The Thousand Deaths of Mr Small

by Gerald Kersh

  CHAPTER XVII

  Dead loss, dead loss, dead loss! thinks Charles Small, gritting his teeth, wishing that the old fool had never been born both to beget and bedevil him. Loss, and loss, and loss, and loss—what was not loss? What had the old man to lose, what had he that was worth keeping? Furious, impotent little man! Pygmy!

  Pygmy? Now Charles Small remembers the legend of Hercules who wrestled with and slew the giant Antæus in the Land of the Little People. The earthbound Antæus, that monstrous protector of the pygmy ones, having died in the terrible grip of the deified Greek, found a champion—a pygmy no bigger than Hercules’ thumb, who challenged the conqueror to mortal combat with a sword no longer than a pin, which he dared to oppose to the Herculean brass-bound club that was cut from a whole oak tree. Hercules, amused, picked up his challenger and stood him on the palm of his hand, and looked with wonder at the tiny creature who stood there in an attitude of defiance urging him to come on and fight. At length he said: “You are a very little fellow, are you not? Tell me, how big is your soul?” And the pygmy replied, in a voice as high as the squeak of a bat: “My soul is as big as your own!” Whereupon Hercules, bowing respectfully, complimented the little hero on his valour, set him carefully down on the ground, and went on his way, marvelling.

  Now there was a pygmy. He had no fear. There was a man. He went out to die for the dead giant, tiny sword in tiny fist. The old man was no pygmy—he was nothing, nobody. Now in such circumstances what would I. Small have done? Having retired to a safe distance he would have thundered in a voice like a knife scratching a plate that Antæus was dead, times were bad, he did not know which way to turn; all the time twirling his microscopic moustache. Then, slinking home to his little house no bigger than half a coconut shell—and a leaky coconut shell at that—he would have taken by the neck some baby pygmy as big as a cockroach, struck it repeatedly and ineffectually with a blade of grass, squeaking: “Bleddy well take a bleddy lesson, loafer! No fighting!”—while his wife wailed: “Not on the head! Chastise him but for God’s sake not on the head!”

  Meanwhile the valiant pygmy would be going about his business, challenging giants, challenging the mighty, challenging the gods, undefeatable; and Mr. and Mrs. Small would sit down glumly to their evening meal of birdseed, or whatever it was, and worry each other about where the next meal was coming from. Later, perhaps, I. Small would take the diminutive Charles for a walk to look at the stupendous corpse of Antæus, and moralise. “You see, boychik? He could have been a big man, only he’s got to fight with every Tom Dick and Harry like a bleddy ruffian. Take a lesson!”

  These idle reflections amuse Charles Small so that he laughs a little through his teeth. But then that sourness comes up from his stomach into the back of his throat, where it burns; and anger, impotent anger, returns. He wants to throw something again; takes hold of a feather pillow and dashes it to the floor, where it falls with scarcely a sound, and this again infuriates him. If he had had his way at that moment that feather pillow would have shaken the house. Chimneys would have fallen, walls would have cracked, screaming mothers would have clutched howling children to their bosoms. But there is nothing but a muffled plop. It is in keeping, and he laughs again, but bitterly. And now he has nothing on which to rest his spinning head, so he must reach for the pillow and put it back again—but not before he has tyrannically punched it into shape.

  … Dead loss, dead loss, dead loss. Naturally, and Mrs. Small wept bitterly of course. So that was what he was; so that was what she was married to! They consulted estate agents and looked at advertisements and then, listening to the altercation, passers-by grew pale and hurried on, for it seemed that in Noblett Street at any moment blood must run like water. Suddenly I. Small put his foot down: he became pigheaded. He was determined, he was decided, once and for all, to take up his old trade. He was like rock. Nothing could move him. Words rebounded, as it were, like dried peas from his thick skull.

  “You had your said——”

  “—Had your say—had your say. Talk English!”

  “Say, schmay! You said your … your … say, schmay, pay! A first-class boot shop she wanted, all right, in Mayfair! So she got it. What bleddy marvels did you do miv——”

  “—With, not miv.”

  “Miv, schmiv—bleddy well listen to me!”

  “Srul! No dirty language in front of the children!”

  “Beggar the bleddy children, bless them!” roared I. Small, furiously beating the table with a newspaper. “Once and for all …”

  “Well, go on.”

  Then, needless to say, he had to think for a minute or two before he remembered what he had intended to say, so that she had a chance to say to the children:

  “Once a bootmaker, always a bootmaker. As long as I know. That’s what he is. Oh, I’m so ashamed, so ashamed!”

  “Repairs!” shouted I. Small. “High-class repairs! Sis my trade, my business! Mayfair they want! Mayfair, give them! Better I should took Solly’s advice, with the Machine! Enough!”

  “Solly. Solly. He’s here again with his Solly, that humpty-dumpty.”

  “So what’s the matter, what, miv a humpty-dumpty? Where would we be, where, without a humpty-dumpty?”

  “More shame for you!”

  “And now she’s got a new madness—a drapery shop she wants!”

  “Boots he wants to mend. That’s all he’s fit for.”

  Maddened with rage, I. Small tore the newspaper and screamed: “Fit for, fit for! All right, so that’s what I’m fit for! So that’s what I’ll do. Na! Not another word! Do you bleddy well hear? Not another word when you talk to me! Enough is enough, so be quiet!”

  She had prepared supper, some dish of fried fish, which she served at this point, putting down the plates with a great clatter, saying: “Go on, eat. I couldn’t touch a thing.”

  “She couldn’t touch a thing. All right then, so I can’t touch a thing,” said I. Small. Then he ate voraciously, looking furtively at his wife from time to time. She did not eat. Little Charles looked at them with trepidation until the old man, threatening to strike him with a soft roll, bellowed: “Bleddy well eat!”

  Mrs. Small would not touch a thing. She said she was choked. I. Small affected indifference, but his eyes were full of worry. “Go on, eat, let him eat it all up while he’s got it,” said Mrs. Small, “the business man!”

  “Millie, eat something,” the old man said.

  “I can’t. I’ve got a lump here,” said Mrs. Small, touching her chest.

  “Lump?” cried I. Small, alarmed.

  “A lump like a ball.”

  This took I. Small’s appetite away. A lump like a ball! While he was drinking his tea Mrs. Small said nothing but: “Don’t make so much noise—you’re not in Cracow now.”

  The old man started to shout: “What’s the bleddy matter with Cracow——” but stopped abruptly, so that he said: “What’s the bled?”

  “I haven’t the heart.”

  Later, when Charles Small went to the kitchen for a glass of water, he saw his mother surreptitiously eating a large piece of fish. She said: “I’m just tasting.”

  Back in the living-room I. Small, who was gloomily perusing the advertisements in the torn evening paper, said: “Millie, for God’s sake, eat. For strength!”

  “I’m choked,” she said.

  “Choke! Choke!” cried I. Small, twisting the newspaper. “She’s always choking! That’s how she gets her living, is it? Choking? By her, choking is a full-time job!”—Goodness knows where the old idiot had picked up that phrase, full-time job.—He went on, very earnest now. He even lowered his voice a couple of decibels, and poked at the arm of his chair with a shapeless forefinger instead of thumping the table with his foolish fist. He even addressed his wife directly instead of talking to the sideboard or the ceiling: “Millie, not another word. This is final, do you hear? No draperies, no schmaperies. Final! No more Mayfairs, no more Noblett Streets. Final! I should sell boots to stray cats
? Is that a full-time job? No more Noblett Streets, no more bleddy cats. I am the master here, did you heard?”

  “—Did you hear, not heard,” she said, “try to speak English. This isn’t Cracow.”

  Then, it goes without saying, the old idiot, who had almost achieved an air of mastery, went up in the air again. He lost his temper, his silly little temper. His voice became thunder, thunder that frightens only children; his eyes flashed lightning, sheet-lightning that is powerless to strike, and merely flickers meaningless threats over inaccessible horizons.

  “Cracow! Schmakow! So by her Samovarna is a place? Cracow isn’t good enough for her yet? Mayfair she wants better, eh? To tie herself up in a … a … a … bleddy sack miv ferschtinkener bleddy cats is by her a … a … a … full-time job, all right! Bootmaker isn’t good enough for her, the bleddy aristocrat! Shops, she wants! I swear by the children’s life——”

  “—Srul! Not by the children’s life!”

  “Beggar the bleddy children!” He raised his right hand in an awful gesture. “I swear by the children’s life, I swear by my life and yours too, by my mother, by my father, by … by … your bleddy mother, by your bleddy father, by your health I swear and the children’s health too! They should drop dead, I should be paralysed! High-class gentlemen’s boot repairs! Na! I swore!” He brought down his clenched right hand. It hit the rim of his saucer and catapulted the dregs of his tea into his face, so that he sat there, ludicrous, with tea-leaves in his fierce moustache and the cup in his lap.

  At this Charles Small, who had been listening with something like awe, burst out laughing. This, of course, was just what the old man needed. “He takes after his mother, the bleddy little murderer!” he said, in the voice of a hungry lion—and like a lion he sprang. A casual observer would have cried murder. Little Charles continued to giggle—he still remembers the curious pattern of tea-leaves on the old man’s face, and the dribble of warm tea that turned down one end of his moustache, so that this masculine attribute was suddenly anti-clockwise. Slapping him sharply on the cheek (“Not on the head!” cried Mrs. Small) he cried, in a voice like no other voice on earth or in hell: “To bed! No supper! To bed! Final!”

  Now where the devil had the old man picked up that word final? Probably from the Communist cobbler.

  So little Charles went to bed, still giggling. He listened. From below came noises reminiscent of a fight between an enraged hippopotamus and a screech-owl. The words were indistinguishable. He caught only two, three phrases: Nothing but my bleddy chains to lose…. And I swore by my mother’s life….

  “Your mother’s dead,” said the piercing voice of Mrs. Small: whereupon there was a thumping of tables and an incoherent bellow. A little later Mrs. Small came into his room with supper on a tray. She called him a bad boy; but obviously she could not bear to let him go to bed unfed. “Honour thy father and thy mother,” she said. “Have respect for your father, or you’ll get such a smacking!”

  Charles Small remembers that he ate with extraordinary appetite, and read an instalment of “The Adventures of Jack, Sam, and Pete” in The Boy’s Friend. He dozed, thinking of the gigantic negro. A stentorian voice jerked him, twitching like a hooked fish, out of the deep black waters of sleep. It said: “Mein mind is made up. Gents high-class repairs! I swore!” Then he slept deeply, as boys do.

  But he knew, in the back of his mind, that the old man would not have his way—would never, never have his way. He was (Charles Small still harks back to his ancient, lost histrionic ambition) a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

  And as for his mother, she was nothing but a hysterical bitch.

  Oh, when the maternal milk begins to curdle in his wretched stomach and the acid begins to bite, he is overcome by a most dreadful hatred for these two foolish people! But more hateful yet is an abominable nostalgia for these fools who thumbed him into the womb, dragged him out, and slapped his little bottom and sent him wailing into the world, into a life which they ruined; a life of which he is thoroughly sick and tired.

  God bless my soul! thinks Charles Small, wondering. Damn my eyes for a bloody fool—why I actually cried when they died!

  *

  And now, sneering at himself as he remembers, Charles Small discovers that his curled lip is somewhat tremulous; a lump in his stomach has crept up towards his throat, and he needs to blink away a mist. Fool! Who but a slave weeps over the carcass of a tyrant? And these were tyrants, insidious tyrants, tyrants of a most detestable kind. For instance: Genghis Khan, he was a tyrant—when his hordes hit the road, you resisted and died, or stayed and died, or you fled and were free to hate him. Good, kind, merciful, murderous, emotionless Emperor of All Men!—with him you knew where you were, whether you were dead or alive. He took your body, but left you your soul. He never tried to make you love him, much less pity him. His was the straight thrust, the swift arrow, the clean slash … cool iron, hit or miss. But these vile wretches!—They went, not for the throat, but the heart; what they call the Soul.

  So that now, with his belly full of sour milk, Charles Small lies, wrung like a wet rag—lie feels like a wet rag—wrung between loathing and pity, disgustedly dropping a tear for all he ever had.

  Had he the slightest desire to see the Old Tyrants alive? No. He wanted them to die, because he wanted to be free. They ate into him; they digested him … as he, through his stomach, is digesting himself. He hated them—oh; most bitterly!—for what they did to him, early and late. Their tyranny was from the very mouth of the womb, which is as the very mouth of hell.

  He loathes the memory of this ridiculous father and despicable mother. Still, in his loneliness, there come back strange remembrances…. There was a dreadful November morning when the carriages drove to East Ham, and they went through the iron gates of the cemetery and walked through avenues of bitter cold monuments to an oblong hole in the ground, the cold ground, and into this hole two men with ropes let down a box; and in this box lay all that was corruptible of Millie Small. All the men of the family were assembled, darkly dressed, dressed (the bloody hypocrites!) in formal suits. And he, Charles Small—dirtiest hypocrite of all!—swathed in the blackest black, was almost overcome by a mad desire to giggle. And then he saw the old man, stricken, overwhelmed, crushed. The prayer was said—that resonant prayer:

  Yisgadal Veyishkadash

  Schme Rabbo!

  —and the old ones plucked blades of grass, wizened frost-bitten grass, and threw them away, and let running water trickle over their fingers before they left the graveyard. The others seemed remarkably cheerful. Charles remembers that he was very annoyed at this. But on the other hand, you could not blame them. All said and done, what was his mother but a confounded nuisance to everyone with whom she came in contact—hysterical, cowardly, unstable, savage, weak, untruthful, malevolent. She blew hot and cold with the same breath. No doubt she loved her husband and her children; but her love was—sexlessly, of course—an impure love, curiously compounded of vanity, petty pride, hunger to possess, and fear of loss. It was a sort of jealousy—it was akin to hate. What were her virtues? Was she generous? She would give her last penny to a beggar in the street … but at home, if one asked her for a penny to buy chocolate, she would talk for half an hour about the value of a penny. You might say that after all it was only a penny, but then she would come back with: “If you wanted a piece of bread and was a penny short, would the baker say it’s only a penny?” In the end, of course, you would get your penny. But it felt heavy in your hand, and the chocolate tasted bitter; you ate it guiltily, without appetite, joylessly, thinking all the time of hard shifts and close scrapes, of hands beaded with soapsuds out of the sink, hastily wiped on an apron and fumbling at the catch of a purse, while through the musty house echoed the thudding of the old man’s hammer against the leather of dirty old boots. And while you so dolefully sucked your pitiful little bar of chocolate wishing you had bought marbles instead, some jolly beggar to whom she had graciously
given sixpence without argument was cheerfully knocking back a pint of wallop in the nearest pub.

  Charles Small wants to be sick. Once, for example, when the old man was hammering his guts out downstairs in Noblett Street, a flower-seller came to the door—a frightful figure of a man, more than six feet tall, with a red nose, a purple face, orange-coloured hair, yellow teeth, and a voice that sounded like a rasp upon leather. “Hoi!” he shouted, and the aspirate made the little shop smell like a beer house. He held out to Mrs. Small a horrible little pot of wilted chrysanthemums, and said: “’Ere y’are, lady, eighteenpence or one of your old man’s old coats.”

  Charles Small was brooding solemnly in a corner, because she had just scolded him for asking for sixpence to buy fireworks, for it was early November, the day before Guy Fawkes Day, when the meanest wretch in town lit a cracker or fired a squib in memory of Guido who tried to blow up Parliament. Charles had had a great desire to burn Guy Fawkes in effigy, dancing round a bonfire and singing:

  Guy, Guy, Guy

  Stick him up on high,

  Hang him on a lamp-post

  And, there let him die!

  but his mother had reasoned with him severely, telling him that fireworks were a waste of money. You spent a halfpenny for a squib, and where did it get you? Nowhere. One—two—three —it was all gone in smoke. And what was the use of wasting money on something for everyone else to see? For a halfpenny you could buy a roll of bread—seven rolls for threepence, fresh rolls. And to go and spend sixpence on squibs? Madness! In any case, they were dangerous. Charles pleaded that everybody let off fireworks over the Fifth of November:

  Please to remember

  The fifth of November

  Gunpowder, treason and shot.