The Thousand Deaths of Mr Small (28 page)

Abel Abelard answered: “Hey, my dear sir, you can’t put
that
on your tin! That’s the Purple Emperor—he lives on rotten meat.”

“So do lobsters. So do crabs. So do shrimps. So do eels. Didn’t you ever stick your nose up against a shop-window in the Strand, with an empty belly? To look at the lobsters? They live on dead men. Well? What do you think you live on, eh? One of these days, big as you are, you’re going to die,” said Solly Schwartz, “and out of your guts what do you think is going to come? Diamonds? Grass? Who eats the grass? The lamb. Who eats the lamb? Eh?
I’ll
eat you. Purple Emperors…. Now, listen. You work for me, five, five and a half, six days a week, and I pay you seven pounds a week. You draw. Later on, when things get better with me, you get more. Anything especially good you do, you get a bonus. In the meantime, seven pounds a week. What’s the matter with that, eh?”

“Well, nothing,” said Abelard. “Only I wonder if I might have something on account.”

Solly Schwartz took out his wallet and put down two
ten-pound
notes, saying: “Here’s twenty pounds.”

“Oh, thank you! This is on account of salary, I take it?”

“Don’t be such a bloody fool! Salary! This is a bonus in advance. Work with me, play straight with me, and I give you my word of honour—you’ll want for nothing. Now, are you with me?”

Abelard said: “I am with you, Mr. Schwartz.”

“That’s settled then,” said Solly Schwartz. “I’ll get in touch with you. In the meantime, remember: seven pounds a week to begin with, and for the present, Good-bye!”

The girl, who had put on a dress and come out to hear the end of the conversation, ran to Solly Schwartz and, before he could recoil, kissed him wetly on the left cheek. He limped away. Looking down the stair-well she saw him scrubbing his cheek with the cuff of his conspicuous coat, rubbing her kiss away. This
made her angry and sad: more sad than angry. But when Abel Abelard showed her the two ten-pound notes she squealed like a delighted child. They embraced, and went to a good restaurant, agreeing that God had sent them a fool.

Solly Schwartz went on his way, grinning.

Now this, if Charles Small only knew it, was the point at which Solly Schwartz began to be God—began unwittingly to involve himself in Charles Small’s destiny and help to break his heart.

God:
this is a strong word. Powerful though he was, alert though he was, the hunchback with the game leg was nothing but the unconscious agent of infinitely higher powers. Shrewd, keen, calculating as he was, how little Schwartz knew of the beautiful thing he had destroyed and in what manner he had been responsible for its destruction!

*

Now how had this happened? To Charles Small, when his life was torn asunder, when he was very young and wriggling like a cut worm in the dirt, it was a mystery. He clung to Solly Schwartz, for there was no one else strong enough to cling to. He became an atheist and, denying the existence of God, cursed Him. He denied God and the Devil, then, and considered himself as a marble between the fumbling forefinger and thumb of a blind man, or as one of a pair of dice in the clumsy hands of a myopic man … hopeless, helpless, lost.

Later he knew that Solly Schwartz, whom he loved then and always would love, was his evil genius. But now, thinking through the mud in which he feels that he is immersed, Charles Small knows that Solly Schwartz bore him nothing but goodwill—loved him—but was himself a bewildered wanderer in this world where men grow tired, in spite of the fact that he believed that he knew exactly where he was going and what he was doing. Now (the hunchback would break a walking-stick over his head if he said it) Charles Small, feeling sorry for himself, feels sorry for Solly Schwartz, the Superman. Schwartz was a better man than Charles, Charles’s father, and twenty men put together … and yet he was, so to speak, in the grip of terrible forces. Even Schwartz, with all his spiritual might, never accomplished a design, or quite achieved an end. Even he, Schwartz, was a tool in an Invisible Hand. Yes, even Solly Schwartz, the Calculator,
was nothing and nobody. He was sharp; but keenest of all is that part of the razor-edge which one cannot see. The part that cuts is invisible.

Charles Small knows, now; he understands that which was incomprehensible, and sees things to which in the old days he was blind.

Now it isn’t necessary to recapitulate. It is essential to turn over in the mind the great passion of Solly Schwartz and its relation to the great love of Charles Small … how the one affected the other … how Passion locked horns with Love, and Passion, triumphant, went away wailing, empty, into the night.

Lara … Lara!

*

As soon as his contract was signed Solly Schwartz went to work with a sort of demoniac energy. He established the London office and, paying Abelard lavishly, drove him like a mule, beating him with the lash of his raw, contemptuous tongue. The
forty-eight
sheets were painted, printed, and pasted up; and so were the twenty-four sheets, the twelve sheets, and the
double-crowns
. The showcards were drawn and printed, and
manu
factured
, each with its little red cord. Solly Schwartz went about like a madman from wholesale house to wholesale house,
brandishing
his tin can, talking through his lower teeth:

“… Look,
trottel.
Look and see. There isn’t any argument. Is it clear? The best product of its kind in the world. Taste these peas—wait a minute, no need for a tin-opener—here, look—they open like that, just as easy as that! Taste, and see! Judge, judge for yourself, mister! … Isn’t that good enough for you? This other bloody rubbish you cut your fingers off with. With my can, so you turn a wheel, and there you are—peas, beans, tomatoes, anything … What? Not such a big can? I’m sorry. All right. For another pint of blood take another ounce of peas! Buy or don’t buy—I’m not here to make sales.”

But he was there to make sales, and they bought.

He would say, furthermore: “Here, look: here’s a showcard for you! Did you ever in your life see a card like this? Look at it—it makes your mouth water. Well?”

The buyers bought. Then Solly Schwartz bought advertising space in the newspapers. Mr. Narwall protested, but Schwartz bought front-page space in the
Daily
Special.
He took the whole front page, three months running, and Abel Abelard drew remarkable pictures. Money poured out; but money poured in. After two years with Narwall Solly Schwartz found that he had a hundred thousand pounds in the bank.

He was about to buy a house in the country, a walled house not far from Woking, quite near the river—a place to which anyone might invite guests—when Mr. Fourose came from America with bad news.

Now Mr. Fourose was a lonely, sinister character who procured information and sold it for ready money to whom it might concern. He was, in effect, a spy, a commercial spy. There are such people. While some men insinuate themselves into war departments and sell their finds to Governments, others insinuate and bribe and corrupt themselves into factories; their information is often more valuable.

Mr. Fourose was a man of medium height and indefinable colour. He had the air of a craftsman; but he had also a certain watchfulness such as one seldom sees in the eyes of a man who is accustomed to watching his tools rather than his men. He said to Solly Schwartz: “Mr. Schwartz, I have some information. Sound information. It will cost you a thousand pounds.

“Do me a favour, don’t make me laugh—I’ve got a cracked lip. What do you mean, a thousand pounds?”

“A thousand pounds,” said Mr. Fourose. “In advance.”

“What for?”

“A few words. A thousand pounds. You know me, Mr. Schwartz. I don’t swindle you. I’m an honest man. Put down a thousand pounds and I give you my word of honour that I’ll put down something worth it. If you don’t, I’ll go elsewhere.”

Solly Schwartz wrote a cheque for five hundred pounds and, putting it across the desk, said: “Don’t touch it, it’s wet. It’s five hundred pounds. I’ll give you the other five hundred pounds when you talk. What is it?”

Fourose, waving the cheque in the air, waited till it was dry before he put it in his pocket, when he said: “Mr. Schwartz,
there’s a firm called Paisley in Philadelphia. They’ve got a new can. It makes yours look silly.”

“Show me.”

“Look. See. Yours is too complicated. This works like … like
that!
Now do you see what I mean?”

Solly Schwartz wrote another cheque. “There’s your thousand pounds,” he said, “and no argument.”

The men shook hands. Fourose hurried to the bank. Solly Schwartz said to his secretary: “Get me a ticket, quick, for Slupworth. Make me a telephone call to Mr. Narwall, tell him I want to see him quick! Above all, hurry; hurry up! I’m in a hurry!”

So, Mr. Fourose went his way and Solly Schwartz went his own, which was to Slupworth; where he changed, that day, the course of several lives.

He arrived early in the evening when Narwall was eating his tea—home-made bread and butter, ham and tongue—what they called a “meat tea”.
Five
bob
a
day
and
a
good
meat
tea
…
and
we’
re
getting
forrader
and
forrader.
Mrs. Narwall asked him to sit down, and served him lavishly, but Schwartz ate angrily, almost in silence until, his appetite satisfied, he pushed away his plate and said: “Mr. Narwall, now look!”

“Go to bed,” said Mrs. Narwall to the children, and they left the room.

“Now look here,” said Solly Schwartz, “I’ve had just about quite enough. I can’t work like this. Every bloody damn thing I do you question——”

“No profanity, please!” said Mr. Narwall.

“Bugger your bloody profanity! Are you listening or are you not? Every damn bloody thing you query! You make me look like a
tuppeny-ha’penny
bloody bleeding bastard, do you hear?”

“Please, Mr. Schwartz, not in front of my wife.”

Solly Schwartz told Mr. Narwall what he could go and do to his wife, expressing a doubt concerning his capacity to do it. Narwall’s face became lead-coloured with rage. Mrs. Narwall, however, smiled a little secretive smile; whereupon Mr. Narwall asked her to leave the room, and she told him not to be silly.

“What have you to complain of, Mr. Schwartz?” she asked.

“I’ve got plenty of bloody God-damn blasted things to complain of!” shouted Schwartz.

“Let us discuss this without profanity,” said Mr. Narwall. Solly Schwartz, telling him exactly what he could do with his
profanity, slipped into unprintable obscenity, at which the
manufacturer
stopped his ears. Mrs. Narwall remained calm, and said: “But what is in your mind, Mr. Schwartz?”

“I can’t work like this!” said Solly Schwartz. “What the devil of a kind of way, God strike me dead, is this, to run a bloody business? Eh? Every bloody bleeding blasted penny I lay out, so you damn well query it. What sort of system is this, by Christ? What louse-bound stinking bloody rotten system, eh? … Oh, ‘ladies present’ you say. You can——your ladies! Or can you? I’ve had enough of you. Enough is enough. I can’t work with you and I won’t. Is that clear?”

Mr. Narwall said: “Wait a minute, Mr. Schwartz, please—do not be too impetuous.”

Solly Schwartz said: “Impetuous. Impetuous be bloody well buggered for a lark!”

He saw Mrs. Narwall kick her husband under the table as she said, in a voice which she thought was deceptively sweet:

“But, dear! If Mr. Schwartz doesn’t want to stay with us——”

“—You’re bloody well right I don’t!” cried Solly Schwartz. “I should work with stingy cows like you two!”

“Are you trying to insult me?” asked Mrs. Narwall.

Solly Schwartz replied: “Yes. Cows. Pigs, I should have said.”

Rising, Mr. Narwall said: “Mr. Schwartz, get out!”

Solly Schwartz uttered a word which it is not customary to print, and added: “Let’s break it up. How can I work with a stinkpot like you? You creeping bastard, you crawler! Break it, for God’s sake, break it!”

“Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain,” said Mr. Narwall.

“Never mind the name of the Lord your God in vain!” said Solly Schwartz.

Then Mrs. Narwall put her hand upon his pigeon-chest and pushed and he fell down.

He limped down the stairs, grinning like a little devil. As soon as the front door had closed behind him, Mr. Narwall said:

“My dear, are you crazy? Are you out of your mind? Schwartz is worth a million pounds.”

“Don’t be a fool. What is he? A salesman, a man handling advertising—a man. You employ him, you pay him, you give him a share of everything you earn. What for? A Can. Is that clear? It is clear, is it? How much have you made this last
couple of years? A hundred and fifty thousand? Well then … consider it. You made him lose his temper, don’t you see? He has got the Can—don’t you remember? Buy him out, buy him out, buy him out!”

So it happened that on the following day Solly Schwartz, who afterwards in Mr. Narwall’s mind was to be symbolic of the Evil One, sold his interest in the Narwall Cannery, and in the patent can, for £100,000. They parted, reconciled, on good terms. Mrs. Narwall, the schemer, smiled at him like a cat. Mr. Narwall said: “It has been a profitable association, Mr. Schwartz, and I am sorry that we have had to part company. God bless you.”

Solly Schwartz said, with the air of a man who has done the wrong thing: “Look here … It could be I was a bit hasty….”

He appeared uneasy. Mrs. Narwall said, in her firm voice, with her soft smile: “All signed and sealed now, Mr. Schwartz. Good-bye!”