The Thousand Deaths of Mr Small (42 page)

Mrs. Small, although she was afraid of cows, sheep, pigs,
seagulls
, live chickens, and practically everything else, had the
courage to confront an egg, from a respectable distance. She watched the incubator. The children watched too. One day a brown egg gave out a tapping noise; the shell broke outwards, and a ridiculously bedraggled little head appeared, followed by a bundle of stuck-down yellow fluff. She was inspired to say: “See? That’s how they’re born. No more questions.”

Priscilla said nothing. If that was how she was born, why was Mama not thrown away like an empty shell? But she nosed her way about the farm; saw the bull serving the cows, and was soon in a position to tell her mother the Facts of Life.

Brooding over his cowardice, the old man screwed up his courage for his third week-end and tried to caress a fowl. Trust the old man again—he picked on a fighting cock, which flew at him and wounded him in the hand. Only a man with no heart could restrain his tears at the discomfiture of this poor silly fellow chased by a chicken, plaintively protesting that he meant it no harm—and only a man with no soul could help laughing until he cried.

Recollecting the incident, Charles Small decides that on the whole he had better cry.

But this is beside the point. He remembers, most vividly, the Muck Heap.

He and Priscilla used to follow Farmer Gray around, while Mrs. Small was having morning sickness. (No matter what she had eaten, she seemed invariably to bring up tomatoes.) It seemed to Charles Small that this old farmer was morbidly preoccupied with stuff that, by rights, should have been flushed away in lavatories or carted away by dustmen—dung, garbage, and the urine of cattle. I. Small muttered something about Farmer Gray being a “bleddy uncivilised beast”, and forbade the children, on pain of chastisement with the
Essex
Advertiser,
ever to go near the stalls, the pens, and the stables. Charles obeyed, at first. Priscilla did not, and her brother followed her. Fascinated, they watched the farmer and a labourer shovelling up barrow-loads of straw, sodden with cow-shit—dealing with the stuff quite reverently. The sanitation of the farm-house was primitive. Every day a labourer carried from a little out-house a brimming, malodorous bucket. One day Priscilla asked the farmer what was the idea, the purpose in all that. Sucking at a foul pipe and smiling under his ungentlemanly moustache, the old farmer said: “Come here, then,” and beckoned them towards a place where one of the labourers was making a kind of layer-cake or
mille f
euilles
of polluted straw, the excrement of pigs, men, horses, women, and cows, that stank to high Heaven. Rotten vegetables went into it, and spoiled fruits. It was something like the Borbonessa Tart, immortalised by Rabelais. Old Gray and the labourer covered it carefully with straw. “She isn’t pretty, is she? She don’t smell sweet, eh?” said Gray. “But now come here.”

He took them to another heap, the straw crust of which was discoloured, dried up. While the children watched, aghast, he thrust his hand into the heart of this heap and withdrew it full of something light and flaky, which he held under their noses, saying: “Smell it.”

Its odour was pleasant, reminiscent of ripe walnuts; it had a wonderfully clean and healthy smell.

“This,” said Farmer Gray, jerking a thumb in the direction of the new heap, “this is
that
, d’ye see? After three years, don’t ye see? This is compost. Ye give it time, my chicks, and it’ll get sweet. Ye give it time, and it’ll give ye time. Don’t you see? What ye take out of the ground ye’ve got to put back, one way or another. This good stuff lightens my soil, and grows the crops. The roses don’t stink, do they now? So now ye know: that’s the way to get rich—puttin’ back into the ground, one way or another, what ye take out of it. To grass we will return—it says so in the Bible. Flesh is grass, grass is flesh … look at they Jersey cows, for instance. There’s flesh and blood and cream! All out of grass, m’dears, all out of grass; and back to grass they’ll go in God’s good time.”

As the children went away Priscilla heard him mutter—they were not supposed to hear—“Shit is money, money is shit, flesh is grass.” Then he bellowed: “You there, Harlow, spread that straw even!”

Remembering this, and he remembers it most vividly, Charles Small wishes to God that he had a compost heap in place of a brain—something that Time might purify and make sweet and life-giving, instead of this stinking, sour, stagnant untransmuted mass of human, animal, mineral, and vegetable detritus that is himself. It occurs to him that a man, properly considered in the light of a higher wisdom, patiently cherished, might in time achieve sweetness and the dignity of … dung.

*

Oh
well
,
thinks Charles Small,
such
was
not
my
destiny.
No
clean compost, he; but something foul, a filthy sodden chaos of blurred words—a kind of old-fashioned water-closet, out of order, stuffed with used newsprint. No, no, he has not the dignity of dung—the self-purifying power of that which makes the roses sweet and the wheat grow tall. He is by way of being a constipated cow, doomed to carry in his congested belly the weight of his own muck.

He despises himself. He let them defeat him.
I
gave
in
to
them,
he says to himself—as an embittered mouse, frozen with terror, might talk to a trap. Wee, timorous, cow’ring beastie! He could not, he dared not gnaw his way through the dark tunnels of the night to the light—he was afraid of the dark. He wanted the little bit of cheese dangling, tantalising, on a little hook; and he nibbled at it, and—
snap!
There he was, caught in a little cage. And it was a fair cop, and there was no one but himself whom Charles Small could honestly blame.

He remembers, belching acidulous laughter, his last miserable protest to the old man, when, after an appalling scene in the course of which I. Small smashed a fly with a rolled-up copy of a circular advertising the Jewish Encyclopædia, Millie Small, who had internal trouble, begged him to go into business. “For
my
sake, Charley—for
MY
sake!”

She really had been far from well, since the miscarriage of the child she had been carrying in Essex. (The child was still-born at seven months. The old man, confident that it would be a boy, had already decided to name it after his grandfather, Nehemiah. Millie insisted that Nehemiah was all right for Cracow. Neil was the name. Naturally, it came out a girl, and stone dead at that. They couldn’t do anything right.)

After that, Millie Small became a chronic invalid, and in her misery she became irresistibly pitiable. She could not eat, she could not sleep, she could not walk, sit, bend, stretch, stand, or lie down without suffering; and her occasional outcries were of such a nature that the old man, tearing his moustache, galloped out of earshot, bleddying to frighten the very cockroaches. Priscilla was unimpressed. Charles, the softie, was twisted like a wet
dishrag
.
For
MY
sake!
Who, having read his Shakespeare, could resist? But Charles Small shed a few tears after his mother had gone to bed, and the old man tried to comfort him, clumsily caressing him with an uncertain hand, which Charles nudged away while he toyed with his untasted supper.

“Charley, boychik, what is it? What do you want I should do? What do you
want?
What do you want from my life?”

Charles said, in the manner of Brutus: “I want to be free, free!”

“What do you mean, free? From what do you want to be free?’

“From you, from everything,” said Charles.

The old man—now he was a nice old man—tried to push a strawberry into his son’s mouth, and spoke gently, saying: “So, boychik, so you want to be free from me, yes?”

Charles Small nodded, spitting out the strawberry. I. Small sighed and said: “Me, also, I wanted to be free. Free, schmee—sis a lot of eyewash, freedom! No such thing. From mine father, God rest his soul, I wanted I should be free. From Cracow I wanted I should be free. And from … well, free … From what free? Free for what? Why should you want you should be free from your Mama what you owe your life to? Why should you want to be free from your Dad what works his fingers to the bone for you? Believe me, Khatzkele, I mean Charley, boychik, when I was young and foolish I wanted to be Free. I couldn’t rest. I wanted to go away. I knew where from I wanted to go away. But where
to?
Still I don’t know. Still I’m a
schusterkopf.
I might have stayed at home.” The old man was unaccountably moved by what he was saying. “… Only here is schooling, education. You can shake hands miv the King of England … miv Society. I know from what I wanted to be free. For what I know—for you, boychik! … And your mother, bless her, is not a well woman….”

I. Small shed tears. Charles Small said heavily: “All right, Dad, I’ll do what you say.”

Making a noise like a gannet between his nose and a pocket handkerchief, I. Small snuffled: “Good boy. Come with me to Mr. Solly Schwartz. He’ll make a man of you.” He lighted a twopenny cheroot with a flourish, adding in an awful whisper: “I made him what he is to-day.”

Charles Small, curiously purged of anger, went to bed with a secreted orange. But before he had time to peel it he was asleep, and before twenty-four hours had passed he was in the hands of the terrible Solly Schwartz.

*

I. Small, although he knew that Solly Schwartz had made his way up in the world, had an idea that he had simply to rap a door
with the head of his stick, and Solly would come out, hobbling and clanking with his iron foot. He dressed himself in his best. By this time he had given up cut-away coats, and, reluctantly obedient to the general trend, wore a jacket-suit of blue-grey; but no persuasion could induce him to put off his two-inch single collar with little wings and the necktie with a knot half as big as his fist, riveted with an imitation pearl tiepin not much smaller than a grape. Say what you like about the old man, he knew how to turn himself out like a gentleman. Even at the bench, he frequently wore starched cuffs, and his shoes were immaculate. For the occasion he laid in a couple of Havana cigars at ninepence apiece. A few days before, an impecunious Swiss had come into the shop, offering for sale a contraption about the size of a very large match-box. He pressed a knob, and, with a loud click a lid sprang back and a flame leaped up. I. Small, captivated, bought it for ten shillings. All you had to do was, fill it with benzene, and there you were—in forty years it would save its cost in matches. He put this, also, in a waistcoat pocket. Charles, too, was dressed to kill in a black coat, dark trousers, and a stiff collar. The old man made him wear a bowler hat—a Boiler, he called it—and a red rose in his buttonhole. I. Small, for this occasion, wore kid gloves and cuffs of the first magnitude, and carried the stick Solly Schwartz had given him in the old days. They went to Oxford Circus by bus, but rode the last half-mile in a taxi. The old man had an idea that if he turned up in a taxi it would make a favourable impression.

They stopped at a big building in the front of which hung a great painted sign that said:
SCHW ARTZ,
LTD.
A doorman held open the outer door of the building while the old man, bothered by his gloves and embarrassed by his walking-stick, overtipped the taxi driver. “Yes, sir?” asked the doorman.

“I want to see Mr. Schwartz, sir,” said I. Small.

“Your name, please, sir?”

“I. Small, sir.”

“One moment, please,” said the doorman.

“Much obliged to you, sir,” said I. Small, trying to pick his nose with a gloved finger, complacently leaning on his stick, confident in his belief that he was doing the right thing

The doorman led him to an ante-room, where a tall lady who might have been moulded of gold and ice asked: “Have you an appointment with Mr. Schwartz, Mr. Small?”

“Tell ’im sis Small, sir.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Small, Mr. Schwartz is engaged; he is in a conference.”

Conference!
—that shook I. Small. So now it was conferences, already! He felt the expectant eyes of his son upon him, and became desperate. He started to say “Bleddy——” but managed to turn it into a brouhaha of coughing. “Say Mr. Small is here,” he said.

“Have you an appointment, Mr. Small? I’m afraid——”

“Bled——”

Then there was a stomping, a clanking, and a thudding of the ferrule of a heavy stick, and Solly Schwartz came out in a hurry, dressed for the street in an overcoat by Simpson and London in Grosvenor Street, shoes by Lobb of St. James’s, a hat by Lock, a shirt by Sulka, a tie by Budd; with such an air of importance and of elegance that I. Small broke wind so forcibly that he stirred the tails of his coat.

“Shloimele!” cried I. Small.

The hunchback looked up angrily, and then said: “What’s that? … What, is it you,
trottel?
How are you? Good to see you again.”

“Like a weiss!” said I. Small, after they had shaken hands, “always a grip like a weiss. Solly, a minute, please?”

Solly Schwartz said to the lady: “Miss Persimmon, tell Halfacre to wait five minutes.” The beautiful lady of ice and gold became slush and tinsel. “Come upstairs,
trottel.
Not much time, but nice to see you again.”

It was like something out of a dream. They walked behind Solly Schwartz through an office that ticked and clicked and vibrated with twenty typewriters (the noise grew louder when Solly Schwartz appeared) and were led into a room furnished in morocco leather and luxuriously carpeted. I. Small fumbled for his ninepenny cigars. They came out in small pieces—he had broken them in his emotional convulsion—and fell to the floor in flakes. Schwartz, meanwhile, had opened an elaborate box, which he pushed across the desk. It was full of great fat
Corona-Coronas
. “Help yourself,” he said, “have a cigar, old
trottel
—grab a handful, put ’em in your pocket. God almighty, you’re getting fat as a pig!’

“It’s the cooking, God bless her,” said I. Small. “You don’t change, Shloimele … Oi! How times change, no? …
Typewriters 
—offices—my little Solly!” I. Small was stirred; he had to wipe his eyes.