by Gerald Kersh
“To Bopeep on their rolling billows,” said Copper Baldwin, with a certain relish. “Where their loaves o’bread repose.”
“I mustn’t be called a minute later than a quarter to six,” said Cruikback. Struck as by an afterthought, he added, “I’m grateful to you, you know, of course. Naturally, I’ll prove it. Oh, don’t imagine I mean with dirty money— nothing of the sort. Only I might make millionaires of you two. Verb sap. You can rest in peace tonight, Laverock; old Cruikback is looking after you, as per usual. Pleasant dreams!”
“What do you mean, ‘millionaires,’ for God’s sake?” I asked.
Cool as a half-commission man, confident as a young fellow whose father is a broker who comes home redolent of B-and-B and Corona-Coronas, Cruikback said, “Of course, you know I’ve taken your hospitality, Laverock?”
“Oh, don’t be silly,” I said.
“Pardon me, young Laverock. You too, Baldwin. I’ll be as silly as I choose. I confess I don’t quite like your attitude, Laverock. But if I say I can put you in the way of making a million—verb sap! Oh, very well, say I exaggerate: call it four hundred thousand, and not a million. All right? Then I mean it, you know. Laverock, have I ever broken my word? Look me in the eyes and call me a liar.”
“Of course you aren’t, old thing,” I said, in a dribble of sentiment.
“You wait and see,” said he darkly. “As it happens, I am in possession of information.”
“All correct, sir. Come on now,” said Copper Baldwin, and then he saw Cruikback to bed—to my bed.
When Copper Baldwin returned, I said, “Look, Copper, you can’t go lending people two pounds out of the petty cash that I’m responsible for.”
“I know I can’t,” he said. “Because Smallpox sees to it that there’s never more than three ‘alf crowns in the petty cash; and that under lock ‘n key. I loaned the gentleman that couple o’ nicker out o’ my own pocket.”
“But you handed the money to me, and I handed it to him,” I said, very agitated. “Therefore, I’m responsible for it to you!”
“Think no more of it,” said Copper Baldwin. “It was out of my own pocket. All warm and clammy. Take it easy, cocko.”
I would have argued the point, only the deliveryman threw a case of film cans into the vestibule at that moment. It missed my foot by about two inches. In one of my rare— perhaps all too rare—bursts of temper, I picked up the box of returns and threw it right back at him, shouting, “Damn your eyes! Henceforward bring this stuff in like a civilized human being!”
There was some consolation to be got out of the blank astonishment on the man’s face as the big steel box flew over his shoulder into the empty street; and, if I had been in a mood to appreciate it, something gratifying in the way he said, “Well, Gord blind O’Biley! Sam Yudenow don’t ‘alf pick ‘em!”
But I never felt more cold, lonely, and frustrated than when I lay down, at last, in the office. For the first time in my life I had a feeling that I was being abused and was indignant without being able to define the reason for my feeling—which is unhealthy.
And my temper was not improved when, at six o’clock in the morning, somewhat puckered about the f holes in his fiddle race, Cruikback breathed in my face as only those do who have stale breath, and said, “Sorry, but that gin, or whatever it was, made me a bit icky. I didn’t know where the bog was, but luckily there seems to be a Jordan under the bed. I used that—I suppose you don’t mind terribly, of course.... But what a little sinner you are, Laverock! Whatever did she see in you? Appeal of the brute, what?”
“What the hell are you talking about?” I asked.
He said, “Must have been about three or three-thirty. That gel from this cafe of yours popped into bed with me. Thought I was you, I imagine. Well, Old Valetudinarians stick together; you told me to be discreet, didn’t you? So I didn’t say a word. We you-knowed cinq fois. Then she slipped away like a wraith. Up the Vale! What a hot little bitch—I beg pardon, young Laverock—what an affectionate lady! But (a word to the wise) you’d better watch out. Bad for the stamina. It’s proved by science that a man has only a certain number of eggs. And I’m a married man—”
“Oh, please go away, Cruikback!” I cried.
“I’m on my way, old thing,” said Cruikback. “Back in a few days.”
He was gone several minutes before my slow, groping wit dredged up out of my silted consciousness the horrid significance of what he had done to me. Preoccupied at first with the Jordan, or chamber pot, which he had used in my name, I could think of nothing else—I am morbidly sensitive about such things.
Only a little later it occurred to me that I had by proxy taken into my bed and seduced the sister of my landlord, the Cypriot dynamiter Costas.
8
NOW I felt that everything had happened to me. In retrospect, the agony of a silly young man put to shame is a laughing matter—and rightly so, because the shame, the exaggerated shame, of your self-conscious boy has in it a certain idiotic pomposity. He has too high a regard for himself, and for his mistakes and his pimples, and his enthusiasms, which are a sort of pimplous eruption of the spirit.
But, oh, my dear reader, think back to the time when you used to blush and didn’t know how to stop it—call back to memory that awful anguish which was yours after your voice broke, when it seemed to you that you were the focal center of a million eyes and nostrils, to every one of which you gave a separate, sharp offense!
I say: I was growing up, at an awkward age, and especially prone to self-examination. I hated Cruikback now with a deadly hatred. We had, I believed, spoiled the purity of Kyra Costas. This, no doubt, was a dreadful thing; Costas was a killer, and I was a man of honor. But over and above this—having reconciled myself to the role of rapist— above all, I say, clung the thought of appearing in Kyra’s eyes as the loose-gutted fellow who used the chamber pot.
It may be silly, but this was on my mind. I will say it again: I have a prejudice against using these articles of bedroom crockery ever since I went through the cucumber frame. I do not mind carrying a pot for someone else but hate the thought of that someone’s carrying a pot for me: let the psychiatrists make what they will of this.
So I went upstairs, seething with hate for Cruikback, and discovered that he had indeed used that chamber pot— from every body orifice, as Zola says—and I thanked God that he had, at least, aimed straight. Once a Valetudinarian, always a Valetudinarian.
The thing to do was to get rid of this vessel. I thought for a long time, as it seemed, and then decided to put it on Godbolt’s doorstep. But the house was already alive. From below, I heard a bass baritone singing in a quavering, yearning tone some such tune as the Byzantine nuns must have played on a three-holed flute. A hot gust of the fumes of stale cooking fat came upstairs. I heard a woman’s footsteps clattering in backless hard-heeled slippers.
Panic took hold of me. I opened the window and put the pot on the sill. Then Kyra came in without knocking. No doubt about it, she was a beautiful girl in a duck-legged, satchel-arsed, Cypriot way—heavy-lidded, heavy-haired, each breast looking as if it weighed seven pounds and was crouching, palpitating, on a marble slab waiting for a weighing machine.
Kyra said, “Well?”
Sweating heavily, I said, “I’m afraid I have no explanation to offer.”
“I should think not,” she said very slowly, wrinkling her nose and dilating her nostrils.
I said to her, “I would offer to kiss you, darling, only I have not yet brushed my teeth.”
“Oh, you would, would you?” she said. “At the best of times this room stinks, but now—” She went to the window and saw what I had discreetly placed outside.
There was an appalling silence and then—I kick myself whenever I remember it—I said the first thing that came into my mind: “It must have been burglars ...”
To my surprise, Kyra began to laugh. “Oh, come on, now,” she said, “you don’t smell sour. You didn’t flob your gob last night. G
i’ me a kiss.”
“Let me explain—” I began.
“Tell it to the Marines,” said Kyra. “Do you like breasts?”
I said, “Oh yes, very much, but—”
“So do I. I can’t imagine myself without ‘em.”
“About last night—” I began.
“I thought of you,” she said. “What’s your name? Laverock? I think it’s a darling name—it sounds like it ought to smell like a bunch of flowers.... Do you kiss wet or dry?”
A sort of obfuscation, a blankness, came over me. Goodness knows what might have happened, only a heavy voice from downstairs bellowed, “Kyra! Kyra kyralina!”
As she advanced to kiss me good-by, I instinctively retreated. My behind touched the handle of the chamber pot. I was aware of its teeter-totter on the edge as Kyra squeezed me; and then I heard a most appalling crash. It had gone through the skylight into the kitchen.
Then I was alone, thinking that if only I had a pistol I would hold it at arm’s length and shoot myself in the face somewhere near the nose. This way, I reasoned, no coroner could call it suicide but only accidental death. After all, who shoots himself in the nose? But I did not have a pistol; and, touching the matter of noses, Cruikback had my last handkerchief.
Hitherto, give or take enough folly to last an average neurotic about sixty-five years, my life had been devoid of serious complications. Now I was in a nightmarish maze. Intellectually speaking, it was as if I had cast my line into a fog without keeping my thumb on the reel. Then I knew fear, blank idiot fear, and tried to grapple with it. It would not be departing very far from the truth if I said that at that moment I went into a kind of delirium—a half-sane man’s delirium, which is nothing but fact in mutiny. Probably the crash of the skylight set it up in a misprinted bar. More likely it was a sense of frustration and injustice at having the name without the game. All the mistakes of my misspent little life came down to irritate me like so many grains of pepper—only I did not dare to sneeze, because Cruikback had my handkerchief.
I went downstairs, determined to have it out with somebody. The first one I met was Kyra, who was washing the urn which, I believe, was used indiscriminately for tea, coffee, and cocoa. I had a speech in mind; but when she looked at me I forgot every word of it.
She said, “My brother would like a word with you.”
This suited me perfectly. I was ready to break him across my knee. Costas appeared then and led me to the kitchen. Pointing to the scattered result of what had exploded on the floor, he asked, “Are you responsible for this?”
I said, “No, sir, no. No, I am not responsible for this! And I will thank you, henceforward, not to put your Midday Special to cool where I cannot see it. It is enough, God damn it, that I have to put up with the smell of your cooking from a distance. If you are not careful I will inform the Ministry of Health—I am a personal friend—and they will close you down in a pig’s whisper. The public analyst is my cousin. Now then! Well?”
It did not occur to me until later that I was already beginning to talk like Sam Yudenow—in this short space of time he must have got into me by osmosis.
I added, “And get that skylight repaired. Also clear up this mess. One of the yobbos gets a bit of glass in his faggot, Mr. Costas, and he rips his esophagus all the way down. Study anatomy. Man has a hemorrhage. Who’s the sufferer? Worst of all—I daresay you know what they are like round here—it passes through his system and makes a gash coming out. In which case, as a man of your perspicacity will no doubt appreciate, that fellow Godbolt will unquestionably bribe him to swear to an unnatural offense. Therefore, Mr. Costas, be advised by me: don’t put it back; simply sweep it up and throw it out.” Marveling at myself, I heard myself continuing: “You come from a sunny, peaceful country. It would surprise you to know what they are like in this locality. All they have to hope for, all they have to look forward to, is a lump of glass in their food. Then come lawyers and a settlement out of court. And who suffers? I leave it to your imagination. So don’t let it happen again, will you, Mr. Costas?”
I was expecting some terrible outburst—indeed, I had been talking in that frightened way which is commonly known as “in fun,” which is the coward’s way out—but, to my astonishment, Costas, winnowed of ferocity, said, “Very well, sir.”
He took up a stiff bass broom, paused, and said, “Are you a relative of Mr. Yudenow’s?” “Certainly not,” I said.
Then, from the doorway, came a voice which I seemed to have heard all my life, crying, “Miv a bass bvoom? Is everybody stark staring? A bass bvoom, I want you should understand, is like hundveds of little spvings. They scatter. Take, better, a piece of tin and scvape. Two pieces o’tin, like a steam shovel in Amevica. One feeds the other. Economics. Then on to a reliable newspaper, and save it for the boys for Godbolt’s shop. Afterwards, hot water, a squeegee, and perfumed carbolic. It’s not Mr. Laveridge’s fault; he’s new to show biz. So whereas, I got a new idea.”
It was that man again—shaven like a bridegroom, with a nose dropper in one hand and a cigar in the other. This cigar, as I later learned, was his “waving cigar”—it was made of wood and lit up at the tip when he pressed the other end. It was eight inches long, an inch in diameter, and bore a wide red-and-gold label with what most reliable witnesses would have sworn to be the imprint of Corona-Corona—only on examination it said, Croona-Croona. His pockets were full of gadgets of a similar nature. He was the pioneer of bubble gum in England: pretending to eat something during a conference, he would simulate a hiccup and then, to everybody’s horror and disgust, blow through moist lips something about the size and color of a pig’s bladder, suck it back, and say, with an air of quiet resignation, “Pay no attention, boys—it’s internal.”
Now he tried it on me. It started with a bubble that grew and grew; what time, seemingly unaware of it, he switched his wooden cigar on and off and contemplated the ceiling. It was somewhat more than I could bear. I got up to go. This horrid membrane was immediately sucked back where it came from like the cloaca of a duck, while he said, “It’s because o’ worry about my staff—and my business. What’s going to happen to me, what? Everybody’s wiring for sound, Laventry. Mayerowitz is wiring up the Crystal Palace, Luton. Connolly’s wiring up, Rappaport is wiring up, MacDougall is wiring up. It’s a cvaze, Lavender, but what am I supposed to do? Wire up? Before Sam Yudenow wires up he’ll be wired up—to an electric chair he’ll be wired up. McGoogan is wiring up. Everybody’s wiring up. So what for should I wire up? Give me liberty or God forbid! Forty, sixty per cent of the gross for the sound system? Over your dead body! Now you’re a man of education, culture. You can’t help your looks, but even so God made you, or somebody, if you get what I mean. And you got nishertive. You’re a learned man. Believe me, Laveridge, the public don’t want sound—the public wants reality.”
“No, it doesn’t,” I said. “Is the stage reality?”
Staring at me as if I had just sprung out of the floor, Sam Yudenow cried, “If it ain’t reality, what then is it?”
“Does Othello really smother Desdemona every night?” I asked.
He replied impatiently, “O’Thello—miv an Irishman, anything can happen. Look at Booligan. Wait till you see O’Toole. Miv ‘im, if she was only smothered to death she’d thank her lucky stars. But how comes O’Thello? Whatever you do, don’t change the subject. We got to face reality. In this life, what comes first? Eating. Now I’m asking you, as man to man, is there any fun sitting through a program mivout eating something? I’m asking you again, candidly, is it possible to eat mivout sound? No. I lay awake at night—me, also, I’m a thinker—and it works out like this: all talkies have done for show biz is put up the price of monkey nuts and chocolates, so now they’re sold without shells. Hacker the Breaker offered me a cargo monkey nuts ready salted—they got a bit spoiled miv sea water. Don’t worry, I got an idea about that, too: ‘Marine Peanuts.’ But round Fowlers End they ain’t educated up to this kind thing. They’re lovely,
mind you—soft as butter, melt in the mouth. I’ll try ‘em out elsewhere. To cut a long story short, I want you should be a pioneer in Fowlers End. Remember The Covered Wagon—only no firearms.... By the way, did you remember like I told you? You know, the crook o’ the arm in the thvoat and the right hand in the arse o’ the trousers?”
“When I chucked Dilly out,” I said. “I had to carry him—he had no arse to his trousers.”
“A nice way to begin!” said Sam Yudenow. “Dilly he’s got to chuck out! I’m ruined. He’s right-hand man in the Ullage mob. Take arsenic, but miv Dilly be diplomatic. But what was I saying? Ah, the question of nushment. Napoleon could see the way things were going in advance, so he went there first, and when they arrived he said, ‘Hello.’ The new tvend calls for soft food during talkies. Now it’s like this: I just bought from Hacker the Breaker three still frames, a genuine carpet, and half a gross Exit signs in red; only he made me take a load army surplus dehydvated cabbage. Marvelous stuff, the very thing! It seems they take a cabbage and they take the water out of it. What’s left? Cabbage. Put a couple spoonfuls in boiling water and there you are, seven pounds delicious cabbage. Now I’m coming right to the point. Have you eaten bubble-and-squeak?”
I had. If you are very young and desperately hungry you can eat it practically without nausea. In Soho, in the small hours, the cafe proprietors used to give it away—this being a benevolent way of cleaning their kitchens. It is made as follows: Procure leftover potatoes. Add to them anything you like which, somehow, always happens to be yesterday’s cabbage. Take a heavy instrument—any heavy instrument—and beat this mixture without mercy until it is quite flat. Put the resultant cake into a pan which you are heating to burn off coagulations of old fat. Fry until you can no longer see through a blue haze. Then give it to a passerby. He will, most likely, hurl it into the street, thus saving you the cost of an extra garbage bin. When cold, a portion of bubble-and-squeak can be thrown a great distance, like a discus, and has been known to inflict grievous bodily harm—for which purpose it is better than brickbats or bottles because, if charged, the thrower can always plead: “I was only offering him a midnight snack.” Bubble-andsqueak has been known by various nicknames, such as “poor man’s leavings,” and “lump-in-the-stomach,” and “constipation tart.” I did not dare to tell Sam Yudenow that I could write a brochure about bubble-and-squeak and its various uses—I felt that if I did so, he would tell me where to find the pencil and put me to work at once.
