The Thousand Deaths of Mr Small (25 page)

It was Jezebel who drove the Dongs out of Slupworth. The Dongs lived in style, with a butler, which was sensational, and a voluptuous Belgian cook—a plump woman of thirty-five with a china-white skin and bright red hair. Her name was Suzanne. She slept in a room on the third floor. Soon after she arrived Mr. Dong developed insomnia. His wife observed that, as soon as she breathed as if she were asleep, her husband would slide out of bed and creep away. He would be absent for half an hour, even an hour, and when she asked him where he had been he said: “Oh, I went to get a drink of water,” or “Oh, I felt stuffy and
went to get a breath of air.” She said nothing, but noticed that he was always loitering about the kitchen. On one occasion she saw him pat Suzanne’s buttocks. He said that he was killing a fly.

Suzanne was constantly complaining that she wanted certain rare herbs, the lack of which cramped her style and spoiled her best efforts. So one day, when Mr. Dong was at the Works, his wife gave Suzanne a little money and told her to go to London and buy what she wanted, adding that there was no need for her to return until the following day. She went gladly. Mr. and Mrs. Dong went to bed as usual at eleven o’clock. At one o’clock he whispered: “Are you awake, dear?” She snored, her eyes open in the dark. Then inch by inch Mr. Dong got out of bed and padded out of the room. Their bedroom had two doors. As soon as her husband was gone Mrs. Dong, who was light on her feet in spite of her size, opened the other door, ran upstairs to Suzanne’s room, and leapt into bed. Soon, as she had anticipated, the door opened and closed silently, and a heavy man threw himself upon her. A little while later, when he had rolled away and was lying, relaxed, beside her, she struck a match and lit a candle, saying: “Aha, Mister
Dong,
I don’t suppose you expected to find
me
here!”

“No, Mrs. Dong,” said the butler.

Now this was almost certainly a product of Mrs. Narwall’s malevolent imagination, but the story went around Slupworth. Dong discharged the butler, kicked out the cook, upbraided his wife, and even went so far as to beat the gardener. But in the end they had to go and live elsewhere. They were laughed out of Slupworth.

Mrs. Narwall, the Jezebel, would stop at nothing. She was bitterly hated, for her cold avarice, her indifference to the world, her remarkable height, and her beauty. She was the most beautiful woman in the town—even in the county. Strangers visiting Slupworth caught their breath when they saw her; one of them, a journalist, said that it was like finding “a marble
masterpiece
in a midden.” That was well said. Marble was the word for Jezebel: you felt that if you took her in your arms she would take all the warmth out of you and leave you nothing but a chill; that nothing but a steel chisel could make an impression on her. She might break, but she could never bend. Everybody wondered how Willie Narwall had managed to get her with child: thinking of this, one imagined a demented shrimp dancing about on a Greek
statue, for she was indeed statuesque and beautiful in the noblest and boldest Greek style. Beautiful, but hard, cold, and
unyielding
; beautiful in a stony, sinister way. Imagine Medusa, whose direct glance could petrify, with her snakes parted in the middle and brushed back and tied into an immense knot on her neck; skimpily dressed in sober worsted, with no ornament but a golden wedding ring that was priced at twenty-five shillings and bought after much haggling for twenty-three-and-six. That was Mrs. Narwall, the Jezebel. She was feared, not only because of what she could say, but because she could suck the strength out of people. Even in the old days when they had the little general shop in Paradise Lane, this vampirish quality of hers was remarked. A workman with a plausible and true story went to the shop to ask for five shillingsworth of goods on credit. He had been disabled for a month by a broken ankle, but now, being sound again and, as a skilled man, confident of getting back his old job or finding another, walked jauntily into Narwall’s … and came out with a paper of salt which he had bought with his last penny. He said to his wife: “Oi don’t know what it is, lass, but that Jezebel gives yow one look and then everything yow meant to say goes to jelly and won’t come out.”

She had two daughters. The elder, Sybil, about whose true parentage there had been so much whispering, resembled the Jezebel. She was nearly thirteen years old. The Baby, as they called her, although she was five years old, was called Ivy, and speaking of her to a friend the servant said: “She’s a little loov. Quoiet as a blessed mouse, bless ’er ’eart, sucking ’er little dummy and playing wi’ ’er little rattle the livelong day. She’s such a little pretty she puts yow in moind o’ one o’ them dolls. You know, Mrs. ’Ood—when yow lay ’em down they close their oiyes and when yow pick ’em up they open ’em again. Oi can’t believe she was muthered boi that black bitch, Mrs. ’Ood. But yow should know.”

Mrs. Hood, who was the cheapest midwife in town, and had therefore been retained—not without haggling—for the Jezebel’s lying-in, said: “It’s ’
ers
all roight. Oh, it’s ’
ers.
Oi didn’t say ’
is
—Oi said ’
ers.
Never will Oi forget it to the longest day Oi live, Mary, moy dear. She loy there loike a dummy—not so much as a whisper—and when Oi asked ’er if she was bad all she said was: ‘Git on wi’ it, and ’old yowr tongue.’ Eh, she’s a hard ’un! She was in labour from seven in t’morning till two in t’afternoon,
and never a word, not a croy. Eh, she’s a proud one! Only when t’little darling’s ’ead was coming out she bit ’er lip roight through, and yow can see t’marks to this day. And when Oi told ’er: ‘Mrs. Narwall, mum, yow got a loovly little girl’ she says: ‘Wrap ’er oop, put ’er down, ’ave yowr tea, get yowr pay, and go away. And don’t fuss me, Oi want to go to sleep.’

“Yow may well say that, Mary. As yow very well know,” said Mrs. Hood, in a low voice, “Oi’ve ’elped certain parties out o’ trooble once or twoice, to obloige friends, risking moy liberty, and Oi’ve known certain parties croy their oiyes out over unborn things that wasn’t aloive or dead——

Mary wiped her eyes.

“—And all
she
does wi’ that pretty little doll is shoov ’er breast into its mouth and say ‘Go on, eat’ and drop off to sleep. Oi stayed three hours. Oi was froightened she moight roll over, that great loomp, in ’er sleep, an’ overlay t’little darling. But she slept loike nothing ’ad ’appened. That’s ’
er
sort. Unnatural.” Grudgingly, but with something like admiration, the midwife added: “’Er lip was swoled loike a sausage in a pan when yow’ve pronged it wi’ a fork, where she bit it. But never a croy. Never so much as a moan…. And when Oi went to ’
im
to draw what was due to me, ’e knocked off eighteenpence for meals eaten in t’ouse. Said arrangement didn’t provoide for board. Eh well, that’s the way to get rich, Mary.”

“Oi druther be poor.”

*

But Solly Schwartz, if uninspired by the Love that casts out Fear, was possessed by the Infatuation that casts out Doubt. He had faith in his gorgeously-labelled cylinders full of nothing. When Mr. Narwall introduced him to his wife, the Jezebel, Solly Schwartz gave her one quick sidelong glance and then, impervious to her Gorgon’s eyes, began to talk. His eager earnestness, his urgent passion, and his unshakeable conviction must have been something like that of the bold apostle Paul when he came into the presence of Cæsar. He snapped open the clips of his suitcase, kicked back the lid with his iron foot, banged down tins, and declaimed. Standing close behind him, W. W. Narwall aimed enquiring gestures at his wife. Her beautiful face was like stone. At last, when Solly Schwartz had to pause for breath, she said: “Tea’s brewed. Sit down.”

“There’s no law to force you to listen,” said Solly Schwartz, throwing his tins back into his case and closing it, “so all right, let’s have tea.”

When all the ham and bread-and-butter was eaten, and all the tea was drunk, and Mr. and Mrs. Narwall had exchanged certain winks, nods, and little grimaces, the Jezebel toyed with a
Pelly-Can
and said: “It might suit. What do you want for it?”

Then Solly Schwartz looked straight into her terrifying eyes and said: “Listen, Mrs. Narwall. I told your husband why I came here to you instead of going to one of the big firms. Now listen. You’ve got shops. Most people would be glad of one of them, let alone forty-eight. And you’ve got a little tin-pot cannery, putting up a few stinking—excuse my language—peas. Now with a tin like mine, a label like mine, and advertising, my God——”

“—In this house we do not take the name of the Lord in vain,” said W. W. Narwall.

“Never mind the Lord, never mind in vain! Do you want me to go on? If not, say so.”

“Go on,” said the Jezebel.

“With this can, this label, proper advertising, every shop in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales will
have
to
put what you turn out on their shelves—peas, tomatoes, soup—what I’ve got here is worth millions. Not thousands, but millions; and you’re asking me what I want for it! I’ll tell you here and I’ll tell you now if you offered ten thousand pounds spot cash for this tin I’d laugh right in your face.”

“Come to the point,” said the Jezebel, coldly. “We asked you a simple question. Give us a simple answer. What do you want for it?” Her eyes would have frozen and her tone quelled another man.

But Solly Schwartz was throwing fire against her ice and, with the vehement
rat-at-at-at-at
of his impassioned talk, drilling the marble, said: “Let’s not waste your time and mine, Mrs. Narwall. You’re quite right, a simple question wants a simple answer. I’ll tell you what I want for this can, straightforward without beating about the bush, and this is a case of take it or leave it, because I won’t bate an inch. This tin is worth God knows how much. I’ll invest it in your firm.”

“And what do you expect to make out of it?” asked W. W. Narwall.

“That’s up to you and me, Mr. Narwall—especially it’s up
to me, see? Because you’ll put up the cannery and I’ll run it and manage all the advertising. And I want half the clear profit from the cannery, and a director’s fee, and expenses. I want to be in charge of the travellers—I’ll send travellers all over the country, and I swear by God that in twelve months I’ll have this tin on every shelf in every grocer’s shop in
the country—and not only with peas in it, either. Beans, carrots, stew, a dozen different sorts of soup, pears, strawberries, raspberries, apricots, everything! I’ll put in my tin and my work on the canning side. You put in the factory and the expenses. And as sure as I sit here, in three years’ time we’ll be making millions. Well, what do you say?”

“These tins of yours: won’t they cost a terrible lot to
manufacture
?” asked the Jezebel.

“Certainly,” snapped Solly Schwartz, “if you make them in dirty little thousands and piddling little tens of thousands. But I’m thinking in millions and millions, and you know very well that the more you make of a thing, the less it costs. But anyway, there’s a way over that. Pack two ounces less in the tin. If you’ve been tinning fourteen ounces of peas, tin twelve ounces instead. Like that, on, say, ten thousand tins of peas you’ve got sixteen hundred and fifty extra tins, and you’re already making up what you’ve put out. And on top of it all you’ve got the advantage over the other manufacturers—you’ve got the
Pelly-Can
, they haven’t. And you’ve got Solly Schwartz. So there it is: my salary to be agreed upon, expenses at my discretion, and we go half-and-half in the profits. Think it over, but don’t think too long, because I’ve got to go back to London to-morrow. I’ll leave you now and come back at nine in the morning. Thanks for the tea. That was a very nice bit of ham—I’d like to buy one to take home with me. Well, I’ll wish you good-evening now, and see you to-morrow.”

When he was gone W. W. Narwall said: “If you ask me——”

“—If pigs had wings they’d fly. I don’t ask you,” said the Jezebel, and sat thinking until, ten minutes later, her husband found courage to ask how Solly Schwartz’s proposition struck her. Then, looking at him with tired disdain, she said: “We’ll do it, Willie.”

“It’ll run into thousands, Charlotte; it’s a terrible risk.”

“You always were a niddering little coward, Willie. We do it, and that’s flat.”

“But——”

“—Don’t argue with me, Willie, you’re wrong.”

Her husband said: “Well, you’re generally in the right, Charlotte,” whereupon she nodded stiffly and hurried to the kitchen, for she had just remembered that she had forgotten to lock up the bread bin and the meat safe.

So it came to pass that W. W. Narwall threw capital into a cannery. The company was registered as Narwall & Schwartz Ltd. And so Solly Schwartz could tell I. Small in Appenrodt’s that he was going to put the whole world in a tin can; and was able, later, to give that weak, bewildered man the two hundred pounds with which he paid his debts, saved his face, and withdrew from Noblett Street, Mayfair, in good order after having sold off the stock at a dead loss.

Dead
loss,
dead
loss,
dead
loss!
thinks Charles Small, gritting his teeth, wishing that the old fool had never been born both to beget and bedevil him.
Loss,
and
loss,
and
loss,
and
loss
—what was not loss? What had the old man to lose, what had he that was worth keeping? Furious, impotent little man! Pygmy!

Pygmy? Now Charles Small remembers the legend of Hercules who wrestled with and slew the giant Antæus in the Land of the Little People. The earthbound Antæus, that monstrous protector of the pygmy
ones, having died in the terrible grip of the deified Greek, found a champion—a pygmy no bigger than Hercules’ thumb, who challenged the conqueror to mortal combat with a sword no longer than a pin, which he dared to oppose to the Herculean brass-bound club that was cut from a whole oak tree. Hercules, amused, picked up his challenger and stood him on the palm of his hand, and looked with wonder at the tiny creature who stood there in an attitude of defiance urging him to come on and fight. At length he said: “You are a very little fellow, are you not? Tell me, how big is your soul?” And the pygmy replied, in a voice as high as the squeak of a bat: “My soul is as big as your own!” Whereupon Hercules, bowing respectfully, complimented the little hero on his valour, set him carefully down on the ground, and went on his way, marvelling.

Now there was a pygmy. He had no fear. There was a man. He went out to die for the dead giant, tiny sword in tiny fist. The old man was no pygmy—he was nothing, nobody. Now in such circumstances what would I. Small have done? Having retired to a safe distance he would have thundered in a voice like a knife scratching a plate that Antæus was dead, times were bad, he did not know which way to turn; all the time twirling his microscopic moustache. Then, slinking home to his little house no bigger than half a coconut shell—and a leaky coconut shell at that—he would have taken by the neck some baby pygmy as big as a cockroach, struck it repeatedly and ineffectually with a blade of grass, squeaking: “Bleddy well take a bleddy lesson, loafer! No fighting!”—while his wife wailed: “Not on the head! Chastise him but for God’s sake not on the head!”

Meanwhile the valiant pygmy would be going about his business, challenging giants, challenging the mighty, challenging the gods, undefeatable; and Mr. and Mrs. Small would sit down glumly to their evening meal of birdseed, or whatever it was, and worry each other about where the next meal was coming from. Later, perhaps, I. Small would take the diminutive Charles for a walk to look at the stupendous corpse of Antæus, and moralise. “You see, boychik? He could have been a big man, only he’s got to fight with every Tom Dick and Harry like a bleddy ruffian. Take a lesson!”

These idle reflections amuse Charles Small so that he laughs a little through his teeth. But then that sourness comes up from his stomach into the back of his throat, where it burns; and anger, impotent anger, returns. He wants to throw something again; takes hold of a feather pillow and dashes it to the floor, where it falls with scarcely a sound, and this again infuriates him. If he had had his way at that moment that feather pillow would have shaken the house. Chimneys would have fallen, walls would have cracked, screaming mothers would have clutched howling children to their bosoms. But there is nothing but a muffled
plop.
It is in keeping, and he laughs again, but bitterly. And now he has nothing on which to rest his spinning head, so he must reach for the pillow and put it back again—but not before he has tyrannically punched it into shape.

…
Dead
loss,
dead
loss,
dead
loss.
Naturally, and Mrs. Small wept bitterly of course. So that was what he was; so that was what she was married to! They consulted estate agents and looked at advertisements and then, listening to the altercation, passers-by grew pale and hurried on, for it seemed that in Noblett Street at any moment blood must run like water. Suddenly I. Small put his foot down: he became pigheaded. He was
determined
, he was decided, once and for all, to take up his old trade. He was like rock. Nothing could move him. Words rebounded, as it were, like dried peas from his thick skull.

“You had your said——”

“—Had your say—had your say. Talk English!”

“Say, schmay! You said your … your … say, schmay, pay! A first-class boot shop she wanted, all right, in Mayfair! So she got it. What bleddy marvels did you do miv——”

“—With, not miv.”

“Miv, schmiv—bleddy well listen to me!”

“Srul! No dirty language in front of the children!”

“Beggar the bleddy children, bless them!” roared I. Small, furiously beating the table with a newspaper. “Once and for all …”

“Well, go on.”

Then, needless to say, he had to think for a minute or two before he remembered what he had intended to say, so that she had a chance to say to the children:

“Once a bootmaker, always a bootmaker. As long as I know. That’s what he is. Oh, I’m so ashamed, so ashamed!”

“Repairs!” shouted I. Small. “High-class repairs! Sis my trade, my business! Mayfair they want! Mayfair, give them! Better I should took Solly’s advice, with the Machine! Enough!”

“Solly. Solly. He’s here again with his Solly, that
humpty-dumpty
.”

“So what’s the matter, what, miv a humpty-dumpty? Where would we be, where, without a humpty-dumpty?”

“More shame for you!”

“And now she’s got a new madness—a drapery shop she wants!”

“Boots he wants to mend. That’s all he’s fit for.”

Maddened with rage, I. Small tore the newspaper and screamed: “Fit for, fit for! All right, so that’s what I’m fit for! So that’s what I’ll do.
Na!
Not another word! Do you bleddy well hear? Not another word when you talk to me! Enough is enough, so be quiet!”

She had prepared supper, some dish of fried fish, which she served at this point, putting down the plates with a great clatter, saying: “Go on, eat. I couldn’t touch a thing.”

“She couldn’t touch a thing. All right then, so I can’t touch a thing,” said I. Small. Then he ate voraciously, looking furtively at his wife from time to time. She did not eat. Little Charles looked at them with trepidation until the old man, threatening to strike him with a soft roll, bellowed: “Bleddy well eat!”

Mrs. Small would not touch a thing. She said she was choked. I. Small affected indifference, but his eyes were full of worry. “Go on, eat, let him eat it all up while he’s got it,” said Mrs. Small, “the business man!”

“Millie, eat something,” the old man said.

“I can’t. I’ve got a lump here,” said Mrs. Small, touching her chest.

“Lump?” cried I. Small, alarmed.

“A lump like a ball.”

This took I. Small’s appetite away. A lump like a ball! While he was drinking his tea Mrs. Small said nothing but: “Don’t make so much noise—you’re not in Cracow now.”

The old man started to shout: “What’s the bleddy matter with Cracow——” but stopped abruptly, so that he said: “What’s the bled?”

“I haven’t the heart.”

Later, when Charles Small went to the kitchen for a glass of water, he saw his mother surreptitiously eating a large piece of fish. She said: “I’m just tasting.”

Back in the living-room I. Small, who was gloomily perusing the advertisements in the torn evening paper, said: “Millie, for God’s sake, eat. For strength!”

“I’m choked,” she said.

“Choke! Choke!” cried I. Small, twisting the newspaper. “She’s always choking! That’s how she gets her living, is it? Choking? By her, choking is a full-time job!”—Goodness knows where the old idiot had picked up that phrase, full-time job.—He went on, very earnest now. He even lowered his voice a couple of decibels, and poked at the arm of his chair with a shapeless forefinger instead of thumping the table with his foolish fist. He even addressed his wife directly instead of talking to the sideboard or the ceiling: “Millie, not another word. This is final, do you hear? No draperies, no schmaperies. Final! No more Mayfairs, no more Noblett Streets. Final! I should sell boots to stray cats? Is that a full-time job? No more Noblett Streets, no more bleddy cats. I am the master here, did you heard?”

“—Did you
hear,
not
heard
,”
she said, “try to speak English. This isn’t Cracow.”

Then, it goes without saying, the old idiot, who had almost achieved an air of mastery, went up in the air again. He lost his temper, his silly little temper. His voice became thunder, thunder that frightens only children; his eyes flashed lightning,
sheet-lightning
that is powerless to strike, and merely flickers
meaningless
threats over inaccessible horizons.

“Cracow! Schmakow! So by her Samovarna is a place? Cracow isn’t good enough for her yet? Mayfair she wants better, eh? To tie herself up in a … a … a … bleddy sack miv
ferschtinkener
bleddy cats is by her a … a … a … full-time job, all right! Bootmaker isn’t good enough for her, the bleddy
aristocrat
! Shops, she wants! I swear by the children’s life——”

“—Srul! Not by the children’s life!”

“Beggar the bleddy children!” He raised his right hand in an awful gesture. “I swear by the children’s life, I swear by my life and yours too, by my mother, by my father, by … by … your bleddy mother, by your bleddy father, by your health I swear and the children’s health too! They should drop dead, I should be paralysed!
High-class
gentlemen’s
boot
repairs!
Na!
I swore!” He brought down his clenched right hand. It hit the rim of his saucer and catapulted the dregs of his tea into his face, so that he sat there, ludicrous, with tea-leaves in his fierce moustache and the cup in his lap.

At this Charles Small, who had been listening with something like awe, burst out laughing. This, of course, was just what the old man needed. “He takes after his mother, the bleddy little murderer!” he said, in the voice of a hungry lion—and like a lion he sprang. A casual observer would have cried murder. Little Charles continued to giggle—he still remembers the curious pattern of tea-leaves on the old man’s face, and the dribble of warm tea that turned down one end of his moustache, so that this masculine attribute was suddenly anti-clockwise. Slapping him sharply on the cheek (“Not on the head!” cried Mrs. Small) he cried, in a voice like no other voice on earth or in hell: “To bed! No supper! To bed! Final!”

Now where the devil had the old man picked up that word
final
?
Probably from the Communist cobbler.

So little Charles went to bed, still giggling. He listened. From below came noises reminiscent of a fight between an enraged hippopotamus and a screech-owl. The words were indistinguishable. He caught only two, three phrases:
Nothing
but
my
bleddy
chains
to
lose
….
And
I
swore
by
my
mother’s
life
….

“Your mother’s dead,” said the piercing voice of Mrs. Small: whereupon there was a thumping of tables and an incoherent bellow. A little later Mrs. Small came into his room with supper on a tray. She called him a bad boy; but obviously she could not bear to let him go to bed unfed. “Honour thy father and thy mother,” she said. “Have respect for your father, or you’ll get such a smacking!”

Charles Small remembers that he ate with extraordinary appetite, and read an instalment of “The Adventures of Jack, Sam, and Pete” in
The
Boy’s
Friend.
He dozed, thinking of the gigantic negro. A stentorian voice jerked him, twitching like a hooked fish, out of the deep black waters of sleep. It said: “Mein mind is made up. Gents high-class repairs! I swore!” Then he slept deeply, as boys do.

But he knew, in the back of his mind, that the old man would not have his way—would never, never have his way. He was (Charles Small still harks back to his ancient, lost histrionic ambition) a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

And as for his mother, she was nothing but a hysterical bitch.

Oh, when the maternal milk begins to curdle in his wretched stomach and the acid begins to bite, he is overcome by a most dreadful hatred for these two foolish people! But more hateful yet is an abominable nostalgia for these fools who thumbed him into the womb, dragged him out, and slapped his little bottom and sent him wailing into the world, into a life which they ruined; a life of which he is thoroughly sick and tired.

God
bless
my
soul!
thinks Charles Small, wondering.
Damn
my
eyes
for
a
bloody
fool
—
why
I
actually
cried
when
they
died!

*

And now, sneering at himself as he remembers, Charles Small discovers that his curled lip is somewhat tremulous; a lump in his stomach has crept up towards his throat, and he needs to blink away a mist. Fool! Who but a slave weeps over the carcass of a tyrant? And these were tyrants, insidious tyrants, tyrants of a most detestable kind. For instance: Genghis Khan, he was a tyrant—when his hordes hit the road, you resisted and died, or stayed and died, or you fled and were free to hate him. Good, kind, merciful, murderous, emotionless Emperor of All Men!—with him you knew where you were, whether you were dead or alive. He took your body, but left you your soul. He never tried to make you love him, much less pity him. His was the straight thrust, the swift arrow, the clean slash … cool iron, hit or miss. But these vile wretches!—They went, not for the throat, but the heart; what they call the Soul.

So that now, with his belly full of sour milk, Charles Small
lies, wrung like a wet rag—lie feels like a wet rag—wrung between loathing and pity, disgustedly dropping a tear for all he ever had.

Had he the slightest desire to see the Old Tyrants alive? No. He wanted them to die, because he wanted to be free. They ate into him; they digested him … as he, through his stomach, is digesting himself. He hated them—oh; most bitterly!—for what they did to him, early and late. Their tyranny was from the very mouth of the womb, which is as the very mouth of hell.