The Thousand Deaths of Mr Small

Forty-five years after he left us Gerald Kersh still suffers from little better than the ‘large, vague renown’ Orwell famously ascribed to Thomas Carlyle. He is remembered chiefly for
Night and the City
(1938), one of the great novels of London’s Soho, driven by its shabby anti-hero Harry Fabian. Jules Dassin’s 1950 film version starring Richard Widmark has certainly helped that book to endure. But Kersh’s novel lives on by itself because it teems with adroitly observed forms of (low) life, and it still feels like the real thing. Readers who come newly to Kersh usually sense quite soon from his salty, word-rich presence on the page that this was a writer who lived fully, and who never missed a trick. Evidently all he saw was of interest to him, not to say fair game.

Kersh does have his notable and steadfast champions today: Harlan Ellison has vigorously sought to promote awareness of a man whose talent he considered ‘immense and compelling’; Michael Moorcock is the ‘sometime executor’ of the Kersh estate and has kindly made possible Faber Finds’ reissues of a selection of Kersh’s finest works; while cinema-book specialist Paul Duncan has also been an avid advocate for Kersh, and is understood to have been at work awhile on a biography. What general readers may know of Kersh for the moment is largely down to the information these men have placed in the public domain.

Kersh was born in Teddington on 26 August 1911. Writing as a meaningful pastime came quickly to him, such that he soon sniffed a vocation. He quit schooling early, and raced through a succession of jobs as if seeking to go one better on Hemingway’s maxim that a novelist ought to have a friend in every occupation. In 1934 he published a
roman-à-clef, Jews without Jehovah
, but it wasn’t on
sale for very long, since three uncles and a cousin of Kersh’s made out unflattering renderings of themselves within its pages, and sought legal redress – apparently a lasting source of tension at Kersh family occasions.

Following the outbreak of war Kersh joined the Coldstream Guards in 1940 and seems to have been rated a decent soldier. His first stint of leave was during the Luftwaffe’s Blitz, whereupon he narrowly escaped fatal injury but was thereafter reassigned to desk duties. In 1941 he drew on his Guardsman experience to write
They Die with Their Boots Clean,
a classic fictional account of basic training, and he enjoyed a surprise bestseller with a work that is richly illustrative of his gift for refining into print things you can well imagine he actually heard. (Finds offers the book, bound up with its sequel
The Nine Lives of Bill Nelson
, under the title given this pairing by their US publisher:
Sergeant Nelson of the Guards
.)

Thereafter Kersh would be phenomenally productive: a writer not merely of novels and stories but of journalism, sketches and columns, radio and documentary film scripts. After the war he settled in the US and there made himself a fixture in popular magazines that paid well for stories and brought him to huge readerships: the
Saturday Evening Post, Esquire, Collier’s, Playboy
. Kersh’s stories are the most accessible demonstration of his protean gifts: the strange and fantastical tales are especially cherished, and may be sampled in Finds’ reissues of
The Horrible Dummy and Other Stories
as well as a broader selection chosen by Simon Raven entitled
The Best of Gerald Kersh
. At the height of this productivity came three of his most admired novels:
Prelude to a Certain Midnight
(1947),
The Song of the Flea
(1948), and
The Thousand Deaths of Mr Small
(1950).

Kersh wrote so much, his printed output was so compendious, that one might suppose he never had time to blot a line. And yet his sentence-making is remarkably strong. He was both a singular talent and a hard grafter: a crafter of sentences, spinner of yarns, scholar of human follies. His living by the pen, however, seems to have been rarely better than precarious, for a variety of reasons: he had money troubles, personal troubles, health troubles, and over time these tended to come at him in battalions. Amid this turmoil he could still produce
Fowler’s End
(1958), judged by Anthony Burgess as ‘one of the best comic novels of the century’. Burgess was also a champion of
The Implacable Hunter
(1961); and
The Angel and the Cuckoo
(1966) earned Kersh more high praise. But by then he
was very nearly through: he died in New York on 5 November 1968, aged fifty-seven. He remains one of those writers perpetually in need of revival, admired by near enough all who read him, awaiting still his golden hour of evangelism. The reader, if not already a convert, is warmly invited to start here.

Richard T. Kelly
Editor, Faber Finds
July 2013

D
ESDEMONA
'
S
taste for outlandish stories led her to an untimely end, suffocated under a pillow by the spinner of untrue tales. She died as she lived—breathless.

She asked for it, and she got it. She was the pulp magazine reader of her day. Nothing but outlandish monsters could satisfy her. Her imagination craved the unnatural, the
supernatural
, and the freakish. If Othello were alive to-day he would probably write for the pulps; and if he published a book his publishers would put in a piece to the effect that all characters therein were fictitious and had no relation to any living person, etc.

Yet the fact is that there is no horror or fantasy or fairy tale conceivable by man that has not its roots in his neighbour's house and back garden. For example: look at the illustrations to the startling stories in the sensational magazines. The
illustrators
, some of whom are capable artists, strain every fibre of their imaginations to outline the Nightmare. They can't. The monster from Mars turns out to be nothing but an exaggerated ant. The dreadful apparition that haunts the house is only a man distorted. If nausea is to be inspired the illustrators must fall back on slime, such as oozes out of any box of fish. The predatory cannot be expressed except in terms of teeth and claws and tentacles. Everything that every writer writes about must in some way have relation to something or somebody, living or dead.

Try it and see. Describe me, say, a butcher, without scraping together memories of all the butchers you have seen and known. Draw me the character of somebody hateful without
remembering
everyone you ever disliked. It can't be done, because you are not God Almighty, you see, and cannot create life. As a
part of all that you have met, you must use things seen and remembered. No character can be fictitious.

So I come to the characters in this book. For the character of the flabby-minded Mr. Small I have drawn on all the
flabby-minded
fathers I have ever met, taken them apart and put the choicest bits together. I have met at least fifty Mrs. Smalls, whom I have squeezed into the skin of that monstrous woman and so on. The characters in this book are not portraits of individuals, dead or alive; but they have relation to innumerable individuals all over this sad world wherever children suck their mother's milk and mothers suck their children's souls.

G
ERALD
K
ERSH
          

New York, 1950    

I
T
used to happen only once or twice in three or four months. But now, when he is a dozen years older, and the poison has worked its way into him, Charles Small has what his wife calls a “mood” twice a week. (She tells the children that he has a “pain”.)

Small locks himself in, throws himself on the bed, pushes his knees up to his chin, grasps his ankles, closes his eyes tightly, and tries to understand himself. His eyelids are not thick enough to black out the daylight. He sees, first of all, a redness that grows smoky.
What
is
it
about?
Tell
me,
what
is
it
all
about?
Answer
me
at
once!
he shouts—but the shouting is all inside himself. His anxious family hear nothing.
Come
out,
come
out!
he screams, silently, until he is purple in the face and his heart beats painfully.

The time comes when his eyes seem to turn a somersault in the cloudy darkness, so that they are looking into his sloppy skull as a gypsy fortune-teller looks into the dregs of a teacup, and there he sees a spattered accidental pattern, something like a hieroglyph which must somehow make sense but which he cannot translate. By this time he is drowsy: the flaky leaves run together to make a brown blob, whereupon he remembers a ridiculous old story: the story of the little boy who went into raging hysterics at the sight of
kreplach
…

It seems that once upon a time there was a little boy who, at the age of nine, was a perfectly normal child. He looked you between the eyes, and spoke his mind. In school he was second in the class, and he was good at games. He had never been beaten or frightened. His mother loved and cherished him, and he lived a clean, happy life. Looking at this child everyone said: “Here is the perfect type of the clean-cut, fearless, uninhibited boy.” Yet he had one mad, unreasoning fear—of
kreplach!
You could put him in a cage with a tiger, or live rattlesnakes, and he was unafraid. But if you showed him a dish of
kreplach
he would scream until he burst a blood vessel.

The boy’s mother, naturally, was worried. She explained to him that
kreplach
was only another word for
ravioli.
Still,
nothing would reconcile the boy to the sight of
kreplach.
At last she consulted a psychiatrist, who told her that
kreplach
in themselves were not objects calculated to inspire fear. Obviously, if the boy knew the meaning of
kreplach
—that is to say, if he understood all the processes that went to the making of
kreplach
—this blind terror would be washed out of his mind. The psychiatrist said: “Now go home, and bring your little boy into the kitchen, and demonstrate to him stage by stage how
kreplach
are made. Then, I wager a pension, his little trouble will pass away…. Not at all, not at all, glad to have been of help. That will be twenty dollars.”

The mother went home and called her little boy, saying: “Isidor, I want you to watch me making something nice for dinner.”

“Sure, Mom.”

“Now look, Isidor, you see what I am doing?”

“Sure, Mom. You’re putting an egg in some flour and beating it all up.”

“That’s right, Isidor, quite right. Now what am I doing?”

“Why, Mom, you’re squeezing it all together and rolling it out with a rolling pin…. Why, what’s the matter, Mom?”

“Now what am I doing, Isidor?”

“Why, Mom,you are rolling it out thin, and thinner and thinner. … What’s the idea, Mom?”

“Now what am I doing, Isidor?”

“Why, Mom! You
know
what you’re doing! You’re taking a glass and cutting out little round pieces from all that stuff you rolled flat…. What’s the matter, Mom?”

“That’s all right, son. Now look and tell me what I’m doing now, Isidor darling.”

“Aw, gee, Mom, you’re getting little bits of meat and putting them in the middle of them round pieces.”

“Good boy! And what am I doing now?”

“Well, Mom, you
know
what you’re doing now! You’re
covering
that meat up with another round piece, and pinching up all the edges. Aren’t you, Mom?”

“That’s a clever boy. And how many of these pieces have I got here now?”

“Five … ten … twenty.”

“Quite right. Now I want you should watch carefully, Isidor, what I’m going to do now,” said the mother. She scooped
up the completed pasta and threw it into boiling water. “Do you see?”

“Sure I see. Why? Is anything the matter, Mom?”

“Isidor, I want you should wait right here. I want you should see exactly what I’m doing.”

“But Mo-om! I’ve seen it! I got a date——”

“Isidor, wait!”

“But what for?”

“For your own good, Isidor…. Now look …”

She dipped a spoon into the pot and fished out a plateful of
kreplach,
saying, triumphantly: “There you are now, you see now, Isidor—what was there to be afraid of?”

The little boy looked at her with wide uncomprehending eyes. Then he looked down at the plate. Pink foam gushed out of his mouth and his eyes started out of their sockets. “
KREPLACH
!
” he screamed, and went into convulsions.

*

It is at this point that Small tries for the thousandth time to think calmly and reasonably of his mother. For thirty-odd years he peeped and pried and sniffed and squinted through chinks and keyholes into the sooty half-light of the family kitchen, and he knows pretty well how his mother was made.

He has seen the flour that was heedlessly ground out of a million subtly different seeds, carelessly dipped up in cupped hands and thrown down on a board. He has heard the clapping of the floury hands beating away loose particles, and the dull clicking of the piled eggs under the fumbling fingers.

He has seen the little hillock of flour beaten into a crater; heard the sharp crack of the eggshell against the edge of a basin, and the quick sniff of the cook when she convinced herself that the egg was not bad. He knows how the egg
went into the crater with a tiny thud, followed by the double-rap of the thrown-down halves of the empty shell; and he has not forgotten the glutinous slap of the fork that beat the egg into the flour … under a cloud. Oh, he knows the operation, process by process!

Soon the sloppy live egg, companying with the flour, grows stickily obstinate. The quick, fierce fork becomes slow and uncertain in its movements. The soft glutinous stuff is resisting the steel. The egg is the ringleader of resistance in the crater. Very deliberately the fork pushes in the sides of the mountain.
The yellow stickiness becomes heavy, sluggish. Crag by crag the mountain falls. The dough still resists. There is a pause. Then, from a rack, comes a big stick, a rolling pin. It descends with a smacking sound and cuts a chasm in the stiff dough. Before the dough can recover, the rolling pin is down again with a crash. The hill becomes a plateau. A few more blows and the plateau becomes a rolling steppe. The steppe becomes a plain. The plain becomes a lawn. The stubborn dough has been thrashed into a limp sheet. There it lies on the board, thin as paper; yellow, beaten.

So far so good. Now it is necessary to cut the enemy into shape. The cook takes a thin glass, powders the rim with flour, stamps out circles; snatches up the residue of the dough, which she beats and rolls again, and stamps again into circles, adding the little extra bit of dough that must inevitably be left over to one last extra-large disc.

On the stove a pot boils and a saucepan lid rattles. The cook’s face seems to burst into flame as she drags the pot aside, and then there is a blast of heat, a puff of dark smoke, and a red light in which Small can see her winking sweat out of her eyes while she puts upon each disc of dough a spoonful of left-over meat, chopped up fine and cunningly seasoned, which she covers with another doughy circle, pinching the edges together.

Oh, Small knows how his mother was made! The odds and ends are used up; the life is beaten plastic and submissive; the left-overs of the family are salted and peppered to taste, and imprisoned.

So, before the iron pot crashes back over the fire, a lurid light fills the dark kitchen. The water boils, and in go the
kreplach.
Soon the lid is lifted. It rattles down while the steam comes up. A spoon goes down into the boiling water, and out of a cloud a voice says: “I made this specially for you—eat it all up—all up!”

“I’m not hungry.”

“But I made it specially for you.”

“But I can’t eat it.”

“What’s the matter with you? Do you want to kill me? Look at me! Look at me! See how tired I am! Feel how wet I am! For what do I sweat? For whom? Why? …
Eat
it
up!
”

“But Mama, please! Please, Mama!”

“I’ve killed myself for you. To please me, eat, for God’s sake!”

“I’ll be sick, Mama.”

“To please
me
… please?”

A great lump of hot, wet dough is stuffed into Small’s mouth, while the voice says: “There, there, nice, nice, there, nice…. Mmmm!”

The hot damp dough is in his nostrils—Small’s head must go backwards before he can breathe, and then he is compelled to eat
kreplach,
the sort they make out of curd-cheese … there is a taste of sour milk, and he is sick. “‘There there, there,” says the voice; and he is floating over a mountain, upside-down—he is dizzy, because he has been swung and swayed here and there. He knows that the mountain had a cratered peak. It is an ancient volcano in eruption. Swung high and low, he grabs with clutching hands. “Drink it, then,” says the voice; and his mouth is full again.

Sucking milk, and gasping between breathless swallows, he sobs: “
Ma-ma
.”

“He’s talking!” says the voice.

“So soon! It can’t be!”

“I should live so sure—he said mama.”

“
Maa-maa
!
”

“Would you believe it! Bless him!”

He is struggling desperately, striking out with an impotent square inch of hand. He has no strength: he is enraged. They have pinned him up in something rough which chafes the tenderest parts of him. Moistening itself to cut more efficiently, this rough thing is filing away the soft skin between his thighs. He shuts his eyes, opens wide his toothless mouth, and empties his lungs in one terrible cry.

“Quick! Quick! For God’s sake, quick! He’s holding his breath! What shall I do? Send for the doctor!”

“Give him to me, Mrs. Small.”

He is picked up like a straw on a high wind, thrown on his belly upon a canopy of stinking black cloth, and beaten in the ribs. Drawing breath again, he weeps. His head is down, his heels are up, and since he has no muscles to hold what remains of the sour liquid stuff inside him, he is sick again—whereupon everything spins and he is passed from hand to hand, until he lands on his back, exhausted.

“I had such a fright….”

“It’s nothing.”

“I thought it was convulsions.”

“Convulsions! All your life you should have such convulsions! Change him, go on.”

Something clicks and the coarse wet stuff peels away. For a second or two—only for a second or two—he feels free and cool, so he croons a little, while they dry him and powder him before imprisoning him again. But now he is completely empty, empty with an emptiness that hurts. Feeling pain, he cries out, and gropes for something to make him feel better.

“You should feed him now, Mrs. Small.”

Jerkily, buttonhole by buttonhole a darkness is split by a great white triangle, out of which bursts another mountain, from the purple summit of which a reticulated pattern of blue rivers runs down into the dark.
Maa-maa
he bleats.

“
K’nehora
,
already he understands everything.
Imbeshrier,
he’s talking!”

The mountain falls. Charles Small’s mouth finds what it has been seeking. A gentle warmth fills his belly. Now he is content; he will sleep. But the voice says: “He hasn’t had
anything!
For God’s sake, look! Look! He’s closing his eyes! He brought everything up, and now he won’t eat! What’ve I done! What’ve I done to deserve it?”

“He’ll eat, he’ll eat, please God, he’ll eat, Mrs. Small. Believe me. Encourage him, and he’ll eat.”

The purple-summited pale mountain darts at him as a terrier attacks a rat. He claws the air with nails that are soft as films of transparent pink varnish, and screams, throwing his head back. This head of his is covered with black fluff: in the centre of the crown of it there is a boneless quadrilateral hot and soft, beneath which the brain, full of blood, throbs and grows. He is caught by the hard, round back part of his skull, and pushed, in spite of resistance, to the mountain. Hot milk is forced into his mouth. Charles Small must drink or suffocate. He drinks, and at last he is put to bed. He would keep that which was forced into him if he could, but he cannot: his overloaded stomach rejects the milk. Then he is comfortable and happy, and would gladly sleep. But the rough stuff about his loins and in his crutch has moistened itself again to lubricate its jagged teeth. It bites.

Charles Small cries. The voice cries: “Oh my God, Oh God, he’s got convulsions!” Then he is picked up, pounded, rubbed, kissed, undressed, wiped, powdered, and pinned up again. After that the mountain comes to him out of a long white nightdress,
and at last there is the dark. He sleeps a little and, awakening, sees nothing. He is alone. So he cries. Springs squeal. Someone moans. Still in the dark he feels the embrace of powerful arms, and inhales a familiar smell—which he hates. Still, it is better than nothing; and alone, Charles Small is nothing. Soothed, he allows himself to be put down again, and then, missing the protective warmth, he cries again. A flat paraffin-wax
night-light
makes a hole in the shadows—a hole no bigger than an orange-pip. “My little dolly! What do you want then? Let Mummy sleep a little, then!”

Charles Small weeps desperately. The voice says: “
Sha
!
…
Sha!
…” Out comes the mountain. As a man nibbles a blade of grass, chews a piece of gum, or smokes a cigarette—so he sucks. “… Was he hungry? There, little dolly, was it then? There then, there then….”