The Thousand Deaths of Mr Small (15 page)

“What do you mean, take it? I couldn’t take a thing like
this!
”

“Don’t be silly, I’ve got plenty of sticks—I’ve got seventeen walking-sticks,” said Solly Schwartz. “I want to make you a present. Take it, Srulke, and hold your jaw. Hoi, waiter, let’s have some more beer. Drink up, Srulke, and tell us what’s the matter.”

There were tears in I. Small’s eyes as he stroked the crocodile on the walking-stick and said: “Nothing. You mustn’t give me a stick like this. By my life and yours too, Solly, I won’t take it!”

“Shut up. Don’t argue with me, Srulke—I don’t like people arguing with me. Take it and be quiet, or are you trying to annoy me? … Now I asked you a simple question,
schlemazzel,
and all I want is a simple answer. What’s the matter with you? Things are bad?”

“They could be better, Solly, and they could be worse.”

Solly Schwartz had grown masterful in the past three years, and his temper had not sweetened. His Punch’s-face was almost malignant as he said: “Give me a straight answer, will you? Everything could be better, everything could be worse. You’re short of money, that’s what it is, isn’t it?”

“Who said so?”

“Well, you’re in Mayfair, aren’t you? What more do yon want?”

“Beggar Mayfair,” said I. Small.

“You wouldn’t take my advice, would you?” said Solly Schwartz, appearing, with his tight, sunken mouth, to bite a mouthful of beer and drink a forkful of ham. “And I should have patience with you!”

“Solly, what’s the matter?” said I. Small, miserably, bewildered, “what did I say? What did I do wrong? What are you so annoyed with me for? The business is a failure: all right, don’t we all make mistakes, Solly? For God’s sake …” Suddenly I. Small became angry: “… Wherever I go must it be always the same thing? In the house, out of the house, upstairs, downstairs; what do they want with me?” The beer was creeping into his veins. “What do they want me to do? Grow wings? Fly?”

Solly Schwartz said to the waiter: “Bring two more beers,” and gripping I. Small’s wrist in his swarthy right hand squeezed it until the bones seemed to crack, saying: “Don’t get excited.”

“He’s got a hand like a pair of pinchers,” said I. Small, rubbing his wrist; and he seemed to fall into a reverie. Arranging his
moustache with the back of a forefinger he looked straight in front of him in his bewildered, thunderstruck way, at six empty glasses on an adjacent table. He gazed so intently that his eyes crossed and the six glasses became twelve, the twelve became twenty-four, forty-eight, ninety-six, a hundred and ninety-two, three hundred and eighty-four, seven hundred and sixty-eight … they multiplied, shifting, iridescent like soap-bubbles in a loose lather until they filled the restaurant. He stared, hypnotised. Then a waiter whisked the glasses away, and all the bubbles burst, and there was Solly Schwartz grinning at him out of a blue drift of fragrant cigar smoke.

“Excuse me, Solly; all of a sudden it went to my head.”

“Head! You haven’t got a head,
schusterkopf!
Come on now, I’m asking you a simple question. You’re in debt. How much?”

“What difference does it make? What’s the use of talking about my troubles? Let’s talk about old times, Solly.”

Solly Schwartz snapped like a dog as he said: “Keep your old times. I’m finished with old times. I want new times. I was asking you a question. Don’t answer if you don’t want to. But listen, Srul, there’s a saying: the shoemaker should stick to his last.”

“My last what?”

“You should have stuck to your trade,” said Solly Schwartz.

“You didn’t, did you?”

“I’m different. You, you were born a
schuster
and you’ll die a
schuster.
So you ought to live a
schuster.
You ought to have taken my advice when I told you to get a machine and go in for the repairing on a proper scale. But no, the
schlemihl
has got to take a shop in such a back alley that even the policeman on the corner never heard of it. Who goes into a back alley to buy a pair of boots? … Mayfair! If you’d done what I told you you wouldn’t be chewing there like an ox, worrying your guts out about—
how
much is it?”

“A hundred and two pounds seven-and-six,” said I. Small, taken off his guard.

“A hundred and two pounds seven-and-six, good God! Oh, you
schlemazzel,
oh you … put that beer away and have a brandy, for God’s sake.”

While they were sipping brandy, Solly Schwartz said: “A hundred and two pounds seven-and-six…. Isn’t your wife’s father well-to-do?”

“I’d rather beg with an organ and a monkey in the streets,” I. Small muttered, moodily twisting and turning his glass.

“Why?”

I. Small stammered: “It … I … From the first they … what with one thing and another, a person doesn’t like to, to, to make himself look—look——”

“—Small?”

“Yes, what is it?” said I. Small, jumping as if he had heard the tinkle of the shop-door bell.

Solly Schwartz looked at him, smiling and shaking his predatory head. “Srulke,” he said, “if you live a thousand years you’ll never learn enough to blow your nose. A hundred and two pounds seven-and-six! Get away with you!”

The needle-point of his contempt penetrated the woolly blanket that was enveloping I. Small’s consciousness and touched a nerve, so that, prodded to alertness, he shouted: “Who’s this, Mr. Bandervilt? By him a hundred pounds is nothing? Go on, laugh at me. Go on, why don’t you laugh?”

Then his lowered eyes saw the crocodile-head of the
walking-stick
, through two tears. Stroking the exquisitely-carved tail of the crocodile he said: “Well, the time has come to talk, not to act. We must face facts…. You’re young, Shloimele, one of these days you’ll learn there’s two classes in society. You, already, you got a motor-car … already you are in society … Enough. Enough is as good as … enough. What are you writing?”

Solly Schwartz said: “This,” and scaled a little oblong of blue paper on to the table. “A present for you. It’s open. Don’t lose it. Take it to the bank to-morrow morning and they’ll give you the money across the counter.”

“What do you mean? What’s the idea? What’s this?”

“Put it in your pocket.”

“It says here two hundred pounds,” said I. Small, trembling. “What’s this for?”

Almost dreamily, Solly Schwartz said: “
Schlemazzel,
I’ve got a long memory. Do you remember nine years ago when you went to Cohen’s to try on a jacket?”

“I was always fussy about my clothes,” said I. Small. “I never wore ready-made. A man I know, I forget his name, took me to Cohen and made me to measure for a special price.”

“Pressburger, that was——”

“—Quidleright! That was where I met you, Schloi! You was a nothing, then, a bit of a
schnip
.”

“You pay a penny to see things like me pickled in a jar, in a sideshow on Hampstead Heath,” said Solly Schwartz,
dispassionately
. “You remember where we met, Srul?”

“I went to (excuse me) make water, and you were in the laventory. Crying, Solly.”

“Crying my eyes out,” said Solly Schwartz, calmly, but through clenched teeth. “And you said: ‘What is it, boychik?’”

“And what
was
it, boychik?”

“Never mind. Then you said: ‘Come on, boychik, wipe your nose and come out with me and let’s eat a sausage.’”

“And why not?” asked I. Small.

“Well, stick
that
in your pocket,” said Solly Schwartz, pointing to the cheque.

“But what for, tell me—why?”

“Why not?” said Solly Schwartz, with all the pride of Lucifer in his eyes, striking his chest so that it thudded like a muffled drum. “Schwartz does not forget a friend or an enemy. Put that in your pocket,
schlemazzel,
drink up and I’ll drive you home in my motor-car.”

I. Small, dumbfounded, stunned as surely as if he had been struck on the head with a club, could only say: “We … we … we went to … to Isaacs, and we had for a few pence a Frankfurter with a bit potato sellid. I don’t … I can’t … what do you mean, tell me, what? Speak!”

Smiling, Solly Schwartz said: And we had a glass of
ginger-beer
apiece.”

“Ginger-beer, schminger-beer—a penny glass of … What difference, ginger-beer! To my worst enemy I give a glass ginger-beer, for God’s sake!”

“Put that in your pocket and drink up,” said Solly Schwartz. He added contemptuously, but not without sadness: “And
I
said to myself: ‘That such a fine man with an eighteen-carat gold moustache should treat me to Frankfurters and ginger-beer!’ Good God!”

“No jokes? About
me
you said that?” said I. Small, with tears on his cheeks.

“Come on, come on, Srul.”

So I. Small was rushed in a daze through the roaring streets until he found himself standing alone outside his own door in
Noblett Street, leaning on a wonderful walking-stick; sobered by shock but so astounded that he wondered whether he had been walking in his sleep.

When Millie saw the walking-stick, she screamed: “What’s this? Haven’t I got enough——”

“—Shush, Millie, I found it.”

“Where did he find it?”

“Where? In a bus.”

“What bus? That’s all he’s got to do with his money, ride about in buses all day long. What bus, Srul, what bus? Where were you going on a bus? Much he cares what happened to his daughter while he was riding up and down in buses.”

“What happened? To the little girl what happened—speak!”

“While he’s been joyriding in buses, that Piccadilly Johnny with his walking-stick, I’ve had to have a doctor in the house.”

“Why? Millie, for God’s sake, what for? God forbid a doctor!”

Millie managed to convey to him that after he had stamped out of the house like a wild beast little Priscilla had picked up a shirt button and stuck it up her nose. Now a shirt button, stuck up the nose, is likely at any moment to reach the brain, and the consequences are terrible. Millie did her duty as a mother—she screamed. A doctor was called in—a very good doctor—a physician and surgeon. With extraordinary skill he had inserted the fourth finger of his left hand into the little girl’s nostril and, exercising all his strength, pulled out the shirt button in half a second; for which he had charged five shillings. But it was quite all right, as long as I. Small had enjoyed himself riding in buses.

“How is she, where is she?” asked I. Small, appalled.

“I put her to bed. Please God——”

I. Small went to their bedroom, where the baby’s cot was. Priscilla was lying on her back, kicking her legs, and trying to screw a pillowcase-button into her left ear. She was delighted by the sensation she had made and hoped that the nice-smelling doctor would come again and poke his soft finger into her ear. Cooing and gurgling, she smiled at the ceiling as an astronomer might smile at the stars, delighted by the infinite permutations and combinations of the cosmos. She had stuck a button up her nose; but this was only a beginning. It seemed to her, then, that that nostril was only one of many delightful holes with which she was perforated: she was an unexplored world.

But I. Small, seeing her screwing the button into her ear, yelled: “Halp! Millie, halp!”

Then everyone made such a noise that a policeman on his beat stopped and gazed steadfastly at the door until the noise subsided. Some loiterer who had nothing better to do than walk in Noblett Street asked, eagerly: “What’s up?”

“Just a little family affair,” said the policeman.

“Me, I send the God-forbids to Sunday school, so me and the missis can ’ave a bit of a cuddle in peace and quiet.”

“There’s a lot to be said for religion,” said the policeman, weightily, pounding his way on his beat.

As he had lied about the walking-stick I. Small said nothing about the cheque, because he was afraid to tell Millie that he had spent the afternoon with Solly Schwartz. Besides, the cheque might not be good—it could not be. His enigmatic silence drove Millie through three stages of rage, but he said nothing. At nine o’clock on Monday morning he went to the Strand branch of the Belgrave Bank and pushed the cheque under the grille. The teller examined it closely, and I. Small remembered a tub full of crawling, live black lobsters packed in ice in a fishmonger’s window in Victoria. He felt that the contents of this tub had been poured from the back of his collar into the seat of his trousers. He said: “Is it all right, is it?”

“Oh, quite all right, sir. How would you prefer it?”

He left the bank, his pocket heavy with two hundred pounds in banknotes and gold, and his feelings overcame him so that he had to stop at “The George” for a glass of brandy. He was hopelessly bewildered and haggard with anxiety in spite of his tremendous relief.

He walked home slowly, gnawed by a fresh worry. When Millie asked him where he had got the money, what could he tell her? He was irresolute and incompetent in lying, as in
everything
else—although, as in everything else, no one could accuse him of failing to do his best. He had the wild idea of telling her that he had found the money in the street; but let it drop. Coming so soon after the tale of the walking-stick, that might be a little too rich for Millie to swallow, and even if she believed him she might insist on his taking the money to the police station. If he told her the truth he would be compelled to admit that he had been loafing in Appenrodt’s with Solly Schwartz while the baby had a button up her nose, and although this confession
would be letting him in for no more than a week or ten days of sharp reproach which would soften into innuendo after a further period of niggling recrimination—call it a month in all—I. Small shuddered away from the thought of what Millie might say about Solly Schwartz. He did not like to mention his name in her presence because she hated him and he loved him and would defend him with his last breath … and so one word would lead to another, and there would be no peace in the house. Then he thought that he might tell her that he had had the money all the time, put away for a rainy day; but he knew that he would never get away with this, for Millie could nag the cork out of a bottle, natter the lock off a door. He decided, at last, to say nothing at all; brushed up his moustache with his forefinger, squared his shoulders, and gripped his new stick resolutely, mentally
rehearsing
the next scene.