by Gerald Kersh
This is a digression. The old man struck Charles Small with such violence that he bent the evening newspaper over the boy’s head, trumpeting: “Actor, schmactor! I’ll actor you! Na!—Take that!” The leading article broke on Charles Small’s skull. “I’ll knock it out of him!” he said, as an aside, belabouring the boy with an advertisement for Coal Tar Soap. “I’ll break every bleddy bone in his bleddy body, the beggar!”
He stopped, at last, breathless, brandishing the stump of the little newspaper, his moustache anti-clockwise, as it generally was in such circumstances. Catching his breath, he said: “Now do you want to be an actor?”
Calm and pale, covered with bits of news-print, Charles Small said: “Yes!” He felt something like Coriolanus
This was the last straw. Dashing down his little bit of newspaper, I. Small went into the hall (as they called the passage) and came back with an immense oaken cudgel, which he grasped by the ferrule and held high, baring his teeth—the primeval I. Small, red-eyed, murderous—saying: “An actor, yes or no, or over goes this stick on the wrong side of your bleddy head!”
Millie Small, terrified, shrieked: “Srul, Srul, not on the head! On the bottom, not on the head!”
“Bottom, schmottom—yes or no—quick!”
Charles Small remembers that, thinking of Coriolanus, he drew himself up proudly, and said: “I want to be an actor”—and waited for the club to fall, knowing perfectly well that it never would fall. It didn’t. The old man lowered the great stick which, properly wielded, might have knocked down a bullock (Charles remembers seeing him run like a maniac when a heifer mooed in a meadow, leaving his wife and children behind him) and said, portentously: “So! All right! You wait! You’ll see!”
Then he grounded his stick imperiously, but—as if you didn’t know!—imperiously drove the ferrule into his own instep. Then, by the Lord, there was the devil to pay. Blinding and beggaring blasting and bleddying, making like Job covered with boils and God out of the Whirlwind all in one—with a certain flavour of Jeremiah and Habakkuk—violent and incomprehensible as the Book of Revelations—I. Small went off the deep end. He cast his shoe over Edom; at least he kicked himself. He smote the Amalekites; he beat his breast and smacked himself in the face. He wiped out the Amorites, and slew Og, king of Bashan. He punched himself on the nose. If he had been a contortionist he would have kicked himself in the stomach. And all the time he hopped, caressing his injured foot. He hurled the great oak stick away; and even that did no harm: it rebounded from a stuffed sofa and fell to the carpeted floor.
Charles Small, with the scornful smile he had so often rehearsed—when he was not busy picking at his pimples—stood like a rock … well, if not exactly a rock, a well-set jelly … until the old man, quite exhausted, sat down on the first available piece of furniture. This happened to be a coal scuttle, an aristocratic coal scuttle of oak with plenty of brass on it. On top of this coal scuttle there was a brass knob shaped like an acorn. As luck would have it—trust the old man!—when he threw himself down with all his weight, something untoward happened. If you paid him for it, he could never have managed it in a hundred years. But on this night of all nights, by some trick of chance, the brass acorn went through his trousers and into his anus.
Little Priscilla, who had witnessed the entire scene, danced happily around the room, crying: “More again, Daddy! More again!”
“Go to bed,” said Mrs. Small. “Srul, don’t make a fool of yourself, get up!”
In a whisper that sounded like a buzz-saw going through knotty wood, I. Small said: “Send the bleddy beggars to bed. A nice thing!” Then he bellowed: “To bed! To bleddy bed! Quick! By my life and yours, too, Millie!”
Coriolanus, with folded arms, scornfully looking down his nose at the rabble, said:
“… You common cry of curs! whose breath I hate
As reek o’ the rotten fens, whose loves I prize
As the dead carcasses of unburied men
That do corrupt my air, I banish you …”
At this, despite his agony, I. Small started to get up, but the lid of the coal scuttle came with him so that he sat down again with a shrill cry of pain. Charles (the noblest Roman of them all) strode out, draped in his imaginary toga. The ludicrous I. Small sat helplessly gesticulating while Millie Small got Priscilla out of the room. Priscilla was a difficult child, and a perspicacious one. (Most of the difficultness of children has its roots in precocious perspicacity.) Priscilla wanted to see the show right through to the Curtain. Millie Small got her to bed at last. When she was neatly tucked in she said, clearly and with resolution: “I am going to be an actress too, Mummy.”
“Don’t be a naughty girl, or I’ll give you such a smacking! Only wicked women are actresses.”
“I don’t care,” said Priscilla.
“You dare say that again!”
“I don’t care. I’m going to be an actress.”
Mrs. Small slapped her, slapped her with all her might. When she was exhausted, and had to pause for breath, Priscilla, who had swallowed her tears, said with tremendous vigour—as if punishment had strengthened her determination: “I don’t care, don’t care, don’t care! Going to be an actress! So there!”
“I’ll kill you,” said Millie Small.
“Don’t care!”
Millie Small was defeated. What was there to do? Take a hatchet and kill the child? She raised a threatening finger and said: “You wait!”—turned out the light, slammed the door, and went downstairs. Her right hand tingled. The child was hard as iron.
In the sitting-room, I. Small, making noises like a stuck pig, was anointing himself with Vaseline. For the nonce Millie was sorry for him. “Risk your life for them, kill yourself for them, and that’s what you get for it,” she said, and gave the old man a powerful infusion of senna pods; carefully polished the knob on top of the coal scuttle, and went to bed. It had been a heavy day.
*
Now, indeed, I. Small was in trouble. He could not sit down, he could not stand up, he could not lie down—the only comfortable posture was kneeling, especially after Millie anointed his fundament with a burning ointment which (as it later transpired) had been given to her by some tea-drinking crony whose husband ran a livery stable. It was all a mistake—I. Small was smeared with some stuff used by horse-chaunters to patch up scabs on the insensitive hides of old cab-horses.
The state of affairs became intolerable. He had to eat his meals on his knees, leaning over two chairs. At last, discomfort proving stronger than shame, he went to a local doctor—some cantankerous old failure who regarded the stethoscope as a new-fangled doodah—a doctor highly regarded in the locality because he had an evil temper and bad manners. I. Small consulted this doctor upon the advice of Lizzard, the atheistic cobbler, who said: “You go to Dr. Ribbon. That man’s no hypocrite. A few years ago, cutting a bit of leather, I gashed my thigh to the bone. Quick as lightning I get a wax-end and needle, and stitch it up. Then I go to Dr. Ribbon and I say: ‘Dr. Ribbon, what’ll I do now?’ and Dr. Ribbon says: ‘Go to hell, that will be three-and-six.’ There’s a man what’s lost his chains. You go to Dr. Ribbon!”
So I. Small, walking at an odd angle, went to Dr. Ribbon. He could not sit on the grubby sofa in the dingy green waiting-room, so he stood, leaning on his stick, looking so sad and so noble that a woman whose womb had fallen out but who patronised Dr. Ribbon because he insulted her, whispered to a neighbour with scabies: “There’s a proper gentleman.”
The womb and the scabies having been more or less kicked out of the surgery, a frightful voice cried: “Next!” and I. Small limped into the presence of a disappointed-looking man with bloodshot eyes and a purple face reticulated with burst capillaries and studded with warts. He was about seventy-five years old. His black morning coat was glossy with grease and grey with ashes. He wore an artificial shirt-front of celluloid, which had broken loose from its mooring, so that I. Small could see some square inches of grey flannel shirt. The surgery stank of chl
oroform and alcohol. I. Small was profoundly impressed. This was the way to live—do what you like, treat people like dogs.
“Well? What’s the matter with you?” asked Dr. Ribbon.
I. Small did not know quite how to speak to such a man. He said: “My—hoxcuse me—bottom.”
This caused the doctor to fly into a rage. “Bottom? Bottom? I asked you what’s the matter with you! Your bottom’s not the matter with you. What’s the matter with your bottom? Drop your trousers and look sharp about it!”
I. Small did so, and a fine figure he must have cut, lifting the skirts of his coat and the tail of his shirt with his left hand while he covered his puny nakedness with his right, with his trousers about his ankles. Dr. Ribbon poked at him with a grimy forefinger and then, rolling a cigarette, said: “Apply Vaseline. You have a simple abrasion of the anus. Button up your trousers. Three-and-sixpence. Good day to you.”
Pale as ashes, I. Small put down a half-crown and a shilling, and said, in a tremulous voice: “Gevalt!”
On the way home he had to fortify himself with sixpenny-worth of brandy, because this diagnosis had shaken him. When he reached home Millie, who had been worrying herself sick, greeted him with wild cries. “Srul! What did the doctor say?”
Smiling bravely in his pain I. Small patted her shoulder and said: “I don’t want I should have the pleasure of bringing bad news, Millie, but you got to grin and bear it. I got Anus.”
Four days later he went back to Dr. Ribbon, because this affair was preying on his mind. “Well, what is it now?” asked the Doctor.
“Please. This, this, disease, this Anus—sis catching?”
“Your anus is your arse-hole, you fool. Three-and-sixpence. Go away.”
I. Small went home, dejected. When Millie asked him what the doctor had said, he waved her away and replied: “Don’t ask!”
He was thoroughly wretched. Maya, Illusion! He had been led to believe that he had an Anus, and it had turned out to be an arse-hole, such as one might find in any Tom Dick or Harry.
*
About this time Priscilla developed an interest in tadpoles. Goodness knows how she caught them, but she came home one afternoon with a jam-jar full of water in which swam five little black things shaped like commas. (Charles Small believes that she wheedled those tadpoles out of a bewildered boy.) The old man looked at these creatures with horror. “What new madness is this, already?” he asked.
Clear-eyed and indignant, Priscilla replied: “They are tadpoles, Daddy!”
“Hm—tedpoles!” said I. Small, and went away. Later he came back to look at these strange creatures, lashing about with their diaphanous tails. He spent hours before the jam-jar. Once, he offered them a little bit of liver sausage, which sank to the bottom of the jar, where it remained ignored, while the disconsolate tadpoles swam around and seemed to look at him with disdain. He was interested to observe their growth. He was an early riser. One morning, about six-thirty, the Small ménage—and half the street, for that matter—was awakened by something that sounded like Roland’s Horn. Millie Small hurried down in her night-dress, saying that she had “just dozed off”—she pretended, the liar, that she never slept—she was always too full of care to do anything but doze off. Charles came running, buttoning his trousers, followed by Priscilla, half-naked, scratching her bottom.
“For God’s sake! What’s the matter with him now?”
Pointing a trembling forefinger at the jam-jar, I. Small stammered: “What next will they bring into the house? The bleddy beggars have got hands! Chuck ’em in the dust-bin! … Hands, already!”
Despite Priscilla’s shrill protests, the old man forced Charles to throw the tadpoles into the dust-bin. He was afraid to touch the jar himself—no doubt he had some creepy idea that they might leap out and grab him by the throat. But he could not get away with that kind of thing with Priscilla. On the afternoon of that same day, at tea-time, she placed before her father a large plate covered with a bowl. I. Small pinched her cheek playfully, smiled in anticipation, called her a good girl, and lifted the bowl. Then he cried to God like a damned soul because, with a “Brekekekex—koax—koax——!” two large frogs jumped into his lap. He held them at bay with a bread-knife, shouting: “Stand back!” Millie Small went out to call a policeman, while Priscilla laughed herself into convulsions and Charles sucked his thumb, not daring to laugh. When the policeman arrived he saw the old man slicing empty air with a bread-knife, and said: “Come on now, this won’t do. Stick that knife in me, and you’ll be the sufferer.”
“Bleddy liddle green beggars jumping all over me! Where’s your cruncheon?”
“You put that knife down, or you’ll soon find out,” said the policeman. “Does he drink, Missus?”
“Oh no!”
“Ever threaten before?”
“No, no.”
“Want to make a charge?”
“Certainly not!”
The policeman was disappointed. He pocketed his notebook, gave I. Small a long, hard stare, and said in a cold clear voice: “Lucky for you. We’ve got our eye on you. You’d better be careful. I know your sort. Better watch out!”
“The bleddy things jumped all over me off of the bleddy plate!” I. Small shouted.
“That’s all right now. We’ve heard that tale before. Now you’ve been warned. Remember. We’ve got our eye on you…. Are you quite sure you don’t want to make a charge, Ma’am?”
The policeman sounded so wistful that Millie Small was half-inclined to oblige him. But she said: “No, thanks. Would you like a nice cup of tea?”
The policeman said that he had to be on his beat. Some other time, perhaps. In the meantime Mrs. Small might rest assured that her dangerous husband would be under constant supervision.
This was why, thereafter, I. Small, when he went out, scuttled like a rat to the corner of the street before turning up his moustache and walking on his way, whistling “Lily of Laguna”.
On the following day Priscilla brought home six newts. I. Small hated the sight of them, but he dared not say a word. They, too, had horrid little hands. She kept them in a bedpan. For fear of what she might do next, the old man did not say a word. For all he knew she might bring home a bleddy crocodile. But one night he crept into the room Priscilla shared with her brother, and poured carbolic into the water, so that by dawn the newts were liquidated.
*
If I. Small thought that Priscilla would be discouraged by the death of her newts, he was to learn that, as the saying goes, he was talking out of his hat. Two days later she came in from school at tea-time with a hop, a skip and a jump, and put on the table an animal at the sight of which Millie Small went off like a factory whistle and the old man bayed like a bloodhound. It was, in fact, a dangerous-looking creature. It was deathly white, with an arched spine, a pink nose and ruby-red eyes. From nose to tail it must have measured about twelve inches. Charles, also, as he remembers, was afraid of this beast because, looking first at him and then at the old man, it bared two rows of teeth like needles. I. Small was petrified, frozen with dread. He tried to say “Bleddy——” through a mouthful of muffin, but made a noise like Blubby—while the animal watched him closely.
“It’s a ferret,” said Priscilla. “His name is Dicky.”
I. Small gulped his mouthful, washed it down with tea, wiped his moustache, filled his lungs for a nice loud outcry and raised the Westminster Gazette for a deadly stroke; while Millie Small said, in an hysterical voice: “This is all I’m short of!”
“Better be nice to him—Dicky bites,” said Priscilla. “Ferrets bite. They kill rats and rabbits. When they bite, they don’t let go until their teeth meet. They suck blood. Old Gonger told me.”
Cautiously drawing back his chair—knocking over his cup in the process—the old man, moist with hot tea and cold sweat, stared fearfully at the ferret. All he could say was: “Who’s Gonger?” in a feeble voice.
Old Gonger, it appeared, was one of Priscilla’s gentleman friends.
He was a professional rat-catcher: a horrid old man. Looking at him, sensitive observers felt that his business was fratricidal. He looked like a rodent; he was rat-coloured, he smelled like a rat, he was verminous, and thoroughly detestable. He was generally seen lurking in the twilight with a sack full of sewer rats, great ferocious ones, which he sold at the back door to a sporting publican who kept a bull terrier that could kill twenty-eight of the fiercest rats in two minutes. For a quart of ale, Gonger would bite a live rat’s head off. He was a species of Geek. Yet, by some mysterious means, Priscilla had touched some tender spot in the heart of this malodorous man. He let her accompany him to a rat-infested warehouse, where he delighted her by pulling out of his pockets (his trousers pockets, at that) a pair of deadly little red-eyed animals that went, silent as smoke, after their grey enemies … and then there was much agonised squeaking followed by a sickening silence. Also, he laid down poison and set traps, big wire traps of the Catch-’Em-Alive-O type. Suddenly he started, thrust his right hand into his left armpit and, with an impatient exclamation, dragged out another ferret which—recognising him for what he was perhaps—had buried its teeth in his arm. Gonger cuffed the ferret’s head, saying: “Dicky! Haven’t I told you a thousand times? Spiteful bugger!”
