The Song of the Flea

by Gerald Kersh

“Mr. Pym, I don’t blame you for prosecuting Winifred. She deserves it. It will do her the world of good. But at the same time I find myself in a certain position. I’m an old man, you see, very old and very foolish; and I promised her mother to look after her—so what can I do? Time after time I tell myself that I’ve done enough, that I’ll never do anything more again, that this is the last time … and so on and so forth. But every time I soften, I weaken, Mr. Pym. I was very fond of her mother. Perhaps you are a little young to understand this sort of thing?”

  “No, no, Mr. Mellish, I do understand exactly what you mean.”

  “It would do her no harm at all to serve a sentence in prison; in fact, on the contrary, it would do her good. I swore, last time, that on the next occasion I would not lift a finger. But here I am again. I don’t know if you believe in psychology, as they call it, Mr. Pym?”

  “Well …”

  “Well, Mr. Pym, Winifred’s mother had a dreadful life with her first husband, and then had to do this and that to make ends meet—until she did me the honour of marrying me. And by that time the little girl had reached what is known as an operative age. You see, Mr. Pym,” said the old man, gently smiling, “fundamentally, Winifred is as honest a girl as breathes. Except for the convenience of the moment I’ve never known her to lie. She’s had a bad start, Mr. Pym—you must realise that?”

  “Oh, I do, I assure you I do!”

  “Then be merciful, Mr. Pym. She took my instruments for your sake when you were prostrate with appendicitis——”

  “She did what?”

  “She would never have taken my instruments for herself, Mr. Pym, and she told me that what she did was for you. Winifred has never lied to me for her own sake. Do you know that when she was thirteen years old she took money out of my pocket to buy French nougat for a little girl friend of hers? Buying affection, Mr. Pym, buying affection! The pathos of it, when you consider it! But no doubt you think me a foolish old man?”

  Pym had leapt up in great excitement. “My dear sir,” he said, “I give you my word of honour I’ve never been prostrate with appendicitis in my life! I can prove it!” He even unbuckled his belt with the intention of showing his unscarred belly; but the old man raised his hands so forlornly and looked up so dispiritedly that Pym was ashamed, and begged his pardon.

  “Then I must be mistaken, Mr. Pym. It must have been someone else who had the appendicitis. It’s out of the question that Winifred would tell a deliberate lie like that; in fact, it’s impossible—it is not in her character; she couldn’t. No, no, I’m not as young as I used to be and my memory is failing me just a little. I’m seventy-two, Mr. Pym; so perhaps you will be a little indulgent?”

  “I’m so sorry, Mr. Mellish. You startled me, or I wouldn’t have been so brusque. Appendicitis!” said Pym, bristling with indignation.

  “I don’t know what grievance you have against Winifred,” said the old man; “I daresay you have your own good reasons for wanting revenge.”

  “I don’t want any revenge,” said Pym, wretchedly.

  “Come now: is there not some little private grievance that prompts you to throw the child into jail like a common felon, Mr. Pym? No doubt she owes you money: she owes several people money.”

  “She doesn’t owe me anything, sir, I assure you—nothing at all.”

  “It’s chivalrous of you to say so, Mr. Pym, but I happen to know different. You don’t understand the girl as I do—you see, I dandled her on my knee when she was a mere child. Winifred is the soul of honour. She has made her little mistakes, as who has not? But she never yet failed to make—you’re not a religious man, I suppose, Mr. Pym?—an act of contrition. She has always been really and truly sorry. She has a frank, open nature, Mr. Pym, and couldn’t conceal anything—however discreditable it might appear—if her life depended on it! I admire your attitude, sir, but Winifred has already told me that she borrowed money from you after you and she were … no longer together.”

  He took out a red-covered notebook, slid a red forefinger down a page and, with something like triumph, said: “Thirty-seven pounds two shillings.”

  “Let’s forget it, Mr. Mellish; forget all about it.”

  “Winifred is fanatically punctilious. I want you to let me pay you that money, Mr. Pym.”

  “The lady owes me nothing, Mr. Mellish.”

  “But I want to pay you, Mr. Pym. I wouldn’t be happy if I didn’t. Please let me. I should keep worrying about it. Now do, please, Mr. Pym; please humour a silly old man—do let me pay back the money she borrowed after you had … ah … separated.”

  “All right, then,” said Pym. “And you can skip the two shillings. I suppose money she asked me for after we’d parted could be considered as a debt.”

  “No, no, if you’ll pardon me—I want this to be clear. Thirty-seven pounds two shillings. I want everything to be clear, if you’ll excuse me—clear and above board.” The old gentleman took banknotes out of a wallet and found a florin in a waistcoat pocket. “Now Winifred owes you nothing.”

  “I never said she did owe me anything,” said Pym, dog-tired; “I told you before.”

  “I honour you for that, Mr. Pym. I honour you for it, upon my soul I do! And now, will you have mercy?”

  “What do you mean—have mercy!”

  “You’ll withdraw your charge?”

  “Why, yes, of course, naturally. I didn’t want to charge her,” said Pym. It was impossible to say to this old gentleman that his stepdaughter was a whore and a thief for whom hanging was too good, and that she was best locked up for the good of the community. Pym had a tender regard for people who found themselves old and feeble in a young and vigorous world. “Of course I’ll withdraw the charge. I was only persuaded to charge her in a moment of irritation.”

  “God bless you! God bless you! And will you give me, for my records, a receipt for this amount?” said Win’s stepfather, laying a hand on the money he had counted out. “I have a twopenny stamp.” As he spoke he pulled a flat leather case out of a pocket and opened it, uncovering visiting cards and a book of stamps.

  Pym wrote a few lines and read them aloud:

  “I hereby acknowledge receipt of £37 2s. This is payment in full of all moneys advanced by me to Miss Winifred Victoria Joyce….”

  He was proud of the word moneys, and felt that advanced made a legal document of it. Having written his signature and the date across the stamp, he looked at the document with complacent gravity and gave it to the old gentleman, who nodded, smiled and said: “I’m very relieved, Mr. Pym, very relieved. Concerning the matter of the withdrawal of the charge, do you happen to know the proper procedure?”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea. I suppose I give you something in writing to that effect,” said Pym. “I don’t know a great deal about these formalities. I should think a signed note should just about cover it, don’t you?”

  “I rather fancy there are forms to fill in. Wouldn’t it be better if you came along to the police station with me?”

  Pym shook his head. He could see the contemptuous curling of the Inspector’s lips under the steely bristle of the clipped moustache, and feel the numbing sting of a frostbitten voice saying: Make your mind up, can’t you? “No, I don’t think there’s much to be gained by that. I’ll give you a note to cover everything. Then you could take the note to the station, and if they want me to sign anything, you can rest assured that they’ll ask me soon enough.”

  “Perhaps you’ll be so kind as to write the little document? It might be just as well if you made it as clear as possible….”

  Pym wrote:

  I impetuously charged Miss Winifred Victoria Joyce with stealing my typewriter. I hereby withdraw this charge. In charging Miss Joyce I was prompted by a momentary irritation.

  Pym never knew when to stop. He was full of magnanimity now; ready—even anxious—to cut the throat of pride on the altar of dignity.

  Everything is now resolved. The fault was entirely mine.

  H
e signed his name with a flourish and gave the paper to the old gentleman, who thanked him in a broken voice.

  “I don’t really want this money,” said Pym.

  “Thank you for humouring an old man. God bless you, Mr. Pym. You are a gentleman. I had begun to believe that the breed had become extinct.”

  “I never lend, you see—I give,” said Pym.

  “I know, I know. Not to put too fine a point upon it, she was your mistress, I believe … silly girl, silly little generous girl; foolish, soft-hearted, passionate little girl!”

  Pym blushed. He was shocked—not because the old man knew that Win had been living with him, but because he had used the word passionate.

  But when he went back to his room, having conducted his visitor to the door, Pym began to sing a cheerful song in a raucous voice. He was rich—rich and powerful, powerful and happy. “I’m sitting on top of the world …” he sang. Now he could buy strawberries, ham, tongue, tyepwriter ribbons, cigarettes by the hundred, new shoes, butter—everything a man needs in order to finish a book. But when he closed his door, the little bedroom breathed its stuffiness right into his face. The stained top sheet of finished work on the table looked like the smudged face of a bleary-eyed woman on the threadbare pillow of a ten-shilling bed in a questionable hotel at dawn: the sooner he got out into the fresh air the better.

  Pym put twenty-five pounds between pages 385 and 386 and washed his hands and face. He was determined to have a little holiday; meet old friends, slap backs, offer hospitality, and make a night of it.

  He shook his jacket and put it on. But while he was buttoning it he heard a short, terrified cry in the adjacent room—a bitten-off shriek, not unlike the shriek of a hungry seagull. It drew itself out, long and thin, until the bird-cry became the howl of a cat. He heard the soft thud of bare or stockinged feet. The floor quivered and a few flakes of plaster floated down from the ceiling as a body (unmistakably a body) fell and rolled from side to side. There was a mad thumping of knees and elbows, a hard banging—a head against a floor—and a noise that made him think of the flapping of a broken wing.

  Busto also had heard. As Pym ran out on to his landing he heard the landlord’s footsteps three floors below. The other door was locked, and white smoke was crawling out of the chinks between the lintel and the floor. The smoke was crawling, the voice was screaming, and the woman might have been trying to tear herself to pieces.

  Pym tried the lock again, and then—a fourteen-year-old boy could have done it in Busto’s house—knocked the door off its hinges with one thrust of his shoulder and hip. The room was full of smoke. In the fireplace there was a pile of burning paper. On the floor writhed a burning woman, screaming. Pym snatched a blanket from the bed; it took time because the bed had been tightly and neatly made. When he threw the blanket over the woman and muffled her in it, she cried out in such agony that he recoiled, so that a little golden tongue of fire darted between the edge of the blanket and her chin and flickered under her nose.

  Then Busto appeared, breathing heavily and saying: “Alla time I got trouble! What she doin’ now? Is this a respectable house? Is this a dirty bloody lunatic asylum? Chrissake! They wanna burn me down?”

  Pym said: “Get a doctor. Call an ambulance. To hell with your fireplace—get a doctor!”

  “Who bust my door?”

  “I bust your door. I’ll pay for your door. Go and get a doctor.”

  A tenant who lived on the floor below cried: “Doctor!” and ran downstairs.

  “Wrap it tighter thees blankets!” said Busto. “Jesus Chris’, you set light to the bloody blanket: you burn her some more, Jesus Chris’!”

  But when Pym, in obedience to Busto’s agonised command, drew the blanket tighter and slapped at another insinuating flame that came out with a flirting pigtail of smoke, the woman uttered such a cry that he fell back, horrified. The blanket fell loose. Another flame peeped out red, sucked in air, and leapt up white. Busto took hold of the blanket and held on. The woman screamed again, but the flames went out.

  “I tell ’em fifty thousand million bloody times don’t use no bloody fireplace. Gawd bleeding Jesus!” shouted Busto. “What, they too bloody mean to pay they bloody rent and they ain’t got a penny to stick in the bloody gas-meter, so they burn my bloody house down to make a cup of bloody tea? Godd-amighty! Chrisamighty! I’m fed up!”

  “Shut your mouth, you stinking old parrot, or I’ll shut it for you!” said Pym.

  Several other lodgers in the doorway murmured indignant approval, and a man wrapped in the remains of a vieux-rose dressing-gown said, in gentlemanly accents: “It would serve him damned well right. Give him one for me while you’re about it, old man.”

  Busto, who had taken the jug from the washstand and was pouring water on the smoking paper in the fireplace, said: “Oh, it’s you, hah, Mr. Bellamy? I wanna talk to you.”

  “If that water drips down into my room and spoils my clothes, Mr. Busto, I’ll sue you.”

  “You go to buggery,” said Busto.

  Pym had put a pillow under the woman’s head. “Don’t you talk about suing anybody,” he said. “Other people can play that game. I could report you to the sanitary inspector.”

  Feeling the pillow under her head, the woman opened her eyes and said in a cracked whisper: “I won’t be buried in a pauper’s grave.”

  “There, there, you won’t be buried in any grave at all, madam,” said Pym. “It’s nothing: only a burn: just a little burn.”

  “I’m so ashamed …” Her face crumpled, exuding moisture like a handkerchief in an agonised fist. “I was only burning some papers, some private papers. I’m so ashamed to give you all this trouble It was very foolish of me to use paraffin—I caught myself alight. I didn’t mean to do it. They were my own papers, strictly private … Mr. Vaughan opened my box after I left the Hotel Perfecto in Tavistock Place and looked at my diaries. He had no right to … I caught fire by accident. Tell them to go away. Why don’t you tell them to leave me alone? They were my own papers, private. Oh, please, why doesn’t somebody call somebody to give me something? It hurts. There’s something they give you. And tell them to go away and leave me alone—why can’t they leave me alone?”

  Two men came upstairs with a stretcher. The old woman looked up at Pym with streaming eyes and said: “Don’t let them bury me in a pauper’s grave.”

  “No, no, I won’t, I won’t,” said Pym.

  She was taken away. At last Pym found himself in her room alone with Busto.

  “That’s the sorta tenant I got,” Busto said.

  “What’s her name?” asked Pym.

  “Mrs. Greensleeve. Ker-ist!” cried Busto. “Go on, cursa piss outa me!”

  “You rotten dog!” said Pym. “Do you want pity?”

  “Ain’t I got to live?” shouted Busto. “Santa Maria Vergine—che cosa c’e’—qui? Stracci—spazzatura! Rubbish, gorblimey—rags!” He jerked a hand and snapped a finger, flipping open an invisible fan. “Look. See what I got—look an’ see!”

  Pym saw a puddle of cold water creeping in to obliterate a coffin-shaped dry patch of grey on the floor by the fireplace. Mrs. Greensleeve’s bed was still respectable, although one blanket and a pillow had been dragged away. Upon the dressing-table lay a cardboard suitcase, wide open. Busto thrust a hand into it and brought up a shiny serge skirt and a darned blouse.

  “My landlord take this?” he said.

  “How much does the lady owe you?”

  “Mrs. Greensleeve? Same as you.”

  “I owe you nothing, damn you!”

  “Same rent as you,” said Busto.

  “Here,” said Pym, giving him a pound, “leave her things alone.”

  “Things! You callum things?”

  “Yes; leave her things alone.”

  “Spazzatura,” said Busto. “Rags, rubbish. I don’t want rubbish—I got rubbish … Hah? What about my door? You bust my door. Hah? That cost!”

  “It couldn’t possibly cost me mor
e than forty shillings to bust you,” said Pym, pale with anger and damp with disgust. “Forty shillings for assault—I know the law!”

  Busto was not afraid. He said “Hah!” and went downstairs. Three steps down he paused, turned his buzzard’s neck, and said: “Bloody fool!” Then he disappeared.

  Pym sniffed the familiar odour of burnt paper, mingled with the clinging smell of singed wool and the stink of charred flesh.

  Now he felt sick, angry, and unsociable. He threw the dirty little rug over the coffin-shaped island of dust in the puddle by the fireplace. Ashes and charred paper fluttered up and came slowly down. Pym picked up a ragged, roasted half-moon of blue-lined paper and read:

  No matches. “Incapacity to shake off poverty

  last stage of human infirmity.” Hazlitt.

  St. Pancras again. 1/- & a penny left

  but would not give me even 1d. He

  because the Holy Spirit

  Mrs. Greensleeve had been burning her diary. A brown-edged rectangle said:

  uary 10th. Telegram unanswered. No stamps reply. No tea. Toothache. No fire. No hope

  And there was another:

  Mother of the Gracchi! These are my jewels, God help me! Cicero and Decimus, my semi-precious stones. Stones of small value, cold and hard and dull like their only begetter. Who would not leave such

  And another, a charred triangle, dry and flaky as piecrust:

  sixpence-halfpenny between

  and starvation. Needles and thr

  Bread? Soap costs threepence

  pen-nibs three a penny

  ink. And paper

  soap, I think

  must be

  oap

  It broke and fell to pieces in Pym’s hand. He sighed, and his sigh stirred the cooling ashes of the paper in the grate so that they settled down, whispering. Busto’s dash of cold water had saved the raw middle of a notebook from the fire. It was cold and moist to Pym’s fingers as he carried it at arm’s length to his room, where he put it down to dry.

  He had been looking forward to a fillet steak and half a bottle of burgundy at the Marquis of Bute; but now everything tasted of singed old women, charred wool and paper, and the ashes of burnt-out hopes.