The Thousand Deaths of Mr Small

by Gerald Kersh

  “That, I don’t mind,” said the old man.

  “Right!” said Solly Schwartz, and went out. After he had banged the door behind him, Cohen smiled. The little hunchback had the power to inspire hope, and stimulate appetite. He drank his tepid coffee and ate his roll and butter, thinking: I’ll make that boy a partner in the business, so help me God!

  *

  Now Solly Schwartz had followed the old man into his little sitting-room merely with the intention of persuading him to buy some fancy labels, because he knew a struggling label-manufacturer who had said to him: “You get out and about, don’t you? Well, if you come across anything in my line, put it in my way and I’ll give you four shillings in the pound commission.”

  But suddenly, the devil knows how, he had stumbled upon this tremendous idea which, in an instant, had taken hold of him. It was as if he had sprung a wolf-trap. It had him in a painful, relentless grip. Writhing, agonising, raging at the senile stupidity of Cohen who could not see the pure splendour of his vision, he scornfully flicked from the astronomical reflector in his brain the wretched little dust-motes of two or three pounds of commission, and gave himself to the steady contemplation of the galaxy of millions. He wanted millions; millions and millions. Cohen, obviously, could not help him: he was too old, too tired, too timid. Solly Schwartz wanted a keen visionary with the heart and nerves of a good gambler who prefers to play neck or nothing to the last penny. At the same time this gambler, speculator, investor, capitalist—call him what you like—must have complete faith in Solly Schwartz. But he must not be too clever.

  Tapping his iron foot with his heavy stick he tried to think of some man of substance whom he might approach. At last he snapped his fingers and said: “Monopol!” And this is how he reasoned: He knows I tricked him once with those trousers. Monopol isn’t an easy man to play tricks on. He’s one of the trickiest tricksters in the trade—I tricked him. Therefore he respects me—he knows I’m no fool. He’s a good businessman and a bit of a chancer, or he couldn’t have got where he is to-day. At the same time, he’s not quite so smart as me, because if he were he wouldn’t have bought those trousers, the way I sold them to him. He’ll be suspicious of me, naturally. But I’ll talk him over, I’ll manage him. Yes, Monopol, by God! Monopol, that swindler, will work with me just because I swindled him. Because after all is said and done the man is a bit of a fool.

  He went to Monopol’s place in Clapham—the “Main Branch”, it was called now, for Monopol was opening shops in every busy street north of Camden Road. On his way he had another dazzling inspiration. He remembered a three-line notice in the morning paper concerning the bankruptcy of the aged Duke of London—an indescribably dissolute old nobleman who had squandered three fortunes and had nothing to live on but his name. Now here, thought Solly Schwartz, making his iron foot ring with an impetuous stroke of his stick—now here is the very thing. The Duke of London! The Duke of London! For a couple of thousand pounds and a few shares in the company, my word, what wouldn’t he do? “Duke of London”. What more could anybody want of a suit of clothes? Recommended by the Duke of London …

  Solly Schwartz had a morbid craving for news, news of any sort. He read the newspapers ravenously, to the last crumb, so he knew all about the Duke of London, and the knowledge made him stronger. He had not the least doubt that now he could mould Monopol like wax.

  Now, Monopol had a secretary who politely asked Solly Schwartz his name, begged him to be seated, and went into Mr. Monopol’s office. Then Solly Schwartz heard Monopol’s voice shouting: “That twicer? Kick him out, throw him downstairs! He wants to see me again, does he? What a nerve! Pick him up by the scruff of his neck and chuck him out—him! What sauce!”

  There was a noise, which Solly Schwartz recognised as the sound of a paperweight hurled against a wall. Then the secretary, a frail little old lady, returned, trembling, and said: “I’m afraid Mr. Monopol is out at present, but——”

  “—There isn’t any but,” said Solly Schwartz. “Excuse me, miss,” and, putting her aside with a gentle push of his powerful arm he limped past her, opened Monopol’s Private Office door, went in, slammed it behind him, and, wildly excited, struck his iron foot with his stick so that it seemed to toll like an alarum bell while he shouted: “Monopol, keep calm! I’m not here to sell you anything. Nothing! Calm, Monopol—I’ve come to do you a favour.”

  “You? You——”

  “—Ssh! Ladies present. I’ve come to make you a millionaire, Monopol.”

  “What you? You make me——”

  Solly Schwartz said: “Monopol, why don’t you wipe your face? You’re sweating.”

  Monopol stopped, took out a handkerchief and wiped his face, and Solly Schwartz knew that he had beaten him to his knees. “What is it?” asked Monopol.

  Then Solly Schwartz, drawing a breath that seemed to suck the very papers on the desk into his great mouth, began to talk. His idea about the Duke of London within ten minutes engendered a hundred fresh ideas in his fecund brain. He made it sound like a poem. Spraying words left and right, with eloquence so compelling that Monopol was unable to move from his chair, Solly Schwartz described his scheme. As he talked the face of Monopol, which had been purple with anger, became pleasantly pink, and he began to smile. His smile started with a slight upward flicker of the eyes. After that his eyebrows, as if he were trying to hide his eyes, while his mouth came down as if to snuff out a smile of the mouth and he nodded agreeably, saying: “Ha! That’s good, that’s clever!”

  Then Solly Schwartz knew that he had won the man. He ejaculated another thousand words between four lungfuls of air and arrived at his peroration. By which time Monopol was smiling broadly and rubbing his hands. Something in his manner made Solly Schwartz stop and ask:

  “What’s the joke?”

  “It’s funny, that’s all. It’s funny. If it’s funny, why shouldn’t I laugh?”

  “What’s funny?”

  “All you’ve been saying to me.”

  “What’s funny about it, tell me.”

  “Well, Mr. Schwartz,” said Monopol, grinning like a fiend, “what you’ve been telling me is the best idea I ever heard of. But the fact of the matter is, I thought of it myself yesterday morning.”

  Solly Schwartz looked at Monopol, let out the rest of his breath in a tremendous hiss through his nose, and compelled himself to smile.

  “Is that all you’ve got to say?” said Mr. Monopol. “Or perhaps you want to sell me a few pairs of trousers? Eh?”

  “All right, Monopol,” said Solly Schwartz, still smiling, “it’s quite all right, Monopol. Wait and see.”

  “Well, so good-bye, eh? I would gladly have considered your suggestion if I had not already thought of it already myself.”

  “Yes, you’re quite right,” said Solly Schwartz, holding out his hand. “More fool me. Serves me right. Shake hands.”

  Monopol said, with a chuckle: “Live and learn, live and learn. Good-bye, good-bye—— Hey! Let go! What are you doing?”

  “You’ll remember me when we meet again, eh, Monopol?”

  “For God’s sake, let go my hand!”

  Solly Schwartz released Monopol’s hand and said: “You bloody crook, one of these days this hand will choke you. Good-bye till we meet again, Monopol. God help you when we do.” Then he left the office.

  It had never occurred to him that anyone like Monopol could outwit him. The rest of the world, yes; naturally. Monopol was welcome to the rest of the world. Not to Solly Schwartz. He was not angry with Monopol, but with himself. He was ashamed; he could have wept. In the foullest terms he cursed, insulted, and upbraided himself for having let himself make a fool of himself, as he stamped and clanked away, pushing himself forward with his walking-stick like a resolute skier on a dangerous slope, who must at all costs rush down fast before he can rise and soar like a bird.

  Soon he became calm. Monopol had won a trick, but the game had only begun. Solly Schwartz began to be convinced that Monopol,
not he, was the fool, because anyone but a fool would realise that in a gigantic adventurous enterprise of this sort a Monopol without a Schwartz was like bread without yeast, like a balloon without gas. He foresaw Monopol’s ruin, and smiled. Thinking of ruin he remembered Cohen, and scowled. If the old fool had the nerve of a mouse, Solly Schwartz would not have been subjected to this humiliation. He was finished with Cohen, once and for all, doddering old schneider-tukhess that he was, with his tea and coffee and rolls and butter.

  It was necessary to make a plan. But the brain and the nerves need food, and Solly Schwartz was ravenously hungry. He could throw ten shillings in gold to a Samuels or stand treat to an I. Small in Appenrodt’s, but when he was alone he was parsimonious. Not unlike one of those jolly fellows who splash their money about among boon companions but begrudge their wives and children a mouthful of bread, Solly Schwartz, when he came home to himself, treated himself with severity; grumbling at himself, accusing himself of wanton extravagance for every penny that he spent on himself; shouting to himself: What? You stuff yourself with steak while the bank account goes hungry? … Until, exhausted, he forgave himself, took himself to bed, and, affectionately kissing himself good-night, slept peacefully with himself.

  When he dined alone, which he generally did, he dined for sixpence, or even less, off boiled beef and pease-pudding and a glass of ale or, preferably, fish and chips in a lowdown fish-shop. He loved, above all things to eat fried fish and chips out of an old newspaper. The flavour of discarded newsprint and the subtle aroma of stale printer’s ink really do blend with the combined savours of fish and potatoes fried in nut-oil, to make something exquisite. Sometimes he took a parcel home; devoured the food with his fingers, and read every word of the paper it had been wrapped in. But generally, having his dignity to consider, he sat down in the shop and ordered a fourpenny piece of fish and twopennyworth of chips (no mean order, in those days) to be served on a plate, with a roll and butter and a bottle of ginger-beer, or a cup of tea.

  Now, his mouth watering at the thought of these good things, he went to a fried-fish shop in a side street off Vauxhall Bridge Road, where he forgot everything in the contemplation of a blackboard upon which the proprietor had chalked:

  NOW FRYING!!!

  PLAICE!

  ROCK SALMON!

  HADDOCK!

  SKATE!

  Then there was a decorative scroll and, in extra large letters:

  NEW POTATOES!!!!!

  He went in, sat down, and ordered: “A fourpenny plaice, two penn’orth, roll and butter, cup of tea.”

  Making music with a fork and the marble top of the table, he looked about him. His brain was cool but swollen like the belly of the spawning codfish that lays a hundred thousand eggs so that ten may hatch. At an adjacent table a man with a wine-coloured face who was eating haddock with the abrupt voracity of a drunkard spat out a bone, which landed upon the brim of Solly Schwartz’s hat; but he did not notice. He was listening to other things.

  He heard a voice cry: “Dick! Taters!” A tiny shutter opened with a slam, and a gnome-like man appeared, bawling: “Taters, guv’—right you are!”—and out came a wire cage packed with cut potatoes, which the proprietor, sweating like a horse, plunged into a great pan of steaming oil so that every chip hissed like a snake in a cloud of steamy smoke, under a sputtering shower of bubbles. A little boy with congested nostrils asked for “Dapoth o’ crackligs”—halfpennyworth of cracklings, which are the detritus of fried fish that have been dipped in batter—and Solly Schwartz beckoned him to his side and gave him threepence, saying: “Cracklings won’t do you no good, get yourself a tuppeny-and-a-penn’orth.” The fryer, with bared teeth, shook his wire basket as a terrier shakes a rat and tossed out of the pan another heap of chips—then, snatching at the handle of another basket, shook into a hot container a quarter of a stone of skate, while the proprietor, beating the little shutter with his fists as if he was trying to knock it down and escape into the open air howled: “Dick! Haddock! Are you asleep?”

  Solly Schwartz thought: Look at that—look at this bloody mess. All this could be done properly. Those stinking frying-pans I’d put behind glass, with chimneys, or something, to take the smell away. Those fryers I’d put into white coats and white hats. Look at that woman behind the counter wiping her face with her hand. In any place of mine, that would be: ‘Out, with a fortnight’s wages, at a minute’s notice!’ … And fish and chips to be taken away in newspaper, eh? God knows how many Tom Dick and Harrys have plastered dirty hands all over old newspapers. There’s a point! It’s unhealthy. Hygienic paper bags for fish and chips. Hygienic. Branches all over the country——

  He was about to have another idea, but the harassed waiter threw down his plate, saying: “Eightpence,” stamping and blinking impatiently. Solly Schwartz gave him tenpence, and prepared to eat. But when he looked up to find the salt, he saw the great tin salt box in the hands of the most repulsive-looking individual that ever offended the eyes and nostrils of the world, who had taken a chair on the opposite side of the little table. Solly Schwartz, dreaming his dreams, had not noticed him. If he had, he would certainly have said: “Excuse me, if you don’t mind—that chair’s engaged.” For, although he had observed and despised the scum of the slums—pickers of poor men’s dustbins and eaters of unclean things so heavily bodyguarded by lice and stench that no policeman dared arrest them—he had never seen a man like the man who was playing with the salt box. He was as dirty as it is possible for a living creature to be. The frock-coat in which his tall, stooping, skeletal body was wrapped was not merely disintegrating: its fibres were so impregnated with animal and vegetable matter—soup, beer, meat, fish, vomit—that it was in a state of putrefaction. But this was nothing. He wore a celluloid collar white and shiny as a false tooth, fastened with a brass paper clip, and a necktie which showed evidence of having been used as a pocket handkerchief, but no shirt, and his fingernails, which were thick and fluted like oyster shells, were full of black dirt. This, again, was nothing. It was the face of the man that caused Solly Schwartz to drop his fork with a clatter. It was like an artist’s conception of Death—there was no flesh on the bones, only skin, in a pimplous patchwork, stretched so tightly over the bones that the mouth and eyes, seemingly lipless and lidless, were pulled wide open. It was a head-hunter’s smoked trophy with the rictus of the last agony miraculously preserved. Of his teeth, only the four canines remained, long and orange-coloured. He made you think of what you would look like and smell like when your time came and you had been a little while underground.

  Solly Schwartz drew back his chair with a start, at which the macabre stranger started too and put down the salt shaker.

  “I’m so sorry, I beg your pardon,” he said, in a strange, high, peculiarly sweet and gentle voice, “do forgive me. May I pass you the salt?”

  The salt was damp. Solly Schwartz had to bang the sprinkler on the table, and afterwards slap its bottom vigorously before he shook out a few reluctant grains. The stranger watched him with his bloodshot yellow-green eyes and said: “Is it not incredible? In this year of grace we still cling to these archaic devices!”

  The very sight, let alone the proximity, of such a creature would have killed an ordinary man’s appetite. But avid Solly Schwartz, hungry for everything, replied: “What do you mean?” Then, when another fishbone rattled upon the crown of his hat he turned and said to the man behind him: “Keep your bones to yourself, can’t you? Spit them out on to your plate like a gentleman!”

  When he turned again the hideous stranger was drawing with a pencil on the marble top of the table. Even the pencil was dirty, but Solly Schwartz saw that guided by the stained forefinger and the filthy thumb it described beautiful lines, pure curves and shapes as clear as daylight, while the stranger, talking to himself, said: “It is childishly simple really. It is perfectly obvious. That thing there, that absurd thing punctured with open holes—it is barbarous, it is unhygienic, not clean. I have seen flies swarm
ing about the tops of such bronze-age devices. A salt sprinkler is good, necessary. Given salt cellars, in a place like this, people whose hands are not necessarily clean—artisans, mechanics, engineers, etcetera—would plunge their fingers into the salt. Or their knives, which would be just as bad, since people who are reduced to eating in these establishments generally eat with their knives.” All the time he was drawing with marvellous speed and accuracy. “… I remember an occasion in a cabmen’s shelter when some poor hungry fellow, eating steak-and-kidney pudding, thrust his knife into his mouth with such unrestrained violence that he cut his uvula, yet with that same knife he took salt from the salt cellar, and who can say what harm might come of this, assuming the man to have had an infected throat, and that the silver—I mean, cutlery—were not thoroughly washed? … On the other hand these sprinklers, while they are advantageous in that they keep the salt from contact with the human hand, which, as you must know, is not necessarily hygienic, have a certain grave disadvantage … the humidity of our climate and the deliquescence of salt tend to combine—as you have just demonstrated, sir—to … in effect, make salt damp and therefore difficult to pour. Now what could be simpler than this—a salt sprinkler with a moveable air-tight cap motivated by a spring and operated by a simple movement of the thumb? There it is,” he said, pointing to his drawings on the marble. “The cap, spring, mechanism, and container could all be manufactured for sixpence. People who buy such things would gladly pay a shilling. But what is the use of talking, what is the use of talking?”

  Solly Schwartz, chewing a mouthful of chips, stared at the table. In a few seconds the stranger had drawn three beautifully accurate diagrams marked A, B, and C, with neat arrows pointing to D, E, F, G, and H. “When did you think of that idea?” heasked.

  “Oh. just now. A triviality, a nothing. Think, my dear sir—think of that?” he smeared the diagrams away with his cuff. “Pah! I have thought of a thousand things better than that. But my real work, ah, that!”