The Thousand Deaths of Mr Small

by Gerald Kersh

  I. Small was bored because he had nothing to do. Noblett Street was too quiet. He missed the hammering and the grunting of the cobblers in the workshop. He was unhappy. So one day when somebody’s manservant came into the shop and asked him if he did repairs, he said: “Well, why not?”

  “Well look, let you and me have an understanding. I work for a certain gentleman who’s got a whole lot of boots and shoes for repairs, do you see? Only it’s got to be first-rate work, top-notch first-rate, every stitch by hand—understand?”

  “Every stitch by hend.”

  “Now look: this is how it is: my gentleman’s stuff has been going to Trumpet’s for repair. Trumpet charges eight-and-six. I’ve come to an understanding here and there, see? So if you see eye to eye, you and me might come to an understanding for six-and-six.”

  “Six-and-six?”

  “All right, call it seven bob. I can put a whole lot of work in your way, only you understand, it’s not for love. If I bring you a receipt that I can make a few pence on, you sign it. That’s only fair, isn’t it? If you don’t think so, say so. Eh?”

  “So what is it you’ve got you want I should do?”

  “To start with, there’s eight pairs of boots and shoes. And I’ve got friends, see? I can make it worth your while, understand? Eh?”

  “Bring ’em.”

  I. Small went to the cellar and opened a packing-case in which he had nailed down his tools. But when he told his wife that he proposed to take in repairs, she had hysterics. At last she knew what he was, at last she knew the creature she had married! She had tried, oh God, she had tried so hard to drag him out of the gutter—but now he wanted to go back to it, back and back, dragging her down and down into the mire! That was it. Had she but known. She had known it all along. She had been warned, more fool she, by her sisters. Now it would be necessary for her to admit that they were right and she was wrong. Such, indeed, was the truth. But to admit that truth—oh, shame, shame! Let the fact be faced: she was married to a dirty little cobbler. And there she was, and woe was she.

  “Then what do you want I should do, what?”

  “Be a man! Do something!”

  “Do what? What do you want I should do? What? Say, speak, tell me what!”

  “All right, go on, go and mend boots,” said Millie.

  “So what am I doing?”

  “That’s all you’re fit for. Go on, mend boots. What’s the matter with you, what are you waiting for? Go on, mend boots!”

  “You should have a good hiding! A good hiding you should have!” shouted I. Small.

  “I’ll call a policeman!”

  “Bah!”

  There was an armistice, and it was arranged that I. Small should set up his last in the basement. If any member of the family popped in it was to be understood that he was hammering away to oblige a nobleman. She looked after the shop while he worked in the cellar, and so they managed to keep their muddled heads above water for a few months. Then she announced that she was pregnant.

  Thinking of this, Charles Small shuts his eyes tight and pinches himself, because it seems too horrible. For many years, now, he has been trying to close his mind against the idea of having been begotten by his stupid father upon his stupid mother, and carried around for nine months in—of all things—of all unimaginable things—his mother’s womb. What business had she with a womb? As for how he got there, that is not to be thought of. When he remembers hearing his mother boast of the trouble she took to breast-feed him his weak, nervous stomach, turns over again. He heaves, he nauseates, his face becomes wet and cold. So he drinks a glass of water. The ostentatious silence of his hushed household gets on his nerves, and in his mouth, always, is that sickening taste of sour milk.

  *

  Oh, what a liar, coward, bully and cheat his mother must have been! Truth wasn’t in the woman. She lived by false pretences. Every other word she said was uttered with intent to defraud. She was constantly endeavouring to create some convincing falsehood complimentary to herself. Everything she did and said was for the sake of appearance, and she really thought that her appearances were deceptive. Obviously she imagined that everyone was a bit of a fool. At the same time, she was ignorant and gullible as a Congo savage: she believed everything but the truth, and was influenced by everything but reason. There was no way of plumbing the abyss of her stupidity.

  As soon as she knew that she was pregnant she behaved not like a woman with child, but like a woman possessed by a devil that had to be cast out. She went for advice, first of all, to her married sisters, who were as ignorant as she was and just as spiteful. They had all had children, without much difficulty, but had done their duty to their sex and glorified themselves in the process. Having heard from other lying wives that it is only natural for a pregnant woman to have strange fancies, they had had strange fancies. It was conveyed to Millie that the more strange fancies she had, the better; Sarah boasted that she had awakened at four o’clock in the morning with a craving for hot rolls and butter. Her husband, who was the best husband in the world, had got up immediately, run to a bake-house where men were working all night to turn out the next day’s bread, and bribed the foreman to let him take away half a dozen rolls so hot that you could hardly touch them.

  Thereupon there was a controversy. Pearl, red with anger, asked Sarah what she meant by “best husband in the world”. When she was big with her little Arthur she woke up at one o’clock in the morning and said: “I fancy a pickled herring.” Now where was a pickled herring to be procured at one o’clock in the morning? Her husband jumped out of bed like a shot, ran half a mile, knocked at the door of a delicatessen shop until the proprietor came down and gave him pickled herrings. She laughed triumphantly.

  At this Ruth sneered: “Didn’t he wait to put his trousers on?”

  “Go on, make a mockery, just because a man has consideration. Did your husband get up at one o’clock in the morning to get you a herring?”

  “No, Pearly, no,” said Ruth, with a quiet smile. “He got home at one o’clock in the morning, from a big deal.”

  “Ha-ha—big deal! Was she fair or dark?”

  “I only wish that you and your husband should have such deals every day of your life, fair, dark or medium,” said Ruth, with dignity. “He was so tired he could hardly stand. He was so tired, he was too tired to eat. All he wanted was to sleep. All of a sudden what do I fancy? Cream-crackers with butter and strawberry jam. There isn’t a cream-cracker in the neighbourhood. But he gets up, goes out in his slippers, and comes back at three o’clock with cream-crackers. And may I never move from this chair, he was so tired he fell asleep with all his clothes on…. It’s no use talking, when you get a fancy, you get a fancy.”

  But Lily, the unnatural creature, smiled smugly and said: “Very nice too. But when I was five months gone I woke up in the middle of the night and said to Nathan: ‘Nathan, I fancy a bit of gingerbread.’ Nathan sat up in bed and so he said: ‘You fancy a bit of gingerbread, Lily?’ I said: ‘In the cupboard, Nathan.’ So Nathan said: ‘If you fancy gingerbread, have gingerbread—go and get it out of the cupboard,’ he said, ‘my mother had twelve of us without fancying gingerbread.’ So I went back to sleep, and I didn’t fancy gingerbread any more. That’s how I like a man to be. Nathan’s a rock, a brick, a stone! Catch my Nathan running for herrings in the middle of the night!”

  “Where there’s no sense there’s no feeling,” said Ruth.

  “That’s what she calls a man!” cried Pearl.

  “What’s the use of talking?” asked Sarah.

  But I. Small was told that if the mother’s craving was not instantly satisfied the baby would be born deformed. Two days later, at five o’clock in the morning, Millie shook her husband and said: “I fancy hot rolls and butter.” He got up, groaning, and went out to find hot rolls. Then she wanted pickled herrings at one o’clock, salted herrings at three o’clock, red herrings at four o’clock, soused herrings at five o’clock, cream-crackers at two o’cl
ock, water-biscuits at two-thirty, and gingerbread in the middle of the night. When I. Small came home with gingerbread, she pretended to be asleep. Millie had hoped that he would say: “Go and get it.” … Oh for a rock, a brick, a stone!

  So, in the last six months of her pregnancy, she sucked down all the foolishness of her gossiping acquaintances—gurgling drain that she was—cloaca maxima of femine slops!

  If one old fool said that she ought to eat for two now, Millie ate herself sick. If another said that if she ate too much she would make the baby too big, she starved herself. Someone said that bottled stout made milk, so she drank stout. Someone else said that if she drank stout the child would be a drunkard. She stopped drinking stout. Her nipples became swollen and sore. Aha—cancer! Her belly swelled. Wow—— something horrible, unbelievably horrible, was going to happen. I. Small was informed that she was about to be torn to pieces. She would have to be sewn up after having burst. It was all because men were selfish. Their own pleasures was all they thought of. They took their pleasure, and then their wives went bang and exploded in a shower of torn entrails, screaming in ineluctable torment, in the middle of a dancing ring of shrieking martyrs, all tugging and pounding and kicking and pulling and digging and dragging. … I. Small thought of Millie as a thoroughfare about to be taken apart with pickaxes, and he pulled out handfuls of his hair. Once, when she said: “Srul, quick! It’s kicking!” he screamed: “Murderer! I’ll break his bleddy neck!”

  I wish to God I’d kicked her out of the window, thinks Charles Small.

  But at last he managed to be born. His father ran up and down in an ecstasy of self-accusation, beating himself on the head and breast and calling himself by insulting names: Lobbus! Snot-rag, toe-rag, uncivilised madman, murderer, pisspot, cannibal, rotter, turd, bandit, loafer, bugger, beast!” He tried to tear off his ears. “Piddler, manure, cad, nogoodnik, scheisspot, foreigner, lapatutnik, nothing, fartnik!” He banged himself about the head. “Muck! … Makkes! … Schlemazzel! Rubbish, bastard!”

  One of the women came to him and said: “It’s a boy.”

  “Boy, boy! How’s Millie?”

  “Please God she’ll be … I don’t know, please God.”

  “Let me go up, let me go!”

  “Wait yet!”

  At last they let I. Small go upstairs. His wife was asleep. They showed him something like a lump of raw liver wrapped in cloth. “What d’you call this?” he asked.

  “Ssh! Your son!”

  “This? A son?”

  “What then?”

  I. Small looked at it with loathing. So that was how it was! Millie’s insides had fallen out. There was some of her offal loosely wrapped in a towel, still pulsating. This was what came of being a beast.

  (Millie, grudgingly yielding to his puppyish amorous advances with a tremendous affectation of disgust, had managed to make him feel horribly ashamed of himself. She somehow conveyed the impression that in her family there had been no sexual intercourse for many generations. Respectable people never even thought of such things. Pfoo!—filthy! … The hypocrite: she enjoyed nothing better than a prurient, sloppy love romance; she used to walk a mile and a half to a threepenny circulating library where she could pick a book off the shelf, so that she would not have to soil her lips by whispering the lewd, unmentionable name of Monsieur Paul de Kock.)

  I. Small, that puny little fool, felt like a raging, ravening, blood-drinking rapist. He was terribly shocked, and perhaps a little proud, of the blood ruin he had wrought. When he started to cry they hustled him out of the bedroom. In the sitting-room the doctor, ostentatiously putting great glittering instruments into a black bag, said affably—it had been a perfectly easy delivery—“That’s all right, control yourself, take it easy man. I pulled her through all right.”

  Pulled her through! I. Small saw his wife being pulled through something with sharp spikes on it. If everything else was not enough, they had to pull her through. He moaned: “Terrible terrible, terrible, oi!”

  The doctor, not wanting to belittle himself, said: “Oh well … it’s her first, you see, and in the case of a primipara it is sometimes hard. I only had to put a stitch or two in the sphincter. I’ll look in to-morrow.”

  Then I. Small ran about like a chicken with its head cut off. Stitches! He saw the women, red to the armpits, wrapping up Millie’s liver and pushing back all that was left of her while the doctor, with bradawl and shoemaker’s needle, sewed her up with wax ends, hammering a mouthful of nails into the hips to make everything safe and watertight. It was more than he could bear.

  Lily, Ruth, and Pearl came in from the bedroom, alarmed by his outcries. He said: “It’s finished! She’s got a case of primepera! She’s hard! She’s got to have stitches in the spink!”

  The doctor paused on his way out, laughing, and said: “Don’t be a fool. She’ll be all right. It was not at all a difficult delivery.”

  “Der liver!” cried I. Small, and fainted.

  They revived him with brandy. On the whole they thought well of him for having fainted: it showed that he had feelings.

  But Lily said, with her triumphant smirk: “When my pains came on my Nathan went to a music hall. He said: ‘What’s the use of sitting and waiting? What can I do? What comes, comes. There’s enough crying and worrying in the house already. Will it make matters better if I walk up and down and get in everybody’s way? I’ll come back later.”

  “Heartless!”

  “Disgusting!”

  “Unnatural!”

  “What do you mean? Would it have helped if Nathan’d mooched about the house fainting? Answer me, tell me the honest truth—what good would it have done?”

  Since the only answer to this question was No good at all, the others became furiously angry. They made disparaging noises, ironically humming and sardonically hawing while they rummaged in their muddled heads for something conclusive to say; until Ruth said: “Who said anything about doing good? It shows feeling, that’s all. Feeling!”

  Lily went on, malevolently calm: “I started to be confined at six o’clock in the evening when Nathan had just come back from the office. The office. He put on his hat, and he put on his coat, and he went out and had something to eat at a restaurant, and after that he went to the Alhambra, and by the time he came home my little Stanley was born. Nathan wanted a boy. So it was a boy. So it was a boy. When my Nathan says he’s going to have a boy, he has a boy!” She looked triumphantly at Sarah, who had a daughter.

  If Millie had not been asleep there would have been a battle of words, a battle royal. The sisters did what they could in whispers—an unsatisfactory way of quarrelling, but sufficiently audible to bring Millie’s mother out of the bedroom. Threatening them with a hard, familiar right hand, the old woman said, in Yiddish: “Noisy rattles, silence; or old as you are I’ll give you such a putsch that you’ll stick to the wall.”

  So Millie slept her sleep for twelve hours and awoke, feeling lighter and healthier than she had ever felt before—but moaning piteously for her husband’s benefit. Eight days later, Charles Small—whose blood had run into its proper channels from his surface, so that instead of looking like a piece of liver he resembled a piece of tripe—was ceremoniously circumcised, as the Law prescribes, in the flesh of his foreskin. Everyone gave him gifts. Izzy, the estate agent, gave him a magnificent rattle with a mother-of-pearl ring to cut his teeth on, and a dozen jingling silver bells. It had been given to his own child, but Izzy had locked it up in a drawer because it was dangerous—the bells were certain to come loose so that a baby was bound to swallow them, sooner or later. Millie was deeply impressed by the magnificence of this gift. She put it away because it was, as she said, “too good to use”. She was like that: anything new, or freshly cleaned, was too good to use. She only half-blew her nose into a freshly laundered handkerchief. Years passed before the dust-covers came off the chairs and you made yourself comfortable. It was a pity even to sharpen a new pencil.

  The tobacconist (trus
t him to show off) gave him a silver drinking cup with a five-pound note inside it. Becky produced a new golden sovereign. Millie’s mother and father offered a neat black case containing a child’s knife, fork, spoon and napkin ring, with a fifty-pound note. The photographer, that hateful creature, said that he would take the child’s photograph free of charge. So one day they went to Nathan’s “studio” and Charles Small was photographed in the nude, lying on his belly on a soft cushion, looking disgustingly helpless. Nathan threw in, free of charge, what he called a Cabinet Study of the Family Group. It has been preserved for forty years, and Charles Small has it still.

  There is his father, in a black coat, obviously afraid of the camera—no doubt he expected it to go off bang—looking angry, therefore. There sits his mother, noticeably in a state of lactation, holding a sort of cretin dressed in long, complicated, frilly clothes with a laced bonnet stuck on its stupid head, and a general air of discomfort. That was Charles Small. The camera caught him half a second before he burst into tears because he was uncomfortable, having wet himself. His mother hated that picture, but she did not have the nerve to say so. She would not tear it up, because she believed that it was unlucky to tear up photographs. Whenever Charles Small sees it he wants to destroy it. Once, in a rage, he started to tear it up, but something stronger than himself made him desist. And there it is, somewhat faded, an embarrassment. He loathes it. His father is a scowling guinea-pig with a moustache, his mother is a little monkey in a floral hat, and he is nothing on earth pinned up in a diaper-full of egested maternal milk.

  Here was the beginning of his misery. Here was the record of the beginning of the end of Charles Small.

  CHAPTER VI

  THERE was trouble from the start. His parents quarrelled over him constantly. Here was something worth quarrelling over! he thinks, striking himself on the chest, partly because he has heartburn, and partly because he despises himself; and he shudders at the thought of himself as he was when that picture was taken.