The Thousand Deaths of Mr Small (31 page)

“Who are you calling Charley?” asked the man, drawing back his cuffs.

“You, Charley,” said Solly Schwartz, ghoulishly gulping the last of his ham. Then he became contemptuously eloquent. He continued: “I’ve warned you in advance—you start, and by Christ I’ll finish! Try it and see.”

“Hit him, hit him!” said the sporting young lady, but the gentleman held back, for he did not like the look of this peculiar man who, in spite of his stunted and deformed figure, appeared so calm, confident, and desperate; leaning, like something out of a Punch and Judy show, upon the handle of that ponderous yellow stick with its carved inscription:
Corfu.

Schwartz went on: “Looking at, looking at! What am I looking at? I’m looking at something that has been stuck under my nose to be looked at,
trottel!
I’m looking out of curiosity,
schlemihl!
What is she looking like that for, if it isn’t to be looked at?”

The gentleman called Mrs. Giglio, the waitress, and, pointing towards Solly Schwartz, said: “This man is being offensive. Please ask him to leave.” But the waitress had just brought his new order, and pretended not to understand.

Between forkfuls of food, Solly Schwartz mocked at the gentleman and his lady, saying: “Mug! Do you know what you’re making eyes at? What d’you think you’ve got there? You idiot! Love, eh? I’ll tell you—powder, paint, perfume, and on her
belly corset-marks. Wash her face and look at her without her stays,
trottel!
What d’you think she colours herself up for, except to be looked at, eh?”

The gentleman rose and said: “If you will step outside, I’ll knock you down.”

Solly Schwartz replied: “Why wait? Try it now,
trottel,”
and swallowed another great mouthful.

The lady whispered: “Do come away, dear!” and stood up; whereupon the gentleman threw down a two-shilling piece and, without a look at Solly Schwartz, conducted her to the door.

She, however, before the door slammed to, looked back. Solly Schwartz grinned at her. She smiled at him. Then the door closed, and they disappeared into the pale morning.

Now, Solly Schwartz, taking a great handful of Cioccalato Baci—the sweetmeats that contained amorous messages—sat back to consider the state of the universe.

Munching, confidently smiling, remembering every detail of the night, he knew that his money had not been thrown away. He turned over every idea with which the harlot had inspired him; every detail of her whorish maquillage, and every aspect of her saleable body—the used-up perfume dabbed on to overlay the exhausted odour of sweaty arm-pits, clumsily scraped, and of other body smells … the growths of incongruously coloured hair … and the aroma of Woman, at which his wide nostrils twitched.

When the waitress came with his bill, Solly Schwartz contrived to manœuvre his nose close to her shoulder, without giving offence; and recoiled in disgust because she was redolent of the sweat of the night, just like the strange woman out of the Alhambra.

This delighted him. He was beginning to understand Sex as Commerce. Women, on the whole, were physically unpleasant to mankind and to themselves. They were ashamed of
themselves
. They were ashamed of their axillary and pubic tufts, of the straightness of the hair on the head, the flaccid hang of their breasts, the stink of their breath—and other exhalations of themselves—and the pallor of their bloodless lips and pasty faces. The time was to come when every woman should put on a new face every morning, just as every month …

… This was another possibility. It could wait.

He thought again of the dyeings and cosmeticisings, the
perfumings and deodorizings and depilatings of the woman of the Alhambra, and of every detail of her dressing, while he drank yet another cup of coffee. After that, when he called the girl, Giglio, over to change a pound note, he said to her: “My dear, I don’t like to tell you, but you smell horrible.”

“What, me?” she said.

“Sorry,” said Solly Schwartz, and went out.

Before the door closed, he saw her sniffing at herself, suspiciously. Walking along Dean Street, chuckling, he exclaimed: “Wow!”—and gave half a crown to a beggar woman in a
doorway
, who, having incredulously examined the coin, tucked it into a secret pocket, assuming that the hunchback was drunk.

But he was very far from drunk that morning—few men have ever been more sober than Solly Schwartz on that occasion.

*

He, who had developed something like a fanatical yearning for the transient, had found the consummation of it—love and beauty, pruritus and vanity. His iron foot and the steel ferrule of his heavy stick made something like music as he almost danced into Shaftesbury Avenue. He had his powerful hands locked upon the most evanescent and profitable things in the world. He had several of the Deadly Sins in his grasp—Envy, Hatred, Malice, Vanity, Pride…. He had dreamed of a commodity that should be impermanent as smoke. Now, by the Lord, he had found something even less tangible and more saleable than smoke—Maya—Illusion.

Solly Schwartz had discovered himself as an advertising man, and a pioneer in the marvellously replaceable business of painted, powdered, scented, shaved, plucked, curled, varnished bodily pride. Overnight, this exhilarated little man had become an expert in the exterior aspects of love, and a connoisseur of female vanity. He was too excited to ride, so he walked—hopped, rather—to his little flat, thinking of all the things that might be bought and sold, and come and go … of the desire of the male for the female; the need of the woman for the man, and how she had to deceive him always, living in disguise. Once she had represented herself as a woman wearing a certain mask, or disguise, she dared not drop it until she had him hooked. Later on, of course, wise to the false face, the laced tits, the
drop-dilated
eyes that pouched in the dawn when the lips grew pallid
and the breath began to stink—later, he would seek a new illusion … another mask, another lie, another hole, another emptiness.

Between Leicester Square and Haymarket, Solly Schwartz conceived the idea of a great Beauty Trade.

C
HARLES
S
MALL
remembers another festive occasion when his mother went, on an emergency call, to visit
goodness-knows-who
—one of her detested sisters who had to be operated on for what was called a Carneous Mole. What Mrs. Small proposed to do about it, barring weeping, God knew. She had, however, heard that this Carneous Mole had something to do with the womb, and therefore it was necessary for her to assist in the matter, if only to the extent of whispering and biting at her
forefinger
, and saying: “Men! Selfishness!” So she went to join her foregathered sisters—who were no better than she—always excepting the detested wife of Nathan, the abhorred Photographer. Before she left, Millie Small laid out a cold roast fowl and a salad containing hard-boiled eggs, and left strict instructions concerning the making of a cup of tea. Then, carrying a big bunch of flowers, she departed. And again the atmosphere of the house grew lighter.

It was a Bank Holiday. I. Small (give the devil his due, he was not a bad old stick) slapped his son on the shoulder in a comradely fashion, and said: “Not a word, boychik—what about Hempstead Heat?”

“Hampstead Heath?” said Charles Small.

“What did I said? Hempstead Heat! Get your cap, boychik—come on!”

So they went to Hampstead Heath on the Bank Holiday, the furtive, festive, liberated I. Small and his bewildered but delighted son, Charles.

A quarter of a mile away they could hear the screaming of calliopes, and a sort of mutter which resolved itself into the joyous babble of a multitude of proletarian nobodies who, for once, had decided to throw away their savings to get away from the memory of the means whereby they had scraped them together. They whirled around and around on the merry-
go-rounds
, and swung desperately on the swing-boats … always grating or rocking to a standstill and getting off at the very spot where they had climbed on. They blew little striped strident
paper trumpets, and wore curious hats. They blew away their hard-earned money in the rifle ranges. They were out of their minds. I. Small, again, went mad with the rest. He had a go at skittles, hurling the balls with all his might, hitting nothing. He even attempted, gingerly, to fire a tiny rifle at a clay figure. He missed every time. He spent eighteenpence on any number of goes at smashing up The Happy Home—throwing wooden balls at a dresser full of plates, cups and saucers. (He broke one saucer.) So, exhausted, he conducted his son to the gambling games. The most conspicuous of these was a round table covered with
soup-plates
. On the face of each plate was clearly marked a sum of money, ranging from twopence to two shillings. The two-shilling plates were most remote, in the middle of this little arena, right next to the hole into which the balls dropped after they had missed their objectives. The balls were celluloid ping-pong balls, penny a ball. It was almost impossible to get one to come to rest in a plate. Still, the old man bought a shilling’s-worth of balls and gave six of them to Charles. Then they started to throw. Charles aimed for the two-shilling plates. He missed, of course—the balls bounced away into the black hole, and so these
pennyworths
of ambition were lost. I. Small went cautiously for the smaller numbers. Needless to say, he missed. But just as his fifth ball bounced out of a sixpenny plate and he growled: “Bleddy beggary!”—somebody, by some mad freak of chance, flipped a ping-pong ball into a two-shilling plate, and roared bloody murder, so that the side-show man turned to attend to him. Taking advantage of this moment, I. Small leaned forward and dropped a ball into the nearest threepenny plate.

Charles Small was terrified—perhaps one of those black gypsies was watching. But the side-show man, having settled his accounts, gave I. Small threepence, and a dark look. Now I. Small was in high spirits. He took Charles to Jack Straw’s Castle. Edging his way through the throng, he said: “
Ginger-beer
? A smoked selmon sendwich?” But he produced one
ginger-bee
r
, one pint of bitter, and two ham sandwiches.

Winking, the old man said: “Nice smoked selmon? Eat—what’s the matter, what?”

Charles Small ate, without much appetite.

He was somehow humiliated by his father’s laying out of a shilling, cursing at the loss of elevenpence, and rejoicing at the return of threepence.

Cheat!

Yet who is he to talk? He does not like to think of the old man dropping his ball into the threepenny plate; but it enrages him to think of his own penny balls, aimed at the highest and most dangerous prizes and always falling down into the dark hole.

Tap, tap, tap go the ping-pong balls from dish to dish. Once launched, you could scarcely follow them with a normal naked eye. So, between the daylight and the inevitable black hole bounces his uncontrollable light mind—will-less, empty,
inflammable
and, after two or three half-hearted bounces, rolling, dispirited, into the Pit.

*

… Balls! It was all balls. Charles Small clenches his hands at the thought of the loss of his balls. (Aie, aie, aie—the image of the old man hurling his balls at The Happy Home and knocking over nothing but a saucer!)

When he was a schoolboy, he was made one of the cricket team, and stood high in the opinion of the captain, because he had a quick eye and a supple wrist with a bat. As a bowler—a thrower of balls, he was wild and inaccurate, just like the old man—but when it came to fending them off and sending them elsewhere, he was not bad.

The time came when he was invited to make one of a team that was to play an important match in public against another little school. It was necessary for him to wear white flannel trousers, a cricket-shirt, and a cricket-cap. He spoke of the matter to his father. The old man said sententiously: “Well, sis already not a bad thing. Everybody looks at you, you’re a Something, a
Somebody
. You can make touch miv people after your critic match—get a good job.” Now unexpectedly I. Small began to roar: “Job! Schmob! Beggar the bleddy job! So long as you’re not a dirty bleddy boot-maker, beggar the bleddy job! Critic, schmitic—play, play! … White shoes? Not worth while to knock you up a pair—can get a pair rubber-soled plimsolls, for one-and-six. White trousers? Take the few shillings and play,
Khatzkele!
”

Charles did not thank his father. He only said: “Charles, not
Khatzkele.
”
And then he went skipping to his mother with the news.

Now Mrs. Small had been talking, over tea, with one Mrs. Fitch, a woman who was a bladder of lurid reminiscence. If you
pricked her with a word, gassy lies squirted out of her until she collapsed into the shrivelled membrane that she was, and dragged herself away vampirishly to bloat herself with more tales. This woman had told Mrs. Small terrible stories about small boys. Many years previous her son had burned himself in some boyish prank. It was a dangerous game, but all the boys played it. One tied a string to a punctured tin can, stuffed the can with
inflammable
material, set light to it, and whirled it round and round until it burst into flames and became red-hot. Her son had had an accident. The blazing can had hit him in the right arm-pit. “The blisters were like a bunch of grapes,” she said. She was an ambulant chapter of accidents. She exercised a profound influence upon Mrs. Small. Now, when Charles arrived breathless with his news of the cricket match, Mrs. Fitch shook her head solemnly and said: “Mrs. Small, if they’re going to play with hard balls, put a stop to it. Do you know Mrs. Shade? Her husband was a cricketer, and he was hit in the privates by a hard cricket ball and … well, it’s not for me to tell you what to do, but if I were you, I’d put a stop to it.”

Mrs. Small said: “No cricket!”

“But Father promised! I’m in the team!” shouted Charles Small.

“No more cricket,” said Mrs. Small, “not with hard balls. No more hard balls.”

So, as Charles Small remembers, he played the game alone in his little room. He had a bat. In fantasy he knocked a shadowy ball to boundary, blocked the slow bowler, subtly deflected the fast bowler for a bye.

The old man, to do him justice, stood up for young Charles, but not for long, against Mrs. Small. As in the Mongolian proverb:
When
the
egg
contended
with
the
stone,
the
yolk
came
out.

Later when Charles Small, humiliated, told the old man that he had let down his team, I. Small wearily said: “You must do like your mother says,” and, patting Charles’s shoulder, gave him sixpence.

But the boy did not want the sixpence. He went back to his little room and played with his bat—a most vigorous game, if there had been a ball. Only there were no balls except those that were thrown away—there are only balls of shadow.

*

Balls, balls, balls! How deep was Charles Small’s yearning for balls such as all the other boys normally played with! He asked his mother if he might have, at least, a rubber ball—for what was the use of a bat without a ball? But Millie Small said, firmly: “No cricket!” And there he was with a cricket bat, a toy cricket bat at that, cut out of one miserable end of pine wood and
perfunctorily
shaped by some fly-by-night novelty vendor. The other boys, the real boys, the ones that played cricket, had proper bats made of willow, with spliced cane handles.

Charles Small bites his lips when he remembers how he took his bat, which he had begun to detest, to a fellow with an irregular hair-line—a little brute named Whiteside—and said: “I say, Whiteside—what’ll you give me for this?”

Whiteside looked at the bat and said: “I’ll give you a magic lantern and twelve slides. What say?”

Now Charles Small was excited. What say? What was to be said? One word: Done! So Whiteside took the bat and gave him one of the most tawdry contraptions of tin that ever sickened the heart of a small boy. It was about the size of a grapefruit—a deformed grapefruit. From the front of it protruded something like a snout with a glass eye at the end of it. At the back there was a nasty little door, as in an old-fashioned burglar’s dark lantern, into which one pushed a tiny paraffin lamp by the light of which it was possible to project meaningless images at short range upon a screen.

Charles was jubilant. I. Small, looking stern, could scarcely restrain his excitement at this new toy, which he turned over and over, and examined with a critical eye. Mrs. Small asked: “Is it dangerous? Will it go off?”

“Don’t be bleddy silly—I’ll fill it up myself,” said I. Small, taking the little lamp away. Charles Small hopped with impatience until the old man came back with the lamp filled and trimmed. A linen table-cloth was pinned to the wall. The magic lantern was set on the table. The slides were laid in order. At this point, Charles Small felt that perhaps this might be better than cricket. His hands were upon the controls; his audience tense.

“Now watch,” he said, and put a match to the wick of the little lamp—whereupon the whole thing blew up with an
ear-splitting
bang, and blue flames crawled over the table. I. Small (he had filled the lamp with benzene) went flapping about like a
demented walrus, bleddying and bleddying, puffing and snorting, while Mrs. Small did all that she was capable of doing: she screamed; as poor little Charles fingered the hot tin ruin that represented all that he had to show for his bat, for his ambition in the cricket field, and his aspiration to showmanship.

When the piddling little flame flickered out, I. Small, panting as if he had rescued a family from a five-storey fire, struck Charles a shrewd blow with the
Evening
News
and shouted: “Murderer!”

“For God’s sake, not in the head!” screamed Mrs. Small.

I. Small put the poor little magic lantern carefully into a
fire-shovel
and carried it to the dust-bin. For hours Mrs. Small roamed about the place sniffing for fire. Twice she had a nervous diarrhœa.

No more pretty pictures in the dark for Charles Small.

But there must have been a stubbornness in him, he thinks bitterly, for he did not quite abandon his position. In October he was invited to make one of the football team. Bursting with pride, he told his mother—not without trepidation. Could he have a pair of footballs boots, he asked. Mrs. Small, preoccupied at the moment with Priscilla, who had turned out to be a problem child, said: “Yes, if you’re a good boy….”

And then, oh good God, how good he was! Butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. He sat dreaming of the field, the wet field under the threatening sky, and the wary contact of the
twenty-two
men … Charles Small was to the fore … he dribbled the ball—passed it to Jones. But Jones was charged by Smith—yet before Smith had time to take advantage of his opportunity, Charles Small’s shoulder had crashed into him, and the ball was at his feet, and the goal in easy reach. The goal-keeper stood, bobbing and weaving. The men of the opposing side were thundering up behind him … Charles Small kicked, quick and hard, and the heavy, soggy, leather ball left the mud and flew, straight and true, between the hands of the goal-keeper and into the net, while the crowd roared: “Goal!”

But Mrs. Fitch came to tea, and when she heard that young Charles wanted football boots, having been nominated for a team, she drew a deep breath and raised her hands. Football, she said, was a ruffian’s game. Mrs. Foley’s little Edward played football and was kicked in the privates, so that he was ruptured, crippled tor life, and might never marry. Mrs. Small was her own mistress, of course; but for her part, Mrs. Fitch would as
soon give her son a vial of prussic acid as a football. It was a very dangerous game. Now tennis, Mrs. Fitch said, was a gentlemanly game, played with a soft ball. Even ladies played it. But football? She would as soon, the heavens forbid, see her son underground, as being ruptured on a football field….

So Charles Small was dreaming his dreams when his mother came to him and said, not without commiseration: “Charley, no football. No football boots, Charley.”