by Gerald Kersh
“What, dangerous? Who, Sam Yudenow?” I said. “I thought he was rather funny.”
Copper Baldwin said, “If you want a ‘ealthier bit of a laugh I’ll tickle the soles of your feet for you. Like a Chinese nanny goat. Where d’you live?”
“Next door, in the dressing room with the cupboard that locks.”
He looked at me out of one eye and then said, “How long have you been out?”
“Out of where?”Iasked.
“I thought you’d been inside,” said Copper Baldwin.
“Mr. Yudenow just showed me round.”
“Listen,” said Copper Baldwin. “One thing I don’t like is madam. Don’t madam me. I mean inside—bucket-and-pail.”
“Oh, jail?” I said. “No, not just lately. Why do you
ask?”
“Nothing,” said Copper Baldwin, “only you’re a funny one. You talk like a gentleman. Educated man?”
“It depends what you mean, Mr. Baldwin.”
“They call me Copper. What d’you mean ‘it depends’?”
“Well,” I said, “I went to school.”
“So did I, so did everybody. Ever pass a scholarship?”
“No. Did you?”
“Yes,” said Copper Baldwin. “You don’t mind me asking, what age did you leave school at?” “Eighteen.”
“I was twelve. What brings you ‘ere?”
“Something to do, something to eat,” I said.
“Is Laverock your real name? What’s your first name?”
“Daniel, but they call me Dan.”
“Why don’t you join the Foreign Legion? Like they do in books when they go wrong?” he asked.
“Didn’t have the fare to France,” I said.
“You’d have been better off, you know. So it’s ‘earts-of-oak, is it?”
“Broke is the word, Copper.”
“I’ll lend you a quid till Friday,” he said. “Later, we’ll see ...”
“I wouldn’t think—” I began.
“Oh, yes, you would,” said Copper Baldwin, “you would and you will.” He fished out an old brass watch. “Twenty minutes to go. Come and ‘ave a beer.”
“It’s only quarter to eleven,” I said. “Are they open
yet?”
He said, “Listen, for Copper Baldwin they’ll open— ” Then he stopped abruptly, shut his mouth with a click and moistened his lips. “See what I mean?” he said. “Who was I talking like?”
“Sam Yudenow?”
“Sam Smallpox—’e’s catching,” said Copper Baldwin, leading the way across the dismal High Street to the Load of Mischief.
“Is that why you said he was dangerous, Copper?”
“You wait and see.”
Before we went into the pub, he took me to the urinal in the alley and pressed into my hand a ten-shilling note and four half-crowns, saying, “Put that in your skyrocket and order like a gentleman ...” His voice died away, and he started, like a man coming out of a bad dream. “What am I talking about?” he said, spitting into the tarred gutter. “As you were! You do what you bloody well like, for Christ’s sake! I’m buying the beer. You’re a manager, see? And a gentleman in a very responsible position, see? And I’m sucking up to you, got me? Talk down to me—you know, treat me off’ anded. Foller?”
“I said, “Damned if I follow, Copper. What’s the idea?”
Copper Baldwin rubbed his forehead and said, “There I go again, if you see what I mean. I’m warning you, Yudenow gets you groggy—”
“That’s another one of his expressions,” I said.
“No, it isn’t,” said Copper Baldwin, “it’s one o’ mine. He picked it up off of me. That’s the way it is wiv ‘im—he’ll take away the very way you talk, and mess it about, and in the end you forget what’s what. The simplest little thing Yudenow can make you uncertain of. And all the time innocent as a child, mind you! Talk white, and ‘e’ll turn it black; and when ‘e lets you ‘ave it back it’s you that’s led ‘im astray. You wait and see. No, what I mean to say is, you take that quid and if Yudenow asks you do you want a few bob to tide you over, make wiv a mysterious—no, wait a minute! Tell him straight: ‘Bollocks!’ Only like a gentleman, d’you foil—Oh, for Christ’s sake! Ever read about Dracula? Ever read about Svengali? Well, then ...” He pulled himself together, shaking himself like a dog. “Don’t let Yudenow lend you a penny, and pay cash for every crumb you eat up at the Greek’s.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“‘Ave you read a lot of books?” Copper Baldwin asked.
“Quite a few,” I said.
“I bet I’ve read more than what you ‘ave,” he said.
“Shouldn’t be a bit surprised, Copper.”
“I dessay you believe what you read. Well, don’t. It’s all a lot o’ crap—every word, practically. One o’ these days we’ll ‘ave a discussion.... Generally, I can size a bloke up one-two-three—I mean, generally I can size a bloke up. But I ‘aven’t got the size of you yet. Well, come on in.”
So we went into the saloon bar of the Load of Mischief—a sad, damp place, close and cold at the same time. The landlord was a deaf old man, slow and heavy as lead. He wore green mittens, a balaclava helmet, and two knitted waistcoats. A paraffin heater burned behind the bar; but in the fireplace there was nothing but a quantity of crumpled red crepe paper, which, I gathered, was supposed to create an illusion of warmth. On the mantelpiece stood a shiny showcard depicting a lady in a tiara clinking glasses with a diplomat decorated with the Order of the Golden Fleece, and captioned CELEBRATE WITH CHAMPEX. There was also a shiny picture of a philosophical old gentleman with a churchwarden pipe, wearing a tasseled smoking cap, advertising CURLY MIXTURE—THE THINKER’S TOBACCO. Naturally, some joker had scratched out the TH and substituted ST. Similarly, there had been erasures and substitutions on the GOLD BRICK SHAG and the HUCKSTABLE TWIST showcards, and a very neat spoonerist job on the FRIAR TUCK ALE sign.
“The famous Cockney sense of humor,” said Copper Baldwin, following my glance. “A scream, ain’t it? You know—mix everything up. Instead o’ saying ‘a bottle o’ gin’ say ‘a jottle o’ bin.’If it turns out smutty, all the funnier. I don’t think! ... And there’s some more of your famous Cockney humor for you. Simply say what isn’t, that’s all. G. K. Chesterton in ‘is essay on Pickwick calls it ‘fine irony’ or something. ‘E was another ‘ysterical crap-hound. ‘E was as bad as Dickens, if not worse. Fine Irony o’ the Working Classes! All you’ve got to do is listen to the dirty sods enjoying themselves. Their idea o’ fun is for an old woman to kick up her legs and show her dirty drawers, and scream ‘Oops!’ ... Well, what’s it to be? Love-in-a-punt?”
“What’s that?”
“Pig’s ear. Beer: f—ing-near-water. Or a drop o’ short?”
“I’ll have a beer,” I said. “So you don’t like Dickens?”
“‘E was phony to the backbone. So are they all, most of ‘em. Liars, every last one of ‘em practically.... Hoy, you! A Bass and a Scotch, you deaf bastard!... That’s the only way to talk to the working classes—or the middle classes, or the upper classes, for that matter. The crook of the arm in the ... I mean, treat ‘em rough. Never argue, never give ‘em a chance to think. Take ‘em individually, one by one. I’ll show you ‘ow Saturday night. The public is muck; shovel it! Bloody rabble. Divide and conquer. When in doubt, pick out the one with the loudest voice. Don’t break your knuckles on ‘im—the ‘eel of your ‘and under the tip of ‘is nose, a swift poke in the Adam’s apple, and let ‘im welter—prink ‘earty!”
“Sam Yudenow warned me—” I began.
“Yudenow! Pay no attention to ‘im, I warn you. You’ve read ‘ow they can concentrate a ‘ole pig into a pill? That’s Yudenow—a one-man Saturday-night crowd—the bloody Gadarene swine compressed. Just add water. That de’ydrated cesspool!”
He drank his whisky. My beer was, indeed, very flat I ordered again, and then said, “So you’ve read Dickens, have you?”
; “Every last word,” said Copper Baldwin, “and did I enjoy ‘im? Yes, I did. Like Mickey-bloody-Mouse. ‘E ain’t true, ‘e ain’t real. And don’t give me all that stuff about ‘aving met Dickensian characters. I know you ‘ave, the same way you’ve met Gloria Swanson, or King George, or Jesus Christ in the Old Kent Road. Give the stinking rabble something easy to copy—that’s all—and there you are: ‘true to life,’ as they say. ‘Umbug! Crappy little sods like Dickens aren’t true to life—life is true to Charles Dickens. And that goes for that poor bastard William Shakespeare, too—though I admit ‘e done ‘is best within ‘is limitations.... And don’t let the Frenchmen or the Russians fool you, either; you mark my words. They never wrote about anything they saw or knew. Zola got it all out of the newspapers; and those ‘e ‘ad to read with a magnifying glass. ‘E was ‘alf blind, like Kipling or Rider ‘Aggard. You don’t see anything with a microscope or a telescope.” “What do you see then?”
“Nothing. Did you ever see a church? No. Or a ‘ouse? No. Or a man? No. Your poor bloody eyes are only made to take in a tiny little bit of anything at one time. You don’t see a thing, cocko, you see a mess of blobs. The closer you get the less you see. The farther away you get the less you see. And when you get in range, what d you see? Something in your imagination. And these poor stinkpots think they’re writing about life. Why, Gorblimey, it would take all of ‘em all their lives put together to write about one second! ... And then some crackpot like Tolstoy, or somebody, sits down on his arse and writes about a million pages all about war—and you say ‘Darling, isn’t it marvelous?’ Was ‘e in that war? No. Was Zola in the Franco-Prussian War? Bet your life ‘e wasn’t—’e buggered off to Marseilles, and pieced that book of ‘is together afterwards. But: ‘Stark realism,’says you. Is anybody ever in a war? The answer is no. I know—I was in the last one from beginning to end.”
“Get hurt?” I asked.
“Not a scratch,” said Copper Baldwin impatiently. “Peace, so-called, is a bloody sight more dangerous. But did I see any war? No. I froze in the mud, I sweated in the dust, I washed when I could and went lousy when I couldn’t; took orders from stinkpots that wasn’t fit to run a cockle stall— it was the same as I’d always been used to. But as for seeing the war—Christ, nobody ever saw it, and whatever you read about it is a lot of eyewash, ‘umbug, ‘earsay, common bloody lies. Like when you read about somebody who ‘knows ‘is London,’ or ‘knows women,’ or something. Why, not one man in a million could recognize ‘imself if ‘e met ‘imself in the street—and people spend most o’ their time looking at themselves, but seeing themselves in reverse, mind you.... No, it wouldn’t matter what you read, it’s all a fairy tale. A dream, get me? I say a dream, and if you believe otherwise, prove it. Time for just one more.”
“A dream you wake up to,” I suggested.
“I ‘ave yet to be convinced that I am not fast asleep,” said Copper Baldwin.
“But you were talking about Sam Yudenow,” I said.
“We were talking about Charles Dickens. Now tell me something—why do you read a load of tripe like Martin Chuzzlewit? Why can’t you put that crappy book down? Because you’re interested in what ‘appens to the ‘ero? That twerp? No. Because you’re interested in Pecksniff, the ‘ypocrite, and Jonas, and Tigg, the bucket-shop keeper, and that dirty filthy drunken old stinking midwife, Sairey Gamp. You’ve got to see those bastards get what’s coming to ‘em. Ain’t that so? Life is like that, too, son. The ‘eroes, the ‘eroes are fabricated. They read themselves up in books, or saw themselves on the stage. It’s the villains that grip you, cocko—black bloody villainy, that’s the salt of life, that’s what keeps you guessing, that’s what keeps you turning the pages! ‘Ate pulls the strings that make you jump, my boy—’ate keeps you going. You know, you’ve got to be in at the death. Well, I’ve got to be in at the death of Sam Yudenow.”
“You said he was dangerous.”
“That’s right. Look, there’s millions unemployed, but I can always get a good job anywhere in the world, because there’s nothing I can’t do with these two Oliver Twists. I got a few quid put away. I could go to Canada, or anywhere in the world, and get a good living too. So why am I ‘ere in Fowlers End, which is the sink of the bloody universe? ‘Ave I got leprosy? No. Am I wanted by the police? No. Sam Yudenow’s got me, that’s what. You know what I mean? I’d never be able to rest in peace unless I got to the finish of ‘im. ‘Ate, it’s the spice of life, sonny.”
I said, “I don’t know; I never managed to hate anybody, and I find life tasty enough.”
He looked at me and shook his head. “Up to a point, a bellyful of warm milk and your thumb to suck is all you need to keep you ‘appy. But as soon as you learn to crawl you want to get your teeth into something. You’ll get weaned ‘ere, my boy. Likewise, up to a point you’re quite ‘appy to listen to the tick-tick. But a ‘uttle later you’re miserable unless you can take it apart and see what makes it go.”
“That doesn’t mean to say that you have to hate the watch,” I said.
“I know. Not necessarily. But what if it’s a dead wrong watch, a deliberately wrong watch, if you can imagine such a thing, and the ‘ole purpose of it is to make you miss your train?”
I said, “I’d keep it as a curiosity. And I’d be very interested to meet the man who designed it.”
“If you found ‘im,” said Copper Baldwin, “you’d kind of meet the Devil, wouldn’t you?”
“Maybe so. But in the meantime, as long as I knew how to tell the right time I wouldn’t let it worry me.”
“Okay. But what if that watchmaker made a practice of going about at night and altering the clocks all over the place so that they told the wrong time?”
“Depends what you mean by wrong time,” I said. “If all the clocks tell the wrong time at the same time, that’s the right time.” I never can resist a bit of metaphysics. “At a certain hour on a certain day of the year, the Government says, ‘Every clock and watch in the country must henceforward be an hour wrong.’And after that, if your watch isn’t wrong it isn’t right.”
“All right, all right, all right! But what if every watch was different?’ said Copper Baldwin.
“You’d still eat when you were hungry, if you had the price of a meal,” I said. And, really, I am fundamentally as easygoing as all that.
“It’s my fault,” said Copper Baldwin bitterly. “I pick on the shittiest analogies.... Look, I see I’m going to ‘ave an amusing time educating you. You’re a treasure, that’s what you are. Friction. You ‘elp my wheels bite, and keep my works from rusting. What a pity this ain’t Sunday! Wait, and I’ll let you cut your teeth on my intellec’. You see, if I open my Norf-and-Souf at all these days, it’s to talk to myself. But look ‘ere. Do you believe in right and wrong? I mean to say, you know the difference, don’t you? There’s no time for definitions now, ‘cause we got to open up the flea pit. Say, to go on with, your instinc’ tells you to do what’s right and undo what’s wrong? All right. All right. And what if you can’t undo what’s wrong, but it starts undoing you? Well?”
“Well...” I said.
“That’s War, ain’t it? I mean, ‘Oly War— Armageddon—Gawd versus the Devil in one f—ing fiery bundle. Ain’t that so? n’you think Gawd don’t ‘ate the Devil? Assuming, o’ course, they exist?”
Just to be annoying, I said, “I don’t see why He should, Copper. But then I’m not a religious man like you.”
“A what like who?” he shouted; then controlled himself and said with a sour smile, “I see I got a prize packet ‘ere. When I’ve trained you to be my intellectual equal, it’s going to be a proper bloody treat. I won’t argue with you now; there’s no time. Let’s drop it.... But what the bloody ‘ell did you mean by ‘religious’? That’s what I’d like to know.”
“Too much hate,” I said, with a passable imitation of Sam Yudenow’s ‘mysterious smile.’ I was feeling cockily confident, extraordinarily cheerful. I slapped Copper Baldwin on
the back; it was like slapping a tight-packed sack of pebbles. “Let’s open up,” I said with airy authority.
“I’ll stick close for a week or two,” said Copper Baldwin. “It’d be a shame to lose you just yet. Only remember what I said: if you want anything, come to me. Before going to Sam Yudenow for a few shillings, go to the carsey, lift up the seat, cut your throat, chuck yourself down the ‘ole, and pull the plug.”
“I’ll do that,” I said.
So we went back to the Pantheon, while Copper Baldwin said under his breath, “Religious, is it? We’ll see about that, cocko!”
I had said it only to tease him, but I believe now that I was right, in a way.
Promiscuous haters get religion as promiscuous lovers get clap. At is a kind of occupational disease which they make a virtue of—you aren’t a man until you’ve had it. The getting of religion by a nater is the sickly consummation of a masturbatory marriage: previously, he only flirted and fumbled himself in dark corners, but, having got religion, he is publicly himself to have and to hold, legally free to worry himself to death. Consider, for example, the sour sighs of such joyless acid-throwing, self-damnatory Holy Rollers as Dostoevski, Graham Greene, Tolstoy, Evelyn Waugh, and other self-digesters of all denominations, dutifully saving their own muck for orgies of mirror-pelting. Their hate got too strong for them, so that mere doubt became insipid. Hate is very lonely; nobody understands it. Love is never frustrated, but hate always is—it is never fulfilled, it wants always to be warmed and cosseted; but it has only its own bosom to fall back upon. So it goes mad; calls itself God, justifies itself, fears itself, adores itself; flagellates itself, licks itself into a shell of scar tissue, and forgives itself. Then, suspecting itself, it hires private detectives to catch itself being unfaithful to itself—and writes an indignant book about itself. Result? Literature.
In writing of myself I forgot to mention that I have a most extraordinary gift of repartee. I can always find the mot juste, the witty riposte, the devastating rejoinder—only it comes out ten or fifteen minutes too late. So now, on the very steps of the Pantheon, I said, “I mean to say, Copper, after all, if it’s reality you’re after, why read books? What do you want them for? You are reality—you’re living it. Reading is a waste of time. So are pictures. So is talking. So is Yudenow; you can’t see him, because your eyes distort and your brain’s only a photographic plate that might be off-color. You know, Copper, light is only algebra, love and hate are only biochemistry, you and Yudenow are simply a couple of formulae—it’s all mapped out and sewn up for you in red tape. Nice and easy, Copper—all you want is a label; paste it on and post yourself! You are all mixed up between naturalism and nature, and candor and truth—that’s what you are, Copper. And you know what a ‘realist’ is? A destructive romantic, a sort of hen-pecked husband at a carnival who pays sixpence for the privilege of throwing little wooden balls at threepenny-worth of saucers. What is real is the good and the true and the beautiful—and that is a hunger and a love.”
