The Thousand Deaths of Mr Small

by Gerald Kersh

  Then Charles Small knew that he was lost. He knew, then, that he was damned. As soon as the train started to move Ivy sighed with relief and grew cheerful. She had not seen what he had seen. She said: “Charley darling, you’re white as a sheet. Aren’t you well? … South Africa, only think! Isn’t it going to be nice!”

  Charles Small replied: “Yes, Ivy.”

  Hearing the words, South Africa, the old gentleman looked up from his Morning Post and said: “Are you young people off to South Africa?”

  Charles Small said: “Yes.”

  “Oh yes,” said Ivy.

  “A land of opportunity,” said the old gentleman. “Lived there most of my life, eighty years. Knew some of the old voortrekkers that were with Piet Retief, who went up against Dingaan. Met Cetewayo. Solly Joel, Beit, Rhodes, all the rest of them—I knew ’em like the back of my hand. I’m an old man now, young feller, but if I was your age I’d be off like you, God bless you. I think I’d be off to Mashonaland—unbroken territory, almost. But I’m too old—eighty-six. Living like a cabbage with my granddaughter in Sealford. Not a burden—made my whack—an old cabbage. Every time I cough their eyes light up. But there’s life in the old dog yet, and they’ll never see what I saw … and I’ll never see what you’re going to see, you lucky young feller! I was with Kitchener in the Sudan. Kruger, Delarey—I knew ’em all. Oh, you lucky people!”

  Charles Small could think of nothing better to do than to offer the old gentleman a sweet, which he frowned at through his glasses, wrinkling the dry skin at the corners of his blinking eyes, and refused with a brusque shake of the head. Charles Small sat with a tight throat while the old gentleman rustled his newspaper back into position and Ivy sat, rapt, too full of emotion to talk.

  The train ran slow and came to a stop. It was only some petty junction, but bitter fear took hold of the heart and soul of Charles Small, and he looked out of the window, half-expecting to see Mrs. Narwall coming at him with her umbrella and (which was worse) her cold and terrible face. But the engine seemed to cough and sneeze and hiccough, and the train jolted on again. Then, even while Ivy was holding his hand, he knew that he was going to desert and betray her, and knew himself for what he was

  The old man said: “I used to be like you, once upon a time, young man—all hot sand and ginger, full of youth, full of courage. I regret nothing, but I envy you. Still, as the poet says: ‘I paid the price for what I bought, nor never grutched the price I paid, But sat in clink without my boots, admirin’ ’ow the world was made.’ I don’t lack the heart, mind you—only your health and strength, like I had when I fought the Zulus; and I was there with an assegai in my leg when that young French prince went down. Oh dear, oh dear, God bless you and your young wife, and if ever you pass through Bulawayo, ask for Van Dongen—the Christian name is Aloysius—and say you know Old Farrow. There will always be a knife and fork for you, and good advice too, because Aloysius knows the country as well as I know …”

  The train was slowing to a standstill. The old man sighed, put his newspaper in his pocket, took hold of his stick, and said: “It isn’t that I want the spirit—only your youth, my dear boy. Bless you, you go and find new worlds. And God bless you too, my dear”—he squeezed Ivy’s hand—“if you pass through Bulawayo tell Mrs. Van Dongen that I remember her, and I hope she remembers me. Here I am, and there’s Mary on the platform. Thanks for your courage. Africa, eh? Here, this is from Africa. Take it. Good-bye, and good luck.”

  The old man pulled out of his tie a pin, the head of which was a little nugget of pure gold, and gave it to Charles Small before skipping nimbly out on to the platform. Charles stuck the pin in his coat, and, taking Ivy’s bag and his own, quickly followed him, ceremoniously handing Ivy down.

  The train was emptying itself and the platform was crowded. The old gentleman paused in mid-stride as a sly-looking woman forced a smile while she opened her arms to greet him; and, looking wistfully over his shoulder, he said: “Don’t forget to mention Farrow in Bulawayo. Oh, and in the Kalahari Desert there’s a city, a marvellous old city, all stone—nobody knows who built it—some say King Solomon. Only it’s deserted, d’ye see, like Petra, except for the jackals and the vultures. Sometimes, baboons. I never saw the place, I never had the time; but it’s there. You’ll see it, you lucky boy. And see the Drakensberg! There’s something marvellous for you! Wild, terrible—and on the veldt below, game, what game!”

  The sly-looking woman tugged at his sleeve and said: “Grandpa …”

  But the old man paused to say: “Blesbok, springbok, eland, klipspringer (but you’ll never catch him) and lions too, and rhenosters, which is Afrikaans for rhinoceros, and buffalo. Get your guns at Purdey’s, or Greener in St. James’s if you can afford the price. Come and see me and I’ll give you my old Express. It’s knocked down a charging rhino more than once. You wait till he’s within thirty yards, for he’s a short-sighted fellow, when he lowers his head—and then you let him have it at the back of the neck. It’s easy if you stand firm and feel no fear at all. For lion, aim at the chest, or behind the left shoulder.”

  “Grandpa, do hurry!” said the sly-looking woman.

  The old gentleman nodded and, obedient to her tug, went on, but kept on talking over his shoulder: “… Never try to shoot a rhino in the head, or an elephant for that matter. Wait for a neck or a heart shot. I live at The Larches, Fir Tree Road. Farrow, remember, just ask for me. I’ll give you my guns—I’m not likely to be using them again. Now, leopards——”

  His granddaughter pulled him away. Charles Small remembers that, somewhere between the squeal of wheels and the hissing of steam, the aged raucous voice insinuated itself, saying: “A lion leaps and strikes, but a leopard drops and rips—use this calibre——”

  But then his granddaughter dragged him away. Ivy said: “What a nice old gentleman, and what a nice pin he gave you! Oh Charley, isn’t it going to be wonderful?”

  Charles Small said: “Yes”—but not more than half of his attention had been devoted to the old one: a good half, because his imagination was alight, and he saw himself, rifle-butt at shoulder, confronting the enraged rhenoster upon those brilliant, burnt-up plains of Africa. At the same time he was looking backwards at the butt-end of the third-class part of the train. Then, oh God, how he wished that this were the open veldt under the Drakensberg, and that he had a rifle in his hands and nothing but a maddened rhinoceros to confront! For he saw the powerful black figure of Mrs. Narwall shouldering the crowd aside and coming inexorably towards him.

  Ivy’s bag and his own squatted flank-to-flank. Charles Small looked at the bags, and at Ivy. He looked again at Mrs. Narwall. She was less than sixty feet away. Waxy-white and slippery with the sweat of pure fear, he said: “Excuse me just a minute, darling.” Ivy had no knowledge of the Nemesis that was within thirty yards of her; she was in love, and full of dreams of rhinoceroses and lions, mysterious cities and the wild grandeur of the Drakensberg. She saw, through the smoke and the steam of the station, the clear, clean light of the veldt … and Charles drawing a bead upon something that was terrible even in a zoo. She smiled quietly. Now she was free. Then someone touched her shoulder, and she reached for her bag, saying: “Charley is me darling, me young chevalier!”

  But it was the voice of her mother, Mrs. Narwall, that replied: “Come on home, Ivy.” And then all was steam and smoke, metallic noises, thunderous transients. Africa evaporated in one whiff. The blesboks, springboks, klipspringers and lions went back behind bars to their zoological gardens, and the free plains receded and became what they always had been—dreams. Only the leopard remained, with her claws in Ivy’s shrinking shoulder, for Charles was out of the barrier and away, slinking, hugging the walls, sobbing for shame.

  Ivy cried: “Charley!” But he was two hundred yards away, in a tea shop. Mrs. Narwall said: “Pick up your bag.” Ivy obeyed her, and, with her mother’s powerful hand on her arm just above the elbow was half-dragged along the smoky, smutty platform towards t
he ticket-office. Once, she looked back, half hoping that Charles would come and save her. But all she saw on that grey platform, which was now deserted, was his abandoned suitcase—stark, alone. The train was drawing out. Now there was not even steam. The station was empty. Her mother’s fingers were like iron pincers in her arm, but she was too unhappy to protest that they hurt.

  In the tea shop Charles Small, having ordered the shilling tea, put down a florin before the waitress brought it, and walked madly up the road.

  Where? He must squeeze his memory to remember where.

  But why, why? Ah, that, that—that is another story.

  CHAPTER XX

  OH, the ignominy of it! That frightful flight was bad enough, but the preliminaries were really disgusting, and what came after … oh Lord … beyond words!

  And now Charles Small, in agony and envy, remembers the first and the last love affair of Solly Schwartz.

  It was about the time Charles Small involved himself in his great, shameful, cowardly love that Solly Schwartz became curious about Woman, and took a mistress.

  By now, this humpbacked little limping abortion who appeared as if he had escaped from a jar of alcohol in a carnival side-show was fantastically prosperous—and, by the same token, quite soberly dressed, got up like the managing director of a great company, which he was, in a beautifully-cut black jacket and striped trousers that made his little legs look longer. It is true that he could not resist a fancy waistcoat, and that in his heavy black satin tie he wore a diamond as big as a button, but he carried with him an air of massive prosperity. Rightly so, for he was prosperous, solidly rich. Looking over his books, totting up figures, figuring, working everything out—not on paper, but with certain movements of his big knuckly fingers—Solly Schwartz decided to relax. How relax? How?

  He put on an old check suit and wandered, without appetite, around the fried-fish shops and the pubs in Pimlico; but returned, greasy with nut oil and acidulous with beer, discontented. He went to vulgar music halls and joined in choruses. Now he had a flat of two rooms in Grosvenor Street, and did not like the place. After dark everything died. Mayfair, moribund, waited for the dawn. Suddenly it occurred to him that people were looking at him. So, one night, with a crisp curse, he picked up a ponderous Corfiote stick of olive-wood and limped out to look for a woman. Where did he go? To the Alhambra. He wanted no love, no passion, this devil of a Schwartz—only the company of a woman, out of curiosity; no desire beyond that. Apart from his loneliness, he wanted to find out what men saw in all this nonsense. So he went to the Alhambra in Leicester Square, where some quizzical, ginger-headed girl gave him the glad eye. She gave him the come-hither. He looked at her, in his keen way, and saw that her big grey eyes were focused upon the diamond in his tie. His eyes met hers with stealthy curiosity as she observed the quality of his clothes and the massiveness of the eighteen-carat gold ring set with a ruby on his middle finger. He knew that she was a whore, but he would not have had her otherwise. Something quickly replaceable—that was his cup of tea—to use, empty, toss to the dustman, and replace.

  A whore, it was true, once used, was not as easily to be disposed of as an empty tin. She clung, she sucked, she cried, she made public scandal, she demanded money. All this Solly Schwartz could deal with. She might infect him with a dreadful disease. At this he sneered, for he knew himself for what he was: the very breath of life had been mephitic to him, and neither woman nor microbe could hurt him—therein lay his peculiar power.

  It was apparent to him that he had excited the woman’s professional interest, with his flash clothes and his ring. She lingered, looking at him. He was unacquainted with the technique of courtship, but he knew a trick twice as good as that: he took out of his breast pocket a wallet bulging with bank-notes and, showing it to the red-head, said: “Want a drink?”

  “I don’t mind if I do.”

  He put the wallet back in his pocket—observing that she was tipping the wink to a quiet, dapper-looking fellow dressed like King Edward VII, but beardless. This dapper man emptied his glass and, when they went out, followed them.

  They went to a little flat near Wardour Street. The girl took off her clothes, and she was like a Gibson Girl. Solly Schwartz took off his hat and put down his stick, within reach, for he knew what was going to happen. The girl kissed him, and the taste of her was repulsive to him. She tasted of wine and tobacco, and she revolted him by pushing into his mouth a rough, coated tongue. Here was love.

  Listening, he heard the stairs creak. Everything, in his mind, was anticipated. The girl, shaking her red hair loose, embraced him, and unbuttoned his jacket. Solly Schwartz had heard of this trick before. He sneered as the light went down—memorising the resting-place of his Corfiote stick of olive-wood—and waited. The red-headed girl wanted him to take off his clothes, but he did not do so because he was ashamed of the malformation of himself. He did not like even to look at himself when he was alone.

  She said: “Are you going to give me a little present? My last friend gave me two pounds.”

  Solly Schwartz gave her a five-pound note, which she tucked into a Dorothy-bag. An awful coldness came down upon him as he watched her moving from her bag to her bed, with a calculating eye on his breast pocket, cocking an ear at the door. She threw her arms around him, and he inhaled the peppery smell of the red-head—still listening.

  Outside, on the landing, a floorboard creaked, and a cautious hand slipped an oiled key into the lock of the door. Solly Schwartz waited for it with something like glee. Exactly as he had foreseen, the door flew open, the light went up, and the dapper man burst in, crying: “My wife! My wife!” Behind him slouched a heavy man.

  Solly Schwartz laughed—it was the old badger game. He went for the big man first, with the olive-wood stick; struck him on the side of the head and knocked him downstairs. Then he took hold of the dapper one by the face and a shoulder and shook him, and nudged him with a knee almost into the well of the staircase. There was a clamour from below, but soon the voices faded.

  “Stay with me,” said the red-head.

  Solly Schwartz stayed, but he kept on all his clothes. She said: “Aren’t you strong? Aren’t you brave? Somebody told me humpbacks were …” Then she fell asleep quietly, like a child. But he lay awake for a long while, thinking not without pleasure of the crack of the Corfiote stick upon the thick skull of the unknown thug, and the thunder of his tumble down the stairs.

  He hoped they would come back. He was in just the right mood to receive them—them and a dozen like them, by God! A full moon shone in the fine clean sky that was wonderful with stars beyond the smeared window, and in this cold blue moonlight Solly Schwartz looked at the naked body of the girl, with its large, firm breasts, its slender waist—not so slender now that it was unlaced—and at that part of her which was, when all was said and done, the target, the ultimate objective. He observed with distaste the corset-marks, exaggerated by the shadows, between her breasts and her belly, and sneered at the cast-off corset on the floor.

  So women squeezed and laced themselves into living lies.

  He picked it up and weighed it in his powerful hands, noting that the ribs were not of whale-bone, but of metal, with rounded ends not unlike the heads of safety pins. He sniffed at it and caught a tang of gingerish sweat and stale cheap perfume; dropped it in disgust and turned his attention again to the sleeping girl. Usable, essentially-replaceable goods….

  He placed a chair by the door in such a position that, if anyone opened it ever so cautiously, it would fall with a clatter. He was not a man to be taken unawares. Then, still fully dressed and clutching his heavy stick, laughing at himself out of one side of his mouth, he lay down beside the naked whore, and dozed.

  If this was love, he knew a trick worth two of that.

  Solly Schwartz fell asleep.

  *

  He awoke at daybreak, no longer angry or nauseated, but calm. The girl slept peacefully on her polluted bed, smiling in her sleep, her legs spread
at an angle of about forty-five degrees—an angle for which, presumably, God had designed them. In the daylight she appeared pasty and wan (even though she was smiling in her sleep) and emanated a stale stink of unhealthy sweat, bad breath, left-over perfume at sixpence a bottle, and goodness knows what else besides. Love! Solly Schwartz opened and closed his right hand to ease it, for he had not until then relaxed his grip on the heavy stick, and tentatively touched her shoulder. She was sweaty. Gingerly he sniffed at his finger, and there again was the repulsive smell of a woman. He sat and thought. Below, in the street, a milkman’s barrow clattered to a standstill while the man’s voice yodelled: “Milk o-hoo, milk o-hoo”—and then there came the clang of cans, and dogs barked, and not far away a cock crowed. The girl awoke and looked at Solly Schwartz with surprise. He was fully dressed except for his hat, and even had his stick in his hand.

  She said: “What … what …”

  Solly Schwartz replied: “Yes, what, what. You know what, what. I laid out your two Charlies and I gave you a fiver, for nothing, that’s what, what! Now get up, and get washed and dressed. I want to watch you.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t do that!” said the girl.

  “Why not?”

  She said: “It wouldn’t be——”

  Solly Schwartz took out another five-pound note and said: “All right, no?”

  “All right,” said the girl, reaching for the money.

  “After,” said Solly Schwartz, leaning on his stick.

  “All right,” said the girl, “but I can tell you, I’m not accustomed to this kind of thing.”