me a pound until … until next …”

  “That’s right. How did you guess?”

  “You didn’t mind my asking, I hope?” asked Abel Abelard.

  “No harm in trying,” said Solly Schwartz, jovially. “If it works once in ten times it still shows a profit.”

  While Abel Abelard was eating his ham and eggs Solly Schwartz said: “I’ll tell you what, though—I could put a little bit of work your way. You are an artist, aren’t you? How would you like to paint me up two or three samples for labels?”

  “Labels? What sort of labels?” asked the painter, who was engaged on a canvas sixteen feet long and eight feet wide depicting the destruction of the Great Library at Alexandria. “Labels?” He made, with his forefingers and thumbs, a tiny oblong.

  “Look,” said Solly Schwartz, pushing the tin of peas across the table. “You see the label on this here tin.”

  “I say, isn’t it horrid?”

  “That’s right. Now what I want you to do is paint me a label with peas on it. Do you follow me? Peas. Garden peas.” Solly Schwartz did not know the difference between a Garden pea and a Common pea—neither does anyone else—but he said it again: “Garden peas. Now I want you to paint me up this label so that when I look at it, it should make my mouth water. Listen. At home, you’ve helped your mother to shell peas, haven’t you?” Abel Abelard had not, but he nodded, and Solly Schwartz went on: “You’ve sat there in the kitchen. It’s Saturday. Your mother has bought half a boiling fowl. She’s going to make a lovely chicken soup with farfel and a few fresh green peas in it before the boiled chicken. Eh?”—At the thought of this Solly Schwartz’s mouth watered and he paused to order ham and eggs. “Your mother says to you, whatever your name is: ‘Make yourself useful, do the peas.’ So you sit down with a basin and you break open those pods, and with your ringer you scrape out all those nice cold peas; and when your mother isn’t looking you eat one or two, and they taste … they taste … they taste of green. Well, that’s how I want this label: it’s got to taste of green peas. I want pods full of peas, a little basin full of peas straight out of them pods, and some pods just opened like your mother had just poked her finger into them, full of peas. I want them shiny-glossy peas. Up here, on top, I want W. W. Narwall’s Fresh Garden Peas in nice clear letters, but not to drown those peas. Do you understand? A label like this to go round a tin like this. Do you see? Tell me, yes or no!” cried Solly Schwartz, passionately