by Gerald Kersh
“You don’t believe, I dare say, what stinkpots a certain type people can be,” Sam Yudenow said, leading me out into the High Street. “That toe-rag! The minute I turned my back, the reptile, what does he do? These ‘ere premises next door ‘e tries to buy up over my ‘ead for a cafe miv a license to sell tobacco! Would you believe it? No. An insult, a bloody insult to my intelligence! Is Sam Yudenow a newborn baby in drapkins sucking ‘is toes? Yesterday was I born? Anybody else, I’d put it dahn to ‘is ignorance, but that twicer ‘e knew—’e knew—where there’s a cinema there’s got to be a cafe. So he goes to Gutter the butcher miv a mysterious smile like a diplomat already, an’ bribes an’ corrupts im to get ‘old o’ these ‘ere premises. ‘E might ‘ave known anybody in show biz miv enough sense to find ‘is nose to pick it at once realizes that in a silent ‘all a showman’s nicest bit o’ bunce comes out o’ eatables. Miv talkies, monkey nuts an’ potato crisps are a thing o’ the past, but in a silent-picture palace they’re ‘alf show biz.
“Treat Sam Yudenow straight an’‘e’s a die; treat ‘im crooked an better thvow a corkscrew into an electric fan. Yes, call me straight an’ I’m a poker; otherwise I too can be a permanent wave.... But it only goes to show you the ... the ... the mentality of such hypocrites! So this Godbolt didn’t know Sam Yudenow would be kind of a jump ahead, sort o’? I ask you—if you say to your grandmother miv a mysterious smile, ‘Darling, let me teach you to suck eggs,’ wouldn’t she be right to give you the left arm in the thvoat an’ the right ‘and in the arse from the trousers? Naturally. But little did Godbolt know.... Two stones miv one bird I knocked dahn. I took the shop an’upper part. The shop I run as a kind o’‘igh-class snack place, sort o’style. Two rooms upstairs is dressing rooms for my variety turns. I wanted to put a bit of a beaver-board partition up in the genevator room, miv a curtain, so the artists could change an’ nip out straight into the ‘all. But Godbolt writes an anonymous letter an’ the sanitary inspector says, ‘Not enough laventries!’ What, a laventry I should build for variety turns? A earthly paradise I make, ‘ere, so laventries they should ‘ave on top of it like Mayfair? Miv velvet seats praps, very likely? ‘Don’t make me laugh,’ I says. ‘I got a cracked lip.’ So upstairs over my restaurant I got two lovely dressing rooms, one male, one female. No sexual intercourse.
“This way it’s simple. Like this, all you got to do is show ‘em in. Let ‘em dress, let ‘em make up to their ‘eart’s content—there’s a looking glass in every room, and in the yard a lovely laventry. Comes five minutes before the hour nip out o’ the ‘all an’ get ‘em out. Then all they got to do is nip dahnstairs, nip into the front entrance, nip through my vestibule, nip up the back o’ the ‘all an’ wait. This you should synchronize to the tick miv the end o’ the second feature, which naturally comes on first. Sometimes, at the last minute, the variety turns get ‘ysterical which one goes on last. Tell ‘em you’ll report ‘em. Never mind who to— that one little word report is quite sufficient. Nip up front, whistle for fights, thvow switches, kick on the partition for the band, swish curtains—an’ for Christ’s sake pull the right string or you go up in flames an’ I’m the sufferer—nip back, rush ‘em on, rush ‘em off, rush ‘em out, rush ‘em in.... A couple kicks on the partition, nip back, three buzzes, an’ there you are—first feature, which naturally comes on last. In case of emergency, the show must go on. If necessary, borrow a lipstick, paint your nose ved—one-two-three—an’ get up on my stage an’ tell funny stovies. Or do paper-tearing—miv the Situations Vacant page Daily Telegraph you can tear out a doily, or a row dancing dolls, miv a running commentary. Remember Fowlers End ain’t Buckingham Palace. If you tear paper, tell the doorman to shout from the back, ‘Oi, Dad, don’t tear up the tablecloth till I read the football results!’—an’ there won’t be a dry seat in the ‘ouse. You’ll see.
“An’ always remember not to forget this: When in doubt, talk very slow; it makes up for not having nothing to say. Otherwise, when in doubt, talk very quick; it gives you time to think. But above all, when in doubt, shut up; then somebody else in doubt will talk and make a fool o’ himself. If everything else fails, tread heavy on somebody’s foot an’ shout, ‘Where you going, can’t you?’
“Now look at the dressing rooms.”
Sam Yudenow took out a large key and opened a side door adjacent to a mean little shop front—a deplorable, a repellent shop front made up of three gray panes of smeared glass rattling in Gothic frames. All the woodwork was painted in a singularly unsavory shade of blue. There is blue, and blue. Some kinds of blue remind you of babies’ eyes, Mediterranean skies, sapphires, or flowers. Other blues suggest midnight and deep melancholy. But the blue of this place was of such a quality that, if you had seen it anywhere else, your first impulse would have been to call a doctor. It was something like the color of the lips of an asthmatic plumber dying of lead poisoning who has put himself out of his misery with cyanide. At every join in the woodwork there was a bubbly bluish-white froth of putty and poisonous paint expelled in a last gasp. The window frames on the floor above were of the same hue, only paler. Those of the second floor were gray streaked with orange. But on the fascia over the window was fixed a long glass plate, deeply engraved or countersunk with bold Roman letters in bright gold, which said: cafe cosmopolitan. Over the door, on a heavy wrought-iron bracket, hung a sign: RESTAURANTVITELLIUS. Yet on the lintel of the shop door some palsied hand had painted in pale orange, in small letters: S. Yudenow Licensed to Sell Tobacco. Behind the left-hand panel of the window I could see a plaster-of-paris ham, a celluloid bowl of wax fruit, and a pyramid of dummy cigarette packets half unstuck. The center panel was chaste, in the Japanese style—there was only a frying pan painted silver in which lay two slices of cardboard ham, a wooden tomato, a clay cutlet, and a lacquered red sausage. Over these goodies hung an appetizing vapor of cotton wool suspended on a bit of string nailed to the ceiling. The panel on the right was full of dummy chocolate bars and empty tobacco tins; but there was also a large gilded frame embossed Hotel Carlton-Waldoria, containing the menu of a special banquet given by the American Ambassador in honor of the Chinese statesman Li Hung Chang in 1897. Lower left, a photograph of a Greek wrestler autographed with a cross; a Vanity Fair caricature of Lord Palmerston; and an ostrich egg. Toward center, a printed card: COSTAS. LADIES AND GENTS TAILORS AND REPAIRS, APPLY WITHIN. Right, again, another card:
!!!BILL OF FARE!!!
SPECIAL THIS DAY!!
Eggs 1
Fried ” 1
Boiled
3d!
2d!
2d!
"2 Fried"
2 Boiled
5d!
5d!
Sausages 1
2
3d!
6d!
Fish
Chips
Fish & Chips
Egg & Chips
5d!
3d!
8d!
6d!
Meat Pie
“ & Chips
Tea
Coffee
Cocoa
3d!
5 1/2d!
1 1/2d!
2d!
2d!
VALET SERVICE ON REQUEST
COME AGAIN!!!
And over all a burned-grease odor, as of Landru’s kitchen.
Gesticulating with the key, Sam Yudenow said, “My cafe. Like the color, eh? It’s blue. In show biz waste nothing. Abit paint ‘ere, a bit paint there—never let ‘em dry up. D’you roller? Miv a drop turpentine, the bottom o’ one tin add to the bottom another, an’ you’d be surprised the results! So long it’s natural, it matches anything. I forget the indigredents o’ this ‘ere color, but look what a lovely shade blue it turned out to be! I was going to call it the Blue Cafe—a smashing title—only my old friend Hacker, ‘e’s a breaker. D’you foller?”
“A broker?” I asked.
“I said a breaker,” said Sam Yudenow. “You ‘eard of a ship breaker? A ‘
ouse breaker you ‘eard of? So my friend Hacker’s a general breaker. A breaker, not a broker. After a broker goes broke, then comes the breaker. My friend Hacker’s a shop breaker, a restaurant breaker, a theater breaker, a ship breaker—a breaker, you know? Say a business is sold up, say: my friend Hacker’s on the spot like a leopard miv a bid. Fixtures an’ fittings, bars an’ counters an’ cupboards, signs an’ shelves an’ linoleum an’ doorknobs— anything an’ everything. Boarding an’ beading, frames an’ doors an’ panels, sinks an’ mantelpieces an’ mirrors—whatever nobody wants my friend Hacker buys. Rags, bottles an’ bones. ‘You chunk it out, I pick it up’—that’s my friend Hacker’s motto; an’ you’d be surprised!
“As I was saying, I was going to call this ‘ere cafe the Blue Cafe only my friend ‘ad this ‘ere ‘and made Cafe Cosmopolitan fascia plus that there Vitellius sign thrown in. ‘Chunk me in a mincing machine,’I says, ‘an’ it’s a deal for thirty shillings.’ In the end it was thirty-five bob, plus the ostrinch egg.... Mivout a mincing machine in a cafe you’re a think o’ the past. Rissoles—on the steam alone o’ my rissoles they get fat rahnd Fowlers End. An’ I dare say you wonder why I got two different signs ‘anging outside my cafe? Go on, say it!”
I said, “I wonder why you have two different signs hanging outside your cafe, Mr. Yudenow. Well?”
He was delighted. “So you admit it got you asking questions, eh? It got you on the guess? You’d look twice at a place miv two signs, ain’t it? You pause. You stop. Before you know where you are, you come in miv a mysterious smile an’ say, ‘Uxcuse me but whereas you got two different signs?” An’ you go out miv a packet cigarettes or a rissole or a bar chocolate. Show biz... But you mustn’t keep me ‘ere chatting all day long. To the dressing rooms, for Christ’s sake!”
As he opened the door, a girl looked out of the first-floor window. I caught a glimpse of a broad oval face, downy and juicy as an apricot, and one burning black eye surmounted by an eyebrow like a kitten’s tail. Then she was gone.
“That’s Costas’ sister,” said Sam Yudenow. “She’s bad medicine. ‘Ave nothing to do miv ‘er. You know what these Greeks are, jealous, the uncivilized bastards. Only the other day, single’ anded, Costas practically lynched half a dozen blokes for whistling at ‘er. She’ll make eyes at you. She won’t mind your face—she never looks ‘igher than anybody’s fly. If Costas catches you so much as laying a finger on ‘er, God ‘elp you. So you better be careful. You never can tell. Some women like Victor McLaglen, some women like cripples. Not even you will be safe. Come on.”
“Even I?” I said, following him. “I like that!”
“Don’t get me wrong,” said Sam Yudenow. “Personally I like your face. It’s just the face for the job.”
3
SINCE I am of a timid and retiring disposition, I must admit that I am not displeased with my face. It enables me to pick and choose my company. If I do not like some importunate stranger I have only to look at him steadily; then he falters and edges away. If, on the other hand, I like the looks of somebody, it is necessary for me simply to say, “Nice weather we are having” to hold him, terrified. People are so surprised to find that I am an easygoing, even a gentle, soul that they tend to fall in love with me out of sheer relief. I am the kind of man who is glanced at quickly out of the corners of eyes. Men fear me and women are fascinated by me. “He must have been through hell,” they say, with a thrill of sympathy or with a delicious tremor. “What a ruthless brute he must be!” Perhaps you remember the old heavyweight boxer, the Chopping Block, George Cook of Australia. It was almost impossible to knock him out; consciousness and unconsciousness were all the same to him. He used to be one of the barriers that had to be passed before anyone got to be a runner-up for the British Heavyweight Championship.
His sad, bewildered eyes glittered under heavy banks of scar tissue, and he had ears like a double portion of sweetbreads. Hundreds and hundreds of promising young heavyweights had hit him in the face with all their might. An old sportswriter told me once that George Cook must have taken, in the course of his career, at least fifteen thousand punches on the nose, which was not only flat and boneless but bent east and west in a lazy zigzag. He had the appearance of a man who, by supernatural toughness, has emerged alive from a concrete mixer. I look something like him; and I have never regretted the circumstances that made me so.
It happened in 1915 when I was a child. Airplanes were a novelty in those days, and I was fascinated by the German Gothas over London. They looked like a series of Ts floating in clear sky. For the first, and last, time in my life I was overwhelmed by a desire to fly. So I found a six-foot length of four-inch squaring and nailed to it two planks for wings, and a board for the tail. The propeller I cut out of the lid of a biscuit tin and fastened with one of my mother’s hat pins. For armaments I carried a double-barreled cap pistol and a five-pound dumbbell which I proposed to drop on the gas works. For a helmet I borrowed my father’s bowler hat and for goggles my mother’s pince-nez. But when I straddled the thing, it wouldn’t fly. Something was seriously wrong here. Then I remembered that airplanes had wheels. I took my sister’s perambulator apart and fitted my machine with an undercarriage. It moved, then; but still it would not fly. So I took it to pieces, carried it up to the roof and reassembled it. As I calculated, all I needed was a good start. Shouting “Bang! Bang! Bang! I’m a German!” I took off. It seems that I described half a parabola on account of the steep slope of our roof, and went right over our garden fence into a neighbor’s cucumber frame. I landed flat on my face. The dumbbell, which I was still firmly grasping, hit me on the nose. The wings folded and beat me about the ears, and my jaw was broken. “Never do a thing like that again,” said my father; and I obeyed him. To this day I cannot look at a dumbbell without a sense of frustration, of grievance; and if, sometime, when things get too tough for me and I have a nervous breakdown and am found throwing dumbbells and crying “Bang! Bang! I’m a German,” the psychiatrists will know exactly where to look for the first causes.
However, from the age of seven, after my face healed I looked not unlike that ancient pugilist Buckhorse, who, in his old age, having no face left to spoil, let anybody knock him down for a shilling. Later, when I filled out into a fine figure of a man, I improved and resembled old George Cook. My stature and physique I must have inherited. After the incident of the airplane I was not allowed to touch dumbbells, Indian clubs, hammers, nails, or wood; and I was followed every time I climbed the stairs.
They gave me an abacus to play with; I took a fancy to the red beads and swallowed them, and I felt so bad about the anxiety I had caused my family that I did not dare to say anything about it. For all I know they are in my system to this day, or else they were digestible beads. I looked in vain for their reappearance with a view to putting them back on the wires, but they never turned up.
I begged in vain for a bicycle. My father settled for a very low-built tricycle because it was impossible to fall off it. Even then my mother would not allow me to take it out of the playroom on the first floor. All the same, I rode it downstairs and through the front door, which was closed at the time. Carpenters had to be called to saw me out of the lower panel. As a result of this mishap I have an evil-looking scar which almost encircles my neck; this is always good for conversation—the politest woman in the world cannot help asking me how I came by it. I never tell the same story twice.
My beauty, again, was not enhanced by the Affair of the Bicycle Pump. Needless to say, with my record, I was not allowed to let off fireworks on Guy Fawkes Day and dance around a bonfire with the other boys. So I decided to make a little firecracker for myself. Somewhere or other I picked up an old nickel-plated bicycle pump, which struck me as being the very thing for the casing; the next thing was to find something to put in it. Now my father used to own a duck gun and I remembered having seen a box of fifty cartridges in one of his drawers. I cut open these cartridges and emptied the whole fifty into the barrel of the pu
mp, ramming the powder and the shot down hard with the piston. Then I made a fuse out of cotton string rolled in gunpowder, and attached it. With this firecracker I decided to surprise and delight the local police force on November the fifth. So I put it against an outside wall of the police station, set light to the fuse, and waited around the corner. The cracker was a success, only the wall came down and I was cut about the forehead with flying glass.
Everybody said it was anarchists. I kept my mouth shut about that one.
As if all this were not enough, I caught diphtheria (as they insisted) through eating pencils. I always was of a contemplative turn of mind. Even as a child, before committing myself to writing, I took a good mouthful of pencil. Most of my milk teeth had gone in the airplane crash, but I still had my molars, and made the most of them. The paint did not appeal to me much, but I enjoyed the savor of the cedarwood. I did not spit out the lead, having been politely brought up; I swallowed it. Lead, cedar splinters, paint, abacus beads—they all went the same way home. But eventually I contracted diphtheria. Considering this in the light of modern science, I believe I caught it from a gluttonous and feverish little boy who borrowed my pencil one drawing lesson and chewed all the goodness out of it. But our family doctor, a superannuated windbag who did not believe in microbes and diagnosed what ailed you by smelling your breath, swore that diphtheria was created by pencils. Anyway I caught it, and my throat seized up, so that they had to make an incision for me to breathe through. For a year or two after that I could not speak and when my voice came back it came in a sepulchral whisper which later mellowed into a throaty purr; so that now my voice has something of the quality and timbre of Tallulah Bankhead’s, only it is deeper and more masculine. It is the kind of voice one associates with the most appalling depravity; it goes with the debauching of pious matrons, the buggering of young noblemen, the reciting of poetry with an ulterior motive, and seduction of convent-bred heiresses. In contrast with my face, it is really arresting.
