The Song of the Flea

by Gerald Kersh

  Pym said: I don’t want to write her filthy little book.

  Reason said: Then don’t write it. Take the advance, write your own book, and, since your conscience is so touchy, pay back what you took later on. You don’t like to do that sort of thing? Then go to hell, via the drain in the gutter, where all soft stuff goes. You cannot be great without Sacrifice. What are your three-for-a-penny scruples, that they should stand between you and your Destiny? Fool, in this life you must fall back in order to spring forward—you must fall down to conquer!

  Pym found himself near Proudfoot’s office at the corner of Adam Street and John Street. Then he turned on his heel, away from Proudfoot and Reason, saying in the words of Busto: Go to hell. You go to hell your way. I go to hell my way. I will not sacrifice one crumb of myself to your beastly gods!

  Then he spat with dramatic vehemence. A passer-by, stopping abruptly, lifted a polished shoe and said: “What’s the idea? Can’t you look where you’re spitting?”

  Pym took out a handkerchief, wiped the shoe, and said: “I beg your pardon, I’m ever so sorry, but the fact of the matter is, I was thinking.”

  “Well, accidents will happen, I suppose.”

  “I really am awfully sorry.”

  “That’s all right. What’s all the fuss over the road?”

  “Is there a fuss? What fuss?” asked Pym vaguely.

  “Ambulance.”

  “Oh, I suppose there must have been an accident,” said Pym.

  “They will happen, won’t they.”

  “Well, sorry I spat on your boot.”

  “I daresay it’ll do it good. Spit and polish, eh?”

  As Pym walked away towards Westminster Hospital an ambulance rushed out of Adam Street.

  “Fall off a bicycle and sprain your ankle and the whole damned world rushes to help you,” said Pym not without a certain bitterness, listening to the fading clangour of the bell.

  But the man in the ambulance had fallen off something higher and more precarious than a bicycle. He had gone raving mad.

  *

  Proudfoot’s associates had been watching him closely, with growing uneasiness, for the past three weeks. All the sweetness melted away from him, like sugar from the surface of a pill. His manner had become stern, peremptory, lofty. It was necessary to ask him several times for the most trivial advice. Questions which, a month before, he would have answered between two sips of whisky now appeared to require deep thought and solitude. He bad ordered an immense throne-like fifteenth-century chair upholstered in crimson velvet and hung with golden tassels, and caused it to be placed by his desk. The cushioned seat of this grotesque chair was so high that short-legged Proudfoot’s fat knees were visible above the blotting pad. He would sit there for hours, in the attitude of Michelangelo’s Lorenzo de Medici—in that darkly brooding attitude expressive of the uttermost depth of thought. If he wanted to be heard whilst Proudfoot was thinking, Sherwood had to shout; shout loud, and then repeat his question three or four times. Then Proudfoot would appear to come slowly out of a trance. His eyes opened slowly. (They were always bloodshot, now; he had been drinking three bottles of whisky a day, to Sherwood’s certain knowledge.) These slow, red, glazed eyes looked down with terrifying arrogance as Proudfoot said: “State your case.” Then Sherwood would ask him to elucidate some perfectly simple problem, always in connection with the laws pertaining to indecent literature. Proudfoot would close his eyes again and fall back into his trance. He asked for samples of the most costly hand-made paper, and caused a thousand great sheets to be sewn into a gigantic folio, expensively bound in gold-embossed morocco and fitted with a strong clasp locked with a golden key. From time to time he was seen writing in this book with a remarkable pen: the nib was of gold, and the penholder was made of a peacock’s feather. He had to have flowers on his desk—large, ornate vases crammed with the brightest of flowers.

  Sherwood uneasily said to him: “What the hell’s the matter with you, Mouthpiece? What’s got into you? To the best of my knowledge you didn’t use to carry on like this.” Proudfoot was thoughtfully drinking a tumblerful of neat whisky. “You don’t think it might be a good idea, after all, to give that stuff a miss, just once in a while? Seriously, for the good of your health. Nobody on earth could keep it up like that—it can’t be done. Nobody on earth can do it?”

  Proudfoot spoke, as from a great distance. “I agree. Nobody on earth.”

  Then Sherwood said: “What about this Weissensee woman’s book? What d’you think we’d better do about it? I don’t feel easy in my mind.”

  With icy deliberation Proudfoot said: “I have promised her that she shall have her book.”

  “But the Law!”

  “I am the Law.”

  Now Proudfoot had said things like that in the old days, when he had meant: I am the Man of Law around here; I know the Law, so be quiet and leave it all to me. He had always been right. Sherwood said: “Well, you know what faith I have in you.”

  Proudfoot replied: “It has not escaped my notice, and you shall be rewarded for it, my friend.”

  “Okay, let it be as you say, then.”

  “It must be as I say.”

  “Oh, by the way; is that a book you’re writing?”

  After a long silence, Proudfoot said: “A book? It is The Book.”

  “What are you going to call it?”

  “It is My Word.”

  “My word!” said Sherwood, facetiously. “What’s it going to be about?”

  “Me.”

  “My God, that could be good!”

  “I see that you know Me. It will be good. Come here, Sherwood,” said Proudfoot. Then he touched one of Sherwood’s shoulders with a light, unsteady hand, and murmured: “You are my Good Angel.”

  “Why, I don’t know what we’d do without you.”

  Proudfoot smiled and resumed the attitude of Michelangelo’s Lorenzo and Sherwood went out. He worshipped Proudfoot … yet he was uneasy. He was in the habit of observing things, and he had seen on the desk beside Proudfoot’s locked book several swollen red volumes of press cuttings and an old Family Bible—also with a golden clasp. The incongruity disturbed Sherwood. Also, he did not like the peacock-feather pen and the gigantic inkpot of sky-blue glass, and he was genuinely worried about the ink. Proudfoot had procured from the printer, a gallon of gold ink.

  Sherwood felt frustrated if there was nothing he could safely steal. He had tried more than once to steal a look at Proudfoot’s locked book. But Proudfoot carried it with him wherever he went. He had filled several pages, laid out in chapter and verse, beautifully written in that gold ink in his best legal longhand.

  On the first page, like the heading of a deed, ran the line The First Book of Proudfoot.

  It was My custom to sit in My red-and-gold chair with My back to the light.

  Thus Proudfoot could see His subjects’ faces while His own was in the shadow.

  Thus I knew them, body and soul, saith Proudfoot, but they knew not Me.

  Still they believed in Me, knowing that I was there to watch over them and deliver them from evil even at the foot of the gallows.

  When a client prayed to Him for help wringing his hands in His shadow, was He not reminded of that which He wrote in His psalm, “Hide me in the Shadow of Thy wings?”

  And when at last I heard your entreaties, saith Proudfoot, looked ye not like Lazarus raised from the dead, or the Leper made clean?

  Furthermore, saith Proudfoot, I accepted your Offerings because they were acceptable to Me. For the greater the offering, the greater the sacrifice. Therefore took I gold and silver and the burnt bodies of prime sheep and fat oxen, and tobacco.

  Yet say, saith Proudfoot, and deny if you dare: turned Proudfoot His face away from the poor supplicator?

  Verily, verily, I say unto you that there is more love in Proudfoot for the poor suitor with a thousand pounds of faith in his heart and the Widow’s Mite in his pocket than for the rich man with a thousand pounds in one-po
und notes in his pocket and a mite of faith in Me in his heart!

  Lo! I am come to deliver you out of the Valley of the Shadow of Death! Have faith in Me or perish.

  He slept in his clothes, stank abominably, but insisted on wearing a large chrysanthemum in his buttonhole.

  *

  So that proved to be an uproarious morning in the office in Adam Street.

  In the absence of Joanna Bowman, Sherwood had employed a younger, cheerful but less efficient secretary called Miss Home—a sprightly, untidy girl with a gargantuan appetite for fruit and sweets, of which she always kept a supply in a drawer. She was a secret sucker and a surreptitious nibbler of fruit drops and wine-gums, apples and pears, and so the office boy, Thomas, found her irresistibly attractive. Whenever she popped a lump of boiled sugar into her mouth, or gnawed hastily at a hard fruit, she felt his wistful eyes, and gave him something to eat on condition that he went away and stopped staring. To her he was a horrible little boy, although he had a dog-like manner of standing, hopefully watching every mouthful she ate.

  To-day she gave him a green apple, in which he buried his teeth with murderous avidity. He bit again and chewed, and swallowed so that noises of deglutition were audible in the office of Mr. Proudfoot, who had acquired an extraordinary sensitiveness of ear. His door opened and he came out, red-eyed with whisky and wrath, and shouted: “What are you eating?”

  Thomas said: “Please sir, an apple, sir.”

  “An apple?”

  “Yes sir, please sir. She gave me it.”

  “And what if I did?” said Miss Home. “What’s the harm in an apple? They come out of my own garden.”

  Closing his eyes Proudfoot said: “And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons …” He opened his eyes again and saw that Miss Home was wearing a dress patterned with flowers and leaves, and he added: “Ah-ha!”

  Proudfoot then said to Miss Home: “I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children and thy desire shall be of thy husband and he shall rule over thee.”

  “I give a week’s notice,” said Miss Home. “I didn’t come here to listen to filthy talk.”

  To Thomas, Proudfoot said: “Because thou hast harkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it, cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life—thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee and thou shalt eat the herb of the field—in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread till thou return to the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return. Thus spake Proudfoot.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Thomas.

  Proudfoot walked slowly back into his office. Sherwood came in after him, followed by Miss Home, Thomas and Dr. Weissensee.

  “I warn you, my friends, that you had better evacuate the Garden of Eden,” said Proudfoot.

  He had become sensitive to cold, and kept a large fire burning in the Adam fireplace. They were horrified to see him pick up a blazing log, which he waved at them before handing it to Sherwood, saying:

  “Cherubim, here is your flaming sword. Drive them away, drive them away!”

  The log rolled, smouldering and stinking, on the floor.

  “God Almighty!” exclaimed Sherwood, “Good God Almighty!”

  “Exactly,” said Proudfoot, “Good God Almighty. You have said it.”

  Sherwood whispered to Miss Home: “Quick. Nip out. Get the police. Ring the hospital. Hurry now.”

  Proudfoot cried, in a strained, thin, exalted voice: “In Law ignorance is no excuse. You have already been told. It has been printed in the leading newspapers. No other gods before Me—is that quite clear? Repeat it … it is a Commandment … repeat it, I tell you!”

  “No other gods before me,” said Sherwood, who could adapt himself to any circumstances. Thomas had armed himself with a poker.

  “Do you promise, Angel, not to make any graven image, or the likeness of anything that is in the heaven above, the earth beneath, or the waters under the earth?”

  “I do.”

  “Do you promise not to bear false witness against your neighbour?”

  “I promise faithfully.”

  “Do you promise not to steal? Do you promise not to kill? Do you promise not to covet your neighbour’s house, wife, ox, ass, or anything that is your neighbour’s? Do you promise not to commit adultery? Yes or no?”

  “Yes.”

  “What is that? No? Then I shall smite you, smite you, smite you—smite you as I smote the Cities of the Plain—smite as I smote Sodom and Gomorrah when I sent My fires down from My Heaven. See!”

  The office boy Thomas was rolling the burning log over the smouldering carpet towards the fireplace. Proudfoot stopped him with a ferocious gesture. The carpet sizzled and smoked.

  Proudfoot shrieked: “Even as I destroyed the Cities of the Plain, so shall I destroy you, Sodomite, Gomorrhite, ravisher of angels!” And he plunged his hands into the glowing fire, scooped out coals, and hurled them about the room. Sherwood looked on with terror, ducking his head as the embers flew past and burst in showers of sparks against the wall behind him. The boy looked on with startled interest. Proudfoot continued: “Even as I destroyed the world, so will I destroy you, O ye of little faith!” He grasped Sherwood in a dreadful grip and forced him to sit in the brass coal scuttle, which was fashioned in the shape of a fireman’s helmet, and went on: “To your Ark, righteous man! Into your Ark, Noah! Perish all ye unrighteous! The heavens are opening!”

  Then Proudfoot clambered on to his great chair, and urinated on the desk; and Miss Home came in with two policemen.

  Anxiously apologetic, she said to one of the policemen: “I assure you that if I had known he was going to behave like this I’d never have come to work here.”

  The policeman, watchful but half amused, said: “Well, Miss, I don’t suppose it’s what you might call exactly businesslike behaviour. Definitely not.” Then, coming closer to Proudfoot as he talked, he went on: “Now, come on, sir, come on now! That’s no way for a gentleman to behave. I ask you, is it now?”

  Proudfoot shouted: “The waters are rising! The valley of the Euphrates is flooded. Full fathom five lies the Tower of Babel and the unrighteous float, prey to the eye-pecking gulls. Ah-ha! A dove! My wrath is appeased. The flood subsides.”

  “That’s right, sir. Now you button yourself up like a gentleman and let’s talk it over.” The policeman who had been talking was close to Proudfoot, now, and the other policeman, a younger man, obedient to certain signs, had come up on the other side. But Proudfoot was calm now. He noticed Sherwood and said: “Give me a cigarette.”

  Sherwood gave him a cigarette and Proudfoot said: “This is My Body. Hoc est corpus meum. Give me a drink.”

  Sherwood filled a tumbler with whisky. Proudfoot drank two-thirds of it at a gulp, gave the rest to Sherwood, and said: “Drink. This is My Blood.”

  Then they heard the bell of the ambulance. Holding up his cigarette, Proudfoot said: “Ah-ha! The Bells, the Bells, the tintinnabulation of the Bells, Bells, Bells! The moaning and the groaning of the Bells. Ring out, wild Bells to the wild sky, for the Son of God is born to-night. But first of all … Let there be light!”

  Sherwood struck a match and Proudfoot, taking a light for his cigarette, said, with a satisfied smile: “And there was light! … I am a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. I will lead you … across the Red Sea. The waters will divide, and there shall be dry land …” He kicked at certain patches of moisture on the carpet.

  Then someone said to him: “This way to the Promised Land. We’d better
get moving now, you know.”

  Proudfoot picked up a T-square by the thin end, and the older policeman put out a large red hand and wrenched it away.

  “Thank you, My son,” said Proudfoot, raising two fingers in benediction, “you are a strong man, and you may carry My cross.” On the way out he turned to Miss Home and said, in a beautiful, resonant voice—the voice that once he had saved for perorations in closing speeches for the defence: “Woman, behold thy son!”

  Then they hustled him out to the ambulance.

  Sherwood sent Miss Home and Thomas away for the day, locked the outer door, went to his office, made a pillow of his right arm and wept into it, saying: “Oh Lord, what a terrible thing to happen to a man like that; oh, what a terrible thing to happen, especially to a man like that!”

  Thomas went and told his mother, who smacked his head. Miss Home carried away a woollen cardigan, a bag of apples, and a special soft rubber eraser—her personal property—and never returned. But Proudfoot, having expressed a desire to overthrow the Nelson Column in Trafalgar Square where (he said) traders profitably sold pigeons for sacrifice in the Temple, was calm and happy. He, too, had achieved his heart’s desire. He had become God.