The Thousand Deaths of Mr Small

by Gerald Kersh

  LOOK OUT! IT’S COMING! …

  … HOLD YOUR BREATH! ANT MINUTE NOW! …

  … NEXT SUNDAY! WAIT FOR IT! …

  And then, “THE NEW INQUIRER!” FEARLESS, SENSATIONAL!

  People wondered what the hell it was all about, for this kind of advertising inspired public interest then. He addressed the editor and the staff saying: “… If you’ve got to be serious, make it rough. I want love, marriage and divorce. I want crime. There’s a man under sentence in Pentonville Gaol who killed three wives for the insurance money—get his story, write it for him, pay him what he asks. Blood and thunder, offences against small boys, rape, robbery, that’s what the public wants, the trottels—excitement! … Politics? We haven’t got no politics—we’re independent of politics—we go for everybody. We cater to the common trottel, the man in the street, the grumbler, see? And specially, specially, for the woman in the street. Once you’ve got the woman, you’ve got the man by the balls. Pictures, ructions—d’you follow me?” … and so on in this vein.

  They followed him all right. He had chosen his men well. They were men after his own heart.

  The New Inquirer shook the country. Mothers forbade their daughters to read it. But they read it themselves. It was so scandalous, so sexy, so eminently suitable for reading on a Sabbath afternoon, when you were relaxed, after you and the old man had taken advantage of the kids’ absence at Sunday school to have a bit of a cuddle. Then, again, Solly Schwartz stopped at nothing in his efforts to innate the circulation. A flock of seedy salesmen went bleating from door to door all over London with Free Gift Offers. If you took out a subscription to the New Enquirer for one year, you received something valuable, such as a tea set, a camera, or an illustrated dictionary. It looked like sheer benevolence; Schwartz was giving away more than he was receiving. But the circulation soared phenomenally and so, therefore, did the advertising rates. Soon, most of the other newspapers tried the same trick, but Schwartz was one jump ahead of them. He put out an unprecedented offer—Free Insurance. He got the idea from an actuary named Rappoport. It was sublime in its simplicity: you had simply to register yourself as a permanent subscriber to the New Inquirer and you were automatically insured against accidents. The New Inquirer paid quite a considerable sum for the loss of both arms and/or legs, and something worth having if you put out both your eyes. If you were lucky enough to die under the wheels of a truck, your compensation ran into thousands. So the circulation swelled and swelled, and the Inquirer grew so fat with advertising that eager readers had to look twice for the news, although the scabrous stuff remained conspicuous enough.

  Charles Small, who was now earning a good salary, played his part, too. Still secretly stage-struck, he went to Solly Schwartz and said: “Look, Mr. Schwartz, I’ve got an idea.”

  “Out with it, quick, trottel. I haven’t got all day.”

  “Well … say the Inquirer organised Dramatic Societies all over the country, amateur Dramatic Societies, and rented theatres for special performances and … and gave cash prizes. I could look after that side of it, you know.”

  “Hm, yes, it’s not a bad idea. But listen, I’ve got a better one. Never mind Dramatic Societies. Who wants to go and see some little pimple-face rushing about like a fart in a colander playing King Henry, or whatever it is? No, for that you want a whole rigmarole with rehearsals and all that. Waste of time. What you mean is this—an Inquirer Local Talent Competition, with cash prizes. You know these trottels—they all think they can sing, and dance, and do conjuring tricks, and make comedy acts. The thing to do is, get a few big names from the music-halls to go here, there, everywhere—all sorts of big names—and act as judges and award cash prizes. And a chance, maybe, for every prizewinner to get a little employment somewhere. That can be done through old Jolly Isaacs. It’s not a bad idea. Work out details along those lines, and I’ll put you in charge of the scheme.”

  Then Solly Schwartz raised his wages and gave him a bonus, and Charles Small found some little comfort in organising the Inquirer Local Talent Competitions. He made contact with famous figures in Variety. Still he was unhappy, because he was in love with Ivy Narwall, passionately in love, and Ivy Narwall was not a Jewish girl.

  CHAPTER XXVII

  CHARLES SMALL throws himself back on the bed with a hissing sigh of exhaustion. He has a slow puncture; he is nearly empty. He tries to refresh himself by biting his nails—a habit which soothes him because it occupies all his attention and leaves no room for thought—like nose-picking. But here again he is frustrated. He generally saved one finger-nail—the little one on his left hand—for a week-end treat, but he remembers that he extravagantly ate it all up on Friday. And there he lies, poor man, picking and gnawing and worrying the ragged edges of himself until the blood comes and there is nothing left to bite—no comfort left, not even the consolation of the feel of himself under his own teeth.

  (Once he tried to cure himself of the habit by biting quill toothpicks, but it didn’t work; he had to eat himself.)

  … Yes, Ivy was a schiksa, a woman of the Gentiles, and he was one of God’s Chosen People. What drivel! He had been circumcised in the flesh of his silly little foreskin; so he was one of the Chosen People. He had been taught to gabble prayers in a language neither he, nor his father, nor his friends understood—“Let him know he’s a Yid,” I. Small had said. He had a hooked nose and kinky hair, and was fed on meat that had been soaked and salted to tastelessness; so he was one of the Chosen People. Why, the confounded kosher butchers who bled their bleddy beef did not even know why they bled it. He was not allowed to smoke between sunset on Friday and sunset on Saturday. The Law of Moses ordains that the Chosen People must rest on the Sabbath; and to kindle fire, to strike a match, was to work. (The old man had an idea that it was because Moses was prejudiced against tobacco. He used to smoke in the lavatory, reading a newspaper. But they cooked and warmed themselves all right.) The Chosen People were forbidden to do business, or even talk of money, on Saturday. Yet they kept their shops open and lit their fires. The Lord rested on the Seventh Day: Charles Small remembers one snotty old man who, on Saturday, would not even carry a handkerchief, because the transportation of that square of linen from his house to the synagogue might be classified as Labour. He tied his handkerchief about his waist, so that it might be argued that it was a garment; putting one over on Jehovah. The whole damned Law, as Charles sees it, is nothing but a mass of absurd prohibitions, productive of nothing but evasions, deceits, dirty secrets, and nauseous hypocrisy. How odd of God to choose the Jews … what was that reply? It isn’t odd, the Jews chose God…. The whole thing is too absurd. They beat their breasts in the synagogues on the Day of Atonement and lived strictly kosher between the four comfortable Wailing Walls of their homes … but ate in unclean, fashionable restaurants, with goys—ate forbidden food, and enjoyed it—the flesh of animals that have cloven hoofs but do not chew the cud, preparations of fishes that have no scales, birds that have been shot, not ritually butchered. They shaved their beards. They howled their heads off over Zion and the Land of Israel to which—if the Prophecy is to be fulfilled, which it must—they must return. Wild horses couldn’t drag the meanest old-clothes man to the Levantine Coast—let alone Nathan, the Photographer, who is a great man in the Movement, and induces silly fools of humble artisans to drop their sweaty pennies into blue tin boxes. According to the Law, the wives of the Chosen People were supposed to segregate themselves to be purified for ten days after menstruation. He can just see them doing it…. And as for that miraculous flight of quails in the Wilderness—were quails kosher? Did they cut the quails’ throats with a gabbled ritual and hang them up to bleed? Just try it and see. A quail, after having flown a thousand miles from Africa to Italy, and almost exhausted, poor bird, is hard enough to hit with a shot-gun…. He could go on for hours about who was Cain’s Wife; and why, having chanted an appalling list of slayings, the Chosen, at the Passover feast, cried: “For His Mercy endureth forever!” And it does
not seem reasonable to him that these secretive circumcised pig-eaters, these kosher whore-mongers should raise their hands in protest at his love, his deep pure love, for gentle Ivy Narwall.

  But so they did. When, at last, Charles Small scraped up enough pluck to say: “I’m going to marry Ivy,” one supper-time, the old man cut himself in the corner of the mouth with a knife—he was eating peas—and Millie Small had to go and lie down. This was all they were short of. This was the crowning disgrace. Charles Small, one of the Chosen People, handpicked by the Lord God Almighty, wanted to marry—to marry, mind you—a goyah, a Christer, a Jew-hater, an eater of pigs! So that was what he was, was it?

  Charles Small lost his puny temper and shouted: “You ought to talk about eating pigs! Haven’t I seen you with my own eyes eating ham—pig’s arse—in Appenrodt’s? Don’t talk to me about eating pigs! Pig-eater yourself!”

  At this, I. Small called him a bleddy dirty liar, and made as if to impale him upon a fork. Charles Small caught up a dessert spoon, and so they stood, with crossed cutlery, until the old man knuckled under, whimpering: “Sha! Be quiet with your Appenrodt’s … smoked selmon … I made a mistake. Didn’t we all make mistakes, isn’t it? Ham, schmam, we all make mistakes. But a schiksa to marry? Sooner or later she calls you a dirty Jew. Then comes bleddy murder, and you break your poor mother’s bleddy heart. On the gellows you end like Crappen——”

  “—Crippen!”

  “Crippen, schmippen! Your mother, she’s not a well woman, and she bore you. Charley, Charley, think of your mother, all she went through…. You should have heard…. It was something terrible. And now she’s not well in her inside, and you want to take her life away! What do you want from our lives? We are not youngsters any more. A year, two years, have pity, Khatzkele, have pity on thy father and thy bleddy mother. For your sake she tore her insides out like a chicken! Marry Hettie, a respectable Yiddisher girl. You got nothing but your chains to lose. Don’t break your poor mother’s heart, Charley.”

  “I hate Hettie. I love Ivy,” said Charles Small, “I want to marry Ivy. I’m not going to marry Hettie. That’s final.”

  “Then out of this bleddy house you go this minute!” howled I. Small, picking up a plate of stewed apples and custard. Charles Small, proud and pale, said: “I desire nothing better. I am earning my own living. I do not propose to stay.”

  He strode to the door. Before he turned the door-knob, there was a terrible outcry of women. Millie Small had had a hæmorrhage.

  All the same, Charles Small walked steadfastly to his room and packed a suitcase. I. Small stopped him at the foot of the stairs. All the bluster and bluff were knocked out of him, and he looked terribly old. He had been crying; one tear still trembled on his woe-begone moustache, and that martial moustache had retreated from his wet eyes towards his chin. “Charley … my darling …” he stammered, “… to please me, for your mother’s sake. If you must go, God forbid, if you must go—why now, just this minute? Your mother’s taken bad, Charley. Please!”

  It was this please that brought Charles Small to a halt, and that was his undoing. Three or four more of the old man’s tears so watered his already diluted resolution that he put down the suitcase.

  “At least, Charley, go in, say good-bye. She’s been a good mother to you, Charley. Is it too much to ask? Bled——” I. Small wept, and even that he did clumsily, making a noise like an unskilled motorist changing gears. He had gone from third into reverse and stripped himself; and, skidding on the slippery contents of his handkerchief, sounded the wavering horn of his poor red nose until even the power to make a noise went out of him. His lights went out. He was still and silent.

  Then Charles, who had at first been inclined to laugh hysterically, remembered little things, such as the cold chicken carved with the curved cobbler’s knife and the drop of blood on the plate; and the surreptitious outings, and the little bursts of tenderness. Not far from tears himself, he put an arm about the old man’s shaking shoulders, and led him back to the sitting-room. The doctor, with his black bag, was putting on his overcoat. “Well, Doctor, what is?” asked I. Small. “Please!”

  Charles Small almost weeps, remembering that word, popping and hissing from under that tear-bedraggled moustache.

  The doctor said: “I’m afraid I’ll have to call in a specialist. There is Mr. Ellery of Harley Street, if you can afford——”

  “—Ellery, schmellery, afford, call, call!” cried I. Small, plucking at his moustache. “A … a … a mother … she bore you … sis … Afford? Everything, anything—take, take! A boy’s best friend!”

  Charles Small asked: “Is it serious?”

  The doctor said: “I think so, but I’d rather consult Mr. Ellery.”

  “Mister did you say, Doctor?” Charles asked.

  “Mr. Ellery,” said the doctor.

  Something like a wet feather seemed to run from Charles Small’s neck down to his coccyx, because he knew that in the medical profession Mister meant F.R.C.S., Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, the smiler with the knife under his cloak.

  Leaving his packed suitcase where he had put it down, by the umbrella stand, Charles Small went back to his room and thought of Ivy Narwall, envying the old man for his power to weep. For Charles, that night, there was no relief in tears. He lay awake, twisting and turning between the sheets, and yearning, always yearning, for a little calm, a little peace in the gentle arms of soft-eyed Ivy Narwall.

  *

  Soft-eyed Ivy Narwall! Soft Ivy Narwall! As quickly as you can snap your fingers, Charles Small flies from sentimental reminiscence into retrospective rage. A nice pair they would have made. Shit and sugar! She was as abject as he, and there was not much to choose between her people and his. Hers also were Chosen People, sinkers of the Amalekites and the Amorites; casters of their shoes over their Edoms, the ranting, canting, hip-and-thigh Nonconformists. He could see Jack Squire, who moved that the Dramatic Society use the Bowdlerised Shakespeare—who blushed at pleasure’s name—who saw lustful thighs in the fork of a tree and phallic symbols in every toadstool and acorn—who tittered, shaking a deprecating head at the sound of the word “naked”…. Oh, how clearly could he see the pious Squire leaping out of the Chapel and into the bridal chamber, to slake his dirty lust, demanding his marital rights! Legitimatised, respectable rapist! Purified pervert! He, too, was Chosen, like the Narwalls, and would gladly have burned at the stake his equivalent of goyim—Baptists, Methodists, Peculiar Methodists, Primitive Methodists, Jews, Greek-Orthodoxes, and above all Roman Catholics. Charles Small wrings his hands when he thinks of his Ivy lying, sick and shuddering, under that unctuous bulk, crying in the dark, no doubt, and wishing that he would stop his insistent fumbling and go to sleep, and leave her to mourn over the perfidy of Charles Small. He can see this podgy Congregationalist devil, first with unacceptable caresses and later with sanctified violence, exacting his due. Charles Small can see the whole business as clearly as if he had his eye to the keyhole of the bedroom … the complacent ferocity of Squire, licensed at last by the Church to make three-dimensional his furtive fantasies, worrying and probing at his lawfully wedded wife who wishes that Charles were there to save her. Oh, dear God, if you are all-powerful, how can you be all-good? And if you are all-good, how can you he all-powerful? …

  He is lost in a labyrinth; a dark, nightmarish maze, in which Man stalks himself, with malice aforethought, wet-mouthed and bare-toothed, fearfully biting at his own shadow, ignorant of the ambient light.

  For the sake of sanity, Charles Small—having no nails left to bite—is forced back into a state of subjective objectivity.

  Charles Small, in his theatrical fantasies, has insinuated himself into the shapes of many men who were great of heart and soul. He has swung his sword at the right hand of Gideon. He has burned at the stake with Ridley and Latimer, saying, while the flames licked at his belly: “Be of good cheer, Brother Ridley. We have this day in England lit such a candle as by God’s grace shall
never be put out.” He was Job. It was he, Charles Small, who had taken the wings of the morning and dwelled in the uttermost parts of the sea. He was Saint Thomas More, who, jesting at the gallow’s foot, and being somewhat enfeebled, said to the executioner: “Help me up, and for my going down let me fend for myself.” He was brave Grindecobbe of St. Albans, who put his neck into the noose in the name of common liberty and the rights of the common man. He was Jack Straw, at the head of the men of Kent, and he was Wat Tyler, out of Surrey. He was, in a Chassidic way, the mad priest, John Ball, the wild rhymester of the hopeless revolt, singing. He was Richard, he was Raymond, he was Bohemund, Belisarius, Beethoven … a dreamer of great dreams and a fighter of mighty fights in the name of the Dream—a man of great faith …

  So says Charles Small’s dream …

  “… So says my dream, but what am I?

  A child crying in the night,

  A child crying for the light

  And with no language but a cry …”

  No language but a cry. The poet hit the nail on the head, thinks Charles Small, bang on the head as far as he is concerned. He knows how to cry, but is inarticulate, impotent, newly-born in middle life, mewling and puking in his ghostly mother’s arms, powerless to bite, powerless to grip, incoherent; strong only in his power to inspire pity and the fear and the hate that pity begets—just as he was when the midwife washed his eyes—just as his father and his mother were when they saw that he might be a man and humbly became children again.

  Where does it begin, where does it end? Charles Small asks of the ceiling. And where? he shouts into the chamber-pot, which does not even throw back an echo. It seems to him that everything is a beginning, and there is no middle, only a lonely road leading into a receding mist which veils an unknown end. It may be that there is a God, and it may be that there is a Devil. It may be that there is no God; nothing but a rolling ball whirling at twenty-five thousand miles an hour on its orbit around the sun, which, huge and bright as it is, is nothing but a dust-mote borrowing a little light from God-knows-where….