The Thousand Deaths of Mr Small (22 page)

And just as he finished saying this to himself, someone tapped him on the shoulder and said: “Hello, you.”

Solly Schwartz looked up and then said: “Mr. Abelard—that’s a funny thing, I was just thinking about you.”

In the half second between the touch and the recognition, Solly Schwartz had conceived another idea.

Abel Abelard was an artist whom Solly Schwartz had got acquainted with one night when, having prowled the streets and poked his great beak of a nose into many sinister, dimly-lit doorways, he had stopped at Vespasiano’s for something to eat and drink, and—always insatiably curious—corkscrewed himself into a little group of men and women, unconventionally dressed, who were talking at the top of their voices about things he did not
understand and men he had never heard of…. Manet, Monet, Pissarro, Sickert. Here, he felt, was another corner of the sky, something more to learn. It was impossible to know too much. He waited for a loop-hole of silence, and squeezed himself into it, saying: “I beg your pardon, ladies and gentlemen, but if you will pardon the intrusion, I heard you mention a certain name just now. Unless my ears deceive me, I believe I heard that gentleman over there mention the name of Rubens.”

“That’s right,” said a fat, bearded man in a nankeen jacket.

“Is he by any chance any relation of Mr. Max Rubens in the New Road?”

He knew that he was talking nonsense, and that he was exposing himself as pitiably ignorant; but he knew that to the ignorant much is told. He was not a bit offended by the roar of laughter that followed. They made room for him and invited him to sit at their table, where, for two hours, they pitilessly made fun of him:

“… Rubens of the New Road is a builder. The one I was talking about was a decorator.”

“… You don’t, by any chance, happen to know a bloke called Theotocopuli, the one they call El Greco or The Greek?”

“… Darling, did you hear that? He says he knows a man called The Greek who opened a restaurant in Dalston—isn’t he priceless?”

“… By the way, speaking of Manet, have you any Monet? We could do with a cup of coffee.”

He listened to it all, smiling, and ordered coffee and pastries for the company; after which they forgot him. But he kept his seat at their table and went on listening until the party broke up. Then a secretive-looking young man took him aside and said: “I say, I don’t suppose you could manage to lend me half a crown, by any chance?”

Solly Schwartz looked at him quizzically, and saw a youthful, nervous face, with a tremulous chin scantily covered by a thin, threadbare beard. “Right you are then, catch hold,” he said, handing over half a crown.

“I’m ever so much obliged. I say, you know we didn’t mean any harm, ragging you and all that? … I suppose you
do
know that we
were
ragging you, or don’t you? By the way, my name’s Abel Abelard.”

“Good-night all,” said Solly Schwartz, and limped away, leaving
behind him an uneasy doubt as to who had made a fool of whom. He had a rare knack of making people feel uneasy, that
hunchback
. Walking home, he thought:
Six
coffees
with
cream.
Twelve
ba-bas.
Plus
half
a
crown.
They
got
a
coffee
and
a
cake
and
a
laugh
from
me.
We’ll
see
who
comes
out
winning.

Now, smiling at Abel Abelard he said: “Sit down, I want to talk to you.”

“What about?” asked Abelard, nervously fumbling at his light beard.

“Have some coffee.”

“Well, yes, if you like.”

“A bit of cake?”

“Well, I don’t mind if I do.”

“Or perhaps you’d like something more substantial—ham and egg, egg and bacon?”

“I wouldn’t say no.”

“Cigarette? Have a cigarette—they’re hand-made.”

“Oh thanks awfully. You’re ever so kind. I say, look here, I don’t suppose by any chance you’d care to lend me a pound until … until next …”

“That’s right. How did you guess?”

“You didn’t mind my asking, I hope?” asked Abel Abelard.

“No harm in trying,” said Solly Schwartz, jovially. “If it works once in ten times it still shows a profit.”

While Abel Abelard was eating his ham and eggs Solly Schwartz said: “I’ll tell you what, though—I could put a little bit of work your way. You are an artist, aren’t you? How would you like to paint me up two or three samples for labels?”

“Labels? What sort of labels?” asked the painter, who was engaged on a canvas sixteen feet long and eight feet wide
depicting
the destruction of the Great Library at Alexandria. “Labels?” He made, with his forefingers and thumbs, a tiny oblong.

“Look,” said Solly Schwartz, pushing the tin of peas across the table. “You see the label on this here tin.”

“I say, isn’t it horrid?”

“That’s right. Now what I want you to do is paint me a label with peas on it. Do you follow me? Peas.
Garden
peas.” Solly Schwartz did not know the difference between a Garden pea and a Common pea—neither does anyone else—but he said it again: “
Garden
peas. Now I want you to paint me up this label so that when I look at it, it should make my mouth water. Listen. At
home, you’ve helped your mother to shell peas, haven’t you?” Abel Abelard had not, but he nodded, and Solly Schwartz went on: “You’ve sat there in the kitchen. It’s Saturday. Your mother has bought half a boiling fowl. She’s going to make a lovely chicken soup with farfel and a few fresh green peas in it before the boiled chicken. Eh?”—At the thought of this Solly Schwartz’s mouth watered and he paused to order ham and eggs. “Your mother says to you, whatever your name is: ‘Make yourself useful, do the peas.’ So you sit down with a basin and you break open those pods, and with your ringer you scrape out all those nice cold peas; and when your mother isn’t looking you eat one or two, and they taste … they taste … they taste
of
green.
Well, that’s how I want this label: it’s got to
taste
of green peas. I want pods full of peas, a little basin full of peas straight out of them pods, and some pods just opened like your mother had just poked her finger into them, full of peas. I want them
shiny-glossy
peas. Up here, on top, I want
W.
W.
Narwall’s
Fresh
Garden
Peas
in nice clear letters, but not to drown those peas. Do you understand? A label like this to go round a tin like this. Do you see? Tell me, yes or no!” cried Solly Schwartz, passionately

“Oh well, yes, I think I can do that. In how many colours?”

“Green! How many colours is a pea? As many colours as you like—the more the merrier—only I want those peas to look like peas, to look like they’re just coming out of that pod on the end of your thumb. Never mind colours,
do
it! And can you do me another label, the same, with tomatoes?”

“Oh yes—they’re lovely things, tomatoes. I love them.”

“Who doesn’t? Imagine—you come home from school hungry and your mother’s making fresh tomato soup with fresh tomatoes, with a little bit of rice in it, eh?” Solly Schwartz, overcome by the memory of it, mopped up egg yolk with a bit of bread, and swallowed noisily; but his eloquence was such that Abel Abelard, whose diet, between ten and seventeen, had consisted in stew and pudding at a great public school, felt hungry for green peas in chicken broth and clear tomato soup with a few grains of rice in it.

“Well, yes,” he said, “but is this a commission, or only a suggestion?”

“Now look here. You paint me up three good labels, to fit this tin—you know the lettering. I want—one for garden peas, one for tomatoes, and one for—” Solly Schwartz thought for a
moment, striking his iron foot with his stick, and then cried—“Chicken soup! Think of a lovely fat juicy fowl, and a bowl, a lovely bowl full of chicken soup that looks like gold, with a few garden peas floating in it. Think of that! Do me those three labels, by tomorrow this time, and I’ll pay you well.”

“Could you pay me a little something as it were in advance?”

Solly Schwartz’s hand went to his pocket. He knew that Abel Abelard was hungry, and something told him that the hungrier he was the more passion he would put into his peas, tomatoes, and chicken soup. So he put down five shillings and said: “This’ll tide you over till to-morrow. You let me have those labels by five o’clock to-morrow afternoon, and I’ll pay you a pound apiece for them. Is that fair?”

“Well, I’m agreeable,” said Abel Abelard.

“I don’t have to tell a man of your education what peas and tomatoes look like, but have you got that chicken soup clear in your mind? It’s a sort of golden colour—think of melted butter—and in it there’s these little fresh peas, and little tiny square bits of farfel. You keep on thinking of it and make me a nice picture with good gold lettering for the label. When I say gold, remember, I don’t mean that sort of gold they paint picture frames with, I mean——”

“—Oh,
don’t!
I know, I know. Hadn’t I better take this tin of peas for the measurement?”

“Certainly, take it.”

“By the way, will you want it back?”

“All I want is them labels.”

“You see, all of a sudden I’ve developed a terrific appetite for green peas. I’ll be here by half-past four to-morrow afternoon. Thank you very, very much. 
À
demain
.”

When he was gone Solly Schwartz paid the bill and went out of the café, saying to himself:
My
God,
what
a
marvellous
salesman
I
am!
I’ve
sold
myself
chicken
soup!
And he walked as fast as he could to Fishbone’s kosher restaurant in Charing Cross Road. There, impatiently beating his iron foot, he waited while a waiter shouted down the shaft: “Von beef vid kasha for a special customer—and der gentleman says dis time it should not smell from herring!”

Then Solly Schwartz caught him by the coat-tails and said: “C’mere—quick, I’m in a hurry! Have you got chicken soup with a few fresh peas in it, and a little farfel?”

“All your life you should have chicken zoop like ve got chicken zoop,” said the waiter.

Solly Schwartz had to swallow a mouthful of saliva before he could say: “Listen. I want a big plate, a great big plate—it had better be a little tureen—with chicken soup, with fresh peas, with a little farfel, the leg quarter of a boiled chicken, and matzo-balls. Quick, I’m in a hurry.”

“A leg quarter special boiled chicken in special chicken zoop mit matzo-balls mit fresh peas mit special farfel for a special customer!” shouted the waiter.

Solly Schwartz sat and waited, remembering this dish as his mother used to make it. But when, at last, he was served, the soup was insipid and the chicken boiled to rags. As for the matzo-balls: he bit one, spat out the mouthful with a hideous grimace, picked another out of the bowl with his fingers and flipped it at the waiter’s head, as a boy flips a marble, snarling: “You should shoot this
scheiss
out of guns. And what do you call this? Soup? And what do you call
this,
chicken? Ducks should be swimming in such soup—under Westminster Bridge there’s better soup. And you call these fresh peas? Eh? They come out of a dirty stinking tin. Don’t argue, because you’re wrong—don’t tell me, I know. This is the last time I patronise this restaurant.”

“Vat do you vant from me? I’m der vaiter, not der cook.”

“Oh, go away,” said Solly Schwartz. He ate his soup and his chicken angrily. He was disenchanted: he had been thinking of the Friday evening meals as his mother prepared them; and
thinking
of them, even while he was chasing the last elusive drop of gravy around the plate with the last bit of bread, although his belly was full his mouth watered, and he said to himself:
Perhaps,
after
all,
it’s
a
bit
of
a
pity
she
died.
That
chicken
soup
with
farfel
and
peas
took
a
bit
of
beating.

(If, just then, someone had offered him a spoonful of the late Mrs. Schwartz’s chicken soup, he would have spat it out in a fine spray and called nostalgically for the chicken soup that mother used to make. Mrs. Schwartz was an execrable cook. Solly’s yearning was not for her watery, greasy soup: it was for a certain lost second. When he was eleven years old a newsagent and tobacconist paid him half a crown a week for his services as errand boy between four and seven o’clock five evenings a week. He learned to love Friday: it was the last day of school, the last day of labour, it was pay day. One awful Friday afternoon in
November a black fog came down—an icy cold, wet fog that penetrated clothes and skin as water gets into blotting-paper—and in this fog the boy Schwartz was lost. He had one small parcel of papers and periodicals to deliver, but he took the wrong turning and then, when the fog came down he found that he was blind as well as halt and lame, and so he pressed his head against some wet and freezing area railings and, as quietly as he could, for even then he had his pride, cried. Then there were footsteps that seemed to shake the street—whatever street it was—and there was a flash of golden light that concentrated itself into a circle. He found himself looking into a policeman’s lantern. A gruff, foggy voice said: “Cheer up, you’ll soon be dead. What you crying for? You lost?” The beam of light moved slowly
downwards
, and shone upon the boy’s iron foot. “Oh, ah,” said the policeman, hooking his lantern on his belt, “up you get, come on. Now, where were you supposed to be going? … What for? … What, to deliver them, eh? Never mind about that. Where d’you live? … Oh there, I know: third left, first right, first left again. Come on, son, have a ride home. Hang on, and I’ll give you a picky-back…. Don’t worry about your papers. It’s on my beat, and I’ll deliver ’em for you. You come on home, my boy.”