The Song of the Flea

by Gerald Kersh

  Before putting the note in his pocket he looked at it again and saw that it was typewritten.

  ‘I did tell her distinctly not to touch the things on the table,’ he thought.

  He opened his door. There was no doubt about it, Win was gone. The bedclothes were on the floor. Win must have burnt up all the gas: the tap of the gas fire was up, the broken asbestos elements were grey and cold, but the air was like hot sour cream. A fork lay on his pillow, in the middle of a pink stain shaped like South America, and the strawberry tin was empty. Win had put what was left of the strawberries in a shallow plate on top of his typescript; he saw five strawberries in a lake of rose-coloured syrup, a quarter of a pint of which had overflowed.

  Pym cried out in agony. Before he could take up the plate he had to stoop, put his lips to the rim, and drink a sickening mouthful. Then he put the plate on the gas stove and looked at his typescript. At least eighty pages were gummed together, unpresentable. He had no carbon copy.

  Pym emptied the water in which Win had washed, poured into the basin a little clear water from the jug, peeled off one sticky sheet and tried to wash it. The cheap spongy paper began to disintegrate. He lifted it tenderly and laid it on the bed. Then he turned back to the table and saw that the typewriter was no longer there.

  Win had stolen it.

  He picked up the plate of strawberries, meaning to throw it at the door.

  Syrup ran into his sleeve. Holding the plate by the edges, like a gramophone record, Pym dropped it into the wastepaper basket.

  ‘Now what am I to do?’ he wondered.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  AT last, desperately shaking his ragged mind like a worn-out coat, he felt something resistant, something that crackled down in the darkness among the fluff and the dust. There yet remained something which had slipped through a hole in a pocket: it might be a bill, or a banknote; he could feel it only through thicknesses of napless cloth. Still, it made the heart beat.

  Pym went to the editorial offices of the Sunday Special and asked for the Features Editor, a tired, fat, brusque man in whose flat white face a long pink mouth writhed like a worm in a puddle of paste.

  “Oh, Mr. Steeple,” said Pym, “it’s quite a time since I did anything for you. I think I’ve got an idea.”

  The long pink worm took hold of its tail. The Features Editor said: “Oh?”

  “I was thinking of calling it I Ate My Hat—And Coat.”

  “Not a bad title. What’s the general idea?”

  Pym outlined the events of the past thirty-six hours, embellishing here, censoring there, telling the story with breathless gaiety.

  “It sounds all right, Pym. Yes, you write that one. It doesn’t sound too bad.”

  “Well,” said Pym, “the fact of the matter is … I want the use of a typewriter—just for an hour or so.”

  “How long is it going to be?”

  “About two thousand words.”

  “How long would it take you?”

  “A couple of hours, at the most. Well—say three.”

  The long pink worm curled, buried itself, wriggled, and came to the surface coiled about the quivering tip of a brown tongue. “I can let you use a machine for a couple of hours, if you like.”

  “About how much will you be paying?”

  “Well, I don’t know. It depends whether I like it.”

  “Assuming you like it?”

  “Eight guineas, if it’s okay.”

  “Say ten,” said Pym, intoxicated with hope.

  “Write it and I’ll see,” said the Features Editor. “I hope you realise, by the way, that I don’t make a practice of this kind of business. It’s only because I think you’ve got something, Pym, if only you settle down and put your mind to it.”

  *

  Three-and-a-half hours later Pym gave Mr. Steeple twelve typewritten pages.

  “Look here, old man,” said Steeple, “I’ve got an appointment with Professor Morris, old Jay Cross Morris. Article on strategy. Enemy at our gates kind of stuff.” The Features Editor had been out to lunch: the worm had stopped writhing and was asleep, loosely curled into an indulgent scroll.

  “You couldn’t take a quick look at this, I suppose?”

  “Sure I will, Pym! You bet I will! A bit later. But I’ve got to see this old bastard. He’s leaking interesting facts like … like an incarcerated bull. Ring back later. No, I tell you what—you ring back to-morrow. I’ll get a chance to breathe by to-morrow.”

  Pym’s voice became limp and heavy; fell back, and died as he said: “You couldn’t manage to look at it now, by any chance, I suppose? I have dates and things to-morrow.”

  “Well,” said Steeple, who was not unacquainted with the agonised mouthing of stranded men inarticulately floundering on the rocks, “ring me about five o’clock. If you’re short for the moment, would a quid or two help?”

  “No, no, thanks all the same,” said Pym. “I’m quite all right. I’ll ring you about five.”

  There was a new hole in his left shoe, and he was hungry; so he hurried back to Busto’s. His rent was paid, he had something to eat and money to put in the gas-meter. Eight or nine pennies in the slot, a pillow on the greasy floor of the gas-oven, a dozen deep breaths … Why not, thought Pym; why not?

  But Busto was waiting for him. “Hoi! Mista Pym—gennaman a-see you,” he said in a stage whisper. “Police.”

  “Police? For the love of God, what’s the trouble now?’

  “I dono, I dowanna know!”

  A thickset, dark-eyed man with a loose mouth and tight nostrils came out of a shadow and said: “Mr. Pym?”

  “I’m Mr. Pym. Yes?”

  “Allow me to introduce myself—Detective-Sergeant Packard. Pleasure of a word with you?”

  “Yes, of course. Would you care to come up to my room? It’s not much of a place,” said Pym.

  “Honoured. Sorry to intrude.”

  “Please come up. I’m afraid I’m in a bit of a mess….”

  “Thanks, Mr. Pym.”

  Pym locked his door and said: “What can I do for you?”

  “I don’t want to disturb you in any way, Mr. Pym. You know a lady named Winifred Victoria Joyce?”

  “Win Joyce? Yes. Why?”

  “Long time since you saw her last?”

  “Why no, not very long. Why?”

  “See Miss Joyce in the last twenty-four hours, for instance?”

  “Yes, I did. Why?”

  “Did you give Miss Joyce anything?”

  “Why?”

  “Give her a typewriter?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Look, Mr. Pym: do you own a typewriter?”

  “Well, yes. Why?”

  “A Paramount Portable Typewriter, Number PWS/67565?”

  “Why, yes: 67565 adds up to 29; 9 and 2 make 11, and 11 is a lucky number—that’s how I remember it … Why?”

  “You pawned that typewriter at Greenberg’s, didn’t you?”

  “Well … yes. But why?”

  “Sorry to keep bothering you, Mr. Pym. You got the typewriter from the City & Western Typewriter Company? On hire-purchase?”

  “I’ve paid for it.”

  “I know. You gummed the receipt inside the lid, didn’t you?”

  “I did,” said Pym, blushing, “because occasionally I had to pawn it, and pawnshops want to know if the typewriter is really yours. It saves trouble to stick the receipt inside.”

  “You got it back from Greenberg’s yesterday, though?”

  “Well, yes. It was only a temporary …”

  “Shortage?”

  “Shortage. But what makes you ask?”

  “A certain party took your typewriter to Greenberg’s pawnshop this morning and asked them to lend money on it. See. Said it was their property. Greenberg’s clerk remembered you got it out yesterday. Asked a few questions. Clerk was told you’d given that typewriter away. Is that so?”

  “Look here, detective-sergeant,” said Pym, uneasily finical.
“I wish you’d tell me what you’re driving at.”

  “Not driving at anything, Mr. Pym, I assure you. Routine enquiry. Did you give Miss Joyce your typewriter?”

  Hazily remembering something he had read in a novel, terrified of the Law as a child is terrified of the dark, Pym said: “Yes and no.”

  He looked and felt, now, like a man with a secret. The detective-sergeant said: “Now come on, Mr. Pym! You give a thing or you don’t give a thing. Which was it?”

  “I gave the lady to understand that my house was her house. You know the kind of thing,” said Pym, trying to laugh: “—‘Everything I Have Is Yours’—as in the song. You know what I mean. ‘Help yourself,’ you say to somebody, ‘go ahead and help yourself to anything you want.’ Do you see?”

  “That’s right. You need a typewriter in your business, I should think.”

  “Can’t get on without one,” said Pym. “God knows how men like Dickens wrote books as big as Dombey & Son all by hand. No wonder they died——”

  “—You got your typewriter out of pawn to give it away to Miss Joyce, I take it?”

  “Well, no, not exactly … no. Miss Joyce was welcome to an indefinite loan of it, so to speak. It’s my fault—I ought to have scraped that receipt off the inside of the cover. To be quite frank, Detective-Sergeant, I don’t know what all this fuss is about. What is it?”

  “Miss Joyce——”

  “—She could easily have misunderstood me, don’t you see? I have a loose way of talking, as you must have noticed.”

  “Miss Joyce is under arrest, Mr. Pym. She’s been knocking stuff off right and left. There’s a nine-carat gold watch and an eighteen-carat double-curb Albert chain, a walnut bed, twenty-five leather-bound books, and a valuable microscope in a mahogany case. Now your typewriter. Why don’t you charge her? She’s best pinned down, for everybody’s benefit,” said the detective-sergeant.

  “Charge her? I don’t want to charge her,” said Pym, “why should I?”

  “Listen,” said Detective-Sergeant Packard, very patiently. “I’m a bit older than you, Mr. Pym, and I’ve had a bit more experience than you of that class of woman. Give her an inch and she’ll take a mile. Let her get away with it again, and one of these days she’ll steal something off of somebody that really needs it. She wants to be checked, you know; you’d be doing her a kindness to let her see that it isn’t as easy as she thinks.”

  In an uncertain voice Pym said: “I daresay you’re right, Detective-Sergeant, but …. it’s a difficult thing to explain … You know how our sort of people get the habit of helping themselves? You borrow my trousers; I borrow your boots: it’s not stealing. There’s a kind of understanding about it. I would have got the typewriter back in due course. Personally, I don’t want to do anything at all about it.”

  The detective-sergeant shrugged his heavy shoulders so that the chair creaked, and he laughed. “You don’t need that typewriter, I suppose? You don’t need it in your business?” he said.

  “Oh yes, I need it all right. All I want is to get it back. I’m not going to prosecute anybody.”

  “How did you think you were going to get it back? I suppose you know she gave it to her boy-friend?”

  “What boy-friend?”

  “Do you know a fellow called American Henry?”

  “Never heard of him. Why? Who is he? Should I know him?”

  “A bad’n. He’s been inside two or three times—living on the immoral earnings, loitering with intent, and burglary. Henry’s your girl-friend’s boy-friend. I thought you would have known.”

  “But that’s impossible!” said Pym, taking Win’s note out of his pocket and glancing at it again.

  “May I?” said Detective-Sergeant Packard, taking the paper neatly between his fingers.

  “You may not! That is a private letter!”

  The detective-sergeant, who had skimmed the cream of it in a quick diagonal glance, handed it back with an apology, and said: “Mr. Pym, you’re an educated man; you know right from wrong. It seems to me that you’ve had enough to put up with from this young woman already. You’ve got your work to do, your typing. I daresay, what with one thing and another, you’ve got trouble enough. You don’t mind my saying so, I hope; but I don’t suppose you’d be living in a place like this, having to put your typewriter in and out of pawn, if you didn’t have to struggle. I’m all for it myself; but I’m just saying—people like you go through the mill; and good luck to you!”

  “Well, I suppose so …” said Pym.

  “Now you take the case of this young woman—Miss Joyce. All she does is grab hold of what she can get. You know how it is,” said the detective-sergeant. “You hang on longest to whatever is most valuable to you. If you’re a medical student, you hang on to your microscope. Or if, say, you’re a sentimental sort of fellow, you might hang on to your father’s watch and chain. If you’re a journalist, like yourself, you go without food and drink to keep your typewriter. Isn’t that so? … Well, along comes Winifred Joyce, and helps herself to everything you’ve been trying to hang on to. She knows that in your circle people are used to being borrowed from, so she takes advantage of it and pinches everything she can lay her hands on. And what for? To give to American Henry. She pinches your property for him! She went straight to American Henry as soon as you turned your back. Cover up for her and you cover up for American Henry, and he’s a nasty piece of work, if ever there was one. I’m telling you for your own information—he talked once. He said: ‘Win got it off a sucker. A sucker gave it to Win.’ … And there you are, being a gentleman, Mr. Pym! Now honestly, you didn’t give her that typewriter, did you?”

  “No,” said Pym. “‘Sucker,’ did they say? I gave—well, it doesn’t matter. ‘Sucker.’ How right they are!”

  “Speaking as man to man, Mr. Pym, the fact of the matter is, she stole your typewriter.”

  “Yes,” said Pym. “Sucker is right.”

  “I mean to say, seeing the facts face to face, she got into your room under false pretences, and just pinched it.”

  “I told her not to touch anything on the table,” said Pym. “Sucker— that’s me!”

  “And the minute your back was turned….”

  Pym was angry. He glanced from the stained pillow to the typescript of his novel, sticky with strawberry juice; and then looked for a long time at the strawberries in the pink puddle on the plate in which a young cockroach, stupefied with feeding, was blissfully drowning. This enraged him. He flipped the cockroach to the floor, stamped on it until the gas-stove rattled, and cried: “God damn it, yes! I charge Win Joyce with the theft of my typewriter! The cheap little sneak!”

  “Better come along and do it now,” said the detective-sergeant.

  At five o’clock Pym telephoned the Features Editor, who said: “There’s ten guineas here for you if you want to come along and get it, Pym. That’s not bad stuff at all.”

  Pym left the telephone booth opposite the police station and walked up the street singing. He took a bus to the office, where the cashier paid him in clean notes and new silver. That night Pym dined at the Café Royal, drank a five-and-sixpenny bottle of wine, and lent a man ten shillings.

  Busto heard him skipping upstairs. Before he went to bed Pym counted his money: eight pounds ten in notes, nine shillings in silver, and three-halfpence. Raising his eyes to the cracked ceiling he said: “Lord God in Heaven, for the life of me I cannot imagine where the odd halfpenny comes from, but I thank Thee with all my heart.”

  He was still smiling when he awoke at eight o’clock next morning.

  *

  Two days later, at about ten o’clock in the morning, Busto knocked at his door and said that there was a gentleman to see him. “A genelman. A proper genelman. Mr. Mellish.”

  Pym ran downstairs and saw a little old man waiting in the passage; a sweet, healthy, red, shiny old man who reminded him of an apple. His ears and nose were full of hair as white and crisp as frost. His hard little hands were interl
ocked on the knob of a blackthorn stick.

  “You must be Mr. Pym,” he said. “Allow me to present myself. My name is Mellish. You, I believe, are Mr. Pym. My unfortunate stepdaughter Winifred called you ‘Johnny’. How do you do?”

  “How do you do, sir? Yes, my name is Pym. Win—I mean Winifred—did call me Johnny. I am sorry, sir, to have to receive you in a place like this.”

  “Oh, vie de bohème, vie de bohème! If I could have a word with you in private….”

  “If you don’t mind coming up to my room, Mr. Mellish … I live,” said Pym, “in a bit of a dump. I’m afraid you’ll have to take me as you find me. I’m not even tidied up, up there … Mind that step, sir, it’s mended with tin. You side-step that bit of tin—that’s fine. I see you can adjust yourself to wherever you find yourself.”

  “Vie de bohème, vie de bohème?”

  The old gentleman sat on the chair, with his hat on his knees. He said that he had already breakfasted, and that tea disagreed with him. There was something about him that made Pym feel comfortable.

  “I daresay you can guess for what reason I have called,” said Mr. Mellish.

  Pym grinned uneasily and said: “I suppose so.”

  “About that silly girl of mine. You’re a man of the world, and I suppose you guess. She means no harm, you know, Mr. Pym.”

  “Oh, I know, I know.”

  “If anything—wild.”

  “Nothing more than wild, I quite agree, sir.”

  “But I see you have charged her with stealing a typewriter of yours. No, no, say no more about it, Mr. Pym—I know, I know. I don’t blame you. Winifred always has been an unscrupulous little thief. I used to be an architect, you know: I was presented with a set of ivory instruments in a silver-mounted case. She stole them. She stole most of my best books. Between ourselves—as victim to victim, as one might say—she started doing this sort of thing when she was seven years old, even before I married her mother. She’s a naughty little girl, Mr. Pym, and I’m very cross with her. I daresay you’re cross with her, too?”

  “Well, I was, yes, Mr. Mellish. In a way, I suppose I am, I am still.”