The Thousand Deaths of Mr Small (5 page)

“Enough, already!”

“Of course,” said Nathan, the Photographer, who saw that his man was obdurate, “for the painting of your fascia you could just put
I
.
Small
.”

“I., schmy, pie—enough!” So the old man clung to his Yisroel. But people called him “Srul” or “I”. Renamed Small, he was called “Big” in the family, because he was a wretched failure and everything he touched fell to dust and ashes.

Now he had nothing but his trade to lose. He had intended to set up shop as a shoe repairer, but Millie drew the line at that. She had seen him at work once or twice, and hated the sight of his nails, black with cobbler’s wax, and the smell of leather and old boots. Working, he wore no coat; his shirt-sleeves were rolled up and his arms were bare to the elbow while he impolitely spat out of his mouth shiny iron brads which he banged into the soles of common men’s boots. This, in itself, was repulsive. There were women’s boots, too, and it seemed that he caressed these instead of handling them with proper severity. He wriggled his fingers, tickling their tongues below the laces, and repaired their soles and heels with the tiniest, tenderest, softest nails. A nice business, this, in which a man humbly mended the dirty boots of working men and the footwear of God knows what female scum of the streets! Besides—to be married to a man in such a trade, and to have to admit the fact!
My
hubby
is
a
tobacconist,
Sarah could say…. Pearl could boast:
My
husband
is
a
dealer
in
electrical
goods.
Lily, that bragger, was already telling the world that she was married to a photographer….
Thank
God
I’m
not
married!
Becky would say, please God, laying herself open to a couple of savage stabs…. Ruth, the accursed one, had married herself to an estate agent, if you please:
Izzy
is
in
the
office,
she might say, on the slightest provocation.

Was Millie to be reduced to apologising to her friends for having married a black-handed, waxy-nailed, sweating, knife-wielding, hammering, slashing cobbler? The whole world knew already that she had paid for her own ring. Someone had dropped a word: the whole town was ringing with the story. Now was there to be more shame and humiliation?

A family conference was called.

I. Small suggested mildly that, after all, people couldn’t go around on their bare feet. People had to have boots. Not being Rothschild, the man in the street had to get soled and heeled just like everybody else. There was a living in it; it was a trade. He couldn’t make boots and shoes, but he knew how to repair
them. He suggested the establishment of a cobbler’s shop. It was not likely that there was a fortune to be made out of it, but a man who was not afraid of hard work might make a good solid living.

The family looked up, exchanged glances, and smiled. Teeth were sucked and heads were wagged until Lily kicked Nathan, the Photographer, who made diplomacy, saying, in an ambiguous voice: “There’s money in boots and shoes. Look at Randall’s. Look at Freeman, Hardy & Willis. Buy from a reliable
wholesaler
, push your stuff, and sell it. Like that you can make good. Now ask yourself a question——”

“—Listen to him,” said Lily.

“—How long does it take to sole and heel a pair of boots?”

“It depends——” began I. Small.

“—Don’t interrupt—you’re not at home now,” said Millie.

Nathan, the Photographer, continued severely: “Excuse me. How long does it take to mend a pair of boots? Half an hour? An hour? An hour and a half——?”

“—Well, it depends——”

“—Please! Call it half an hour. How much do you get for it? Two, three shillings?”

“Now that depends——”

“Manners, manners, Rollo!”

“I don’t know what you mean by Rollo.”

“—Call it two-and-six. From this deduct the cost of the leather, the cost of the nails, and your rent, because it takes time. You’ve got to be sensible. You pay, say, a pound a week rent. What does that mean? It means that every minute that passes is worth money. A pound a week you pay, and you keep your shop open maybe ten hours. That makes two shillings an hour working time gone in rent. On top of that comes gas, leather, nails, raw materials, tools. Then there’s an assistant. He’s got to be paid. Call your overheads four shillings per working hour. Yes?”

Everyone nodded. Nathan, the Photographer, continued:

“You can sole and heel a pair of boots for two-and-sixpence in, it might be, a half an hour. This means to say you make, if you are lucky, one shilling an hour. You make, if you have got the business, ten shillings a day if you work ten hours a day. That makes three pounds ten a week. From this you must deduct all day Sunday and one half day. Five and a half days,
at one shilling an hour for ten hours a day makes fifty-five shillings. With this fifty-five shillings you must support a wife and family with heat, light, wear-and-tear, clothing, and
something
to eat. It can’t be done!”

Millie burst into tears, and I. Small struck himself on the chin in bewilderment and said: “What do they all do, then? Die? Me and my friend Schwartz, we got an idea. From America comes a machine——”

“He’s here again with his friend Schwartz,” said Millie, kicking him in the ankle.

He was silent. Nathan, the Photographer, continued: “If a man has got a trade, he should follow that trade.”

I. Small said: “Quite right! My frand Schwartz and me, we thought what … in America, so they make a machine. So by this machine you can do hend-sewn work,
ein
—
zwei
—
drei
—in two minutes. Here a veel—there a veel——” the young man made enthusiastic gestures, building the American boot-repairing machine in the air. “Everything is done miv veels. Me and mein frand Schwartz, ve tinked vot … vot … vot …” In his excitement he mislaid his English. He wanted to put forward the suggestion of his vigorous and imaginative friend Solly Schwartz, a keen, progressive young fellow whom he loved and admired. Schwartz, who had a club-foot, a hump on his back, a tallowy Punch’s face, whose glittering little black eyes moved so fast that they seemed to be watching the floor, the ceiling, the four walls, your face, and the back of your neck—Schwartz, one of the ugliest men in London, was quick and cool as a lizard, and full of ideas.

Like a lizard he was perpetually darting after the invisible; he was always on the watch for something that was not there. He had no money, of course. Solly Schwartz had come out of some Stepney slum. Born out of shape, he was his father’s shame, and therefore his mother’s joy. His father could not bear to look at him; so his mother lost no chance of kissing and cosseting him. No one ever beat this marred brat that might fall dead at a slap, but he would not have cared if they had laid into him with a copper-stick from dawn to dusk: he felt within him a greatness. At the age of fourteen he was sent to do all that he was fit to do. His father apprenticed him to a tailor. He and Yisroel
Schmulowitz
became friends. The hows, the whys and wherefores can wait. One day, telling Srul (short for Yisroel) Schmulowitz about
the new American machine that sewed, buffed, rasped, and finished the soling and heeling of a pair of shoes in just a few minutes, Schwartz said: “What’s the matter with you?
Schuster
kopf
!
go on sit on your arse and hammer and sew and sew and hammer and where are you? Where you began back where you started. There’s a machine does it all for you in a couple of seconds and you don’t need to lift a finger only get a couple of bloody fools for a couple of pounds a week to press a button here and pull a bit of string there and put their foot on a pedal.
Handwork
is a thing of the past you should learn everything is done nowadays by machinery you stitch and stitch and stitch and stitch and stitch until you make holes in your thimble and along comes a sewing machine and
tra-la-la,
tra-la-la,
tra-la-la
there’s a seam. Let’s get an American machine where there’s a wheel here and a wheel there. With this machine it’s
tratata
—
tratata
—
tratata
and what it would take you to do in an hour this machine does in a minute. A feller like you. Find yourself a girl with a few hundred and marry her and get a machine and make a fortune.
Schuster
kopf
—fifty pairs of boots and shoes you can have on the shelves to be finished in a few minutes each and cut the price and … and what for bang with a hammer when any Tom Dick and Harry can run a machine?”

“Where should I get a machine, where?”

“Marry and get a few hundred pounds and get credit and be a man!”

I. Small, as he had begun to call himself, was thinking of all this when his English ran through his fingers. Millie and all her family spoke fluent Yiddish, but he would have been ashamed to slip back into the jargon. Millie whispered: “Be quiet. Do you want to make a poppy-show of me?” Then Nathan, the Photographer, continued:

“Let’s look on this side of it. Say I’m in the boot and shoe repairing business. Right? I bang away and sweat, I sew, I work myself like a fool and knock my guts out for an hour … what for? A couple of shillings. Still, all the same if my business
is
boots and shoes, it should
be
boots and shoes.
Now
look on
this
side of it. I take premises. I go to a wholesaler and I take a line of goods, gents’ boots and shoes, that I pay eight shillings a pair for. In five minutes I sell a pair of gents’ boots and shoes for ten-and-six. In five minutes I’ve made half a crown, and at the same time I walk up and down in a coat and I’m a somebody,
a
mensch
, a man! If I sell a pair of boots for two-and-six profit every five minutes for ten hours I’ve made thirty shillings an hour. Thirty shillings an hour is fifteen pounds a day. Fifteen pounds a day, five and a half days a week … well, to be on the safe side call it twelve pounds a day five days a week, that makes sixty pounds a week clear profit. And you’re a gentleman. You come, you go. That’s better than banging and banging with your mouth full of nails—sixty pounds a week clear profit. The thing to do, in this life, is let other people do the dirty work. Give them a living wage, yes. But what for bang your guts out? Do I make myself clear?”

“It’s a trade. It is an honest living,” Small persisted stubbornly.

“Certainly it’s a trade, an honest living,” said Nathan, the Photographer, suavely. “So is sweeping the streets. So is being a dustman an honest living. A navvy makes an honest living. A chimney-sweep makes an honest living. Agreed, Schmulowitz!”

“Small,” said Millie.

“—I beg your pardon, Small. But you’re young, you’re inexperienced, and if you don’t mind my saying so, you don’t realise that you’re marrying a well-brought-up girl from a nice family. You’ve got to give her the … the
surroundings
”—he was proud of this word, and said it again, rolling it on his tongue—“the surroundings she’s used to. A friend pops in for a cup of tea. What does she see? She sees you sitting in an apron, with your sleeves rolled up klupping hobnails into some toe-rag’s boot. Ask yourself, Small, ask yourself a question—how would
you
like it?”

At this point Millie’s feelings—whatever they were; she Was full of woe-begetting “feelings”—burst into tears and said: “For my sake! For
my
sake! To please
me!
”

All the English had been washed out of his memory by this torrent of eloquence and flood of tears: groping and scrabbling in the wash for a few words, I. Small stammered but said nothing. He was ashamed to break into Yiddish in the presence of Millie’s sisters.

Nathan the Photographer, who was a man of intuition, sensed this and said, in fluent Yiddish with a strong Ukrainian accent that made Becky giggle (whereupon Lily bit her lips and stored up another grudge): “Srulka, how much do you make?”

I. Small said, excitedly: “Tree pound a veek!”

“For a single man it’s a very good wage. A single man can live on twenty-five shillings. I pay my assistant—my assistant, mind you—thirty shillings. But circumstances alter cases. Now look. Listen to me just for a minute, and take advice from a fool.”

Nathan, the Photographer, paused, and I. Small nodded, deeply impressed. In this family there were two infallible formulæ by the application of which it was possible to compel anyone, however distantly related, to do something foolish. Formula One, the Feminine Formula, was:
Do
it,
do
it
to
please
me.
Just
to
PLEASE
ME
do
it!
Formula Two, nearly irresistible, consisted in five words spoken in a plaintive voice after a violent quarrel:
Take
advice
from
a
fool.
If one said: “I will not do this, that, or the other, against my inclination, to please you or anyone else,” the woman had grounds for hysterical recrimination and the exhumation of dead and rotten scandals and martyrdoms for a period of three to six months.

If, in the other case, one asked: “Why should I take advice from a fool?” Or said: “If you insist that you are a fool, who are you to tell me what to do?” up popped the devil.

The lover of peace, in the family, did violence to all his feelings if someone said: “To please
me,
do something that you’d die rather than do,” or: “Take advice from a fool—don’t do what you’ve always wanted to do.”

Nathan, the Photographer, said: “Take advice from a fool. There’s a few hundred pounds. Find a place in a good position and go into business. Do you want to be a
schuster
all your life?”

The company nodded, groaning. A
schuster
is a man who works with shoes; and this, they thought, was a very degraded thing to be.

I. Small shook his head. The estate agent laughed, “Ha-ha,” so contemptuously that Millie got his face in focus through a couple of eyefuls of tears, and put into cold storage a little vitriolic something to throw into his eyes one of these days when he might be off his guard.

“It’s as good as nailing up boards outside dirty old empty houses!” she cried.

“I’d rather deal in property than stick my nose into every Tom Dick and Harry’s great big
ferschtinkener
feet!” said Ruth.

This was not well found: Ruth had big feet. Millie said: “Look who’s talking about feet! Who takes size seven?”