The Thousand Deaths of Mr Small

by Gerald Kersh

  Mrs. Small said: “No cricket!”

  “But Father promised! I’m in the team!” shouted Charles Small.

  “No more cricket,” said Mrs. Small, “not with hard balls. No more hard balls.”

  So, as Charles Small remembers, he played the game alone in his little room. He had a bat. In fantasy he knocked a shadowy ball to boundary, blocked the slow bowler, subtly deflected the fast bowler for a bye.

  The old man, to do him justice, stood up for young Charles, but not for long, against Mrs. Small. As in the Mongolian proverb: When the egg contended with the stone, the yolk came out.

  Later when Charles Small, humiliated, told the old man that he had let down his team, I. Small wearily said: “You must do like your mother says,” and, patting Charles’s shoulder, gave him sixpence.

  But the boy did not want the sixpence. He went back to his little room and played with his bat—a most vigorous game, if there had been a ball. Only there were no balls except those that were thrown away—there are only balls of shadow.

  *

  Balls, balls, balls! How deep was Charles Small’s yearning for balls such as all the other boys normally played with! He asked his mother if he might have, at least, a rubber ball—for what was the use of a bat without a ball? But Millie Small said, firmly: “No cricket!” And there he was with a cricket bat, a toy cricket bat at that, cut out of one miserable end of pine wood and perfunctorily shaped by some fly-by-night novelty vendor. The other boys, the real boys, the ones that played cricket, had proper bats made of willow, with spliced cane handles.

  Charles Small bites his lips when he remembers how he took his bat, which he had begun to detest, to a fellow with an irregular hair-line—a little brute named Whiteside—and said: “I say, Whiteside—what’ll you give me for this?”

  Whiteside looked at the bat and said: “I’ll give you a magic lantern and twelve slides. What say?”

  Now Charles Small was excited. What say? What was to be said? One word: Done! So Whiteside took the bat and gave him one of the most tawdry contraptions of tin that ever sickened the heart of a small boy. It was about the size of a grapefruit—a deformed grapefruit. From the front of it protruded something like a snout with a glass eye at the end of it. At the back there was a nasty little door, as in an old-fashioned burglar’s dark lantern, into which one pushed a tiny paraffin lamp by the light of which it was possible to project meaningless images at short range upon a screen.

  Charles was jubilant. I. Small, looking stern, could scarcely restrain his excitement at this new toy, which he turned over and over, and examined with a critical eye. Mrs. Small asked: “Is it dangerous? Will it go off?”

  “Don’t be bleddy silly—I’ll fill it up myself,” said I. Small, taking the little lamp away. Charles Small hopped with impatience until the old man came back with the lamp filled and trimmed. A linen table-cloth was pinned to the wall. The magic lantern was set on the table. The slides were laid in order. At this point, Charles Small felt that perhaps this might be better than cricket. His hands were upon the controls; his audience tense.

  “Now watch,” he said, and put a match to the wick of the little lamp—whereupon the whole thing blew up with an ear-splitting bang, and blue flames crawled over the table. I. Small (he had filled the lamp with benzene) went flapping about like a demented walrus, bleddying and bleddying, puffing and snorting, while Mrs. Small did all that she was capable of doing: she screamed; as poor little Charles fingered the hot tin ruin that represented all that he had to show for his bat, for his ambition in the cricket field, and his aspiration to showmanship.

  When the piddling little flame flickered out, I. Small, panting as if he had rescued a family from a five-storey fire, struck Charles a shrewd blow with the Evening News and shouted: “Murderer!”

  “For God’s sake, not in the head!” screamed Mrs. Small.

  I. Small put the poor little magic lantern carefully into a fire-shovel and carried it to the dust-bin. For hours Mrs. Small roamed about the place sniffing for fire. Twice she had a nervous diarrhœa.

  No more pretty pictures in the dark for Charles Small.

  But there must have been a stubbornness in him, he thinks bitterly, for he did not quite abandon his position. In October he was invited to make one of the football team. Bursting with pride, he told his mother—not without trepidation. Could he have a pair of footballs boots, he asked. Mrs. Small, preoccupied at the moment with Priscilla, who had turned out to be a problem child, said: “Yes, if you’re a good boy….”

  And then, oh good God, how good he was! Butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. He sat dreaming of the field, the wet field under the threatening sky, and the wary contact of the twenty-two men … Charles Small was to the fore … he dribbled the ball—passed it to Jones. But Jones was charged by Smith—yet before Smith had time to take advantage of his opportunity, Charles Small’s shoulder had crashed into him, and the ball was at his feet, and the goal in easy reach. The goal-keeper stood, bobbing and weaving. The men of the opposing side were thundering up behind him … Charles Small kicked, quick and hard, and the heavy, soggy, leather ball left the mud and flew, straight and true, between the hands of the goal-keeper and into the net, while the crowd roared: “Goal!”

  But Mrs. Fitch came to tea, and when she heard that young Charles wanted football boots, having been nominated for a team, she drew a deep breath and raised her hands. Football, she said, was a ruffian’s game. Mrs. Foley’s little Edward played football and was kicked in the privates, so that he was ruptured, crippled tor life, and might never marry. Mrs. Small was her own mistress, of course; but for her part, Mrs. Fitch would as soon give her son a vial of prussic acid as a football. It was a very dangerous game. Now tennis, Mrs. Fitch said, was a gentlemanly game, played with a soft ball. Even ladies played it. But football? She would as soon, the heavens forbid, see her son underground, as being ruptured on a football field….

  So Charles Small was dreaming his dreams when his mother came to him and said, not without commiseration: “Charley, no football. No football boots, Charley.”

  The boy was appalled. He cried: “You promised! You promised!”

  Mrs. Small knew that she had promised, but her fear was stronger than her conscience, so she grew angry and shouted: “Be quiet when you speak to your mother!”

  After that, knowing that she was at fault, she stroked Charles’s head and said: “I’ll get you a big box of plasticine.”

  He shook himself away, put his face to the wall, and—when his mother was gone—wept, wept most bitterly.

  A little later she came up with some dish of eggs and potatoes that he especially favoured.

  He ate the food because he was young and hungry—although he detested his mother, who had cooked it. Millie watched him while he ate, shedding tears as usual. He was inclined to say, like his mother when she wanted to make his father miserable, that he could not touch a thing or swallow a bite, but appetite prevailed over grief, and he ate everything that was put before him—and plenty was put before him, because Mrs. Small was sorry for him, and feeling guilty, ashamed of herself.

  I. Small sat gloomily, smoking, fumbling at the Star. For once, Mrs. Small was quiet and complaisant, while the old man was gruff and indifferent. In spite of the lump in his throat, Charles swallowed a great deal of food, curiously calm.

  He achieved, just then, what might be described as a subjective objectivity—he pitied himself, hated them, seeing them for what they were; pitied them for being so pitiable; and hated himself for pitying them.

  Later, when he went to bed, his mother came into his little room to see that he was tucked up. He had been crying a little. At the sight of the tear-marks on his cheeks, her eyes gave out salt water. She said: “Don’t fret, Charley—to-morrow I’ll buy you a big box of plasticine.”

  Charles turned his face to the wall, weeping for the broken promise of the lost football. His mother went away, closing the door quietly (this was something to be remembe
red) because somewhere in her muddled head there was an impression … somewhere in her heart there was a feeling … that she had deceived a child as she in her time had been deceived….

  As she went downstairs she remembered an uncle, exhausted by goodness knows what excesses, who had come from South Africa with a belt full of gold. He was a well-dressed, distinguished-looking old man with a fine white moustache and a little imperial. But he had a growth in his throat, spoke in a growl, and had to be fed through his anus with some kind of a tube…. She remembered how she and her sisters used to giggle over this, making fantasies of the old man walking to the dinner table on his hands, taking a leg of chicken between his toes, and sticking it into his bottom. She was his favourite. He used to take her for little walks, treating her to ice-cream, sweets, or fruits; nothing that cost more than a halfpenny. The old man was dying, riding the white horse. He was not expected to last more than a month or two. His growl had turned to a sort of fierce whisper, a malodorous whisper. The family was breathless. It was expected that Millie was to inherit the thousands in bank-notes and gold that the old uncle kept in his belt.

  At last there came a day when he called her to him, saying that he had something important to give her, something to set her up for the rest of her life. Then there was a commotion. The youthful Millie was scoured and scrubbed from head to foot. Her hair was almost torn out of its roots with a fine comb, and she was put into a fancy dress. All this was not done without some smacking and weeping. At last, with a big butterfly-bow of pink ribbon in her hair, she was led into the presence of the rich old dying man. She expected a shower of gold.

  He gave her an old tin can with a slot crudely poked through the lid, dropped in a halfpenny, said: “Save!”—and died.

  She never forgot that disillusion, or the disgusting rattle of the little coin in the can.

  And now she was sorry. Still, Charley might have been kicked in the privates. As far as she was concerned, the privates were unnecessary. Nevertheless, remembering childish disappointment, she felt badly.

  Before he fell asleep, Charles Small heard the great voice of little Mr. Small in the bedroom below, saying: “Beggar the bleddy bats! Balls, schmalls! What’s the matter, what, with balls already? Yes and no, she says, in the same mouth. No son of hers, by her, should have balls. Let me alone. I want you should be quiet when you make these ructions. Balls, schmalls!”

  Then Charles Small heard no more, because he fell asleep.

  *

  Similarly, there was the affair of the skeleton. Charles Small had a kind of morbid interest in skeletons; dried, artificially-articulated bones. His mother, who disapproved of this, because to be interested in skeletons meant to be aware of the fact of death, forbade him to go to the Natural History Museum, which was full of the most tremendous skeletons—of Brontosauri, for example, fifty feet long. This was something like a skeleton: here was Death with a vengeance!

  “No more museums!” she said, dragging him away, and shuddering past the mounted remains of the Triceratops.

  On the ground floor there were wax models of lice, fleas, and bedbugs, none less than eighteen inches long. Charles wanted to stop and examine these interesting things, but there was a contretemps. I. Small paused, with his son, and looked with awe at the waxen model of a louse, saying: “What for a vermin! Look, Khatzkele—see what comes from not combing your head.” He became pale—probably he thought that this was a special kind of louse, stuffed; and visualised hundreds of them walking over him, biting like bulldogs. Charles was fascinated. Millie tried to drag him away, but his eyes were riveted on the effigy of the bedbug, which, weighing several pounds, looked horrible. It was red, it had six legs, it was nauseating: Charles Small could have looked at it for hours, and so, for that matter, could his old man. But Mrs. Small was embarrassed. Again, there was a monumental waxen reproduction of a flea. It stood about sixteen inches high. “You see, that’s what you get, not washing between your toes,” said I. Small.

  Mrs. Small said: “So that’s what he is. That’s all he can think of, fleas! Come out!”

  I. Small was helpless. Charles said that he wanted to have another look at the bedbug, but the old man said: “Beggar the bleddy bug!” in a voice that reverberated and echoed through the museum and stimulated into action a blue-uniformed attendant, who started out of a coma and sternly, in the voice of an old Sergeant of Guards, said: “None of that, now, d’yer ’ear?”

  Startled, I. Small said: “What did I said? Bugger the bleddy beg. What’s the matter, what?”

  “I want to look at the bug!” yelled Charles Small.

  The attendant said: “We can’t ’ave this sort of thing ’ere. Better be orf.”

  “No bugs!” said Mrs. Small, drawing her son to her with a firm hand. To the attendant, apologetically, she said: “They take fits into their heads.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  They dragged Charles to an A. B. C. tea shop off the Cromwell Road, where they ordered tea, crumpets, and pastries—fat cream buns and chocolate éclairs crammed with custard. Charles lusted after these delicacies, especially the crumpets, but he had a nostalgia for the great bedbug. So, apparently, had the old man, because before poking at his first crumpet Charles heard him mutter: “Beggar the bloody bug-begs!”

  Then he and Charles ate with gloomy voracity, while Mrs. Small, trying to eat a buttered crumpet with her gloves on, said: “So that’s what he is. Bugs they want. I haven’t got enough trouble. Bugs he wants. He takes after his father. As long as I know.”

  “Bugs, schmugs—beggar the bleddy buggers!” cried I. Small, overturning the teapot and crying out in pain as the hot liquid poured over his knees. He, too, was deeply interested in that bedbug. In his time he had killed things like that, no more than an eighth of an inch long, with his thumb, and seen his own blood squirt out of them. He wanted to look one square in the face; and this last simple pleasure was denied him.

  “Bugs, schmugs!” he said again.

  “Be quiet. You’re in the A. B C, not in Cracow,” whispered Mrs. Small. “If you want bugs, go to Cracow.”

  Charles Small was snivelling over his third buttered crumpet. “Blow your nose—I mean use your handkerchief—this minute!” cried Mrs. Small.

  Charles did so, with a frightful bubbling noise, while the manageress of the tea shop anxiously stood off and on, because there was suddenly the air of an impending massacre.

  All that happened was this: the old man patted the boy’s cheek and said: “Don’t worry, boychik, you’ll have bugs.”

  Then Charles Small, comforted, devoured a cream bun.

  But after that he found that he had a secret predilection for parasitic insects and for skeletons.

  So came the Affair of the Articulated Rabbit.

  There was a boy named Noggin—a dirty, furtive, self-seeking boy who, hearing that Charles Small was willing to pay good money for skeletons, offered skeletons. Charles Small wanted to start a museum; he wanted skeletons. Noggin said that he had the articulated skeleton of a rabbit, which he would sell for sixpence. Now Charles Small’s pocket money was carefully assigned: he bought the Magnet, and chocolate marshmallows. But for one week he deprived himself of the adventures of Billy Bunter and the delectable liquidation of a chocolate-covered oblong, and went hungry because he wanted to look at bones. For a whole week he wondered what had happened to Billy Bunter, Harry Wharton, and all the rest of the boys at Greyfriars’ School, yearning for his sixpenny skeleton.

  Noggin never came across. He was a dirty liar. He never had a skeleton, even of a wretched rabbit.

  Charles Small has not forgotten how, at long last, he went for Noggin with both hands. Noggin knocked him down. Charles got up, flinging ineffectual fists. Noggin, with a carefree laugh, knocked him down again. After a little while Charles Small, a little muddy, bloody, tearful, and bruised, said: “Why? Why?”

  “Because I wanted to,” said Noggin.

  Then Charles went to the lavatory and cried as
if his silly little heart would break—not because he had been punched in the mouth by Noggin, but because Noggin had punched him in the mouth because he wanted to, because he was triumphant, because he had swindled Charles Small and had an easy victim. This filled little Charles Small with a great sorrow.

  *

  Every mother’s son travails with a skeleton. The son of Millie Small, the bedevilled, bewildered Charles, had—as his mother might have said—bones on the brain. It seemed to him, somehow, that there was wisdom in the naked framework of the body, clean of flesh and guts, nice and dry, liberated from liver and lights. At that time he wanted to run a museum full of skeletons. But after the Noggin affair, looking at his collection, he knew that this was only a dream. Charles Small had the shells of a sparrow’s egg, a swallow’s egg, a chicken’s egg, a seagull’s egg; six assorted butterflies; a stag beetle pinned to a cork; and a number of stones of significant shapes which he had chosen to categorise as Stone Age.

  Now, all this was repulsive to him. Empty eggshells, cold stones! He swapped the whole collection for a broken Waterbury watch from the works of which it was possible to make spinning tops, and a pocket compass—for he had an idea that his destiny lay in the Congo, where such an article might come in handy. Later, he traded the watch and the compass for a white rat. He will never forget that incident. He came home at tea-time, jubilant for the nonce. He was late, having spent half an hour in passionate negotiation. I. Small and Millie were already sitting down to tea. There were muffins, jam, and some relish of tinned fish.

  “What have you been up to? Have you been kept in?” asked Mrs. Small.

  I. Small said: “Let him give a bleddy account from himself!” (Where he picked up that word, “account”, Charles was never able to discover.) “An account, a bleddy account,” shouted I. Small, picking up an immense steel poker with a brass knob. “Bleddy well account, or over goes this poker on the wrong side of your head!”

  “Not on the head! Srul, for God’s sake, not on the head!” cried Mrs. Small.