The Thousand Deaths of Mr Small (14 page)

On this occasion he trumpeted so violently that he sounded a sort of Call to Arms. Millie, that seasoned warrior, leapt into battle, crying: “What class of people makes a noise like that when they use their handkerchiefs? Who blows like that into a
clean
handkerchief? He’s got to blow straight into a clean
handkerchief
, this millionaire!”

Millie and I. Small had been quarrelling, off and on, for seventeen years about handkerchiefs. She had got it into her head that it was wickedly extravagant to blow one’s nose into a perfectly clean handkerchief. Then, as surely as the bang follows the flash, I. Small roared: “Then tell me, tell me then—what for
is
a clean handkerchief? What does she want I should do with a clean handkerchief—have it framed?”

Charles went to bed. He had begun to feel affectionately about his father; and at the same time resentful.

He remembers that he thought:
Damn
him,
if
the
old
man
wanted
to
eat
ham
why
couldn’t
he
just
have
eaten
it
and
said
so?
If
he
didn’t
want
to
say
so
why
couldn’t
he
tell
his
own
lie
instead
of
sticking
it
into
my
mouth?
…
He’s
not
so
bad.
But
oh,
damn,
damn,
damn
—
why
did
he
have
to
wait
all
these
years
until
Mother’s
back
was
turned
before
he
let
me
begin
to
understand
him?

Then compassion and contempt fought a tug-of-war in Charles Small’s soul until, after a short, sharp tussle, both sides let go in the same instant, so that he relaxed with a snap and went to sleep.

Oh,
if
only
I
could
sleep
like
that
now!
says Charles Small, with a groan.
What
wouldn’t
I
give,
to
sleep
the
way
I
used
to
sleep
when
I
was
a
boy
of
sixteen
…
sixteen
from
forty
….
Good
God,
twenty-four
years
ago
….

It is good, to sleep as a healthy sixteen-year-old boy can sleep, but looking back Charles Small decides that he would not relive his first sixteen years for an eternity of sleep—paradisiacal sleep full of erotic dreams in technicolor—not for any consideration!

N
OW
, naturally, just as he is hanging trembling on the edge of sleep like a raindrop on the point of a leaf, Charles Small is
disturbed
by a stealthy sound. His wife is cautiously turning the knob of the door. Instantly he comes back, worse than conscious, to an exacerbated state of nervous tension. It is as if he has taken hold of the handles of a shocking-coil. An agonising shudder runs from his wrists to his shoulders and down his spine. He is sorry for his silly wife. But, having taken his two handfuls of self-pity and dropped his penny, he cannot control the mysterious current that shakes him—the strange, uncontrollable, quivering current of hate. He listens, closing his eyes and pretending to be asleep. The lock of the bedroom door, although it is well oiled, makes a little chirping noise. Hettie, with all the goodwill in the world, cannot move without making a noise—some silly little noise—she will swallow, gurgle in the stomach, hiccup. Even when she blinks her eyes her lashes seem to scratch the air like so many slate pencils. Now, by way of a change, she is overtaken by a need to sneeze. Opening his left eye half an inch, Charles Small sees her pressing her left forefinger against her upper lip. She is shaken by convulsions; yet she manages to make no more noise than one makes when one draws the cork of a medicine bottle:
Bip!

Charles Small sits up, shouting at the top of his voice: “What’s the big idea? For God’s sake, what have I done to deserve this? When
you
don’t feel well do
I
deliberately come and make
disgusting
noises in your ear when you’re trying to get five minutes rest and peace?”

Hettie’s tremendous effort to hold back the sneeze has forced tears into her eyes. Now they run down her face.

“I didn’t——” she begins.

“—if you didn’t who did? And
now
what are you crying for?”

“I didn’t know if you were asleep, Charley. I——”

“—So you came to wake me up, to find out, eh?” Even as he says this Charles Small knows that he is being despicably cruel
and unjust; but something stronger than himself has taken possession of him.

“Charley, darling, I brought you an egg
beaten up in milk,” says Hettie. “And I wasn’t crying, Charley. I know it annoys you if I cry. Honestly, I wasn’t, because I know how it gets on your nerves. I got something in my eye. Please drink this milk. There’s a new-laid egg
beaten up in it, and a little sugar. Come on, Charley darling, dear darling Charley, it’ll do you a world of good.”

Charles Small glares at her angrily, but not without pity. He sees that she is looking at him with yearning under her pink eyelids, and he says to himself, with a hard, short laugh:
Aha,
aha,
here
it
is
again!
He knows what that look means: it means that she wants to make love to him.

In every imaginable way, however, this woman is repulsive to him. He is bored and irritated by her sloppy adoration. He loathes her because she agrees with every word he says, however preposterous. He is sickened by the lingering touch of her humid hand. His heart sinks when he embraces her. On such occasions, it was necessary to close the eyes tightly and … one, two, three … back to everyday indifference and normal distaste.

She puts the glass by his bed, saying: “I’m sorry if I disturbed you, Charley. I tried to be as quiet as I could. Drink it if you can. I’m sure it’ll do you good. I won’t disturb you again.”

Then, after she has opened the door, he wants to call her back and say:
Hettie,
Hettie,
my
poor
dear
Hettie!
Please
forgive
me.
I’m
not
very
good
to
you.
You
are
very
patient
with
me,
and
I
don’t
deserve
it.
I
beg
your
pardon
with
all
my
heart
and
soul.
Excuse
me
—
I
am
not
really
a
pig,
although
I
behave
like
one
….

He actually begins to say it: “—I say, Hettie.”

Startled by the changed tone of his voice, she stops, rigid, and says: “What is it, Charley?”

He pauses and, after a short struggle with himself, says: “Try and keep those children quiet, will you?”

“Yes, Charley. Have a nice rest.”

I
suppose
I
shall
go
to
bed
with
her
to-night
says Charles Small. Sighing in anticipation of this fortnightly function, he lies back and, searching his tired memory, decides that he will think of Lya de Putti…. He is rather partial to that woman of blazing passions who cannot shake hands, on the screen, without an orgasmic wriggle … he has never forgotten the way she kissed
Emile Jannings in
Vaudeville
—it was like a woman, dying of thirst, sucking an orange. She is one of his small, select harem, which includes Cleopatra, Eleonora Duse, a lady with remarkable buttocks who once jostled him in a bus, and Mary Queen of Scots. But Lya is his favourite. He imperiously calls her into his imagination once a month. But he knows that if he found her in his arms in the flesh he would probably faint, or pretend to have a stomach-ache, or say that he had to go and see a man about a dog, or say “Let us just be good friends,” or cry for his mummy—in any case, nothing would happen.

Nothing Charles Small desired ever had or ever could happen.

I
T
was the same with poor old I. Small. He was marked and
foredoomed
to perish squealing, like a stuck pig. One Sunday morning he said to his wife: “Millie, the time has come—we got to face facts.”

He had picked up this phrase from an old shoemaker whom he occasionally employed—an argumentative Freethinker, an audacious revolutionary who talked in such a manner that he made one’s blood run cold. His name was Lizzard, and he had devoted some fifty of his seventy years to what he called “
Meetings
”. He had all sorts of jargon on the tip of his tongue, and was always ready with some startling proposition, such as: “There are two classes in society, Mr. Small. One produces but does not accumulate, and the other accumulates but does not produce.’ And: “There is such a thing as Evolution.” And: “The time has come to act, not to talk.” And: “A fact is not called a fact for nothing. Therefore it must be faced. Let us face facts!” He went on like this all day, his lips bristling with bright iron brads under his grizzled beard, talking, spitting out nails, hammering them in, gasping, misquoting and singing all at the same time, lively as a leprechaun. “… The spectre of war is haunting Europe!”—
bang
bang
bang
—“You have nothing but your chains to lose, Mr. Small, and all the world to gain!”

“Chains?” asked I. Small, looking about him. “What do you mean, chains? What chains? Where chains?” He touched his Watch-chain to satisfy himself that it was not yet lost. Then, somewhat sadly, he said: “You’re bleddywell right. I got nothing but my chain to lose. And what’s
that
worth? Three pounds?”

Banging so furiously that he had to shout to make himself heard, Lizzard shouted: … “Common ownership of the means of production!”

Remembering that if you were “common” you spat on the floor, picked your nose, scratched yourself, and slept with your socks on, I. Small said, firmly: “Means, yes! Common, no!”

“The social system——” said Lizzard, scraping away with a rasp, “the social system——”

“—Listen,” said I. Small, gravely. He had a hazy memory of policemen with big moustaches arresting Socialists. “Listen, Lizzard, don’t use that word in this house.”

“What word? Repeat it to me!”

“Social,” whispered I. Small.

“Another lackey of the bourgeoisie, eh?”

“Say it in English, Lizzard. I haven’t had your education. I don’t talk French. You’re in England now, not in France.”

“The ruling classes——”

A bell tinkled upstairs. I. Small put on his coat and hurried out of the underground workshop, pausing only to say: “Mind you, Lizzard, you’re not bleddy far wrong about my chain to lose, but did I asked you to poke your bleddy nose into my business? It’s
my
chain. Get on with your work!”

Yet he was influenced by the erudition and the eloquence of Lizzard. Sometimes, after supper, reading the evening paper, he looked up and said portentously: “Aha! So that’s what they are, the ruling classes!” Or: “Um-um! The skepter of War is haunting Europe already!” Or: “More taxes! My last chain they want to take away from me! The time has come not to talk, Millie,
not
to talk the time has come!” Once, reading a headline:
Facts
In
The
Mexican
Case,
he shouted: “Do you see? Facts! Face them!”

Now, throwing down a wire spike-file of bills, he said, “Face facts, Millie, whatever else you do.”

Then he twisted and pulled his coppery moustache until it was taut as a telegraph-cable and said: “Well, Millie, I’m sorry to say I done my best. I done my best, I’m sorry to say. Now what I’m going to do goodness only knows. Rent, rates, taxes, gas, milk, bread, and here’s for £8.10s. leather. And stock—stock! Oi! The plumber, 25s.——”

“—And whose fault was that?”

“Beggar the bleddy fault, you, me, him, her, it, that—whatever it is—a pipe bursts, so what does she want I should do? Drownd myself?”

“So that’s what he is.”

“So what’s what he is, beggar it? Listen, Millie, the business is a failure.”

“Whose fault is that, Srul, answer me—whose fault?”

“Face facts,” said I. Small.

Tragically, Millie said: “It’s my fault, it’s all my fault, I made a mistake. I thought I could make something of you. It’s
my fault. It was a mistake. You can’t make a purse out of a sow’s ear. Well, you can’t lie down and die. You must
do
something. What do We owe?”

“Nearly a hundred pounds.”

“And what have we got?” asked Millie, with terrible calm.

Loosening the fourth button of his Waistcoat, I. Small pulled out his massive gold watch-chain—the sort of chain they used to call a Double Curb Albert. It was an impressive chain, worthy of a ponderous repeater; but one end of it was clipped to a
five-shilling
Waterbury watch, and from the other there hung a little gun-metal matchbox. Having detached the watch and the matchbox I. Small let the chain fall on to the table and said: “
Na!
—I got nothing but my chain to lose.”

“What are we going to do? To have to go and ask Father for money—I’m so ashamed!”

“Who’s asking her father for money?” screamed I. Small kicking the sofa.

Millie wept copiously. Her body was shaken by sobs of such violence that I. Small thought of a careless washerwoman shaking a half-wrung sheet. She writhed and twisted, with a dull slapping and a slow intermittent hissing, while drops of dirty water seemed to sprinkle the table, as she cried: “I knew it would come to this…. I knew it would come to this…. Oh what are we going to do, oh what are we going to do? What is going to happen to the children?”

Now, I. Small, humiliated and angry, started to say
Beggary!
—but, being of a compassionate nature, and seeing that his wife was genuinely wretched, he stopped himself short at the first syllable, so that he said: “Beg——”

“That’s all he’s fit for. To beg,” said Millie, gathering to her bosom her five-year-old son and her two-year-old daughter. “Get him a barrel organ—buy him a monkey—that’s what he wants! Here——” she held out little Priscilla at arm’s length. “Take her, go on, take her out into the street, hold your hat out and cadge for coppers. Oh oh, oh!”

She cried out so dolefully that the children, already terrified, began to scream. Charles, in spite of his puny stature, could make a noise like a klaxon. Priscilla, when she cried—which was almost all the time—raised a scratchy, intermittent shriek
reminiscent
of bats in the twilight; a sound so high-pitched that it was felt rather than heard; but it sent its vibrations into every nerve.
As for Millie, who could put the passion and agony of Ruth and Naomi into the search for a mislaid matchbox and the sullen rage of Jonah into a dissertation upon a misplaced crumb of cigarette ash—she surpassed herself. She began by emitting a noise such as one might make by squirting a fine jet of water, under enormous pressure, into a resonant zinc pail, and ended by going off like a geyser. If she had made noises as horrible as this over a broken egg-cup, what unexplored heights and depths of sound would she explore now? Even the honking and
squeaking
of Charles and Priscilla made I. Small’s scalp tighten so that the hair at the nape of his neck stood on end. And this was nothing. The orchestra was merely tuning up.

It was more than I. Small’s weak flesh and thin blood could bear. He ran out of the room, snatched up his hat, put it on back to front, went, panting, into the street and walked aimlessly, lashing about with an imaginary walking-stick, until the heart in his breast, like a well-battered punching-ball, rattled itself quiet. By then he found himself in Langham Place. He pushed his hat away from his forehead, shoved his hands into his trouser pockets, and walked on, slowly and resolutely, trying to think, to make a plan.

When he reached the other end of Portland Place he realised, with a horrible sinking of his knocked-about heart, that if it came to thinking he had nothing to think with, and that he could no more make a plan than a monkey could make a watch. So he turned and walked back, and all that he could say to himself was:
I
wish
I
had
my
stick.
Without his walking-stick he did not know what to do with his right hand; he liked the feel of that stick, and found pleasure in the smart tap of its ferrule on the paving stones, but he dared not buy another—he would never hear the end of it. Twice he had been tempted; once by a snakewood stick with a silver band, and once by an elegantly polished stick of pimento wood. But, standing with his nose almost touching Cox’s window in Oxford Street, like a hungry urchin at the window of a pastry-cook, he heard a voice saying:
So,
that’s
what
he
is,
Piccadilly
Johnny!
There
could
be
no
bread
in
the
house,
but
he’s
got
to
rush
out
and
spend
his
last
penny
on
walking
sticks.
Why
doesn’t
he
go
and
get
an
eyeglass,
while
he’s
about
it?
What
does
he
care
if
his
children
go
in
rags?
…

Indignantly framing something beginning with
bleddy,
I. Small stepped off the kerb opposite the Langham Hotel, and then a
large motor-car stopped with a strained outcry of brakes while, above the
parp-parp-parp
of an exceptionally powerful horn, an imperious voice shouted: “Why the hell don’t you look where——”

I. Small, who had not been alarmed by the proximity of the car or the blasts of the horn because at that moment he did not care whether he lived or died, turned with a great start at the sound of the voice, and cried, half sick with emotion: “Is it you? No, it can’t be! Can it?”

“Why don’t you look where you’re going, does your mother know you’re out? Why, you——Why, may I drop dead if it isn’t Srulke Small! Srul,
wie
geht’s?
”

“Shloimele—Sollyle—to see you is … is … is …
oi!
” I. Small was strangled with joy. Half incoherent in his most lucid moments, he stood in the gutter, gibbering, trying to find
something
good to say.

“Get in,
schlemihl
,” said Solly Schwartz, opening the door.

“In a motor-car he’s riding?” stammered I. Small “Whose motor-car?” And he touched with the tip of a finger the polished brass of one of the headlamps, and felt the machine quivering and straining like a thoroughbred horse before a race. It was a large, luxurious Renault, brilliantly enamelled, high and roomy, coquettishly bonneted.

“It’s mine,
schmerel
,” said Solly Schwartz. “Get in, Srul. Have a ride.”

I. Small, who had never ridden in an automobile, climbed into the car with trepidation. When, after three fumbling attempts he closed the door, and found himself sitting next to his old friend, a great happiness came up from somewhere inside him so that he caught the hunchback’s neck in the crook of his arm and kissed him three times on the cheek, saying: “Schloimele … my little Solly! This is … this … I got no words!”

“Ah, it’s nice to see you again, Srul, you old
schlemazzel!
Where would you like to go? I bet I know where you’d like to go.”

“Where?”

“You’d like to go and have a snack and a glass of beer at Appenrodt’s, that’s where you’d like to go,” said Solly Schwartz, pulling levers and busying himself with little knobs. The car began to move. I. Small, terrified but curiously exhilarated, sat tense. His heart was beating painfully, but he was happy.

“Solly, are you sure you know the way you should work it?”
he asked, when they missed a four-wheeler by half an inch at the corner of Great Titchfield Street.

Solly Schwartz laughed scornfully, and in a few minutes they were in Piccadilly.

“I know you’d rather go to Appenrodt’s for old time’s sake,” said Solly Schwartz, and I. Small sighed and said:

“That’s right, Solly, old time’s sake, no?”

“A snack, a drink, a chat—yes?”

I. Small was silent. He had so much to say, but, when he came around to trying to find a Way to say it, he felt as a lawyer might feel who, called upon for documents, discovers that some blind idiot has shaken up the contents of his filing cabinets in a big black sack—miserably enraged, impotent, apologetic. When they sat at a table, face to face in the light, he gripped Solly Schwartz’s hand again and said affectionately: “How smart he looks! What did you pay for that suit?”

“Eight guineas.”

“What do you mean, eight guineas? For God’s sake, Solly—motor-cars, suits for eight guineas, pearl tiepins, kid gloves, silk veskits…. How comes, tell me?”

“It’s nothing,” said Solly Schwartz, with an impatient gesture. “How has it been with you?”

“So-so,” said I. Small; but it would have taken a stronger will than his to hold his misery under the surface of his face.

While they were eating their ham and drinking their big, comfortable mugs of Munich beer, Solly Schwartz said: “Come on, Srulke—give it a name. What’s the matter with you? You’re in trouble? Tell an old friend. You’re Worried. What is it?”

“Who said so?” said I. Small.

“Out with it, Srulke—come on, what’s up?”

“Nothing…. That’s a nice stick you got, Solly. Where do you get it?” He picked up from between Solly Schwartz’s feet the most wonderful walking-stick he had ever seen. It was cut out of some rare Wood that resembled red ivory, and the head, secured by a ring of gold, was cunningly carved out of the monstrous tooth of some aquatic beast. The craftsman who had shaped it had carved it into the likeness of a crocodile. The stick could not have weighed less than three pounds.

“Like it, Srulke?”

“Who wouldn’t?”

“Good. It’s yours, Srulke. Take it.”