The Thousand Deaths of Mr Small (8 page)

“So what do you want I should do, what?”

“Photogrephs! A photogreph!”

“Every five minutes she wants to go out to get a photogreph taken. So now all of a sudden by her is a misery miv photogrephs! If she didn’t wanted a photogreph, she should said she didn’t wanted photogrephs. What for does she wait, what for, till anybody’s here to make mein life a misery miv her photogrephs? What does she want from mein life?”

“What’s the use of talking to him if he’s ignorant, ignorant! He wants his son to go to a place where such a class of people go? That’s the way you catch diseases. All right!
I’m
not
used
to that sort of thing.”

“Diseases? What diseases? Who is?”

“It’s all right, Srul. It’s all right. As long as I know what you are it’s quite all right. Go to your Society Beauties!”

I. Small howled: “Then if it’s all right it’s all right, so what is there to make an
all
right
about?”

“Another man would have a little pride. Another man would tell a photographer to keep his twopenny-halfpenny photogrephs. … Where is he going?”

“Where’s he going? He’s bleddywell going to tell Nathan to bleddywell keep his bleddy photogreph,” said I. Small, reaching for his hat.

“No, wait,” said Millie, terrified. “I don’t want trouble. Wait. This is better: when Nathan gives us the photogreph I’ll tear it up and throw it in his face.”

And for twenty-seven years she has been boasting that this photograph has come out of the same camera that caught the likenesses of Lords and Ladies and Honourables. The Belgian, De Groot, knew how to take a picture. He was an artist. He listened carefully to Nathan’s directions, expunged them from his consciousness, formed his group, and clicked his camera—it
was all over in two or three minutes. For the look of the thing he exposed several more plates and made the sitting last half an hour, but what his eye caught first, that was the picture. Nathan stood in the background appearing to direct the operation.

There it hangs, expensively framed, the detestable photograph. On one side stands Charles Small’s father dressed in cutaway coat, light waistcoat, and striped trousers. An instant before he pressed the bulb, De Groot cried:
“Ha!”
—so that I. Small’s eyebrows are aristocratically arched, his eyelids droop, his mouth appears to be about to open to issue a desperate word of command, and his shoulders are tense.

The poor downtrodden imbecile has been photographically trapped in a moment of terror, yet looks remarkably like D’Artagnan. When De Groot cried
“Ha!”
Millie’s intestines
convulsed
, and wanted to empty themselves, so that she tightened her abdomen and instinctively turned her face to the doorway behind which, she knew, the toilet was; so that she appears genteelly detached. Between them stands Charles Small. Got up in a winged stiff collar, bow tie, black jacket and waistcoat, striped trousers and patent-leather shoes, and gripping his first bowler hat in his left hand, he resembles the young Napoleon. He didn’t want to have his picture taken, and was on the verge of rebellion, even when his father threatened to break every bone in his bleddy body. His mother pinched him, and De Groot’s camera, neatly picking out the expression that comes into a face between surprise and resentment, made him look imperious. The pain of the pinch made him relax his grip on his hat: you would think that he was about to point towards a new world.

In his way De Groot was a master. His work has survived him: Charles Small cannot bring himself to burn it. Even if he could, it would do him no good; the image is with him. He will continue to say to himself:
Four years to make a good, thoroughbred dog … Four years to make a fine glistening 
racehorse
… One year to make a lovely wheat field … And thirteen years to make that thing with the bowler hat! … Forty years to make me! … In forty years a tree gets big and strong … Oh, miserable creature!

He is shocked and bewildered when he realises that it took thirteen years to make him what he was when he was declared a Man. Like everything else they said, it was a confounded lie. Man! They told him that he was a man, and gave him manly
gifts—gold watches, cigarette cases, dressing cases, and all that. After dinner he made a speech, saying: “My dear Parents,
Grandparents
, Relatives and Friends! Now I have become a Man …” But next day they took away his presents and locked them up, and he was nothing but a thirteen-year-old boy, stuffed with a sense of dragging time, and wondering how people lived to the age of forty. Thirteen years was quite enough.

It
took
me
thirteen
years
to
be
that,
says Charles Small, looking at the framed photograph.
That!

I
T
must be remembered that Charles Small’s thirteenth birthday was celebrated fourteen years after his parents were married. Several of his relatives were dead and two or three of his father’s friends were estranged, notably Solly Schwartz. Millie hated Schwartz. She might have forgiven him for his club-foot, for his puniness, and for the curve of his back, but I. Small seemed to love him. So she hated him. Sometimes Schwartz paid them a visit. He was received by I. Small with enthusiasm, and greeted courteously by Millie. As soon as he was gone there were quarrels.

“Well, he can eat, your friend!”

“What do you mean, he can eat,
my
friend? Can’t
your
friends eat?”

“That’s right. Go on. Pick up every word I say. Show your ignorance—pick up every word.”

“All right, I’ll show my ignorance—every word you say I’ll pick up…. What did you say?”

“Never mind.”

“What’s the matter miv Solly Schwartz?”

“Nothing.”

“What does she mean
nothing?
”

“Now he wants to bring cripples into the house. So that’s what he is. I haven’t got enough. So he wants cripples in the house,” said Millie, with resignation. “As long as everybody is happy, let it be cripples in the house. There’s a man up the road with no arms and legs, who plays a barrel organ with his mouth. Go on, bring
him
into the house! What’s he waiting for? Let him put on his hat and coat and bring a few
more
cripples into the house.”

“What’s the matter with cripples?”

“Nothing. Nothing! Who said there was anything wrong with cripples? Wrong,
wrong
—with cripples? I only ask that you should bring them into the house. Didn’t I say so? Didn’t I say ‘Bring cripples into the house’? Then bring them.”

I. Small, muddle-headed and angry, shouted:

“So what’s the matter miv Schwartz?”

“Who said anything about Schwartz? But go on, get Schwartz, That’s all I’m short of, Schwartz. Do me a favour, will you? Get Schwartz, and the man that turns the organ with his mouth. You know I haven’t got enough trouble, don’t you?”

“Is it Schwartz’s fault he’s got a bed foot?”

“Well, no … no, not
his
fault.”

“Whose
fault then, whose fault?”

“Nothing. Who said anything about anybody’s fault? Let him come, let him live here. I’ve got nothing better to do than wait hand and foot on your humpy angels.
Threehalfpence-twopence
, threehalfpence-twopence, threehalfpence-twopence,” said Millie, referring to Schwartz’s club-footed limp.

“He comes in to say hullo. Siz a friend of marn!”

“Now he wants
friends.
His family isn’t enough.”

“What’s the matter miv friends, what? Because I’ve got a family, I mustn’t have a friend any more? Is that what you want?”

“All right, as long as I know! So that’s what he is. He’s had what he wanted, and now it’s ‘Goodbye, I’m going out to run after prostitutes with my cripple friends.’ Very nice!”

“What does she mean, what?” cried I. Small, in a frenzy of bewilderment. “I say there’s no harm I should said hullo to Solly Schwartz and she’s here with her prostitutes. Why must you always have your mouth full miv prostitutes?”

“That’s all right. It’s quite all right.
I
know!”

This injustice hurt I. Small. Prostitutes! She spoke of
prostitutes
to him! When other men winked and whispered about their amorous triumphs—their various five-shillingsworths of waste in shame picked up around Leicester Square—I. Small boasted of his purity. He could honestly say that he had never “been with” a woman until he was married: this was all he had to be proud of. His pride was wounded; his honour was touched; he lost his voice for a minute or two, and when it came back he screeched like a grackle: “If I have the name I’ll have the game! Wait and see!

Then Millie became savage. She behaved like all kinds of predatory creatures—she slavered like a jackal-bitch, bared her teeth like a hyena, and in the manner of a hungry caracal sharpened her claws upon the air. (They never touched each other, that couple, even in anger: she bit, slashed, scratched, and tore her husband to pieces in fantasy. He strangled her, broke
her back, and trampled her dead body in pantomime. Willing to wound and yet afraid to strike as the poet says, they fought at a distance. Remembering them in their little tantrums Charles Small remembers a visit to the Zoological Gardens, where he saw two wretched little furious monkeys trying to get at each other through a fine-meshed wire partition.)

“Siz wicked to make a mockery from cripples!” I. Small shouted. “Wicked!”

“So now I’m wicked, is that it?”

“Certainly,” said I. Small.

“Go on then, go away, go to your cripples, go to your Solly Schwartz. Go on!”

“You told me to go,” said I. Small, putting his on hat, “so good-bye.”

At this, Millie was afraid. It was not that she would not know What to do if her husband left her. She could go home, where, as she imagined, she would be welcome; where she would buzz around like a blue-bottle, flapping at imaginary dust and moving pieces of furniture that were best left alone and stirring pots that did not need to be stirred, offending everyone by repolishing into dullness mahogany furniture in which you could see your
reflection
, saying that she hated dirt, hanging out of windows to smear panes of glass professionally cleaned and polished an hour before, lifting up heavy objects and putting them down again just for the sake of lifting them up and putting them down, begging comfortably-seated people to get up while she shook up chair cushions, and driving everyone to the verge of madness so that at the end of the day she could pant through parched lips: “
I
’
m
not afraid of a little hard work, like
certain
people I could
mention
.” Then there would be, she thought, something like the shout that tore hell’s concaves while father, mother and the rest said: “Millie is here. Thank God, no one could call
her
dirty and
she,
at least, is not afraid of work. Look at her, worn out. Why doesn’t she stop it, why doesn’t she go to bed and rest? Every five minutes she gets up and moves everything and takes up the carpets and polishes all the furniture. She’ll kill herself with work.”

Then she would come groaning out of her chair saying that she had forgotten the carbolic. Certain people, no doubt for reasons of their own, liked to have disease in the house. Not Millie. To her, water was something into which people who were not
absolutely filthy poured carbolic, so that it could be scattered about the house…. She would fill the lavatories with carbolic, she would scrub the saucepans with carbolic, she would sprinkle the clocks with carbolic; disinfect the soap with carbolic, pour carbolic on the evening newspaper, and gargle with carbolic. Oh, she would be welcome if she went home; she constantly worried about how they were getting along without her. If her husband left her she would not be without a place to go.

But there was something disgraceful in being left by a husband. Millie knew exactly what people would say—she had said it herself on several occasions. Like her sisters, she had cast-iron opinions on the subject of Separation. When the Duke and Duchess of Battersea separated, the sisters all said: “
She’s
no good, that’s what it is. She carries on with every Tom Dick and Harry.” When Mr. Nussbaum ran off to America with a milliner, they said it again of Mrs. Nussbaum. When Dr. Crippen was sentenced to death for the murder of his wife, they shook sad, wise heads and said: “He’s not to blame—she drove him to it, carrying on with every Tom Dick and Harry, leading him a dog’s life. Such women deserve all they get. Believe me, he had his reasons. It serves her right.” Of Ethel le Neve, again, they said: “It serves her right, for carrying on with Doctor Crippen—a married man! She should be hung too.” And when they came again to Crippen, it was: “Serve him right—a married man
carrying
on with girls. Hang him, and a good job too!”

If, on the other hand, a wife separated herself from her husband, their anger was terrible. They denounced both parties. “What was she in such a hurry for, her? Somebody waiting to meet her at the station—she was afraid of being late—some Tom Dick or Harry…. And him, he drove her to it—
him!
—carrying on with everything in petticoats, beating his wife, never satisfied with the cooking, smoking day and night, lazy…. But if she hadn’t left him, believe me, he’d have left her—her, with her nagging; and she couldn’t boil an egg
.
Her house was a disgrace—you could write your name in the dust on the mantelpiece. She was too busy carrying on with every Tom Dick and Harry. … Let’s hope it’ll be a lesson to him, the rotter, when she dies in the gutter, the common woman….”

No, truly respectable married people did not separate.
Respectable
wives and respectable husbands did not leave and were not left. Such goings-on were good enough for the riff-raff, the rabble,
the costermongers, the dukes and duchesses who committed adultery on tiger-skin sofas and then tore out their hair and went home and drank poison and killed themselves. The Moss sisters had read all about them—it was all down in black and white—and they rejoiced that they were good girls, not duchesses. No scandals for them, thank you. If husband and wife didn’t agree, the proper thing to do was exchange smiles in public for the look of the thing, and fight it out at home; fight in silence like pit-dogs locked belly-and-throat so that nothing but death could part them. This battle of dog and bitch, since it was, so to speak, illegal, had to be fought at night, in secret. It might go on until the opponents were utterly exhausted—only old age brought a lethargic, weary, disgruntled peace—as in the case of a certain Mr. and Mrs. Good, of whom Pearl said, with a sidelong glance at her husband: “Certain people not far from here ought to take a lesson from those two—fifty years they’ve been married and they still say please and thank you to each other.” Millie,
remembering
a passage in some novelette that had moved her to tears, changed her tone and said: “If you’re not happy with me I want you to go, Srul. I want you to have your freedom. Don’t worry about me, I’ll manage somehow. I don’t want to know where you’re going. I only want to know that you’ll be happy. Go, Srul!”

“Didn’t I told you,” said I. Small, who had not enough sense to keep his mouth shut and walk out of the house, “didn’t I told you I’m going out for an hour with Solly Schwartz?”

“You mean, ‘didn’t I
tell
you’. For God’s sake, at least, Srul, for the child’s sake, tell me—where are you going?”

“I thought you didn’t want to know.”

“I should want to know where you’re going with your friend? Friends, he wants friends! I should want to know where he’s going with his
friends,
ha-ha!”

I. Small shouted in his deafening bass voice: “Don’t
you
got friends?”

“Srul, don’t change the subject. If you don’t want to tell me where you’re going, don’t tell me where you’re going. Go. Go on, go. If burglars break in I’ll call the policeman. Please, Srul, I want you should go.”

“All right, I won’t go!” He threw his hat into the fireplace, from which it rebounded with a hollow sound.

Millie said: “For
my
sake—to please
me
—I
want
you to go to
your humpback. Don’t worry about me, I can’t help it if you hurt my feelings. Go!”

“Look, Millie, if you’re not careful I’ll go.”

“Go!”

“I should go when she makes poison of it.”

“Now I’m poisoning him. All right. What can you expect?”

“From what, what can you expect?”

“It’s my fault,” said Millie shaking her head. “I was warned, I didn’t take advice, so I suffer. It’s all right, Srul, go on, go. Go with your humpy. How comes your wife with you? What for? What does he want a wife for? What does
he
care if his wife isn’t well? No, he’s got to go out with threehalfpence-twopence, drinking with prostitutes. It’s all right, as long as I know what he is. As long as I know, it’s all right. I only want to know. Go on, go. I’ve got a headache. Thank God there isn’t a stone floor in the kitchen, Crippen!”

“Oh, bleddywell beggar yourself!” shouted I. Small, putting on his hat back to front and stamping his feet.

“That’s just what I expected. Go on, go.”

“You asked me to go, you told me to go, you said
go
when I asked you if I could go weeks ago, and now in that tone of voice she says go.”

“First learn to talk English, Srul, then talk about my tone of voice. If my tone of voice doesn’t suit you, find another tone of voice. Go! Should I mind being let alone? I’m used to it.”

“You’re a bleddy story-teller! You can have a hundred friends in and out of the house all day long, and so me, so I mustn’t go out five minutes miv one friend!”

“Don’t say
miv;
say with … Do I go out at all hours of the night with humpbacks with a leg and a half, running after goodness knows what rubbish to get myself diseased? Do I go out drinking in dirty rotten common public-houses?”

“All right, I’m not going.”

“Srul, to please me, go!”

“May I drop dead if I go!”

“So sure should I live, you’ll go!”

“Honest? You want I should go?” asked I. Small. “What’s the matter, Millie, I should go out miv a friend for a walk, and a chat, and for sixpence a glass lager beer? Tell me, what’s the matter with that, Millie?” he asked, in a heartbroken voice.

“A chat. What secrets has he got with his humpy little Punch and Judy show?”

“Millie, once for all, stop talking about humps! Is it Solly’s fault he’s got a liddle hump? Did he said to his father und mother: ‘Please, mummy-deddy, do me a favour, give me a hump—for my
sake, to please me, mummy-deddy, for mein birthday a hump give me.’ Eh?”

“I don’t know. He’s your friend, ask him. All right, go on, creep out, go and
chat,
what are you waiting for? What do they want to talk about that I mustn’t hear? Dirt, filth, women. As long as I know what he is. Oh, I’m so ashamed, so ashamed. The whole town’ll know. He’s had my money; that was what he wanted; and off he goes dressed up like a Piccadilly Johnny with a walking-stick—a walking-stick if you don’t mind!—to roam about the West End with humpbacks. Goodness only knows what they get up to.”