The Thousand Deaths of Mr Small (38 page)

And so they went downstairs into the depths.

Charles Small remembers that he was fascinated by the Coiners’ Den, and had to be dragged away, while his mother
muttered: “That’s all I’m short of—a coiner he wants to be!” I. Small, also fascinated, said: “Bled——” and then shut up, because Mrs. Small was standing, open-mouthed, looking at Dr. Crippen, who murdered, chopped up, and concealed under a stone the body of his wife whom he had poisoned with hyoscin—this drug being anaphrodisiac—so that he could enjoy his mistress with an easy conscience. She decided that Dr. Crippen was a harmless-looking man. If he had turned up his moustaches and had a little more chin there might even have been some
resemblance
between him and …
brrr!
… she didn’t like to think of it. I. Small and Charles were looking at the loathsome
countenances
of Burke and Hare, the body-snatchers. I. Small (he had developed a mania for cabbage) said: “So you see? Sis what comes of not eating up your cebbage. It should be a lesson.” He might have gone on in this vein but he saw Mrs. Dyer, the Baby Farmer, who had been hanged for several atrocious murders, and said: “Beggary!”—and turned his attention to the Original Electric Chair. Having keenly scrutinised this hideous apparatus I. Small said: “See? Electricity! Sis good for rheumatism!” After that his attention was caught by some extraordinarily horrid prints of Turkish tortures. In one of them a man with a moustache was portrayed, hanging by the chin on a hook. This was a little more than he could stomach. He said: “See? He didn’t eat his bleddy cebbage!” So they left the Chamber of Horrors—but not before I. Small, pretending that he had lost his handkerchief, slipped back for a last lingering look at the Coiners’ Den, to which he had taken a fancy.

On the way out he made a detour so that they passed Alexander Pope. Millie had to drag him away. Muttering something about “Yiddisher boys should eat their cebbage,” and … “be a good boy and please God you’ll end up in the Chamber of Horror”—he probably meant the Chamber of Commerce—the old man conducted them to a tea shop in Baker Street, where they ate pastries. For a change there were no scenes—except once, when Millie told him not to make such a noise drinking tea.

After that (one does not sprain one’s wrist every day) they took Charles to the Zoo. I. Small laid out twopence for
monkey-nuts
, or peanuts as they are called now, and they went to look at the unhappy beasts in captivity. Now, Charles Small wonders who was on which side of the bars. They went to the Lion House. Charles tried to give the tiger a monkey-nut. The beast uttered
a low growl—at which I. Small leaped into the air and, dragging his wife and child out into the open air, growled—much more fiercely than the tiger—“Bleddy ruffian.” After that they went to the Monkey House. Now this was charming. Charles Small and the old man were enchanted. A Rhesus monkey took
monkey-nuts
, shelled them, and ate them. I. Small rumbled: “Take a lesson, Charley—sis … sis … economics, boozology. We are all equal, see?” He was remembering the pronunciamentoes of Lizzard, the atheistic cobbler. “Monkeys, people—you got nothing but your chains to lose. Liberty, equality, eternity, or (God forbid) death!”

The monkey masturbated.

On the way home I. Small was pensive. Charles was quite happy. He had had a good day. Looking at the old man, one might have imagined that he was a philosopher—at least, a military theoretician like von Clausewitz, or Falkenhayn. His brows came down to meet his moustache, which he twirled with one hand while he plucked at his hair with the other. After some cogitation he twisted a bus ticket into the form of a propeller, impaled it on a pin, and held it over the rail of the bus-top, so that it spun round and round. He had intended this for the diversion of Charles Small; but somehow he could not part with it. After thirty seconds the pin broke loose and, flying backwards, stuck in Mrs. Small’s left breast. After a few whispered bleddy beggaries the affair was hushed up, and the old man became pensive again. What could he be thinking of? Charles Small found out when they got home, when I. Small, in an undertone that sounded like the flushing of a lavatory, said: “Boychik, you saw? Take a lesson. Do like monkeys, they put you in a zoo. But the other one, eh? A hump, bandages on the head, eh? You saw? A humpback, a Yiddisher boy, and he Worked his way up to be Pope!”

All this is very fine and large, excruciatingly funny, a perfect scream—yet all the same, Charles Small would give a good deal for one crack at the hunchback, Solly Schwartz, with that cannon of a duck-gun. Much as he loves and admires that awe-inspiring, iron-footed creature, it would please him no end to see him disappear in a red shower. He owes Solly Schwartz more than he can ever repay … both good and evil….

*

While he appreciates the great benefits that have come to him through Solly Schwartz—his nice house in Highgate, his car, his clothes at ten pounds a suit, his well-filled refrigerator and American kitchen unit—something rankles, so that now his stomach feels like a flytrap full of angry wasps.

This dates back to the time when he, Charles Small, went into open revolt against the old man and Mrs. Small. It was a dramatic passage. Having won his little Scholarship, he was entitled to several years free education, with a grant of money, at a Secondary School. Now there was some thumb-biting as to the advisability of this. Millie—her voice was like Pibroch of Donuil Dhu, the Gathering Song of Donald the Black—filled her bag and skirled to summon the Clan. There was no
gainsaying
her, no ignoring that Call. They left the sheep unattended, the bride at the altar … left the deer, left the steer, left nets and barges; came in their fighting gear, broadswords and targes. They foregathered at the Mosses’ house, where, until after dinner, the men talked of trade, politics, and war, while the women, sagely nodding, discussed the private affairs of the Royal Family—whereupon Lily asked when Millie was last in Buckingham Palace. The Pibroch of Millie Small knelled for the onset, and all the women cried out at once, while the men with one voice roared for silence. Out of this brouhaha came the slow, deliberate voice of Nathan, the Photographer, saying: “Let us be reasonable.”

It was understood that the meeting had been called to decide whether Charles Small should go to school until he was sixteen, or be apprenticed forthwith to a tradesman.

I. Small—it was inevitable—made a perfect ass of himself. He drew himself up in his chair, shook out a handkerchief, and made such a noise with his nose that Old Man Moss choked on a glass of tea and had to be banged on the back. Then he lit a little cheroot, blew out the match with an air, shot his cuffs, pushed up his military moustachios, and, remembering that confounded atheistic cobbler again, said: “Education, education is the opium of the pipple! Through religion you lose your chains! A trade!
But!
…” Then he looked silly again, and said in a much smaller voice: “Eh, Nathan?”—and paused for a reply.

Millie Small looked daggers and kicked I. Small in the ankle. The old man started to bleddy, but said: “Bl—
arhem
”—
pretending
to cough, for which no one blamed him, considering the quality of his cheroots.

“Education——” began Nathan, the Photographer,
portentously
.

I. Small’s rosy face was glowing. He said: “I made a mistake. Not religion, education, sis the opium of the pipple!” It was observed, at this point, that his face was set in a fierce expression, and that he pinched Charles’s cheek and gave him a puff of his little stinking cheroot. Charles Small remembers the odour of the smoke to this day. It is almost comical. Where did the old man find such things? People shied away from him on all sides. He was blowing out fumes compounded of ammonia and dung.

“Education,” said Nathan, the Photographer, “is a good thing, but you must afford it—you must afford it. Only people of, of, of
brilliance
want education. So, the boy is brilliant. Bear all this in mind. He goes to school till sixteen. Then, what? A clerk in a city office? It’s an honest living, let us not argue about that. But … education, proper education, takes money. Where is it to come from? What comes after? What are you going to do when the boy leaves school? Eh, Millie? Make a doctor of him? Make a dentist of him? A lawyer of him? No, put him into business, let him learn a trade.”

He spoke. Millie, through snot and tears, said: “You see? … You see what I told you?”

I. Small’s cheroot had burned down, and there was a smell of burnt hair. Nevertheless, he inflated his chest, and in that moment became magnificent. He had conducted young Charles to the grammar school where the Preliminary Examinations were to be held and there he had seen scholastic-looking men sweeping through the cold corridors in black gowns; and this had made a deep impression on him. Brushing the charcoal out of his moustache he shouted:

“Nathan, beggar your bleddy trade! Give me opium or give me death! School! Not another word!”

There were many more words. Catching something like a sardonic smile on Lily’s face, Millie—on one of the few recorded occasions in family history—took sides with her husband, and so with much emotion the sisters and brothers-in-law parted not without sidelong looks.

Thus, Charles Small went to Secondary School.

Recapitulating, those years in school were the most wretched of his life because, as a Parthian shot, kissing Millie on the cheek and patting her comfortingly on the shoulder, Lily said: “Cheer
up, Millie. He’ll do the best he can. Our Stanley’s going to go in for the Dentistry.”

After this, it was education or bust.

May dogs lift their legs against the chaste gravestones of I. and Millie Small, tastefully inscribed with
GOD
TOOK
YOU
FROM
US
ONLY
BECAUSE
THE
ANGELS
GREW
LONELY
and
DEEPLY
MOURNED
BY
THEIR
HEARTBROKEN
SON,
CHARLES,
DAUGHTER,
PRISCILLA,
RELATIVES
AND FRIENDS
—a list as long as your arm!

Now it was expected of Charles Small that he should grow up to be a Scholar and a Dentist, a Gentleman, fighting duels with stinking breath at two feet while he foully poked nicotine-stained fingers into the mouths of hapless opponents, for which (glad to be rid of him) they would throw him ten shillings before scuttling downstairs moaning in unendurable agony, never to return.

From now on at all hours, I. Small brought up the subject of Teeth. “Charley, boychik, you see?” he would say at tea-time when the boy was biting into a buttered crumpet, “without teet, where are you? Cruffins, mumpets you got to suck like
grandfather
at his mother’s chest. Everybody’s got to have teet. Sis the Facts of Life. Teet
you
got
to
have!
”

Charles Small, who was breaking out in pimples and found it impossible to look anyone in the face—but was nevertheless getting cocky—muttered: “What about boots?”

I. Small was tolerant on this occasion. He merely said: “Boots—boots—boots—boots——” in the manner of Kipling, managing somehow to flip a teaspoon over his shoulder. But he said at last: “Charley, I’m older than you; take it from me—boots don’t ache.”

And for once Millie Small did not put her oar in.

She asked him: “What did you learn to-day, Charley?”

Now how, Charles Small wonders, how is it possible for a boy to give an honest answer to such a question? Is he to say that he has learned almost nothing at all? That he has learned a couple of naughty stories which will stick to his memory like pitch as long as memory exists? That he was called a congenital idiot because he could not grasp the inwardness of the Present Indicative of the Verb, To Be, in the recitation of which he did not get beyond
Je
? (Later he remembered
suis
,
but that was
l’esprit
d’escalier
.) That he had successfully recited Wordsworth’s “Daffodils”? That the history master had called him a beast and
said that he had better be in a pigsty because, overwhelmed by the Saxon kings, he had made a disgusting smell in class? That arithmetically he was already foredoomed to the bottom of the Form?

He looked for no understanding here, and buried his lip in another crumpet, smearing his acneous face with the best fresh butter, while I. Small whispered: “Shhh! He’s t’inking.”

Those years were nightmarish. They were full of lies and deceit—and terror. At the end of the school year he received a Report which had to be returned with his parents’ signatures at the foot. Charles Small forged them, and was kept down in class in his second year. Much they knew about it! And all the time I. Small went on about teeth, teeth, teeth. The old man had excellent teeth and was conscious of the fact that few other men had—let alone women. Charles Small remembers, with distaste, a Dissertation on Teeth, which was as follows: “Teet. Who goes about widout teet? Charley, you’re a good-looking boychik. A good-looking boy should concentrate miv teet!
Because
? Listen, an old man, so he can go
fsss
—
fsss
—
fsss
—and who cares? But a young woman mivout teet, she’s a dud. Take my advice, Khatzkele. Who to does a woman go? To a nice-looking feller.
Keep
you
bleddy
mind
on
teet!
”

Young Charles Small struggled like a rabbit in a bag, but, for the life of him, he could not even matriculate. Before he left in the morning to sit for the first examinations Millie filled him with eggs, standing over him and saying: “Remember! The most important thing is Mathematics!”

It was hopeless. He concealed half Euclid up his sleeve, and still he got only six per cent of marks under the very nose of a blind examiner.

When the results of the examination came out, I. Small shouted: “Matriculation, schmatriculation! Let the bleddy beggar learn a trade!”

Now Millie Small had read in the Sunday papers of boys who, having failed their examinations, hanged themselves; and she was afraid.