The Thousand Deaths of Mr Small (9 page)

She had never allowed her husband to forget that when they married he was penniless, and she had five hundred pounds. She had rubbed it in so thoroughly that he was sore and tingling from head to foot with shame, so that now, when she referred to her money he wanted to go and hide. He took out his purse and emptied it on to the table. There was a golden sovereign, a
half-sovereign
, three half-crowns, two florins, four sixpences, and a threepenny piece. With something like calm, almost with dignity, he said: “I earned it. Look—I take a shilling, one shilling. Is it too much?” She did not answer. He threw down the shilling and picked up sixpence.
“Na!
That suits you?”

“Certainly, Srul. How much more do you want to buy cups of cocoa for your Society ladies?”

Millie’s allusion to her exhausted dowry had demoralised him. He did not roar with rage, but said humbly, holding up the sixpence: “A glass lager beer.”

“Very nice. The last sixpence in his pocket Piccadilly Johnny’s got to rush out and spend on beer. Now I know what he is. It’s all right as long as I know. He can’t buy a bottle of beer and drink it in the house like a man. Oh no. He must go out and about, Piccadilly Johnny with a walking-stick! Go on, hurry up, you’ll be late for humpy.”

“Leave humps alone, I told you!”

“Don’t hurry back. Stay out all night. Don’t worry, I’ll be waiting with a nice cup of tea and something to eat.”

“Millie, for goodness’ sake, why should you
be
like that?” said I. Small, tearfully.

“Like what? He wants me to be like his fancy women—is that what it is? So that’s what it is! Well, I’m sorry, Srul, I can’t help my nature. I’m not going to be a fancy woman, even to please you. But don’t let me get in your way. Go on, Piccadilly Johnny, take your walking-stick. Ha-ha, a walking-stick he wants.

This enraged I. Small. He bellowed: “What’s the matter, what, with a walking-stick, what?”

“Let his children starve. What does he care, the millionaire, as long as he can buy walking-sticks!”

“Deliberate bleddy story-teller! For ten years I had this stick!”

“Then take it, Piccadilly Johnny, go on, go out and show off with it—him with a walking-stick!—I never heard of such a thing!”

“Oh, beggary!” cried I. Small, and broke his stick over his knee. Throwing down the splintered halves he said: “
Na!
Ten years I had that stick. It was in your way, was it? Right! Now you should be satisfied. There, take the stick, put it in the fire—in the fire put it! Now am I a Piccadilly Johnny?”

“So that’s what you are! So this is what he’s come down to! Breaking up walking-sticks to light the fire. It’s all right, I don’t mind, as long as I know, Srul. I only want to know the truth. Once I know——”

“Beggar yourself! Beggar the bleddy truth!” shouted I. Small, and went out.

When she heard the street door slam, Millie was sad. She looked at her husband’s saddle-shaped purse open and empty on the table, at the few gold and silver coins gleaming among bronze pennies in the gaslight, and she wept. She was ashamed and unhappy.
What
is
the
matter
with
me?
she asked herself, pushing the loose money about with a fork on the tablecloth. (She could not bring herself to touch it with a finger.)
He
does
his
best,
poor
man.
He’d
run
to
the
devil
for
me.
He’s
a
good
man
—
what
do
I
want
of
him?

Still weeping, she remembered that she too was not without virtue: she remembered a December afternoon when she had taken off her overcoat and hung it on the shoulders of a blind beggar woman who was pretending to sell matches in Oxford Street. She was like that. All that she had was anyone’s to take;
and she could be sympathetic for hours on end while neighbours talked of their troubles. But, confronted with people she loved, she felt as a gun might feel—if it could feel—when the hammer clicks back, the cartridge is rammed tight, the finger is upon the trigger, the eye is on the sights, and the spark is waiting that will scatter the charge.

Then there was a bang. The one nearest to her got hurt.

A
FTERWARDS
she was always sorry, and she cried. But even as she cried she knew that her tears were in their way missiles, because she had been born and bred like that. Sometimes she wept alone, as she wept then, while her husband, sick with guilt and completely discouraged, slunk westward to meet his friend, Solly Schwartz.

His evening was poisoned.

… The dull ache in Charles Small’s right side is subsiding. A certain congestion in that region takes itself away to
somewhere
lower down, so that by God’s grace he can sigh and, in sighing, lift an awful weight off his breast-bone. Having sighed he thinks again …

A lot of people aren’t so bad, if only they are left alone. But people won’t leave you alone. Oh no! They’ve got to fiddle with you, interfere with you, mess about with you. They say they love you. Well, if they love you, why can’t they let you be? What do they want to try and make you like themselves for?

… The pain is coming back, and so is the sour taste of curds and the hopeless gurgling washiness of the whey. He punches his pillow, every feather in which seems suddenly to have become a thorn, and thinks again:

Whose fault is it? Your own, no one’s fault but your own, if you are squeezed out of shape and made miserable by weaklings. Would they bruise their fingers on a piece of iron? No. More fool you, then, for letting yourself stay soft. More fool you, for letting your mother get a scissors-hold on you before you had wriggled clear of her womb! Oh, rottenly unfair game played by
abominably
matched opponents! … You weigh seven pounds; she weighs a hundred and fifty pounds. “Now you can suck me dry, on condition that later I may suck you.” Maaa-maaa-maaa! … You thought you were pretty clever to have gulped a bellyful of sour milk. Later you were reminded that it was your opponent’s turn. Then out came your heart, your brain, your guts, your liver and the marrow of your bones; whereupon she gets back with a ladylike belch and says “Good son, good son”—like
a satisfied customer in a restaurant saying “Good custard.”

Oh why was not everyone like Solly Schwartz? Charles Small loved Solly Schwartz.

*

Model the figure of an average man, and then, while the clay is still wet, put a heavy weight on its head and leave it to settle down and harden, and you will find yourself possessed of an oddly deformed statuette. Its head will be sessile, pushed down into its shoulders. Between the flattened cranium and the almost invisible throat you will see a queer, lowering face that seems to be nothing but a dog-like grin, an immense nose and a chin like the toe of a boot. Anything may happen to the torso, but in all probability the shoulders will come up as the head sinks down, the back will hunch itself, and the legs will become short and thick and curiously curved while the feet are splayed. Only the arms harden in their original shape, and then they appear disproportionately large. Such was Solly Schwartz. ——in fact he was even less than that. There had not been enough clay to complete his left leg, so that since it was six inches shorter than his right he wore a surgical boot with a steel frame—what they used to call an “iron foot”. His father considered him as an affliction rather than a child, and so indeed he must have appeared when the midwife, in Kutno, held him up for inspection on a towel. Every mother shuddered at the thought of Solly Schwartz newly born, and thanked God that no such monstrosity had been born to her. He, laughing heartily, used to tell his friends that when he was circumcised his father cried: “For God’s sake, keep the little piece and throw the big one away!” What was there to do with such a creature? “It gives me the sick to look at him,” said the father, who was a tailor, watching the hunch-backed child playing with an empty cotton-reel.
“
Gott
sei
dank
he doesn’t get it from
me!
”

“Nor from me,” said the mother, meekly. “Leave him, leave him—it’s not his fault, it’s his misfortune. Let him be,
Avrum-kele
, leave him…. Ah, my darling little dove! Ah, my pretty little doll! Bless him, then!”

“Yes,” said the father, “let him sit on his
tukhess
and stitch, and stitch, like me. That’s all he’ll be good for. Let him be a tailor like his unlucky father.”

So as soon as Solly Schwartz was old enough to learn how to
work the child went to work. By that time his parents had emigrated. He hopped about the workshop, damping rags for the pressers and sweeping the floor until he learned how to sew. But he was clumsy. His father cursed himself for having begotten such a son, who could not even “threadle a needle”. The fact had to be faced: little Solly Schwartz was maladroit. But he was strong in the arms and had large, sinewy hands—
disproportionately
large, extraordinarily muscular hands, to which the tailors in the sweat-shop referred as
luppes.
The end of it was that he became a presser. Singing cheerful songs in a voice which was audible above the thunder of the heavy sewing machines, he hopped from the pressing-stove to the bench and back again, clownishly juggling the hot, ponderous irons. It was generally assumed that he was not in his right mind; he was happy. Malformed, hunchbacked, incurably lame, sentenced to hard labour for life with no earthly hope of earning more than thirty shillings a week, he sang. On one leg, he danced. When his father died and his colleagues offered condolence, Solly Schwartz said nothing but: “Good.”

An old cutter, pausing with his mouth and his scissors wide open said: “What did you say?
Good?
By you is good if your father dies, God rest his soul?”

Young Solly Schwartz replied: “Certainly is good. Ain’t God good?”

“Who’s talking about God? Honour thy father and thy mother.”

“Who said so? Moses said so. Who said so to Moses? God. Who gave the Law to Moses? God. If you live, it’s good. If you die, all right, it’s good. Did you want he should live for ever? Let him be, he’s dead and done with. What do you care? Cry over your own father.”

“A bladdy good hiding, that’s what he wants,” said the cutter, picking up a yardstick; for Solly Schwartz was only fifteen years old.

“Come on, give me a good hiding. But put one finger on me and I warn you, that’s all—I warn you!” said Solly Schwartz, picking up a hot pressing-iron and holding it effortlessly like a Roman boxer with a cestus.

“What’s the use talking? Where there’s no sense there’s no feeling. And so that’s how we go,” said the cutter going back to work; while some of the other workers in the sweat-shop
glanced at Solly Schwartz and, winking at one another said: “He’s a
riach,
a proper devil!”

His mother died soon after his father. He did not observe the eight days of mourning prescribed by ritual, but came back to work as soon as she was under ground, whistling a vulgar tune entitled
Poppety-Poppety-Pop,
and wearing a pink tie.

The cutter, a large man of violent temper, shocked by such callousness, picked up the brass-tipped yardstick and shouted: “Look at ’im! Cossack, epicurean, murderer! His father and his mother, dead in their graves they are lying, and he’s here whistling like … like … like an Irishman, in a check jacket. Haven’t you got no respect for the dead, may they rest in peace?”

“No!” said young Solly Schwartz. “Respect for the dead? What for?”

“What
for?
Because a son should
have
respect! Your
mother
is lying dead—so you should
have
respect! Think, think, you … you … you humpty-dumpty, your mother, she’s lying dead!
Dead!”

“What do you want me to do? Just tell me, Mister Berkowitz, say the word. Have her stuffed? She’s dead. Well? And so?”

“Show respect. Respect show!”

Taking off his coat and rolling up his sleeves in preparation for the day’s work Solly Schwartz said: “Mr. Berkowitz, don’t talk about her. She’s my business, not your business. She’s dead, and a good job too. Better off!”

“Honour thy father and thy mother!” cried Berkowitz, the cutter.

“Honour them? What for? Did they honour me? They’re gone—let them go. What d’you want me to do, cry? I’m glad they’re dead. What did I want
them
for?
In
der
erde
with my father.
In
der
erde
with my mother, and a good job, too! Now I’m nobody’s son. Now I’m Solomon Schwartz. Good!”

Brandishing the yard-measure the cutter said: “What you want is——”

“—
I
know what I want. Give me what
you
think I want,” said Solly Schwartz, clenching his fists. “Come on.”

Then the master of the workshop came in, took the cutter aside, and said: “What’s the matter with you? Why can’t you leave the boy alone? He’s an orphan. It’s a
mitzvah,
Berkowitz, to be kind to an orphan. Stop it, Berkowitz!”

“Mr. Cohen, can you stand there and talk to me like this? Stop it? Stop what? He threatened me already with a red-hot iron. With a red-hot iron this humpty-dumpty threatened me. A nogoodnik, a rotter! His mother still twisting and turning in her grave, God forbid, and in he comes in a check coat whistling already
Poppety-Poppety-Pop.
Tfoo!
Mr. Cohen, enough!
Oder
he goes,
oder
I
go.
No!
What, am I here to be … be … be blackmailed by this, this
scheisspot?
Me?”

“Sha!”
said Mr. Cohen. “Berkowitz,
sha!
A cripple, an orphan—may it never happen to you—it’s written, it’s a
mitzvah
to do good to an orphan. Let him alone. No mother, no father, leave him be!”

“If that
rotzer
stays, by my life and yours too, and may I drop down dead, then I go, Mr. Cohen.”

Mr. Cohen said, wearily: “Oh, let it be, Berkowitz, go! What do you take me for, I should throw out into the streets orphans already into the streets, what? Go! Go, for God’s sake, leave me in peace and go!”

Berkowitz said: “So that’s how it is. You wanted to get rid of me and you couldn’t say so like a man. Look at the way he gets himself up, that
schtinker!”

“Are you going, Berkowitz?”

“Hm! For such a little loafer, for such
scheisspots
I should take away my living, is
that
what you want? A
krenk
on the——”

“—Berkowitz, no curses in my workshop! May the man be paralysed with a rotten fit and take a black cholera who makes curses in this place! Is that clear?” said Mr. Cohen, in Yiddish. “May worms devour him and a fire in his
kishges!
And a week’s notice. No cursing, Berkowitz, or may my hands drop off…. What, are you making me rich with your dribbing and drabbing? Look at you,
stuck
narr,
look at you,
stuck
ochs,
you … you … whatever you are, go, work, you
stuck
pferd!”
Mr. Cohen was getting angry, and enjoying it.
“Parkh!”
he cried. That meant
scab.
“Lozerducke
bund!
Herod! Lazybones! Pisstank, loafer, aristocrat, go back to work—a grown-up man fighting with boychiks!”

Berkowitz, pale with anger, went back to work, but thereafter he tried to make himself offensive to Solly Schwartz. He did not dare physically to threaten this ugly boy who had the arms of a weight-lifter and the eyes of a detective-inspector: he used his tongue.

“Look at the way it dresses, that thing,” he said to the assistant cutter. “Hm! Look at humpty-dumpty! Shepherd’s plaid he’s got to wear, with a
hoika
on his back like Primrose Hill. Pink shirts, give him. Patent boots, to button up; nothing is too good for it…. They’ve got no
khine,
Pressburger, no bloody
khine.
How comes for a presser to dress himself up like a … a … door-knocker? There you are, that’s what it is. They want to make a show of themselves, these pressers. What can you do with people like that? Eh, Pressburger? Ask
yourself
the question. Answer me.”

Pressburger, a good-natured man, whispered: “Ah, come on, Mr. Berkowitz, be nice, please! What do you want to hurt his feelings for? If it gives him pleasure, why shouldn’t he wear a check suit with a pink shirt? What’s the matter with you, Mr. Berkowitz? When I was a boy all I could think about was I should have a moustache with a fancy weskit.” Pressburger laughed. “Well, so I got a moustache—look, feel the quality, all hair, a nice shade of grey. By me, this was ambition. You can have it for eighteenpence.” Pressburger was trying to sweeten the atmosphere of the workshop; to cleanse it of acrimony and spite.

But Berkowitz went on and on until Solly Schwartz said:
“Achtung,
stuck
schneider.
Listen!”

Now this was fighting talk. It is always dangerous to call a man what he is—it is insulting because in doing so you imply that you are different, and therefore somehow superior. It must be because most men are ashamed of what they are. There is a tacit understanding that one is superior to one’s trade, however respectable it may be. Call a plumber an idle thievish,
incompetent
dog, and he will reason with you; shout: “You plumber!” and he will hit you with a wrench. Tell your bank manager that he is a heartless robber, a parasitic bourgeois, and a rotten cheat, and he will try to explain matters: call him a banker and he will probably have you thrown out of his office. There is no surer way to irritate a man than to tell him coldly that he is what he ought to be proud to be. It must be because men have lost their pride in their work. Perhaps they have been listening to too many fairy stories about Vanderbilt and Rockefeller, or reading too many columns of Society Gossip and looking at too many shiny rotogravure supplements in the weekly magazines. The fact remains that for fifty years, now, all anyone has needed to do,
if he wanted a punch in the face, has been, in effect, to say to any man: “You are what you are.”

Berkowitz, passionately angry, said: “What did you call me, what?”

“
Schneider.
Tailor. Well? What are you?
Schneider.
Go on
schneid,
you
schneider
.”