The Thousand Deaths of Mr Small

by Gerald Kersh

  “That would depend——”

  “—Yes I know, that Would depend. Give me a straight answer. Which?”

  “Am I to understand, young man, that you want me to buy your tins? Are you trying to sell me the patent, or what?”

  “Answer my question first, Mr. Narwall, and we’ll talk about all that later on.”

  “It’s not a bad idea, I’ll go so far as to say that.”

  “Not a bad idea?” Solly Schwartz laughed. “It’s a revolution. Mr. Narwall, just now I asked you a question: which?”

  “Well … perhaps I might choose your can, if I was put to it, and had a fancy for novelties.”

  “If you would, wouldn’t all the customers in your forty-eight shops? Wouldn’t all the customers in everybody else’s shops? Answer me that, Mr. Narwall.”

  “Mr. Schwartz, I am an honest man, and I tell you here and now, frankly and openly, face to face, that it’s not a bad idea. But, as you said yourself, I’m only in a small way in business, so I couldn’t go to much. I might consider putting this out as a novelty. How much were you thinking of asking for the patent of this little novelty?”

  “Novelty? Don’t make me laugh, Mr. Narwall. Patent? When hair grows in the palm of my hand I’ll sell the patent. Who said anything about selling patents? What are you talking about?”

  Slowly turning the opened can between his flat, shiny palms, W. W. Narwall said: “I’ll tell you what, Mr. Schwartz. I’m busy for half an hour, and then I go home to my tea. Come home and join us—we have a good meat tea—and bring them samples with you, and we’ll talk the matter over. If you’d like to pass the time looking round the place, I’ll meet you in the front in twenty minutes to half an hour.”

  “Right you are, Mr. Narwall, I’ll be there on the dot.” Solly Schwartz repacked his case and left the office with a high-beating heart. For twenty minutes he limped about the premises, hopping from floor to floor. He stood for ten minutes in the warehouse. Ten strong men hurried in and out carrying sides of bacon, huge cheeses, boxes of butter, and packing-cases of tinned food, without perceptibly diminishing the stock. Here was wealth indeed. But the jam-boilery was contemptible; the cannery was so small that two men, three boys, and six sickly-looking label-sticking girls could run it; and as for the pickle department, it made Solly Schwartz laugh. Three strapping young women, their sleeves rolled up to the shoulders, perspiring copiously, stooped over tubs vigorously mixing cucumber, cauliflower and onion in a mustard sauce. Four little girls were filling square-faced jars with the mixture before putting them along the bench to a middle-aged woman who closed them with a tin cap. Below her sat two girls who pasted on the labels, and pushed the jars within reach of a young man in a flannel shirt who picked them up four at a time and banged them down into boxes, two dozen jars to a box. After that a man with a grey moustache nailed the boxes down and put them on a little trolley. The pickle-mixers, in particular, fascinated Solly Schwartz; they were yellow with mustard sauce from head to foot. He attracted the attention of the foreman by poking him in the back with his stick. And, jerking his head at the mixers, said, for the sake of talking: “That’s a dirty job.”

  “Somebody’s got to do ’t, or ’ow would yow get yowr pickles for your tea?”

  “What do you put in that yellow stuff?”

  “Mustard, vinegar, and one or two other things.”

  “Why don’t you stir ’em up with some sort of big wooden spoon?”

  “Too slow that way. Yow’d get tired in an hour mixing wi’ a spoon. Besoides they work better boi ’and. It keeps their skin whoite, and burns all the ’air off their arms.”

  Then Solly Schwartz went to meet W. W. Narwall at the front entrance. The little man was sitting in an old-fashioned barouche, which he must have impounded from some shabby-genteel bankrupt creditor. The coachman, in a dark grey brass-buttoned livery coat that was far too large for him, brooded over the reins and glowered at a bony old grey mare which appeared to rely for support upon the shafts.

  “A nice turn-out,” said Solly Schwartz, when he was seated.

  Narwall looked at him suspiciously and said: “It’s good enough for me. I like it. Them as don’t can lump it…. Hoi there—what are you waiting for? Christmas?”

  Notorious for their frugality, and proud of that notoriety, the Narwalls made a boast of the fact that they did not live in Woody Dell, but were content with an eight-roomed red-brick detached house in the quietest part of the dull and sullen town of Slupworth. They rejoiced in their parsimony. Hodd kept, fed, and paid wages to five servants; Dong had six, including a butler. The Narwalls employed only two, a man and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. Prince. Mr. Prince was coachman, odd-job-man, and gardener. Mrs. Prince did the cleaning and helped with the cooking. Also, she sewed and darned and mended. The Hodds and the Dongs looked down their noses at the Narwalls, but the Narwalls turned their noses up at the Dongs and the Hodds—but not in the open, because Charlotte Narwall, the Jezebel, was a dangerous woman to have for an enemy. She had a forked tongue and poisoned fangs. She was patient and malevolent. For years she could be still, coldly watchful like a snake on a rock, waiting for you to come within her range; and then she would strike. Then, God help you.

  It was Jezebel who drove the Dongs out of Slupworth. The Dongs lived in style, with a butler, which was sensational, and a voluptuous Belgian cook—a plump woman of thirty-five with a china-white skin and bright red hair. Her name was Suzanne. She slept in a room on the third floor. Soon after she arrived Mr. Dong developed insomnia. His wife observed that, as soon as she breathed as if she were asleep, her husband would slide out of bed and creep away. He would be absent for half an hour, even an hour, and when she asked him where he had been he said: “Oh, I went to get a drink of water,” or “Oh, I felt stuffy and went to get a breath of air.” She said nothing, but noticed that he was always loitering about the kitchen. On one occasion she saw him pat Suzanne’s buttocks. He said that he was killing a fly.

  Suzanne was constantly complaining that she wanted certain rare herbs, the lack of which cramped her style and spoiled her best efforts. So one day, when Mr. Dong was at the Works, his wife gave Suzanne a little money and told her to go to London and buy what she wanted, adding that there was no need for her to return until the following day. She went gladly. Mr. and Mrs. Dong went to bed as usual at eleven o’clock. At one o’clock he whispered: “Are you awake, dear?” She snored, her eyes open in the dark. Then inch by inch Mr. Dong got out of bed and padded out of the room. Their bedroom had two doors. As soon as her husband was gone Mrs. Dong, who was light on her feet in spite of her size, opened the other door, ran upstairs to Suzanne’s room, and leapt into bed. Soon, as she had anticipated, the door opened and closed silently, and a heavy man threw himself upon her. A little while later, when he had rolled away and was lying, relaxed, beside her, she struck a match and lit a candle, saying: “Aha, Mister Dong, I don’t suppose you expected to find me here!”

  “No, Mrs. Dong,” said the butler.

  Now this was almost certainly a product of Mrs. Narwall’s malevolent imagination, but the story went around Slupworth. Dong discharged the butler, kicked out the cook, upbraided his wife, and even went so far as to beat the gardener. But in the end they had to go and live elsewhere. They were laughed out of Slupworth.

  Mrs. Narwall, the Jezebel, would stop at nothing. She was bitterly hated, for her cold avarice, her indifference to the world, her remarkable height, and her beauty. She was the most beautiful woman in the town—even in the county. Strangers visiting Slupworth caught their breath when they saw her; one of them, a journalist, said that it was like finding “a marble masterpiece in a midden.” That was well said. Marble was the word for Jezebel: you felt that if you took her in your arms she would take all the warmth out of you and leave you nothing but a chill; that nothing but a steel chisel could make an impression on her. She might break, but she could never bend. Everybody wondered how Willie Narwall had managed to get her with child: thin
king of this, one imagined a demented shrimp dancing about on a Greek statue, for she was indeed statuesque and beautiful in the noblest and boldest Greek style. Beautiful, but hard, cold, and unyielding; beautiful in a stony, sinister way. Imagine Medusa, whose direct glance could petrify, with her snakes parted in the middle and brushed back and tied into an immense knot on her neck; skimpily dressed in sober worsted, with no ornament but a golden wedding ring that was priced at twenty-five shillings and bought after much haggling for twenty-three-and-six. That was Mrs. Narwall, the Jezebel. She was feared, not only because of what she could say, but because she could suck the strength out of people. Even in the old days when they had the little general shop in Paradise Lane, this vampirish quality of hers was remarked. A workman with a plausible and true story went to the shop to ask for five shillingsworth of goods on credit. He had been disabled for a month by a broken ankle, but now, being sound again and, as a skilled man, confident of getting back his old job or finding another, walked jauntily into Narwall’s … and came out with a paper of salt which he had bought with his last penny. He said to his wife: “Oi don’t know what it is, lass, but that Jezebel gives yow one look and then everything yow meant to say goes to jelly and won’t come out.”

  She had two daughters. The elder, Sybil, about whose true parentage there had been so much whispering, resembled the Jezebel. She was nearly thirteen years old. The Baby, as they called her, although she was five years old, was called Ivy, and speaking of her to a friend the servant said: “She’s a little loov. Quoiet as a blessed mouse, bless ’er ’eart, sucking ’er little dummy and playing wi’ ’er little rattle the livelong day. She’s such a little pretty she puts yow in moind o’ one o’ them dolls. You know, Mrs. ’Ood—when yow lay ’em down they close their oiyes and when yow pick ’em up they open ’em again. Oi can’t believe she was muthered boi that black bitch, Mrs. ’Ood. But yow should know.”

  Mrs. Hood, who was the cheapest midwife in town, and had therefore been retained—not without haggling—for the Jezebel’s lying-in, said: “It’s ’ers all roight. Oh, it’s ’ers. Oi didn’t say ’is—Oi said ’ers. Never will Oi forget it to the longest day Oi live, Mary, moy dear. She loy there loike a dummy—not so much as a whisper—and when Oi asked ’er if she was bad all she said was: ‘Git on wi’ it, and ’old yowr tongue.’ Eh, she’s a hard ’un! She was in labour from seven in t’morning till two in t’afternoon, and never a word, not a croy. Eh, she’s a proud one! Only when t’little darling’s ’ead was coming out she bit ’er lip roight through, and yow can see t’marks to this day. And when Oi told ’er: ‘Mrs. Narwall, mum, yow got a loovly little girl’ she says: ‘Wrap ’er oop, put ’er down, ’ave yowr tea, get yowr pay, and go away. And don’t fuss me, Oi want to go to sleep.’

  “Yow may well say that, Mary. As yow very well know,” said Mrs. Hood, in a low voice, “Oi’ve ’elped certain parties out o’ trooble once or twoice, to obloige friends, risking moy liberty, and Oi’ve known certain parties croy their oiyes out over unborn things that wasn’t aloive or dead——

  Mary wiped her eyes.

  “—And all she does wi’ that pretty little doll is shoov ’er breast into its mouth and say ‘Go on, eat’ and drop off to sleep. Oi stayed three hours. Oi was froightened she moight roll over, that great loomp, in ’er sleep, an’ overlay t’little darling. But she slept loike nothing ’ad ’appened. That’s ’er sort. Unnatural.” Grudgingly, but with something like admiration, the midwife added: “’Er lip was swoled loike a sausage in a pan when yow’ve pronged it wi’ a fork, where she bit it. But never a croy. Never so much as a moan…. And when Oi went to ’im to draw what was due to me, ’e knocked off eighteenpence for meals eaten in t’ouse. Said arrangement didn’t provoide for board. Eh well, that’s the way to get rich, Mary.”

  “Oi druther be poor.”

  *

  But Solly Schwartz, if uninspired by the Love that casts out Fear, was possessed by the Infatuation that casts out Doubt. He had faith in his gorgeously-labelled cylinders full of nothing. When Mr. Narwall introduced him to his wife, the Jezebel, Solly Schwartz gave her one quick sidelong glance and then, impervious to her Gorgon’s eyes, began to talk. His eager earnestness, his urgent passion, and his unshakeable conviction must have been something like that of the bold apostle Paul when he came into the presence of Cæsar. He snapped open the clips of his suitcase, kicked back the lid with his iron foot, banged down tins, and declaimed. Standing close behind him, W. W. Narwall aimed enquiring gestures at his wife. Her beautiful face was like stone. At last, when Solly Schwartz had to pause for breath, she said: “Tea’s brewed. Sit down.”

  “There’s no law to force you to listen,” said Solly Schwartz, throwing his tins back into his case and closing it, “so all right, let’s have tea.”

  When all the ham and bread-and-butter was eaten, and all the tea was drunk, and Mr. and Mrs. Narwall had exchanged certain winks, nods, and little grimaces, the Jezebel toyed with a Pelly-Can and said: “It might suit. What do you want for it?”

  Then Solly Schwartz looked straight into her terrifying eyes and said: “Listen, Mrs. Narwall. I told your husband why I came here to you instead of going to one of the big firms. Now listen. You’ve got shops. Most people would be glad of one of them, let alone forty-eight. And you’ve got a little tin-pot cannery, putting up a few stinking—excuse my language—peas. Now with a tin like mine, a label like mine, and advertising, my God——”

  “—In this house we do not take the name of the Lord in vain,” said W. W. Narwall.

  “Never mind the Lord, never mind in vain! Do you want me to go on? If not, say so.”

  “Go on,” said the Jezebel.

  “With this can, this label, proper advertising, every shop in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales will have to put what you turn out on their shelves—peas, tomatoes, soup—what I’ve got here is worth millions. Not thousands, but millions; and you’re asking me what I want for it! I’ll tell you here and I’ll tell you now if you offered ten thousand pounds spot cash for this tin I’d laugh right in your face.”

  “Come to the point,” said the Jezebel, coldly. “We asked you a simple question. Give us a simple answer. What do you want for it?” Her eyes would have frozen and her tone quelled another man.

  But Solly Schwartz was throwing fire against her ice and, with the vehement rat-at-at-at-at of his impassioned talk, drilling the marble, said: “Let’s not waste your time and mine, Mrs. Narwall. You’re quite right, a simple question wants a simple answer. I’ll tell you what I want for this can, straightforward without beating about the bush, and this is a case of take it or leave it, because I won’t bate an inch. This tin is worth God knows how much. I’ll invest it in your firm.”

  “And what do you expect to make out of it?” asked W. W. Narwall.

  “That’s up to you and me, Mr. Narwall—especially it’s up to me, see? Because you’ll put up the cannery and I’ll run it and manage all the advertising. And I want half the clear profit from the cannery, and a director’s fee, and expenses. I want to be in charge of the travellers—I’ll send travellers all over the country, and I swear by God that in twelve months I’ll have this tin on every shelf in every grocer’s shop in the country—and not only with peas in it, either. Beans, carrots, stew, a dozen different sorts of soup, pears, strawberries, raspberries, apricots, everything! I’ll put in my tin and my work on the canning side. You put in the factory and the expenses. And as sure as I sit here, in three years’ time we’ll be making millions. Well, what do you say?”

  “These tins of yours: won’t they cost a terrible lot to manufacture?” asked the Jezebel.

  “Certainly,” snapped Solly Schwartz, “if you make them in dirty little thousands and piddling little tens of thousands. But I’m thinking in millions and millions, and you know very well that the more you make of a thing, the less it costs. But anyway, there’s a way over that. Pack two ounces less in the tin. If you’ve been tinning fourteen ounces
of peas, tin twelve ounces instead. Like that, on, say, ten thousand tins of peas you’ve got sixteen hundred and fifty extra tins, and you’re already making up what you’ve put out. And on top of it all you’ve got the advantage over the other manufacturers—you’ve got the Pelly-Can, they haven’t. And you’ve got Solly Schwartz. So there it is: my salary to be agreed upon, expenses at my discretion, and we go half-and-half in the profits. Think it over, but don’t think too long, because I’ve got to go back to London to-morrow. I’ll leave you now and come back at nine in the morning. Thanks for the tea. That was a very nice bit of ham—I’d like to buy one to take home with me. Well, I’ll wish you good-evening now, and see you to-morrow.”

  When he was gone W. W. Narwall said: “If you ask me——”

  “—If pigs had wings they’d fly. I don’t ask you,” said the Jezebel, and sat thinking until, ten minutes later, her husband found courage to ask how Solly Schwartz’s proposition struck her. Then, looking at him with tired disdain, she said: “We’ll do it, Willie.”

  “It’ll run into thousands, Charlotte; it’s a terrible risk.”

  “You always were a niddering little coward, Willie. We do it, and that’s flat.”

  “But——”

  “—Don’t argue with me, Willie, you’re wrong.”

  Her husband said: “Well, you’re generally in the right, Charlotte,” whereupon she nodded stiffly and hurried to the kitchen, for she had just remembered that she had forgotten to lock up the bread bin and the meat safe.

  So it came to pass that W. W. Narwall threw capital into a cannery. The company was registered as Narwall & Schwartz Ltd. And so Solly Schwartz could tell I. Small in Appenrodt’s that he was going to put the whole world in a tin can; and was able, later, to give that weak, bewildered man the two hundred pounds with which he paid his debts, saved his face, and withdrew from Noblett Street, Mayfair, in good order after having sold off the stock at a dead loss.