The Thousand Deaths of Mr Small Read online

  What was there worth quarrelling over? Do reasonable, civilised human beings quarrel over bags of corruption begotten in guilt and shameful darkness, gestated in fear, and born in mess and panic? Into his tortured mind comes a disgusting image: he sees himself as a nightmarish bagpipe. You tucked this bagpipe under your arm, but you did not blow into it: it was ready-filled with human breath. Day and night, night and day, day in and day out and night after night it squealed and screamed. With all your soul you hated its nerve-racking music, and yet you were compelled to walk up and down with it in the middle of the night in the hope of silencing it. It paused in its shrieking only as long as it took to discharge vomit from one end and dung from the other … and something compelled you to cherish this filthy instrument and hold it in your arms until it sprouted wicked little white teeth so that it might bite you. Trust his father and his mother to have words over such an object! They did not argue about the best way of killing it and disposing of it, but about what label they ought to tie upon it: in other words, they wrangled bitterly over the baby’s name.

  It was customary to name a child after some close relative who had more or less recently died. I. Small’s father had been dead for several years, and his name was Khatzkele. One day, while he was crooning and yearning over the baby, tickling its slimy chin, and actually kissing it, he said—with tears in his eyes—“Liddle Khatzkele, mein liddle Khatzkele!”

  “Khatzkele! What do you mean? What are you talking about? Where do you think you are? Khatzkele! Who’s called Khatzkele?” said Millie.

  “What’s the matter miv Khatzkele?”

  “You want to make the child a laughing-stock? How can you call a child Khatzkele? In front of strangers you want me to say: ‘Come here, Khatzkele,’ I suppose. Is that the sort of man you are?”

  “Why not?”

  “Why not. Why not! … What’s the use of talking to people if they’re ignorant? What’s the use?” Millie said, in agony, to the ceiling.

  “Khatzkele was good enough for mein father. It should be good enough for mein son. What do you want you should call him, then?”

  “He should be called Dudley after my Uncle David.”

  “How comes Dudley to David?”

  “What’s the use of talking if people are ignorant?”

  “Ignorant, schmignorant. Dudley, Schmudley … Khatzkele!”

  “Never!”

  “Is your bleddy uncle more important than mein bleddy father, God rest his bleddy soul?” cried I. Small, in anger.

  “A nice way to talk in front of the child,” said Millie, snatching the week-old baby to her bosom.

  I. Small roared: “Certainly mein father, God rest his soul, is more important by me than your bleddy Uncle Dudley. Dudley! Schmudley! Hah!”

  “Khatzkele! When he grows up people will say: ‘What’s your name?’ and he’ll say ‘Khatzkele,’ and then people’ll say ‘A Jew boy!’”

  “Is there any shame in that? Shame in that is there any? Is Rothschild ashamed? Is Sessoon ashamed from it? Is Montefior ashamed? Is—is—is—is Shakespeare ashamed? He should be ashamed to be a Jew?”

  “Not a Jew—Jewish! Talk English! You’re not in Cracow now.”

  “What’s the matter with Cracow? Is Samovarna better? No Dudleys. Soll ich——”

  “—I swear by my life and by yours too that my child will never be called Khatzkele. There!”

  “By your life, by my life, and by the child’s life too, if I should fall dead this minute, that bleddy child won’t be called Dudley!”

  “I swear by my health, not Khatzkele!”

  “And I swear by my health, and your health, and his health and every bleddy health, no Dudley!”

  “Oh, I’m so ashamed, so ashamed!”

  “She’s ashamed. She’s ashamed. All right—I’m ashamed, I’m ashamed. She’s ashamed, I’m ashamed. No Dudley! I should have mein son a Dudley! Hah!”

  “His son? What does he mean by his son?” said Millie to the overmantel.

  I. Small, addressing the washstand, cried: “Whose son does she think it is, already?”

  “Isn’t it my son?”

  “And isn’t it mein son?”

  “I don’t have Khatzkeles.”

  “I don’t have no Dudleys! Mein son is going to be called after mein father. Your bleddy uncle can go and beggar himself. Na!”

  “I’m so ashamed, so ashamed, so ashamed!”

  I. Small was magnificent (for him) in this situation. He stamped a foot, folded his arms, and said: “Khatzkele or nothingk!”

  Millie began to cry. The baby was asleep but she gave it a sly pinch so that it cried with her. A nurse, still in attendance, who had been listening at the door, came running in and said: “You’ll sour her milk. Have a little consideration. Selfishness—there’s men for you!”

  “Sour, sweet, long, short, big, little, large, hot, cold, no Dudley! Khatzkele. Beggar their bleddy uncles!”

  Then the baby threw up a stomachful of half-digested milk, and Millie, calling for a doctor, was consoled by the nurse, who said that everything was quite all right because everyone knew that men were beasts. Later it was necessary to come to some arrangement. The photographer was called in as arbitrator. He said:

  “You are both right. But what is in a name? On the whole, Srul is right. His father’s name was Khatzkele, and the father comes first.”

  Since the discussion took place in Millie’s father’s house, she said nothing at that time: but she gave the photographer a terrible look, catching which, he continued: “On the other hand, the mother’s wishes must be obeyed. Now, take the name Khatzkele. A good name, an honourable name, a perfect name. But when in Rome you do as Rome does. Say for example that your father’s name was Habakkuk. Therefore would you call your son Habakkuk? No. Why? Because you’re in England now. If you called your son Habakkuk everyone would laugh at him. People would say: ‘Why don’t you go and have a Kuck.’ Every time he left the room people would say ‘He’ll be back in a minute, he’s just gone to Habakkuk.’ … Now you’ve got to call somebody after somebody, so you’d call your Habakkuk Habakkuk actually, but in English you’d call him Henry. Why? For his own good! Take the name Khatzkele. I’ve got a cousin called Khatzkele. He calls himself Charles, and what’s the matter with that? Now Millie wants a Dudley, and Srul wants a Khatzkele. Well? What’s the matter with two names? I say, call the boy Charles Dudley. Charles Dudley Small—isn’t that a name? Charles Dudley Small.”

  All Millie’s sisters and brothers-in-law applauded this suggestion. Her mother had no fault to find with it. Her father, scratching his beard in perplexity, muttered: “Duddler? Duddler? Who was Duddler, who?” For as far as he knew there was no one in the Pentateuch who begat a Duddler.

  But the photographer said: “Dudley, Dudley is short for Dovidel.”

  “Then let it be.”

  I. Small was defeated again. The brat was named Charles Dudley, but for thirteen years he did not know exactly what his name was. When his mother hated his father more than usual—two or three days in every week—she would call her son Dudley; with extraordinary subtlety and courage (for him) I. Small put a stop to this by waiting until they were all together in a public place and then saying in a loud voice: “Khatzkele, mein liddle boychik.”

  This made Millie so ashamed that she settled on the name of Charley. The photographer, who loved his little joke, called him Chudleigh. Lily, who missed no opportunity of annoying her sisters in general and Millie in particular, and liked nothing better than a suggestive word or smutty story called him Habakkuk. The last syllable of the name of that fierily poetic prophet had, in jargon, a fæcal significance, so she laid heavy emphasis upon it. But that was Lily all over; that was the way her mind worked. (If she admired your room she developed an inability to pronounce her R’s, so that she was talking about your womb; and if you could have heard her talking about male chickens, you would have died laughing.)

  Habakkuk, Dudley, Khatzkele, Chudleigh, Cha
rley…. The child was confused for years until the jokes wore out, and everyone called him Charley. I. Small grew to like the name: it was a handy name to shout when he wanted to let all the air out of his lungs—Char-LAAAY!——He made it sound as if he was selling Charlies by the sackful off a coalheaver’s cart, at two-and-twopence a hundredweight.

  But when, at the age of thirteen, the boy was according to Jewish Law proclaimed a man morally responsible for his own sins—on the momentous occasion when, wearing his first long trousers, he was called up to read a portion of the Law in the local synagogue, did they call Charles Dudley Small? No. They called Khatzkele-ben-Yisroel: and then old I. Small disgraced himself by making a sucking, popping noise like a wet cork drawn out of a rubber bottle and letting his feelings overcome him to such an extent that tears ran down into his moustache and were sniffed up into his nostrils, from which they were expelled in a whirling spray by a terrible sneeze; whereupon he had to use his handkerchief, blowing a ram’s-horn blast that might have brought down the walls of Jericho. But they were not in Jericho. They were in synagogue. The whole family was there. By this time Khatzkele-ben-Yisroel, alias Charles Dudley Small, had half a dozen male cousins who had already been initiated, thus, into full manhood. It had been conveyed to him that all the world was waiting for him to make a fool of himself. When his father blew his nose the Portion of Law which he had learned by heart, word by word, fell through a hole in his head. He had stage fright. Something like a hard-boiled egg was stuck at the back of his throat. Then the great scroll unrolled, and a voice hissed the first word, which was Kee, and it all came back in a rush, and came out in a rush, delivered in a voice so piercing that several people in the audience could not hear themselves speak for half an hour after.

  When it was all over his mother kissed him and said: “Dudley! Dudley!”

  “Khatzkele,” said his father, shaking him by the hand, “Khatzkele, now you are a man!”

  “Come on, Dudley!”

  “Do what your mother tells you, Khatzkele.”

  He was aware of an interlacing, a reticulation of forked lightning not far above his head: looks were being exchanged. But there was no quarrel that day, because Millie was in a genial, expansive mood. She smiled and nodded, as if to say: “To-day is a holiday, for to-day let me put aside my tools—my rack, my thumbscrew, and my pincers. Let me turn my four wild horses out to graze for a few hours and refresh them. I will make a fresh start and tear you asunder first thing to-morrow morning.”

  For on that day her son had become a Man….

  Ha-ha-ha! says Charles Small, looking at the photograph that was taken to commemorate the occasion. It is a magnificent photograph, expensively mounted and signed (if you please) like an Old Master—Nathan, with a flourish. There is a high-class-looking inscription chastely printed in elegant type: The Studio Nathan, Old Bond Street, West One—not a common or garden W.1. but West One. This was the kind of man Nathan, the Photographer, had turned out to be: Bond Street, West One! He had picked up (such creatures have all the luck; there is no getting away from it) a wonderful Belgian photographer, a refugee who had fled from Brussels when the Kaiser’s Army was on its way in. So now Nathan was making a fortune. He was patronised by the nobility and gentry. Society beauties had their photographs taken by Nathan of West One. Foolish people who did not know what Millie knew about the immoral lives Society ladies led, illiterates unacquainted with the works of Miss Marie Corelli, stood and gaped at framed photographs of famous beauties in the vestibule of The Studio Nathan. Millie, who was a keen observer of women, and who could be relied upon to find their weak points—she had brought a charwoman around to her opinion that Lily Langtry was ugly as sin and that Ellen Terry had a face like a horse—could not bear to look at such portraits. If Lady A. was blonde, she bleached. If Lady B. was dark, she dyed. If the Duchess of C. had a fine bosom, it was because she stuffed her dress with newspapers or handkerchiefs. Millie was very much down on bosoms. She thanked God that she had never gone in for any such filthiness. But as for Nathan, the Photographer, all he thought about was bosoms. Millie said that she would rather see her husband sweeping the streets than messing about with Duchess’s bosoms.

  Be it as it may: Nathan’s present to Charles Small when he became a Man was a picture, again. Naturally: it cost Nathan nothing. He said that his normal charge for such a picture would be “in the region of twenty guineas.” When he suggested a date for an appointment Millie said that she did not know how to thank him. As soon as he was out of earshot she laughed without mirth and said: “It just shows you. That’s the way to get rich. I’d rather sell bootlaces in the street than get rich that way. But there you are—what can you expect from a Litvak?”

  I. Small said: “Nathan conies from Jmerinka, Millie.”

  “What’s the use of talking? He’s a foreigner, he’s ignorant—him and his Jmerinka. Oh, what’s the use, what’s the use of talking? A photographer. Oh, I’m so ashamed, so ashamed! Do you call yourself a man? He stands there and he calls himself a man.”

  “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 wan
t 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!

  CHAPTER VII

  IT 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.