by Gerald Kersh
Then he went back to his office, much stimulated. These people were his cattle. As for the War; for Solly Schwartz all life was perpetual war, permanent crisis. He enjoyed this kind of thing. At the door of his office he encountered a laughing office-boy who had been relishing the whole affair, and glared at him.
“What’s your name, boy?”
“Ibbertson, sir,” said the office-boy.
“What are you grinning at, eh?”
“You, sir. Sorry, sir.”
“What are you doing with my paper-weight?”
“I was coming down the stairs to join in the fun—I mean, stand by, like, sir.”
“How much are you getting?”
“Ten shillings a week, Mr. Schwartz, sir.”
“You’re a liar. You’re getting a pound a week. Put back that paper-weight and go about your business.”
And in good times and bad, for the rest of Solly Schwartz’s life, Ibbertson loved him and followed him like a dog.
*
A few days later, Solly Schwartz was bitten by a nostalgia—he wanted to see I. Small, and take him out for a beer and a ham sandwich. Solly Schwartz arrived at the shop in the side street, in a Napier car of immense power. Charles Small remembers that, an hour or two before, the old man had gone back, more military than Marshal Ney, twirling his bleddy moustachios, carrying a paper bag full of pies. Mrs. Small, by this time, had got over her loathing for the hunchback. She wanted to offer him a cup of tea.
But, learning that I. Small was not there, Solly Schwartz picked on the children. He said: “Come for a ride in my car and I’ll buy you toys.”
“But——” said Millie Small.
“Shush!” hissed Schwartz, taking the children by the hands. He sat with them on the back seat of the limousine, and told the chauffeur to drive to Hamley’s. When they arrived at this most magnificent of toy shops, Solly Schwartz took them inside. Now here was richness! “Point out what you want,” said Solly Schwartz.
The children were stupefied. Charles Small was embarrassed. He suggested a penny bar of plasticine. Priscilla poked her finger boldly towards the most expensive thing she could think of—a rocking-horse, magnificently piebald. Then Solly Schwartz, looking—Charles remembers—like something out of a Punch and Judy show, said: “A pennyworth of plasticine, that’s all you want?”
Charles Small’s eyes were fixed upon a miniature theatre, complete with puppets.
Solly Schwartz, whose keen eyes had followed the desirous glance of the boy, said: “You want that? Eh?”
“But it costs two pounds, Mr. Schwartz,” said Charles Small.
“Ask for it. Say ‘I want it!’”
“I want it,” faltered Charles Small.
“Pack that up!” said Solly Schwartz to the sales-lady, looking with contempt at the boy. Then he said to the girl: “Tell me, is there anything else you fancy?”
Without hesitation Priscilla pointed to an expensive doll’s-house and, looking him between the eyes, said: “That.” That was one of the most costly articles in the toy shop.
“Wrap it up,” said Solly Schwartz, taking out his wallet. All these playthings were loaded in the big car. They went back to the house. Millie Small was shaken by such generosity, and offered Solly Schwartz a wedge of cheese-cake, which he devoured in four gulps. Then (paper money was just coming in) he gave Priscilla five pound-notes—which she accepted with the air of a gracious creditor.
“Say thank you,” said Mrs. Small.
The little girl put the money in her pocket, shrugged, and turned away. She wanted to play with her rocking-horse. Her mother was mortified, but Solly Schwartz laughed heartily and banged his iron foot with his heavy cane.
“I’m so ashamed——” Millie Small began to say.
“Ashamed? Be proud!” cried the hunchback, and offered a pound-note to the boy. Charles Small remembers that he looked from Schwartz to his mother and back again, indeterminate. At last, timorously, he took the money. By then, the whole house was rattling while Priscilla was rocking her wooden horse.
“Nebbisch!” said Solly Schwartz, curling his lip; and after a brief farewell, he hopped into the Napier, and went away.
CHAPTER XXIII
SO, while Priscilla went up and down, wielding a piece of string as a whip, see-sawing on her rocking-horse and (in defiance of her mother) shouting defiant battle-cries and brandishing a tin sword, the Cossacks went down before the Germans over the Russian border; while Charles played with his toy theatre. And in another theatre, a theatre of war, the Germans were attacking Verdun. And there went some more of the flower of the flock, the many men so beautiful. It seemed that all was lost; that every man wanted to commit suicide, to die with his generation. That was when well-grown boys of sixteen perjured themselves and swore that they were eighteen, and men of forty-eight swore by the Almighty God that they were thirty-eight years old, and men with one arm and men with wooden legs tried to insinuate themselves into the Army to have a crack at the Jerry.
German Intelligence gleefully reported defeatism in the British Army because Cockney companies, lugubriously singing:
“I don’t wanna die,
I wanno go ’ome
And live on the earnings
Of a lady typist—
Far over the sea I wanna be
Where the alleyman can’t get at me …”
—while they went into action like demons, out for blood.
Solly Schwartz, interested in advertising, made a note of the fact that the German High Command had given it out that British man-power was so depleted that the Allies had to send out women to fight. The Germans went into action light-heartedly. It was alleged that some of them carried pillows to put under the hips of the foe. And over came a mad-doggery of Highland Scots in kilts, bent on murder, to the great discomfiture—as long as they lived to be discomfited—of the attacking forces. The kilted men of Scotland rushed in. They were no ladies. Thousands of bull-necked Germans died, somewhat bewildered, in the ditches, and the Highlanders danced on their graves, and went through the dug-outs for chocolate and suchlike stuff.
So much for the public, thought Solly Schwartz; tell ’em a lie and they swallow it, hook, line and sinker. But where does it lead to? Is there any future in it? No. In advertising, better tell the truth…. At least, tell a lie not so easily exposed. The rumour was flying that the Germans were leaving behind them cakes of poisoned chocolate. Few men, in captured trenches, ate the enemy’s chocolate cakes. Here, again, was good Public Relations: sow doubt in a mind, thereby dividing and conquering it. Solly Schwartz was learning fast. On the other hand—considering the example of the chocolate—there were always sceptics who cheerfully crammed that chocolate into their mouths, and gulped it down, and were the better for it. Then, before it had had time to take, bang went the lie. One sceptic makes many. One reasoning human being, like a speckled apple, can corrupt a bushel. Now … now … this was not the right way. This was the Compromising Way, the Wrong Way. … There were only two ways from which a man might choose: the Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing but the Truth, or the Lie, the Whole Lie, and Nothing but the Lie, so help him God! He realised then that a man defeats his own ends if he tells a Lie that he cannot back up with facts—even if he has to invent the facts—and that a Truth is quite useless naked, but very powerful draped in the shimmering gauze of an alluring Lie.
Advertising! The fine young men with straight legs and straight backs who had seen the posters that said Do Your Bit! and Your King and Country Need You! … the trottels who had allowed themselves to be impressed by this stuff had paid through the nose. They had paid through the head, the heart, the belly—paid with their lives. Schlemihls! … No, there was no doubt about it: a straight lie was impermanent; a common truth was unpalatable. The only thing to do was create a State of War and impose a new sense of duty.
Here was Advertising.
*
Considering all this, Solly Schwartz remembered an old story about Truth. Once upon a time
there was a young Prince who, having been told of Truth by his philosophical tutors, wanted to know the nature of Truth. (“Quid est veritas?”—“Est vir qui adest!”) The Prince saw a purple butterfly upon a rose. “Are these True?” he asked. His tutor said, certainly they were True. He pointed to a wonderfully rosy-golden sunrise. Was that True? Then he indicated a sky that came down like frowning eyebrows, shooting out forks of lightning that split the trees. This too was True. A beggar covered with ulcers, blind and toothless, whimpering for alms at the palace gate—he was also Truth. And so was a beautiful little girl, light as gossamer, who danced on the grass, picking flowers to put in her hair. The great proud horses were Truth. So was their dung. Shining horses, smoking dung—flowery girls and ulcerated beggars—everything was Truth, nothing was Truth.
So at last the Prince decided to go and seek Pure Truth, for he was bewildered. He gathered a dozen of his comrades about him, and they left the comfort of their mansions and their palaces, and went out into the world in search of the Truth. They wandered—oh, how they wandered! They went from the Black Sea to the Sea of Japan, from the Sea of Japan to the White Sea, down again to the Sea of Azov, out to the Danube, up to the Baltic, down again to the Mediterranean—never finding Truth—until they found themselves in some awful wilderness, a desert, through which they made their way and came to the fringe of a frightful jungle of plants like saw-toothed swords, where they found an old hermit squatting on his hams and eating a root.
“What do you seek, gentlemen?” asked the hermit.
“We seek Truth,” said the Prince.
Jerking his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the sword-leafed jungle, the hermit smiled and said: “That way, gentlemen.”
The Prince and his friends slashed their way through the murderous, spiny vegetable things that pricked and pricked at them, and at last, exhausted, found themselves on the outer edge of the forest upon the rim of a smiling valley bathed in golden sunlight. Below them, in this valley, stood a palace of crystal—all light, pure, blinding.
By this time, the Prince and his companions were old and haggard, bearded, filthy, weary. Yet, from the palace of crystal twelve or thirteen naked maidens, most exquisitely formed, came running with cries of delight.
“Who are you?” asked the Prince.
“We are the Hand-Maidens of Truth,” said one of the girls, throwing her arms around his neck.
The Prince asked: “Where is Truth? Where is your mistress?”
“In the palace … Stay with me …”
The Prince pushed her away and strode down the valley to the palace of crystal. There, he roamed room after room, until at last, in a little room, he saw the figure of a woman draped in gauze of the finest silk, impenetrable to the human eye, which emphasised the contours of the most superb form that ever Man beheld.
The Prince asked: “Who are you?”
In a low sweet voice the woman replied: “I am Truth.”
“Unveil!”
“No, better not,” said Truth.
The Prince stepped forward, took hold of the gauze veil and ripped it down. Truth stood naked.
The Prince uttered a loud cry. Her body was beautiful, but her face was loathsomely ugly—like the pimplous, fly-blown face of a beggar-woman.
“Are you indeed Truth?” asked the Prince, weeping.
The hag with the beautiful body said, in her melodious voice: “I am Truth, and you have found me.”
“But you are horrible, you are hideous!” sobbed the Prince. “You are Truth! I have found you! You are repulsive! What am I to tell my friends who are companying with your Hand-Maidens? What can I say of you? For twenty years we have hacked our way through all the jungles of the world to find you. And now—what can I tell them?”
Very gently: “You must lie,” said Truth.
This hit Solly Schwartz right where he lived.
*
Solly Schwartz was one of the loneliest of men. All that he had, he poured into that which was yet to be. He was a speculator in life, time and energy—he invested To-day in To-morrow, leaving only a narrow margin of emotion, mild emotion concerned with fine motor-cars, fine clothes, extraordinary walking-sticks, and delicatessen and fish and chips. The fire of him shot beyond him, like the flammenwerfers that were being used on the Western Front—which spat their terrible flames forward, and advanced, cool and insulated behind the flames.
All the same—to shift the analogy—while he lifted his leg against the lamp-post and aimed, as high as he could to make one with the bright light, his nose was perpetually twitching at little present scents, at the dust of the earth. There was something of Lucifer in this little man who, with his eyes yearning towards Heaven, hooked his fingers into the World, and tried to subdue it in the teeth of The God. Women were not for him. His pride and his shame surpassed the love of women. He amused himself alone and was, in a way, happy in his loneliness, because of his fearlessness, his faith in himself and in the power of his money. Richard Crookback! He would take the country and fit his hump into the soft purple velvet of a little crooked throne.
This strange, solitary man, elegantly dressed, with a diamond in his tie as big as your fourth finger-nail, and his ruby ring, went to the music halls, and the boxing and the wrestling matches. He enjoyed the music halls, but not alone: somehow, in these places, he felt that he needed someone to prod, nudge, exchange laughter with, and stand treat to drinks and spiced snacks. Once, for example, at the ringside, fascinated, he watched two perfect specimens—Gunboat Groth and Bombardier Layton—fighting it out toe-to-toe. They were heavy-weights. The Bombardier won on a knock-out. The referee raised the Bombardier’s right hand, and there, battered and bloody, but magnificently triumphant, stood a Man. His opponent, knocked out with a straight right to the jaw, delivered in the English style, was still unconscious. While the crowd roared, the winner picked Gunboat up in his arms very tenderly, and carried him to his corner before running to his dressing-room, where his handlers and a doctor were waiting to patch his wounds, which were not inconsiderable, for it had been a terrible fight through twenty rounds.
Solly Schwartz had the idea of taking over this fighter. Between the first round and the nineteenth he had conceived a great respect for this mighty man with long straight legs, long straight back, and long flat muscles, who went down nine times under punches that might have knocked over a buffalo—but always came back fighting, and won the fight in the last ditch.
He went to see the winner in his dressing-room, and there he lay, bleeding and bruised, while a man in a white sweater massaged his ribs, which were strawberry-coloured with bruises and would soon be mulberry-coloured. How much did he get out of it? A few pounds.
“Trottel!” muttered Solly Schwartz, limping out.
He was the stronger man. He wished that he might encounter a heavy-weight boxer in anger. With the hammer of his stick and the tongs of his hands, he would show the boxer who was who….
The clanking of his iron foot reminded him that he was still, in spite of himself, obedient to the ineluctable Law of Gravity that bound better bodies than his to the earth, the dust, the gutters, the pavements, and the blood-spattered canvas. Yet no muddy gravitation had a drag upon his imagination, which soared beyond the stars …
… Things to be used, things to be used and thrown away like empty cans—men, women, strength, blood, beauty. There was money without doubt in a champion like the Bombardier. There was big money in boxing … yes, again, ephemera. And here again was Maya, illusion. Once upon a time, in the proud days of the Fancy, in the time of Tom Spring, the game was clean, and it was possible to have faith in a man; to stake your life and your fortune on his cleanliness and integrity. But now, there was no cleanliness and little integrity—only the main chance, the money in it … Solly Schwartz didn’t mind money, but something in his heart made him shy away from boxers. He, the lame hunchback, felt a great, magnanimous pity for these superbly-constructed fellows, who gave their youth and the sprin
gtime of their beauty to the perfection of a punch—who, training themselves to smash one another, destroyed themselves, yet loved one another—who admired the enemies that broke their defences, and nodded red-dripping approval of punches in the face—who, bashed to pulp, smiled through black eyes and cracked lips, and thanked their butchers for a good fight. Without doubt, there was money in it; yes, without doubt, but Solly Schwartz did not want that kind of money. He was sorry for these beautiful men, these excellent athletes, who cut each other up, while the mob howled, to put money in the pockets of Ginzberg, Riley and the rest—soon to go away, worn out at thirty, impoverished, broken in health, and forgotten, to cadge sandwiches from little men who chose to remember them. No, no, no—these poor fellows were not Solly Schwartz’s meat. Apart from the fact that, being a fighter himself, he liked them while he pitied and despised them, they were too little for him.
He remembered the roar of the multitude when the Bombardier landed that last clean right-hand punch, and the other man went down, struggling against the inexorable seconds of time. The hall, stinking of humanity and of smoke, seemed to seethe like a pot. A man in a pink shirt, on his left, screamed: “Good old Bombardier—kill ’im!” A man behind him cried: “Get up, Gunboat, get up!”—in an injured tone. When the referee declared the Bombardier winner, a few of the spectators groaned, but most of them clapped their hands and cried “Hooray!” The man behind cried “Boo—boo!”—lowing like a steer. But when the Bombardier picked up his fallen opponent and carried him to his corner, the whole great mass of spectators rose spontaneously and sent up a roar of delighted approval that shook the roof.
Now, even his enemies—those who had lost money because of his victory—were in love with the Bombardier. Only a few loyal trottels were concerned with the dragged-out body of Gunboat. … No, no; why waste time and energy on one fool when there were ten thousand fools ready and willing to be turned inside out? … Ten thousand? Ten thousand million, blowing hot and cold with the same mouth—suckers—puppets! Pull the proper string, and up goes the right hand or the left; press the appropriate lever, sitting these dummies on your knee, and snap go the jaws of these ventriloquist’s dummies and out of their grinning mouths come the words that you put into them.