The Song of the Flea (43 page)
Read The Song of the Flea Online
Authors: Gerald Kersh
Pym seized her savagely by the handle. He had twenty-six shillings and ninepence in his pocket, and needed a room to work and sleep in. He thought of the clean, scoured landladies of the neighbourhood, and was sick at heart. Then he thought of
Busto, that wicked little man, and remembered—he could not recall where he had heard it—a proverb:
It
is
better
to
deal
with
the
devil
you
know
than
with
the
devil
you
don’t
know.
Busto was a swine in greed and a cat in watchfulness; a wolf in snatching and a squirrel in hoarding; a bug to creep, a louse to cling, a leech to suck; flea-like in evasiveness, snake-like in pitilessness, maggot-like in impartial hunger. Yet Pym, laughing at himself between his teeth, found himself homesick for the
single-mindedness
of Busto and for the naïve nakedness of the curious squalor of his house.
In this sort of muck, a man knew where he was. Black was black and white was white. You paid and stayed—or out you went. There was a queer kind of honesty in Busto’s place: no sidelong looks got you anywhere; no false promises carried you through; no smile masked a lie. Whatever you had, Busto got out of you—even a little truth, once in a while.
Pym went to Busto’s house and said: “Got a room?”
“Sure,” said Busto. “Lovely room. Ground afloor front room, sixteen a-bob a week.”
“Nothing cheaper?”
“No.”
“Sixteen shillings!”
“Yes.”
“Oh, all right. Okay.”
Busto opened his left hand, touched the palm of it with his right forefinger, and said: “Hah?”
Pym had sixteen shillings ready; a ten-shilling note and six silver shillings. Busto sneered a smile at him and said: “First of all you got a room for eleven a-bob upstairs. Hah? Okay. Now you got a sixteen a-bob room, ground floor. Hah? Okay, okay! You wait. To-morrow is better. Why not?”
“Indeed, why not?”
“A minute,” said Busto, and went downstairs. Soon he came back with a portable typewriter.
“Mine! Mine!” shouted Pym.
“Some fella so this fella finds it in-a street, so that fella bring it a-me because you got your name and address inside it. Okay? So I keep it for you.”
“I gave you a forwarding address,” said Pym, looking hungrily at his old typewriter.
“I forget it.”
“Busto, you’re a liar,” said Pym, happily, “an unmitigated liar. Who was it that brought the typewriter?”
“Oh, some fella.”
“Did you give him anything?”
“
Hah?
”
“Did he leave an address?”
“No.”
“I would give that man my shirt,” said Pym. Then he took the new typewriter back to where he had bought it and they gave him ten guineas for it, and he was happy. Pym had not wanted to pawn his new suits and his overcoat; and in a mysterious way he had developed a great fondness for his old typewriter. It was, to him, like a wife after thirty years of marriage: he would not die of grief for the loss of it, but he was not himself without it.
He typed:
23456789-¾qwertyuiop
3
/
8
asdfghjkl;
7
/
8
zxcvbnm,.½”/@£&’
()
¼Q
WE
RTYUIOP
1
/
8
ASDFGHJKL:
5
/
8
ZXCVBNM?.
%
Then he wrote:
The
quick
brown
fox
jumped
right
over
the
sly
lazy
dog.
And:
Now
is
the
time
for
all
good
men
to
come
to
the
aid
of
the
party.
He made patterns with commas, obliques, ampersands, and dots. Soon the old typewriter took him to her bosom again, and they were one; and he let her peck away all that had come to the top of his consciousness.
He wrote:
Joanna, Joanna, I have been thinking of you constantly, my dear Joanna. Writing to you, although I am alone, I feel closer to you; I feel that I am in communication with you. I want to be near you because I love you. I love you because God made you well—beautiful in soul and body, strong and full of courage, clean and honest, keen and successfully shaped, finely tempered, polished, burnished, and finished … something like a knife with which you could defend your honour, kill a tyrant, cut down trees to build a house, fight a
Last Battle, sharpen a pencil, build a ship in which brave men might sail to find new worlds, or clear a way through the jungle. When I think of you I think of a good blue blade made to take a razor-edge and a needle-point—and at the same time supple; a weapon for hewing things down, and an instrument for carving wonderful shapes out of what you have cut away. For all this, and for your beauty, and for other reasons which I cannot define, I love you and profoundly admire you….
23456789-¾qwertyuiop
3
/
8
asdfghjkl;
7
/
8
zxcvbnm,.½”/@£&()¼QWERTYUIOP
1
/
8
ASDFGHJKL:
5
/
8
ZXCVBNM?.%
… I love strength. I love nobility. I love that which is beautiful and good. Therefore, Joanna, I love you. Once I knew a man who used to stay up with me all night wondering which was best: the Good, the True or the Beautiful. We used to argue until the day broke. How young I must have been then! How can anything be beautiful unless it is good?
You are the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. You are all that I aspire to. Something in my mind tells me that you and I are going to make great things together. Something tells me that you love me, and I tell you that I love you very dearly….
23456789-¾qwertyuiop
3
/
8
asdfghjkl;
7
/
8
zxcvbnm,.½”/@£&’()¼QWERTYUIOP
1
/
8
ASDFGHJKL:
5
/
8
ZXCVBNM?.%
… I’ll see you to-morrow and well talk again together. Something tells me that we are destined to be together.
I love you. Once I had a young hawk with a broken wing. I offer you my heart, but—as then—carefully, with my finger-tips, as I offered him meat hoping to earn his love. Good night, dear heart. Good night.
Then Pym took the paper out of the typewriter and tore it to pieces.
*
Busto unbuttoned his coat, as he usually did before going to bed. He preferred to sleep at odd hours. Now his clock—a fly-blown dial smaller than the cap of a small pickle-jar supported by a massive bronze Hercules—said that it was half-past eight
in the evening. Therefore it must have been about ten past nine. Pym, heavy with melancholy and jerked alternately the four points of the compass by yearnings to work, sleep, drink and eat, heard an imperious knocking at the street door.
Busto came up, groaning.
“Hah?” he said. “Oh. Is
you.
Well?”
A piercing voice, neither male nor female, said: “Is that you, Busto? Well, listen. My father wants to know if you’ve received a letter in a long narrow envelope, addressed to M’Gurk.”
Busto said: “Hah! Lookatim! All dressed up.”
“Did you or did you not receive a letter addressed to Mr. M’Gurk?”
“Hah!”
“In a long envelope.”
“Hah!”
“Did you?”
“Don’t be silly.”
“Did you or didn’t you?”
“Long envelope,” said Busto, with scorn. “
You
never got no long envelope. Long envelope! Hah! Long envelope. You never even got a-short a-envelope.”
“Look here, you! I know the law. You can get five years hard labour——”
“Hah!”
“Did you or did you not——”
“No envelope.”
“No letter at all addressed to M’Gurk?”
“Go way.”
“You’re sure, now?”
“Lookatim—all dressed up,” said Busto. “Hah!”
Pym went into the passage and saw Boysie M’Gurk frantically gesticulating with a fist no larger than a knotted rope, while Busto waited like a buzzard, black and dusty, avid and patient.
“What’s up?” asked Pym.
Busto did not give himself the trouble of lifting a finger. He pointed to Boysie with his chin, and said: “
Long
a-envelope, they want.”
“We’ve got a contract lost in the post,” said Boysie. “Oh, it’s you. Still here?”
“You’re looking remarkably elegant, Boysie.”
“What? You never heard?
The
Miserable
M’Gurks
—you mean to tell me you never heard? ‘Man, Woman and Dog’—you never heard? There’s a contract in the post, gone astray. Oh, it’s okay, it’ll turn up, but——”
“Things are going well then, eh?” said Pym to Boysie, who piped:
“That new act of mine is going like a house on fire. I made them do it just like I said. I’m a dog with black spots and long ears right down to the ground. I steal the whole act. I get them rolling in the aisles. They pee themselves laughing.”
“So, you’re a dog with black spots, are you? Just like
you
said, is it?” said Pym, “I seem to have some vague idea that I had a certain little tiny something to do with it.”
“Well, it’s true that you kind of gave me the inspiration in the course of a discussion.”
“I’m humbly grateful for your magnanimity in acknowledging the fact.”
“Not at all, old man. Give honour where honour is due, I think. We’re top of the bill at the Hackney Pantheon. George Black’s interested. I wouldn’t mind betting we’ll be in the next show at the Palladium. I shouldn’t be a bit surprised.”
“And how’s your father and your mother?”
“Oh Christ, pretty much the same. You know what they are,” said Boysie bitterly. “I was expecting a letter from Mr. Redbird—you know, the Holborn Hippodrome—and the old man forgot what address he gave. I didn’t want to bother Redbird—I mean to say, it makes you look such a bloody fool—so I just came to enquire. It all falls on me. You don’t know what it is to have idiots for parents.”
“That’s a nice way to talk about your mother and father!” said Pym.
“To hell with them. I’m roughing out a few ideas for an act of my own, the dog act; with a stooge and a lamp post.”
“The dog with black spots and long ears, eh?” said Pym.
“That’s right. It’d be a good idea, I thought, to pad the dog-suit
out big, turn him into a cock-eyed sort of spotty mastiff, and get one of those midgets that are always loafing about Charing Cross Road to do the stooging. Whadda you think?”
“I do not think,” said Pym.
“I daresay I could put something your way if you like. I could probably use some of your stuff later on. Think it over.”
“I’m infinitely obliged to you.”
“Oh, that’s all right. Been scribbling anything lately?”
This was too much. “Scribbling!” said Pym, “scribbling! Sarcasm is wasted on you, you unnatural child.” And he picked Boysie up by his coat collar, bent him over one of his knees, and smacked his bottom, saying: “… Scribbling … scribbling …you little dog … with black spots! Scribbling! … You pachyderm … you abortion … you precocious … imp! Ttris’ll … teach you … to respect your elders … and betters. Now run away and play dogs.”
Boysie ran away. Busto, who had been looking on with sour approval, said: “You wanna glass a-wine?”
Pym said: “That’s kind of you, Busto, that really is!” He had given some thought to the nature of Busto, and knew that shillings were his stars and pennies the red corpuscles of the blood of his heart; and wine cost money—even the Lunatic’s Broth that Busto drank. “No, you really are very kind. But you must come out and have a drink with me.”
“Okay. Some other time maybe,” said Busto. “Good night.” And he went downstairs to make ready for the perils and the dangers of the coming night. Looking at the Mona Lisa, he prayed:
“
Vergine
Santa,
tu
sai
tutto,
io
le
faccie
le
so
leggere
sai?
E
so
benissimo
che
tu
sai
tutto!
Va
bene?
Sissignora,
prendo
la
tua
parola,
e
t’affido
tutti
i
beni
miei.
Se
mi fossi
incontrato
con
una
donna
come
te,
ti
avrei gia fatto mia moglie
…
Figli, o non
figli
…
e perche no?”
It meant:
Holy
Mother
of
God.
You
know
everything.
Lady,
I
can
read
faces,
and
I
know
that
you
know
everything
…
Okay?
Lady,
I’d
take
your
word
for
anything.
I’d
trust
you
with
all
I
got.
And
if
I
ever
came
across
a
girl
like
you
I’d’ve
married
her
myself,
kid
or
no
kid
…
Why
not?
An all-knowing God, knowing his Busto, must have found such a prayer acceptable.
*
It was nearly ten o’clock when Pym reached the
Duchess
of
Douro.
The saloon bar was empty. The barmaid was reading a little paper-backed novel. The landlord was reading the evening paper. “Can I have a piece of bread-and-cheese and a pint of beer and some pickles?”
“Haven’t seen you for quite a time,” said the barmaid.