The Thousand Deaths of Mr Small (7 page)

I. Small, that puny little fool, felt like a raging, ravening,
blood-drinking
rapist. He was terribly shocked, and perhaps a little proud, of the blood ruin he had wrought. When he started to cry they hustled him out of the bedroom. In the sitting-room the doctor, ostentatiously putting great glittering instruments into a black bag, said affably—it had been a perfectly easy delivery—“That’s all right, control yourself, take it easy man. I pulled her through all right.”

Pulled
her
through!
I. Small saw his wife being pulled through something with sharp spikes on it. If everything else was not enough, they had to
pull
her
through.
He moaned: “Terrible terrible, terrible, oi!”

The doctor, not wanting to belittle himself, said: “Oh well … it’s her first, you see, and in the case of a primipara it is sometimes hard. I only had to put a stitch or two in the sphincter. I’ll look in to-morrow.”

Then I. Small ran about like a chicken with its head cut off. Stitches! He saw the women, red to the armpits, wrapping up Millie’s liver and pushing back all that was left of her while the doctor, with bradawl and shoemaker’s needle, sewed her up with wax ends, hammering a mouthful of nails into the hips to make everything safe and watertight. It was more than he could bear.

Lily, Ruth, and Pearl came in from the bedroom, alarmed by his outcries. He said: “It’s finished! She’s got a case of primepera! She’s hard! She’s got to have stitches in the spink!”

The doctor paused on his way out, laughing, and said: “Don’t be a fool. She’ll be all right. It was not at all a difficult delivery.”

“Der liver!” cried I. Small, and fainted.

They revived him with brandy. On the whole they thought well of him for having fainted: it showed that he had feelings.

But Lily said, with her triumphant smirk: “When my pains came on my Nathan went to a music hall. He said: ‘What’s the use of sitting and waiting? What can
I
do? What comes, comes. There’s enough crying and worrying in the house already. Will it make matters better if I walk up and down and get in
everybody
’s way? I’ll come back later.”

“Heartless!”

“Disgusting!”

“Unnatural!”

“What do you mean?
Would
it have helped if Nathan’d mooched about the house fainting? Answer me, tell me the honest truth—what good would it have done?”

Since the only answer to this question was
No
good
at
all,
the others became furiously angry. They made disparaging noises, ironically humming and sardonically hawing while they
rummaged
in their muddled heads for something conclusive to say; until Ruth said: “Who said anything about doing good? It shows feeling, that’s all. Feeling!”

Lily went on, malevolently calm: “I started to be confined at six o’clock in the evening when Nathan had just come back from the office. The office. He put on his hat, and he put on his coat, and he went out and had something to eat at a restaurant, and after that he went to the Alhambra, and by the time he came home my little Stanley was born. Nathan wanted a boy. So it was a boy. So it was a boy. When
my
Nathan says he’s going to have a
boy,
he
has a
boy!”
She looked triumphantly at Sarah, who had a daughter.

If Millie had not been asleep there would have been a battle of words, a battle royal. The sisters did what they could in whispers—an unsatisfactory way of quarrelling, but sufficiently audible to bring Millie’s mother out of the bedroom. Threatening them with a hard, familiar right hand, the old woman said, in Yiddish: “Noisy rattles, silence; or old as you are I’ll give you such a
putsch
that you’ll stick to the wall.”

So Millie slept her sleep for twelve hours and awoke, feeling lighter and healthier than she had ever felt before—but moaning piteously for her husband’s benefit. Eight days later, Charles Small—whose blood had run into its proper channels from his
surface, so that instead of looking like a piece of liver he resembled a piece of tripe—was ceremoniously circumcised, as the Law prescribes, in the flesh of his foreskin. Everyone gave him gifts. Izzy, the estate agent, gave him a magnificent rattle with a mother-of-pearl ring to cut his teeth on, and a dozen jingling silver bells. It had been given to his own child, but Izzy had locked it up in a drawer because it was dangerous—the bells were certain to come loose so that a baby was bound to swallow them, sooner or later. Millie was deeply impressed by the magnificence of this gift. She put it away because it was, as she said, “too good to use”. She was like that: anything new, or freshly cleaned, was too good to use. She only half-blew her nose into a freshly laundered handkerchief. Years passed before the dust-covers came off the chairs and you made yourself
comfortable
. It was a pity even to sharpen a new pencil.

The tobacconist (trust him to show off) gave him a silver drinking cup with a five-pound note inside it. Becky produced a new golden sovereign. Millie’s mother and father offered a neat black case containing a child’s knife, fork, spoon and napkin ring, with a fifty-pound note. The photographer, that hateful creature, said that he would take the child’s photograph free of charge. So one day they went to Nathan’s “studio” and Charles Small was photographed in the nude, lying on his belly on a soft cushion, looking disgustingly helpless. Nathan threw in, free of charge, what he called a Cabinet Study of the Family Group. It has been preserved for forty years, and Charles Small has it still.

There is his father, in a black coat, obviously afraid of the camera—no doubt he expected it to go off bang—looking angry, therefore. There sits his mother, noticeably in a state of lactation, holding a sort of cretin dressed in long, complicated, frilly clothes with a laced bonnet stuck on its stupid head, and a general air of discomfort. That was Charles Small. The camera caught him half a second before he burst into tears because he was
uncomfortable
, having wet himself. His mother hated that picture, but she did not have the nerve to say so. She would not tear it up, because she believed that it was unlucky to tear up
photographs
. Whenever Charles Small sees it he wants to destroy it. Once, in a rage, he started to tear it up, but something stronger than himself made him desist. And there it is, somewhat faded, an embarrassment. He loathes it. His father is a scowling
guinea-pig
with a moustache, his mother is a little monkey in a floral hat, and he is nothing on earth pinned up in a diaper-full of egested maternal milk.

Here was the beginning of his misery. Here was the record of the beginning of the end of Charles Small.

T
HERE
was trouble from the start. His parents quarrelled over him constantly.
Here
was
something
worth
quarrelling
over!
he thinks, striking himself on the chest, partly because he has
heartburn
, and partly because he despises himself; and he shudders at the thought of himself as he was when that picture was taken.

What was there worth quarrelling over? Do reasonable, civilised human beings quarrel over bags of corruption begotten in guilt and shameful darkness, gestated in fear, and born in mess and panic? Into his tortured mind comes a disgusting image: he sees himself as a nightmarish bagpipe. You tucked this bagpipe under your arm, but you did not blow into it: it was ready-filled with human breath. Day and night, night and day, day in and day out and night after night it squealed and screamed. With all your soul you hated its nerve-racking music, and yet you were compelled to walk up and down with it in the middle of the night in the hope of silencing it. It paused in its shrieking only as long as it took to discharge vomit from one end and dung from the other … and something compelled you to cherish this filthy instrument and hold it in your arms until it sprouted wicked little white teeth so that it might bite you. Trust
his
father and
his
mother to have words over such an object! They did not argue about the best way of killing it and disposing of it, but about what label they ought to tie upon it: in other words, they wrangled bitterly over the baby’s name.

It was customary to name a child after some close relative who had more or less recently died. I. Small’s father had been dead for several years, and his name was Khatzkele. One day, while he was crooning and yearning over the baby, tickling its slimy chin, and actually kissing it, he said—with tears in his eyes—“Liddle Khatzkele, mein liddle Khatzkele!”

“
Khatzkele
!
What do you mean? What are you talking about? Where do you think you are? Khatzkele! Who’s called
Khatzkele
?” said Millie.

“What’s the matter miv Khatzkele?”

“You want to make the child a laughing-stock? How can
you call a child Khatzkele? In front of strangers you want me to say: ‘Come here,
Khatzkele
,’
I suppose. Is that the sort of man you are?”

“Why not?”

“Why not. Why not! … What’s the use of talking to people if they’re ignorant? What’s the use?” Millie said, in agony, to the ceiling.

“Khatzkele was good enough for mein father. It should be good enough for mein son. What do you want you should call him, then?”

“He should be called Dudley after my Uncle David.”

“How comes Dudley to David?”

“What’s the use of talking if people are ignorant?”

“Ignorant, schmignorant. Dudley, Schmudley …
Khatzkele!”

“Never!”

“Is your bleddy uncle more important than mein bleddy father, God rest his bleddy soul?” cried I. Small, in anger.

“A nice way to talk in front of the child,” said Millie, snatching the week-old baby to her bosom.

I. Small roared: “Certainly mein father, God rest his soul, is more important by me than your bleddy Uncle Dudley. Dudley! Schmudley! Hah!”

“Khatzkele! When he grows up people will say: ‘What’s your name?’ and he’ll say ‘Khatzkele,’ and then people’ll say ‘A Jew boy!’”

“Is there any shame in that? Shame in that is there any? Is Rothschild ashamed? Is Sessoon ashamed from it? Is Montefior ashamed? Is—is—is—is Shakespeare ashamed? He should be ashamed to be a Jew?”

“Not a Jew—
Jewish!
Talk English! You’re not in Cracow now.”

“What’s the matter with Cracow? Is Samovarna better? No Dudleys.
Soll
ich
——”

“—I swear by my life and by yours too that my child will never be called Khatzkele. There!”

“By your life, by my life, and by the child’s life too, if I should fall dead this minute, that bleddy child won’t be called Dudley!”

“I swear by my health,
not
Khatzkele!”

“And I swear by
my
health, and
your
health, and
his
health and
every
bleddy health, no Dudley!”

“Oh, I’m so ashamed, so ashamed!”

“She’s ashamed.
She’s
ashamed. All right—
I’m
ashamed,
I’m
ashamed. She’s ashamed, I’m ashamed. No Dudley! I should have mein son a Dudley! Hah!”

“His
son? What does he mean by
his
son?” said Millie to the overmantel.

I. Small, addressing the washstand, cried: “Whose son does she think it is, already?”

“Isn’t it my son?”

“And isn’t it mein son?”

“
I
don’t have Khatzkeles.”

“I don’t have no
Dudleys!
Mein son is going to be called after mein father. Your bleddy uncle can go and beggar himself.
Na!”

“I’m so ashamed, so ashamed, so ashamed!”

I. Small was magnificent (for him) in this situation. He stamped a foot, folded his arms, and said: “Khatzkele or nothingk!”

Millie began to cry. The baby was asleep but she gave it a sly pinch so that it cried with her. A nurse, still in attendance, who had been listening at the door, came running in and said: “You’ll sour her milk. Have a little consideration. Selfishness—there’s men for you!”

“Sour, sweet, long, short, big, little, large, hot, cold,
no
Dudley!
Khatzkele. Beggar their bleddy uncles!”

Then the baby threw up a stomachful of half-digested milk, and Millie, calling for a doctor, was consoled by the nurse, who said that everything was quite all right because everyone knew that men were beasts. Later it was necessary to come to some arrangement. The photographer was called in as arbitrator. He said:

“You are both right. But what is in a name? On the whole, Srul is right. His father’s name was Khatzkele, and the father comes first.”

Since the discussion took place in Millie’s father’s house, she said nothing at that time: but she gave the photographer a terrible look, catching which, he continued: “On the other hand, the mother’s wishes must be obeyed. Now, take the name Khatzkele. A good name, an honourable name, a perfect name. But when in Rome you do as Rome does. Say for example that your father’s name was Habakkuk. Therefore would you call your son Habakkuk? No. Why? Because you’re in England now. If you called your son Habakkuk everyone would laugh at
him. People would say: ‘Why don’t you go and have a Kuck.’ Every time he left the room people would say ‘He’ll be back in a minute, he’s just gone to Habak
kuk
.
’ … Now you’ve got to call somebody after somebody, so you’d call your Habakkuk
Habakkuk
actually, but in English you’d call him
Henry.
Why? For his own good! Take the name Khatzkele. I’ve got a cousin called Khatzkele. He calls himself Charles, and what’s the matter with that? Now Millie wants a Dudley, and Srul wants a Khatzkele. Well? What’s the matter with two names? I say, call the boy Charles Dudley. Charles Dudley Small—isn’t that a name? Charles Dudley Small.”

All Millie’s sisters and brothers-in-law applauded this
suggestion
. Her mother had no fault to find with it. Her father, scratching his beard in perplexity, muttered: “Duddler? Duddler? Who was Duddler, who?” For as far as he knew there was no one in the Pentateuch who begat a Duddler.

But the photographer said: “Dudley, Dudley is short for Dovidel.”

“Then let it be.”

I. Small was defeated again. The brat was named Charles Dudley, but for thirteen years he did not know exactly what his name was. When his mother hated his father more than usual—two or three days in every week—she would call her son Dudley; with extraordinary subtlety and courage (for him) I. Small put a stop to this by waiting until they were all together in a public place and then saying in a loud voice: “Khatzkele, mein liddle boychik.”

This made Millie so ashamed that she settled on the name of Charley. The photographer, who loved his little joke, called him Chudleigh. Lily, who missed no opportunity of annoying her sisters in general and Millie in particular, and liked nothing better than a suggestive word or smutty story called him
Habakkuk
. The last syllable of the name of that fierily poetic prophet had, in jargon, a fæcal significance, so she laid heavy emphasis upon it. But that was Lily all over; that was the way her mind worked. (If she admired your room she developed an inability to pronounce her R’s, so that she was talking about your womb; and if you could have heard her talking about male chickens, you would have died laughing.)

Habakkuk, Dudley, Khatzkele, Chudleigh, Charley…. The child was confused for years until the jokes wore out, and everyone called
him Charley. I. Small grew to like the name: it was a handy name to shout when he wanted to let all the air out of his lungs—Char-LAAAY!——He made it sound as if he was selling Charlies by the sackful off a coalheaver’s cart, at two-and-twopence a hundredweight.

But when, at the age of thirteen, the boy was according to Jewish Law proclaimed a man morally responsible for his own sins—on the momentous occasion when, wearing his first long trousers, he was called up to read a portion of the Law in the local synagogue, did they call Charles Dudley Small? No. They called Khatzkele-ben-Yisroel: and then old I. Small disgraced himself by making a sucking, popping noise like a wet cork drawn out of a rubber bottle and letting his feelings overcome him to such an extent that tears ran down into his moustache and were sniffed up into his nostrils, from which they were expelled in a whirling spray by a terrible sneeze; whereupon he had to use his handkerchief, blowing a ram’s-horn blast that might have brought down the walls of Jericho. But they were not in Jericho. They were in synagogue. The whole family was there. By this time Khatzkele-ben-Yisroel, alias Charles Dudley Small, had half a dozen male cousins who had already been initiated, thus, into full manhood. It had been conveyed to him that all the world was waiting for him to make a fool of himself. When his father blew his nose the Portion of Law which he had learned by heart, word by word, fell through a hole in his head. He had stage fright. Something like a hard-boiled egg
was stuck at the back of his throat. Then the great scroll unrolled, and a voice hissed the first word, which was
Kee,
and it all came back in a rush, and came out in a rush, delivered in a voice so piercing that several people in the audience could not hear themselves speak for half an hour after.

When it was all over his mother kissed him and said: “Dudley! Dudley!”

“Khatzkele,” said his father, shaking him by the hand, “Khatzkele, now you are a man!”

“Come on,
Dudley!”

“Do what your mother tells you,
Khatzkele.
”

He was aware of an interlacing, a reticulation of forked
lightning
not far above his head: looks were being exchanged. But there was no quarrel that day, because Millie was in a genial, expansive mood. She smiled and nodded, as if to say: “To-day is
a holiday, for to-day let me put aside my tools—my rack, my thumbscrew, and my pincers. Let me turn my four wild horses out to graze for a few hours and refresh them. I will make a fresh start and tear you asunder first thing to-morrow morning.”

For on that day her son had become a Man….

Ha-ha-ha!
says Charles Small, looking at the photograph that was taken to commemorate the occasion. It is a magnificent photograph, expensively mounted and signed (if you please) like an Old Master—
Nathan,
with a flourish. There is a high-
class-looking
inscription chastely printed in elegant type:
The
Studio
Nathan,
Old
Bond
Street,
West
One
—not a common or garden W.1. but
West
One.
This was the kind of man Nathan, the
Photographer
, had turned out to be: Bond Street,
West
One!
He had picked up (such creatures have all the luck; there is no getting away from it) a wonderful Belgian photographer, a refugee who had fled from Brussels when the Kaiser’s Army was on its way in. So now Nathan was making a fortune. He was patronised by the nobility and gentry. Society beauties had their photographs taken by Nathan of West One. Foolish people who did not know what Millie knew about the immoral lives Society ladies led, illiterates unacquainted with the works of Miss Marie Corelli, stood and gaped at framed photographs of famous beauties in the vestibule of The Studio Nathan. Millie, who was a keen observer of women, and who could be relied upon to find their weak points—she had brought a charwoman around to her opinion that Lily Langtry was ugly as sin and that Ellen Terry had a face like a horse—could not bear to look at such portraits. If Lady A. was blonde, she bleached. If Lady B. was dark, she dyed. If the Duchess of C. had a fine bosom, it was because she stuffed her dress with newspapers or handkerchiefs. Millie was very much down on bosoms. She thanked God that she had never gone in for any such filthiness. But as for Nathan, the Photographer, all
he
thought about was bosoms. Millie said that she would rather see her husband sweeping the streets than messing about with Duchess’s bosoms.

Be it as it may: Nathan’s present to Charles Small when he became a Man was a picture, again. Naturally: it cost Nathan nothing. He said that his normal charge for such a picture would be “in the region of twenty guineas.” When he suggested a date for an appointment Millie said that she did not know how to thank him. As soon as he was out of earshot she laughed without
mirth and said: “It just shows you. That’s the way to get rich. I’d rather sell bootlaces in the street than get rich that way. But there you are—what can you expect from a
Litvak?
”

I. Small said: “Nathan conies from Jmerinka, Millie.”

“What’s the use of talking? He’s a foreigner, he’s ignorant—him and his Jmerinka. Oh, what’s the use, what’s the use of talking? A photographer. Oh, I’m so ashamed, so ashamed! Do you call yourself a man? He stands there and he calls himself a man.”