The Thousand Deaths of Mr Small

by Gerald Kersh

  “Well, he can eat, your friend!”

  “What do you mean, he can eat, my friend? Can’t your friends eat?”

  “That’s right. Go on. Pick up every word I say. Show your ignorance—pick up every word.”

  “All right, I’ll show my ignorance—every word you say I’ll pick up…. What did you say?”

  “Never mind.”

  “What’s the matter miv Solly Schwartz?”

  “Nothing.”

  “What does she mean nothing?”

  “Now he wants to bring cripples into the house. So that’s what he is. I haven’t got enough. So he wants cripples in the house,” said Millie, with resignation. “As long as everybody is happy, let it be cripples in the house. There’s a man up the road with no arms and legs, who plays a barrel organ with his mouth. Go on, bring him into the house! What’s he waiting for? Let him put on his hat and coat and bring a few more cripples into the house.”

  “What’s the matter with cripples?”

  “Nothing. Nothing! Who said there was anything wrong with cripples? Wrong, wrong—with cripples? I only ask that you should bring them into the house. Didn’t I say so? Didn’t I say ‘Bring cripples into the house’? Then bring them.”

  I. Small, muddle-headed and angry, shouted:

  “So what’s the matter miv Schwartz?”

  “Who said anything about Schwartz? But go on, get Schwartz, That’s all I’m short of, Schwartz. Do me a favour, will you? Get Schwartz, and the man that turns the organ with his mouth. You know I haven’t got enough trouble, don’t you?”

  “Is it Schwartz’s fault he’s got a bed foot?”

  “Well, no … no, not his fault.”

  “Whose fault then, whose fault?”

  “Nothing. Who said anything about anybody’s fault? Let him come, let him live here. I’ve got nothing better to do than wait hand and foot on your humpy angels. Threehalfpence-twopence, threehalfpence-twopence, threehalfpence-twopence,” said Millie, referring to Schwartz’s club-footed limp.

  “He comes in to say hullo. Siz a friend of marn!”

  “Now he wants friends. His family isn’t enough.”

  “What’s the matter miv friends, what? Because I’ve got a family, I mustn’t have a friend any more? Is that what you want?”

  “All right, as long as I know! So that’s what he is. He’s had what he wanted, and now it’s ‘Goodbye, I’m going out to run after prostitutes with my cripple friends.’ Very nice!”

  “What does she mean, what?” cried I. Small, in a frenzy of bewilderment. “I say there’s no harm I should said hullo to Solly Schwartz and she’s here with her prostitutes. Why must you always have your mouth full miv prostitutes?”

  “That’s all right. It’s quite all right. I know!”

  This injustice hurt I. Small. Prostitutes! She spoke of prostitutes to him! When other men winked and whispered about their amorous triumphs—their various five-shillingsworths of waste in shame picked up around Leicester Square—I. Small boasted of his purity. He could honestly say that he had never “been with” a woman until he was married: this was all he had to be proud of. His pride was wounded; his honour was touched; he lost his voice for a minute or two, and when it came back he screeched like a grackle: “If I have the name I’ll have the game! Wait and see!

  Then Millie became savage. She behaved like all kinds of predatory creatures—she slavered like a jackal-bitch, bared her teeth like a hyena, and in the manner of a hungry caracal sharpened her claws upon the air. (They never touched each other, that couple, even in anger: she bit, slashed, scratched, and tore her husband to pieces in fantasy. He strangled her, broke her back, and trampled her dead body in pantomime. Willing to wound and yet afraid to strike as the poet says, they fought at a distance. Remembering them in their little tantrums Charles Small remembers a visit to the Zoological Gardens, where he saw two wretched little furious monkeys trying to get at each other through a fine-meshed wire partition.)

  “Siz wicked to make a mockery from cripples!” I. Small shouted. “Wicked!”

  “So now I’m wicked, is that it?”

  “Certainly,” said I. Small.

  “Go on then, go away, go to your cripples, go to your Solly Schwartz. Go on!”

  “You told me to go,” said I. Small, putting his on hat, “so good-bye.”

  At this, Millie was afraid. It was not that she would not know What to do if her husband left her. She could go home, where, as she imagined, she would be welcome; where she would buzz around like a blue-bottle, flapping at imaginary dust and moving pieces of furniture that were best left alone and stirring pots that did not need to be stirred, offending everyone by repolishing into dullness mahogany furniture in which you could see your reflection, saying that she hated dirt, hanging out of windows to smear panes of glass professionally cleaned and polished an hour before, lifting up heavy objects and putting them down again just for the sake of lifting them up and putting them down, begging comfortably-seated people to get up while she shook up chair cushions, and driving everyone to the verge of madness so that at the end of the day she could pant through parched lips: “I’m not afraid of a little hard work, like certain people I could mention.” Then there would be, she thought, something like the shout that tore hell’s concaves while father, mother and the rest said: “Millie is here. Thank God, no one could call her dirty and she, at least, is not afraid of work. Look at her, worn out. Why doesn’t she stop it, why doesn’t she go to bed and rest? Every five minutes she gets up and moves everything and takes up the carpets and polishes all the furniture. She’ll kill herself with work.”

  Then she would come groaning out of her chair saying that she had forgotten the carbolic. Certain people, no doubt for reasons of their own, liked to have disease in the house. Not Millie. To her, water was something into which people who were not absolutely filthy poured carbolic, so that it could be scattered about the house…. She would fill the lavatories with carbolic, she would scrub the saucepans with carbolic, she would sprinkle the clocks with carbolic; disinfect the soap with carbolic, pour carbolic on the evening newspaper, and gargle with carbolic. Oh, she would be welcome if she went home; she constantly worried about how they were getting along without her. If her husband left her she would not be without a place to go.

  But there was something disgraceful in being left by a husband. Millie knew exactly what people would say—she had said it herself on several occasions. Like her sisters, she had cast-iron opinions on the subject of Separation. When the Duke and Duchess of Battersea separated, the sisters all said: “She’s no good, that’s what it is. She carries on with every Tom Dick and Harry.” When Mr. Nussbaum ran off to America with a milliner, they said it again of Mrs. Nussbaum. When Dr. Crippen was sentenced to death for the murder of his wife, they shook sad, wise heads and said: “He’s not to blame—she drove him to it, carrying on with every Tom Dick and Harry, leading him a dog’s life. Such women deserve all they get. Believe me, he had his reasons. It serves her right.” Of Ethel le Neve, again, they said: “It serves her right, for carrying on with Doctor Crippen—a married man! She should be hung too.” And when they came again to Crippen, it was: “Serve him right—a married man carrying on with girls. Hang him, and a good job too!”

  If, on the other hand, a wife separated herself from her husband, their anger was terrible. They denounced both parties. “What was she in such a hurry for, her? Somebody waiting to meet her at the station—she was afraid of being late—some Tom Dick or Harry…. And him, he drove her to it—him!—carrying on with everything in petticoats, beating his wife, never satisfied with the cooking, smoking day and night, lazy…. But if she hadn’t left him, believe me, he’d have left her—her, with her nagging; and she couldn’t boil an egg. Her house was a disgrace—you could write your name in the dust on the mantelpiece. She was too busy carrying on with every Tom Dick and Harry. … Let’s hope it’ll be a lesson to him, the rotter, when she dies in the gutter, the common woman�
��.”

  No, truly respectable married people did not separate. Respectable wives and respectable husbands did not leave and were not left. Such goings-on were good enough for the riff-raff, the rabble, the costermongers, the dukes and duchesses who committed adultery on tiger-skin sofas and then tore out their hair and went home and drank poison and killed themselves. The Moss sisters had read all about them—it was all down in black and white—and they rejoiced that they were good girls, not duchesses. No scandals for them, thank you. If husband and wife didn’t agree, the proper thing to do was exchange smiles in public for the look of the thing, and fight it out at home; fight in silence like pit-dogs locked belly-and-throat so that nothing but death could part them. This battle of dog and bitch, since it was, so to speak, illegal, had to be fought at night, in secret. It might go on until the opponents were utterly exhausted—only old age brought a lethargic, weary, disgruntled peace—as in the case of a certain Mr. and Mrs. Good, of whom Pearl said, with a sidelong glance at her husband: “Certain people not far from here ought to take a lesson from those two—fifty years they’ve been married and they still say please and thank you to each other.” Millie, remembering a passage in some novelette that had moved her to tears, changed her tone and said: “If you’re not happy with me I want you to go, Srul. I want you to have your freedom. Don’t worry about me, I’ll manage somehow. I don’t want to know where you’re going. I only want to know that you’ll be happy. Go, Srul!”

  “Didn’t I told you,” said I. Small, who had not enough sense to keep his mouth shut and walk out of the house, “didn’t I told you I’m going out for an hour with Solly Schwartz?”

  “You mean, ‘didn’t I tell you’. For God’s sake, at least, Srul, for the child’s sake, tell me—where are you going?”

  “I thought you didn’t want to know.”

  “I should want to know where you’re going with your friend? Friends, he wants friends! I should want to know where he’s going with his friends, ha-ha!”

  I. Small shouted in his deafening bass voice: “Don’t you got friends?”

  “Srul, don’t change the subject. If you don’t want to tell me where you’re going, don’t tell me where you’re going. Go. Go on, go. If burglars break in I’ll call the policeman. Please, Srul, I want you should go.”

  “All right, I won’t go!” He threw his hat into the fireplace, from which it rebounded with a hollow sound.

  Millie said: “For my sake—to please me—I want you to go to your humpback. Don’t worry about me, I can’t help it if you hurt my feelings. Go!”

  “Look, Millie, if you’re not careful I’ll go.”

  “Go!”

  “I should go when she makes poison of it.”

  “Now I’m poisoning him. All right. What can you expect?”

  “From what, what can you expect?”

  “It’s my fault,” said Millie shaking her head. “I was warned, I didn’t take advice, so I suffer. It’s all right, Srul, go on, go. Go with your humpy. How comes your wife with you? What for? What does he want a wife for? What does he care if his wife isn’t well? No, he’s got to go out with threehalfpence-twopence, drinking with prostitutes. It’s all right, as long as I know what he is. As long as I know, it’s all right. I only want to know. Go on, go. I’ve got a headache. Thank God there isn’t a stone floor in the kitchen, Crippen!”

  “Oh, bleddywell beggar yourself!” shouted I. Small, putting on his hat back to front and stamping his feet.

  “That’s just what I expected. Go on, go.”

  “You asked me to go, you told me to go, you said go when I asked you if I could go weeks ago, and now in that tone of voice she says go.”

  “First learn to talk English, Srul, then talk about my tone of voice. If my tone of voice doesn’t suit you, find another tone of voice. Go! Should I mind being let alone? I’m used to it.”

  “You’re a bleddy story-teller! You can have a hundred friends in and out of the house all day long, and so me, so I mustn’t go out five minutes miv one friend!”

  “Don’t say miv; say with … Do I go out at all hours of the night with humpbacks with a leg and a half, running after goodness knows what rubbish to get myself diseased? Do I go out drinking in dirty rotten common public-houses?”

  “All right, I’m not going.”

  “Srul, to please me, go!”

  “May I drop dead if I go!”

  “So sure should I live, you’ll go!”

  “Honest? You want I should go?” asked I. Small. “What’s the matter, Millie, I should go out miv a friend for a walk, and a chat, and for sixpence a glass lager beer? Tell me, what’s the matter with that, Millie?” he asked, in a heartbroken voice.

  “A chat. What secrets has he got with his humpy little Punch and Judy show?”

  “Millie, once for all, stop talking about humps! Is it Solly’s fault he’s got a liddle hump? Did he said to his father und mother: ‘Please, mummy-deddy, do me a favour, give me a hump—for my sake, to please me, mummy-deddy, for mein birthday a hump give me.’ Eh?”

  “I don’t know. He’s your friend, ask him. All right, go on, creep out, go and chat, what are you waiting for? What do they want to talk about that I mustn’t hear? Dirt, filth, women. As long as I know what he is. Oh, I’m so ashamed, so ashamed. The whole town’ll know. He’s had my money; that was what he wanted; and off he goes dressed up like a Piccadilly Johnny with a walking-stick—a walking-stick if you don’t mind!—to roam about the West End with humpbacks. Goodness only knows what they get up to.”

  She had never allowed her husband to forget that when they married he was penniless, and she had five hundred pounds. She had rubbed it in so thoroughly that he was sore and tingling from head to foot with shame, so that now, when she referred to her money he wanted to go and hide. He took out his purse and emptied it on to the table. There was a golden sovereign, a half-sovereign, three half-crowns, two florins, four sixpences, and a threepenny piece. With something like calm, almost with dignity, he said: “I earned it. Look—I take a shilling, one shilling. Is it too much?” She did not answer. He threw down the shilling and picked up sixpence. “Na! That suits you?”

  “Certainly, Srul. How much more do you want to buy cups of cocoa for your Society ladies?”

  Millie’s allusion to her exhausted dowry had demoralised him. He did not roar with rage, but said humbly, holding up the sixpence: “A glass lager beer.”

  “Very nice. The last sixpence in his pocket Piccadilly Johnny’s got to rush out and spend on beer. Now I know what he is. It’s all right as long as I know. He can’t buy a bottle of beer and drink it in the house like a man. Oh no. He must go out and about, Piccadilly Johnny with a walking-stick! Go on, hurry up, you’ll be late for humpy.”

  “Leave humps alone, I told you!”

  “Don’t hurry back. Stay out all night. Don’t worry, I’ll be waiting with a nice cup of tea and something to eat.”

  “Millie, for goodness’ sake, why should you be like that?” said I. Small, tearfully.

  “Like what? He wants me to be like his fancy women—is that what it is? So that’s what it is! Well, I’m sorry, Srul, I can’t help my nature. I’m not going to be a fancy woman, even to please you. But don’t let me get in your way. Go on, Piccadilly Johnny, take your walking-stick. Ha-ha, a walking-stick he wants.

  This enraged I. Small. He bellowed: “What’s the matter, what, with a walking-stick, what?”

  “Let his children starve. What does he care, the millionaire, as long as he can buy walking-sticks!”

  “Deliberate bleddy story-teller! For ten years I had this stick!”

  “Then take it, Piccadilly Johnny, go on, go out and show off with it—him with a walking-stick!—I never heard of such a thing!”

  “Oh, beggary!” cried I. Small, and broke his stick over his knee. Throwing down the splintered halves he said: “Na! Ten years I had that stick. It was in your way, was it? Right! Now you should be satisfied. There, take the sti
ck, put it in the fire—in the fire put it! Now am I a Piccadilly Johnny?”

  “So that’s what you are! So this is what he’s come down to! Breaking up walking-sticks to light the fire. It’s all right, I don’t mind, as long as I know, Srul. I only want to know the truth. Once I know——”

  “Beggar yourself! Beggar the bleddy truth!” shouted I. Small, and went out.

  When she heard the street door slam, Millie was sad. She looked at her husband’s saddle-shaped purse open and empty on the table, at the few gold and silver coins gleaming among bronze pennies in the gaslight, and she wept. She was ashamed and unhappy. What is the matter with me? she asked herself, pushing the loose money about with a fork on the tablecloth. (She could not bring herself to touch it with a finger.) He does his best, poor man. He’d run to the devil for me. He’s a good man—what do I want of him?

  Still weeping, she remembered that she too was not without virtue: she remembered a December afternoon when she had taken off her overcoat and hung it on the shoulders of a blind beggar woman who was pretending to sell matches in Oxford Street. She was like that. All that she had was anyone’s to take; and she could be sympathetic for hours on end while neighbours talked of their troubles. But, confronted with people she loved, she felt as a gun might feel—if it could feel—when the hammer clicks back, the cartridge is rammed tight, the finger is upon the trigger, the eye is on the sights, and the spark is waiting that will scatter the charge.

  Then there was a bang. The one nearest to her got hurt.

  CHAPTER VIII

  AFTERWARDS she was always sorry, and she cried. But even as she cried she knew that her tears were in their way missiles, because she had been born and bred like that. Sometimes she wept alone, as she wept then, while her husband, sick with guilt and completely discouraged, slunk westward to meet his friend, Solly Schwartz.