by Gerald Kersh
I said, “Don’t be silly.”
“Acinema, even,” he continued, with that old enthusiasm which had carried us all away a hundred years ago. “Simply hold the land, if you like, and let A.A.A.A. buy off you. Statistics prove that industry runs to a standstill without labor. Upon my word of honor, it’s proved! A.A.A.A. pays well. Pay the working classes well, Laverock, and what’s the first thing they do? Buy a bedroom suite and a piano. This I can give you on the best authority. And a pair of glasses, a haircut, drugs, et cetera. I speak to you as a Valetudinarian, Laverock. How many times did I beat you until the blood ran down? Buy a piece of Ullage. The factory site I can’t offer, of course, but I can arrange it for you to get a nice piece of land northwest of the High Street for eight hundred pounds that is bound to be worth twelve thousand in eighteen months. I have documents to prove it. Only I want two hundred pounds for myself, to get my boy out of pawn. What do you say? As a Valetudinarian give me a plain yes or an honest no. Speak up, young Laverock, speak up!”
“Oh, Copper!” I shouted; and Baldwin, who had been eavesdropping on the whole conversation, came in with a rigid face, carrying the bottle and three glasses.
He served us as a butler serves his masters—in discreet measure. Then he served himself as a butler serves himself—three and a half fingers deep. “I say, look here, Cruikback, old thing,” I said, “do you mind frightfully if we leave you the bottle for a few minutes, because I want a word with Mr. Baldwin?”
He said, “Oh, very well. I don’t suppose you could manage to switch on a film or something, could you?”
“We got some magic-lantern slides,” said Copper Baldwin. And so we had—left over from goodness knows when—of The Pilgrim’s Progress. With these and the gin, Cruikback seemed to be comfortable. For my part I was glad to get Copper Baldwin up into the projection room, where I could tell him word for word all that Cruikback had said to me.
“As you say,” he said—although I had said nothing of the sort—“it do seem like an act of Providence, don’t it? But remember your arithmetic, cocko. What’s eight hundred plus two? One thousand, by my calculations.... Hold hard, Danny boy—we’re coming to that bit about ‘Death where is thy sting, Grave where is thy victory?’ Then ‘e passed over, an’ all the trumpets sounded for ‘im on the Other Side. Gawd stone my Aunt Fanny, but if I ‘ad a trumpet I’d ‘ave a blow at it! Christ Almighty, Danno, can’t you see where this leads to?”
I said, “Putting one across Sam Yudenow?” I said.
“And getting ourselves a lovely bit o’ change, tell your mum. Only there’s a formality, pally. A matter of a thousand nicker. I got a hundred and fifty. Would you ‘appen to ‘ave a matter of eight hundred and fifty quid on you?”
“No, but I think I could find something like it—” I began.
“Oh, bugger! I got ‘Christian and Apollyon’ upside- bloody-down! Damn that demented tinker—only you shook me. First of all, what’s your strategy?”
“Beat Cruikback down,” I said.
“You don’t think that might be taking a mean advantage of a gentleman?” asked Copper Baldwin.
I said, “Certainly.”
“Mind you, I want to see everything in writing,” said Copper Baldwin.
“Better get this clear,” said I, while he slipped into the machine that horrid Gustave Dore picture of the ‘Trial of Faithful’while, pursing his lips, he imitated the sound of a trumpet and made a noise with his tomahawk upon the projector, managing at the same time to whisper, “Okay, cocko—when the film busts during a children’s matinee, this never fails to wow the little bastards, specially if you put it in upsy-down. Repulsive, though, at the best of times, ain’t it? ... I suppose you know, Danny boy, this could mean a modest competence? And do Sam Smallpox down? Then we f—off. Get me? I got my papers: chips, which is the same as to say ship’s carpenter—and for a ten-pun note I can get you a legitimate set too. I’m a pal o’‘Kicking Jack.’ ‘E runs the Avocado—unlicensed for passengers, but the idear is, ‘Kicking Jack’ signs you on as one o’ the crew, and you give ‘im a twenty-pound note. Ever been to Guatemala? I don’t mind telling you, it’s a hell of a lot different from Fowlers End. You take my word for it, son. I been. Oh, those laundresses—black as ink, white as milk, an’ every one with ‘er mouth full o’ gold teeth! None o’ your brassy, mind you—sweet as honey. What say? Eh? Don’t believe what they say about cheese, and rancid butter, and all that. They’re fresher than new-laid eggs. Oh, to hell with it all, Danny boy. Come on and let’s go! Are you game? ... Oh, now I got the ‘Celestial City’ arse upwards; but what’s the odds? ...”
His washed-out blue eyes grew dark with passionate reminiscence. He said, “I don’t know what it is. It may be Sam Yudenow’s Greenburgers that brings it to mind. But did you ever smell the hot breath of that jungle coming on a rotten wet breeze out of the mouth of the Rio Dolce by Puerto Barrios, and see the blacks under the naphtha flares, like in a fun fair, shouting, ‘Fruit-ah, fruit-ah, fruit-ah!’ It brings the blood to the surface, son. Okay, you’ll get eaten alive: too many insects. Somewhere or other there’s a statistical correlation—abolish insects, and where’s your natural balance?... Believe me, you go past Cuba in a mist. Invariably a mist, in those parts; and the Caribbean’s gray, gray-green. Unlike the Atlantic, which is dead dull gray; and the Mediterranean, which is blue. The Gulf of Mexico, though, is greeny-blue. All the same, off Cuba the flying fishes start to play. Porpoises, too. No, but I mean to say, they play! Make as many knots as you like, and there’s your porpoise just an arm’s length in front of you, kind o’ laughing. Susceptible to music, too, Dan—not that I’m musical myself; but I swear to Gawd, with these two eyes I seen an old shantyman calling up the porpoises on a fiddle. It’s they what chase the flying fishes, boy, and there’s the pathos on it—the poor bloody fish is geared for escape. But he can’t escape, don’t you see, because that’s his destiny. ‘E’s got to get out o’ the water, but ‘e’s got to get back in again. It makes you think. If ‘e flies high enough, ‘e’ll land flapping on the deck of a steamer. If not, there’s the old rollicking porpoise with about five hundred teeth smiling welcome.... And beyond Cuba the banana countries that everybody runs away to, where the coppers carry nickel-plated carbines. And don’t believe what they tell you about the laundresses. They wash themselves ten times more often than Fowlers End, so help me Jesus, and if they smell at all it’s like ripe coconuts. Oh, dear me!”
And all of a sudden I had a mad desire to go to these wonderful places with Copper Baldwin. “Hold hard,” I said, “you’ve got a hundred and fifty pounds? Then leave the rest to me, and I’ll arrange it.”
So I went downstairs and talked to Cruikback, who had already got through about a third of the bottle.
He said, “Well, young Laverock? Thought it over?”
Shrewd now, I shook my head sadly and said, “Afraid so, old thing. Thought better of it.”
He cried, “Why, what the hell do you mean, young Laverock? Thought better of what? No, really, I mean to say! Quest-ce que c’est que ca? No, if this isn’t absolutely un-Valetudinarian, I give you my written permission to bugger me for a row of pins! Written and stamped, to boot! Take back your filthy gin,” he said, swallowing about a tumblerful and afterward putting the bottle in his pocket. Then he was all concern. “You always were a strange one, you know,” he said. “Hard up? In times like these, I can imagine. Why then, I’ll tell you what you must do, young Laverock—you must take the bull by the horns, old thing, and borrow.”
“Thanks—” I began.
“Not another word. Don’t embarrass me.”
I said, “I might be able to raise a few pounds from, for example, my Uncle Hugh—”
“Now that, young Laverock, is the very last thing I want you to do. I suppose you mean Hugh Laverock, of Laverock and Strype, in the City? God help you, young Laverock, you never were of what might be described as correlative intellect. When I have the time, I’ll introduce you to a b
loke I know, a comparative glandularist, and I’ll bet you he’ll find thymus. Yes, I’m sorry, but I’m afraid you’ve got glands. Of internal secretion, what’s more. You don’t happen to wet the bed by any chance, do you? But as I remember, you always were a backward boy. Go to the City, indeed! Can’t you see that’s exactly what I don’t want? About three months from now, yes—which is why I want three and a half per cent of the stock in the Limited Company. I suppose you know you’ll have to form one?”
“As I work it out, Cruikback,” I said, “I don’t see my way clear to raising a thousand pounds.” I was being, I say, shrewd, swallowing insults like so many tonic pills and getting keener on them. “For this proposition—I mean to say, a bit of land in Ullage!—I could manage about three hundred pounds.”
He said, with an air of finality, “Sorry, old thing— quite out of the question.” Hereupon he became indignant, stood up, sat down, took a little gin, banged the cork back as if he were knocking down his worst enemy, and shouted, “No, this is the bloody limit! No, after all, I never thought I’d live to see it, but you hit—but I mean, hit—the precise correlation between caution and bankruptcy. Firstly, what about the two hundred pounds I need to get Henry out of pawn? I say nothing of his mother. As a man of the world, you know what women are; one has to provide them with this and that. Spectacles, medicine, vaginas, nail polish, hair, depilatories. Oh, no, damn it all! And then you come to me with an utterly mad proposition of going to your uncle in the City with my proposition when the reason I am telling you of this is that I specifically want it kept out of the City! Why, you little fool, don’t you realize that if your uncle got wind he’d bust the issue? Or don’t you? No, you don’t—or do you?”
I said, “You confuse me a little, old thing, I admit.” “I dare say. You always were muddleheaded. You always lacked correlative control. Or shall I rather say uncorrected imagination? Now look here, Laverock, before I go a step farther, answer me one question: In a nutshell, what do you know of high finance?”
I was compelled to say that, to come right down to the point, I knew about as much as would cover a silver threepenny piece. Nodding and smiling, Cruikback said, “As if I didn’t know! I’ll try and simplify the thing for you, old man. The nub of finance is, in fact, the boost of value. Even you understand as simple a proposition as this? It is to increase the value of a thing by playing on greedy people’s avarice, and then cashing in and getting out. Now you know, I’m a very strong Socialist myself; only my Socialism takes a National form. Oh, don’t imagine for one moment that I’m not a pretty strong Internationalist—but put it this way: a body must have a head. You’ll grant me that? International Socialism under one flag—the color of this flag we’ll work out eventually. It might be striped. Look at the Union Jack, bless it! If you were an industrial designer, would you dare to wrap soap in it? Or the Stars and Stripes? But perhaps I’m departing from my point. If you let your bloody uncle in on this, he’s bound to let in half his fat friends in the City. They’ll form a dummy company, try to snatch that land in advance of A.A.A.A.—and so good day to you and me. Oh, no, thank you. We have it and hold it with the titles screwed down, if you don’t mind. This way, you must know we put a shield over our interests and deal a blow at the capitalist system, which is hand in glove with the bloody communists and making a mess accordingly.”
“Work me that one out, old thing,” I begged.
“Oh, now, I say, look here, this is no time for me to be teaching you economics! Managerial dialectics all in good time. You’ve heard of the inevitability of gradualness? It’s a lot of hooey. Ever had a swift punch on the button? That’s the inevitability of suddenness, and that’s what counts. Look at Napoleon. We’ve got a coup d’etat in hand—and you sit there picking your ears for wax! Now I’ll tell you what I’ll do. As confidential surveyor, I happen to know that A.A.A.A. is going to buy immense tracts of land northwest and southeast, in Ullage. Northwest come the workmen’s houses, pubs, and so forth. If I were in your position, I’d get financing for a good dance hall. A.A.A.A., you know, will be employing people by the thousand. A good dance hall! Your greatest expense is an orchestra. Let’s not go into detail now. As Napoleon said, there is time to worry about the Vistula after we have crossed the Rhine. I can get you that land on the northwest, but the factory must be southeast, where the railway line has got to run. I can get you a six-hundred-foot frontage there. It would cost A.A.A.A. four million to build round you—”
“But it’s all mud,” I protested.
“I know it is, my good ape. Otherwise, why would it cost A.A.A.A. four million to build around you? It’d be worth a hundred pounds a foot to them, can’t you see? Yes, I’ll get you that.... I dare say you wonder why I don’t go to your proprietor, or somebody. Well, I’ll tell you: he’d do me down, because I’m not a businessman. Furthermore, I’ve got to have a couple of hundred at once—and that’s the kind of chicken feed a man like me simply can’t ask for. So, say you raise five or six hundred and—honor of a gentleman— don’t let a word leak out in the City until the gold rush comes and we make the killing. My cut, if you like, will be: Terms to Be Mutually Agreed. Gentleman’s agreement ... Happen, by any chance, to have a spare handkerchief?”
“You’ve got one there,” I said.
“I know, but I mean a white one.”
Out of the fullness of my heart I gave him a white handkerchief, which he used enthusiastically, whispering, “Other fellow means well, Laverock, but couldn’t understand that one would rather use a snotty handkerchief from a gentleman than a clean one from the rabble.... I’m a raging Socialist myself. But I draw the line at colored handkerchiefs. Verb sap, what?”
“Not quite,” I confessed.
“Better have a bit of gin, old thing. And try and pull yourself together.... How much do you think you can raise in about the next three days? No longer, young Laverock, because I’m not a gradual sort of man. You know me. Remember the time I thrashed the big Jew?”
“It was your nose that was bleeding,” I reminded him.
With a light laugh he agreed: “Wasn’t it, though? Too much blood; I always get a nose bleed when I’m excited. And the grass was slippery. How young we were then! ... It would be far better, you know, if you could get hold of seven hundred.”
“Do the best I can.”
Grasping my hand, he said, “I knew I could count on you, Laverock. At a reasonable estimate we ought to have about a quarter of a million pounds’ worth of property. Now, did I let you down? ... Oh, look, I’m afraid I’ve drunk most of this gin. Had I better drive, do you think?”
“Look here, old thing,” I said, “don’t drive a man too far. You know what happened last time. If you want to sleep here tonight, Copper Baldwin will unscrew a few seats, and you can he down in the generator room. I’m more or less responsible for what happened last time.”
“The gin was bad,” said Cruikback.
“But, according to you, my landlord’s sister was not.”
“Oh, no, did I? You should have stopped me. Is she clean? It doesn’t matter in general, but my wife’s a lady, you know, though a Braddock. Finishing school, and everything—”
“Her brother is looking for you with a carving knife,” I said, lying, “and he has no fear of consequences.”
At this he became grave. “You know me,” he said. “I’m not afraid ipso facto of a knife, or of a dago per se; but a dago out for blood with a knife, cum no fear of consequences,’could be an infernal nuisance to a man in my position. That’s the way of the world, young Laverock—it’s the way things are. I’d be compelled to strike him (you haven’t forgotten how I mowed down that gigantic great sheeney?) and there’d be a scandal, which I can’t afford. I think I mentioned, I’ve got to get poor little Henry out of pawn. It’s not that I mind so much as the fact that the poor little fellow has got to be circumcized. God damn it, Laverock, you must be aware, if you’re a student of statistical correlation, that practically one hundred per cent o
f Jews are circumcized? And how do you like that? ... No, but wait a minute. Let’s get this clear. As I gather, the young lady thinks it’s you. Oh, well—” he was full of confidence now—“these Mediterranean races are all wind, old thing. Just you call their bluff, young Laverock. Too much wine, and sleeping in the afternoon. It stands to reason, doesn’t it? Where’s the Roman Empire? Where’s Byzantium? Where’s Spain, Portugal, Carthage? I’ve never lied to you, have I? The Mediterranean races—not that I have any prejudices myself—statistically have no guts: dysentery—it’s positively demonstrated—on account of green figs. If that dago comes up to you with a carving knife, you just take it away from him and give him a good talking-to. And if it comes to a roughhouse, don’t forget the good old long straight left. Remember how I felled that immense Hebrew?”
“He felled you, and he wasn’t immense,” I said.
“You will have your little joke, young Laverock. But be advised by me—if it comes to rough-and-tumble, never bite a dago, because they have worms in the muscles, encysted. This is proved; it comes from goat’s milk.... Since I see that I’m going to put you out, I think perhaps I’d better drive back. And, oh, I say, look here, better have that money in three days, or I’m afraid it’s no go. Ta-ta! Thanks for the entertainment; I adored that bit with the blokes standing on their heads.”
So he went away, and I went next door meaning to go to bed.
11
I ENTERED discreetly, imagining that Costas and his sister had gone to bed, but I was surprised to hear activity in the kitchen. There was light under the door and, penetrating the stink of the Greenburgers, a piercing odor that seemed to go right through my head. As a smell it was not disgusting but positively painful: it made me want to rub my scalp and cry; it got on my nerves and made my heart beat too hard and too fast.
I thought, at first, that Sam Yudenow was getting them to try out a new recipe, so—I always was a light walker—I went to the kitchen and quietly opened the door. The stench became ten times stronger, but the air was clear, and I saw Costas, a mass of muscle in a sweat shirt, brooding over the gigantic copper steam boiler in which the Greenburgers were made. He was engrossed; no man ever looked more tense than Costas as he very gently stirred whatever he was cooking with a wooden spoon. On the floor near by stood three immense bottles. The back of one of them was turned to me, so I could only read the labels on the other two. One of them said: nooo; the other, glycerin. Kyra, who was sitting at the table where they customarily prepared the vegetables, appeared to be harmlessly engrossed in mending a five-shilling alarm clock. And something must have gone wrong with the bell because, at her elbow, stood two dry electric batteries.
