The Thousand Deaths of Mr Small

by Gerald Kersh

  “So what’s the matter mit mein name?”

  “With! With your name! Not mit. Not mein. With my name!”

  “Mein father’s name was Schmulowitz. Should I be ashamed from it?”

  “Ashamed from it! Of it! Of!”

  “Of. Let it be of. If my father’s name——”

  “—You are not your father.”

  “Schmul was a great man. In the bible read—read in the bible! Hannah was married to Elkanah, so she lies down and gives a son——”

  “—So that’s what you are! Hm! A nice way to talk!”

  “So what’s what I am? What did I said wrong?”

  “What did I said wrong! What did I say wrong?”

  “Say. Hannah brought Schmul to Eli, so it was he got to be a prophet.”

  “You are not a prophet now. You are not in Palestine now. Millie Schmulowitz! I’d be so ashamed! Millie Schmulowitz—never!”

  “What do you want I should call myself, what?”

  She thought of Smiles, Wits, de Witt, and Mule; but finally decided on Small.

  “But what are you ashamed of, what?”

  “Who’s ashamed?”

  “What’s your name? Moses.”

  “Moss!”

  “What’s the matter with Moses? Moses was good enough to lead you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage, wasn’t he?”

  “You’re not in Egypt now. Schmulowitz! I should call myself Schmulowitz! Small!”

  “Let it be Small,” he said, heavily.

  “It sounds like the same thing, really. And Yisroel. It’s not … it’s not …”

  “—It’s not what? What, it’s not?”

  “Listen, you’re in England now.”

  “So I’m in England—so what’s the matter, what?”

  “Yisroel! It makes people laugh. Yisroel! Rollo! Make it Rollo—that’s a nice name. Rollo Small.”

  “My name isn’t good enough, so I’m not good enough. Good day! Go find a Rollo, a Schmollo! Good-bye!”

  She did not care whether he came or went, lived or died, but she had told all her friends that he was desperately in love with her. He, for his part, was sick and tired of the whole affair, and she could see it. One syllable, now—one brusque Go might have sent Yisroel Schmulowitz stamping away. Sensing this, she cried, and said, through her tears: “It’s not what you’re called, it’s what you are that counts!”

  She had got this out of some novelette, no doubt. It was a little too deep for Schmulowitz, who in any case was powerless in the presence of a weeping woman. He cried himself when he saw a woman shedding tears, thinking of his mother, so this fool, missing a heaven-sent opportunity of giving himself a better wife, and Charles Small a different mother, pulled out a silk handkerchief, saying: “Rollo, Schmollo, Wollo, Bollo, call me what you like!”

  “A rose by any other name would smell,” she sobbed.

  So they were engaged. He had to give her a ring, of course, but he had very little money to spend. Millie’s youngest sister Lily was married to a prosperous photographer who had given her an engagement ring that cost £85—the whole family had seen the receipt; after which young Lily had acquired a maddening habit of touching her hair, adjusting her blouse, and emphasising her lightest word with a queenly gesture of the left hand, so that wherever Millie looked she saw the diamond flash.

  “Stop showing off with your rubbishing bit of glass!” she screamed, at last.

  “Bit of glass, eh? Ha-ha! You Wouldn’t say no to such a bit of glass. What’s the matter, are you jealous, or what?”

  “Ha-ha! I should be jealous of a rubbishing bit of a thing like that?”

  “Oh yes. We all know. We all know all about that, Millie. We all know all about the rings your young man gives you.”

  Trust Lily to be a bitch! Every one of those damnable sisters was a bitch: three of them were born bitches, two had achieved bitchery, and one had had bitchery thrust upon her. They had to be so in order to survive. They were perpetually feeling one another for a fresh sore spot—which it was never difficult to find—they were sore to the core, those hysterical fools. They enjoyed being hurt: it gave them something to cry about. If, by some miracle, you managed not to hurt them they would tread on their own corns to make themselves scream. They would stop at nothing, to put you in the wrong. Charles Small once saw his Aunt Sarah scraping her eyes with a match-stick in order to draw tears that might wring the heart of his mother with remorse for having hurt Sarah’s feelings by saying that a certain sky-blue woollen jumper “showed off her figure too much”. Sarah had a bosom like a pair of overblown pomegranates, and made the most of it—in the end it got her a tobacconist with three branch shops and a motor-car. But when Millie, who was flat-chested, expressed righteous indignation and virtuous disgust at her pride in these peerless globes, these conspicuous founts of motherhood, Sarah, having said a few never-to-be-forgotten things about “it being better to have a proper figure than something like pimples on your chest” rushed into the kitchen and poked herself in the eye with a match to get in the first weep. What a battle there was then!—complete with forced marches, dark strategies, dirty tactics, espionage, attack, counter-attack, entrenchment, night assaults, sieges and sorties! It lasted three months—in which time Lily and Pearl, having formed a secret alliance, carried a blitzkrieg to Becky because she had said that Ruth was the best cook in the family.

  However when Millie remembered Lily’s ring she wanted one like it, which the cobbler Schmulowitz could not afford to buy. He had his eye on a bargain priced at £15—a wretched little cluster of chip-diamonds around a flawed sapphire no bigger than a split pea. Millie had hysterics…. So she should be the laughing-stock of her friends! So she should be ashamed to look anybody in the face for the rest of her life! Oh, oh, oh what had she done to deserve it?

  Schmulowitz said that later on, please God, he would give her pearls, and diamonds, and rubies, and anything she fancied. In the meantime, why spend money on rings when there was a living to make?

  “Rubies! How comes, rubies! Who wears rubies? You’re in England now! And sapphires—oh, how they’ll laugh!”

  Yisroel Schmulowitz, who was already beginning to hate the sight of her, and who still had a little spirit left in him, said “Give me back the ring and finish!”

  Then she wept heartbrokenly until she had a clever idea. She went to her father and said: “You’re giving me five hundred pounds. Now look—a diamond is as good as money. Buy me a ring, now, for a hundred pounds.”

  Mr. Moss, her father, said: “Was fur meshuggass is dis? Fur a hündred pfund a diamant? Ich, soll a——”

  “I won’t marry him without,” she said.

  At this, Mr. Moss, who had been gathering himself for a devastating charge, pulled himself back on his haunches and became thoughtful. Then he said: “Nu, nu vell, a diamant is already wie gelt”—and he took her to Black Lion Yard, where she chose a diamond ring that cost £92, which he gave to Schmulowitz, who later at a little engagement party took it out of a square, velveteen-lined box, and put it on the third finger of Millie’s left hand. Healths were drunk. Everyone admired the ring. Lily bit her lips with envy, and Millie was as happy as she could be. Schmulowitz was proud to be associated with such fine people, but he was unaccountably miserable. He admired the brilliants set in the ring, but he would have looked with greater pleasure upon the cracked sapphire that he had bought with his own money. He gave it to Millie, but she did not like to be seen wearing it. Who wore sapphires? Diamonds were the thing.

  This was the beginning of the end of Yisroel Schmulowitz. He had sacrificed his father’s name, and let himself be called “Small”. To his first name, Yisroel, he clung with desperate stubbornness. Millie reddened her eyes a dozen times with weeping, begging him to call himself Rollo. But he held out until, at last, Millie went to Nathan, the Photographer, a clever man, and (she never forgave him for this) asked him to reason with her fiancé. Nathan, the Photographer (she never stopped
hating him), went and wrestled with Yisroel Small. He said:

  “Now look here. When in Rome, you’ve got to do as Rome does. Honest, this is England.”

  “What’s the metter, what?”

  “Nothing. But what do you want to be pig-headed for? What do you want to call yourself Yisroel for? Think, and you’ll see! Yisroel!” the photographer laughed. “You’re going to get married. Am I right?”

  There was an alarming pause, which Nathan, the Photographer, did not fail to note, before Yisroel Small said: “So?”

  “Listen. English people can’t pronounce, they can’t say all these names. When you’re in Rome, do as Rome does——”

  “—I’m not in Rome.”

  “That’s just it. You’re in England. When in England, do as England does.”

  “What’s the metter from mein name, what?”

  “It’s foreign. You’re going into business.”

  “Is already in the King’s pelace a person called Battenburg. I put new heels yesterday on a proper gentleman from the Russian Ambassy—Protopopoff. Protopopoff!”

  “Now look here. This is England.”

  “England, Schmengland—what’s the metter with mein name?”

  “There’s a prejudice against Joosh people. Yisroel! Everybody’ll laugh.”

  “Let ’em laugh!”

  “Now look. Yisroel is only another word for Israel.”

  “So?”

  “Israel is a name like any other name. Israel, Rollo—what’s the difference?”

  “All right then, Yisroel, Israel—let it be Israel!”

  “No, wait a minute—‘Israel’ only makes matters worse.”

  “Enough, already!”

  “Of course,” said Nathan, the Photographer, who saw that his man was obdurate, “for the painting of your fascia you could just put I. Small.”

  “I., schmy, pie—enough!” So the old man clung to his Yisroel. But people called him “Srul” or “I”. Renamed Small, he was called “Big” in the family, because he was a wretched failure and everything he touched fell to dust and ashes.

  CHAPTER IV

  Now he had nothing but his trade to lose. He had intended to set up shop as a shoe repairer, but Millie drew the line at that. She had seen him at work once or twice, and hated the sight of his nails, black with cobbler’s wax, and the smell of leather and old boots. Working, he wore no coat; his shirt-sleeves were rolled up and his arms were bare to the elbow while he impolitely spat out of his mouth shiny iron brads which he banged into the soles of common men’s boots. This, in itself, was repulsive. There were women’s boots, too, and it seemed that he caressed these instead of handling them with proper severity. He wriggled his fingers, tickling their tongues below the laces, and repaired their soles and heels with the tiniest, tenderest, softest nails. A nice business, this, in which a man humbly mended the dirty boots of working men and the footwear of God knows what female scum of the streets! Besides—to be married to a man in such a trade, and to have to admit the fact! My hubby is a tobacconist, Sarah could say…. Pearl could boast: My husband is a dealer in electrical goods. Lily, that bragger, was already telling the world that she was married to a photographer…. Thank God I’m not married! Becky would say, please God, laying herself open to a couple of savage stabs…. Ruth, the accursed one, had married herself to an estate agent, if you please: Izzy is in the office, she might say, on the slightest provocation.

  Was Millie to be reduced to apologising to her friends for having married a black-handed, waxy-nailed, sweating, knife-wielding, hammering, slashing cobbler? The whole world knew already that she had paid for her own ring. Someone had dropped a word: the whole town was ringing with the story. Now was there to be more shame and humiliation?

  A family conference was called.

  I. Small suggested mildly that, after all, people couldn’t go around on their bare feet. People had to have boots. Not being Rothschild, the man in the street had to get soled and heeled just like everybody else. There was a living in it; it was a trade. He couldn’t make boots and shoes, but he knew how to repair them. He suggested the establishment of a cobbler’s shop. It was not likely that there was a fortune to be made out of it, but a man who was not afraid of hard work might make a good solid living.

  The family looked up, exchanged glances, and smiled. Teeth were sucked and heads were wagged until Lily kicked Nathan, the Photographer, who made diplomacy, saying, in an ambiguous voice: “There’s money in boots and shoes. Look at Randall’s. Look at Freeman, Hardy & Willis. Buy from a reliable wholesaler, push your stuff, and sell it. Like that you can make good. Now ask yourself a question——”

  “—Listen to him,” said Lily.

  “—How long does it take to sole and heel a pair of boots?”

  “It depends——” began I. Small.

  “—Don’t interrupt—you’re not at home now,” said Millie.

  Nathan, the Photographer, continued severely: “Excuse me. How long does it take to mend a pair of boots? Half an hour? An hour? An hour and a half——?”

  “—Well, it depends——”

  “—Please! Call it half an hour. How much do you get for it? Two, three shillings?”

  “Now that depends——”

  “Manners, manners, Rollo!”

  “I don’t know what you mean by Rollo.”

  “—Call it two-and-six. From this deduct the cost of the leather, the cost of the nails, and your rent, because it takes time. You’ve got to be sensible. You pay, say, a pound a week rent. What does that mean? It means that every minute that passes is worth money. A pound a week you pay, and you keep your shop open maybe ten hours. That makes two shillings an hour working time gone in rent. On top of that comes gas, leather, nails, raw materials, tools. Then there’s an assistant. He’s got to be paid. Call your overheads four shillings per working hour. Yes?”

  Everyone nodded. Nathan, the Photographer, continued:

  “You can sole and heel a pair of boots for two-and-sixpence in, it might be, a half an hour. This means to say you make, if you are lucky, one shilling an hour. You make, if you have got the business, ten shillings a day if you work ten hours a day. That makes three pounds ten a week. From this you must deduct all day Sunday and one half day. Five and a half days, at one shilling an hour for ten hours a day makes fifty-five shillings. With this fifty-five shillings you must support a wife and family with heat, light, wear-and-tear, clothing, and something to eat. It can’t be done!”

  Millie burst into tears, and I. Small struck himself on the chin in bewilderment and said: “What do they all do, then? Die? Me and my friend Schwartz, we got an idea. From America comes a machine——”

  “He’s here again with his friend Schwartz,” said Millie, kicking him in the ankle.

  He was silent. Nathan, the Photographer, continued: “If a man has got a trade, he should follow that trade.”

  I. Small said: “Quite right! My frand Schwartz and me, we thought what … in America, so they make a machine. So by this machine you can do hend-sewn work, ein—zwei—drei—in two minutes. Here a veel—there a veel——” the young man made enthusiastic gestures, building the American boot-repairing machine in the air. “Everything is done miv veels. Me and mein frand Schwartz, ve tinked vot … vot … vot …” In his excitement he mislaid his English. He wanted to put forward the suggestion of his vigorous and imaginative friend Solly Schwartz, a keen, progressive young fellow whom he loved and admired. Schwartz, who had a club-foot, a hump on his back, a tallowy Punch’s face, whose glittering little black eyes moved so fast that they seemed to be watching the floor, the ceiling, the four walls, your face, and the back of your neck—Schwartz, one of the ugliest men in London, was quick and cool as a lizard, and full of ideas.

  Like a lizard he was perpetually darting after the invisible; he was always on the watch for something that was not there. He had no money, of course. Solly Schwartz had come out of some Stepney slum. Born out of shape, he was his father�
�s shame, and therefore his mother’s joy. His father could not bear to look at him; so his mother lost no chance of kissing and cosseting him. No one ever beat this marred brat that might fall dead at a slap, but he would not have cared if they had laid into him with a copper-stick from dawn to dusk: he felt within him a greatness. At the age of fourteen he was sent to do all that he was fit to do. His father apprenticed him to a tailor. He and Yisroel Schmulowitz became friends. The hows, the whys and wherefores can wait. One day, telling Srul (short for Yisroel) Schmulowitz about the new American machine that sewed, buffed, rasped, and finished the soling and heeling of a pair of shoes in just a few minutes, Schwartz said: “What’s the matter with you? Schusterkopf! go on sit on your arse and hammer and sew and sew and hammer and where are you? Where you began back where you started. There’s a machine does it all for you in a couple of seconds and you don’t need to lift a finger only get a couple of bloody fools for a couple of pounds a week to press a button here and pull a bit of string there and put their foot on a pedal. Handwork is a thing of the past you should learn everything is done nowadays by machinery you stitch and stitch and stitch and stitch and stitch until you make holes in your thimble and along comes a sewing machine and tra-la-la, tra-la-la, tra-la-la there’s a seam. Let’s get an American machine where there’s a wheel here and a wheel there. With this machine it’s tratata—tratata—tratata and what it would take you to do in an hour this machine does in a minute. A feller like you. Find yourself a girl with a few hundred and marry her and get a machine and make a fortune. Schusterkopf—fifty pairs of boots and shoes you can have on the shelves to be finished in a few minutes each and cut the price and … and what for bang with a hammer when any Tom Dick and Harry can run a machine?”