The Song of the Flea (14 page)

The flower-seller said: “It makes you fink.”

Then Pym began to laugh. The tin-whistle player looked up at him and glided away, while the fat old tomato-buyer said: “You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

“I am,” said Pym, “I am, I am! That little fellow got a meal and my last few coppers out of me the other day on that same story, word for word the same story. Wouldn’t you laugh?”

“Well, would you believe it!” said the flower-seller. “I mean to say—I ask you!”

“’E’s making it up,” said one of the old women.

“Come and sit down,” said Proudfoot.

“I gave him twopence,” said Pym, shaking with laughter.

“Let’s have a couple of rums, double,” said Proudfoot to the barman, making his voice gruff. “Come and sit down, Pym. The trouble with you, as you were saying, is …”

*

“In a nutshell, I’m not strong enough to be what I want to be,” said Pym. “I don’t hang together in the shape I was cut out to be. I can’t explain. People have too much power to hurt me.”

“To hurt you. Yes?”

“Oh, not by what they do to me. They hurt me by suffering themselves, and by what they do to other people. For instance: you saw me fighting a little while ago with that man Nat?”

“I did, and I can tell you that no one but Nat could have stood on his feet after what you did to him, Pym.”

“Well, it wasn’t what he said to
me,
you know.”

“I know. It was because he struck Spitting Lil. Incidentally, she went to prison not very long ago for attempting to throw vitriol into another woman’s eyes. The lowest of the low! Well?”

“I’m sorry, Proudfoot; I can’t help it. Women, women…. I don’t know, Proudfoot, I don’t know. Did I ever tell you that I practically killed my mother?”

“With what?”

“Good God, with nothing! She was a fragile little thing,”
said Pym, dabbing at his broken nose with a reddened
handkerchief
, “and, not to dwell on the subject, I was a difficult boy to get born. I was hard to bring up, too. She was never the same afterwards, Proudfoot. If it hadn’t been for me she’d be alive to-day. As it was, she died at forty-three.”

“Everyone kills his mother,” said Proudfoot. “Did you turn head-over-heels in the womb with intent to inflict grievous bodily harm? Childbirth involves an inevitable risk as you must very well know.”

“I know, I know. But … it’s hard to put into words….”

“Was your mother an invalid?”

“Why, yes, she was, Proudfoot. An invalid, that’s right.”

“And your father disliked you on account of that?”

“Well …” said Pym.

“Did they sleep together?”

“Why no, no, they didn’t.”

“Separate rooms?”

“Yes, separate rooms. But they were very devoted to each other.”

“Your father regarded you as the unhappy cause of this separation?” asked Proudfoot. “He hated you for it?”

“He didn’t seem to be particularly in love with me. But——”

“—But your mother made up for that.
She
did not dislike you because you had separated her from her husband?”

“Good God, no! She was fanatically in love with me. The weaker she got, the more she was devoted to me.”

“Worshipped the ground you trod on? Worried about your woollen underclothes, kept warning you to take care how you crossed the road when you went out, stayed awake until you came in at night? Made a fool of herself over you, and made no secret of it, eh?”

“Yes. You’ve got it exactly, Proudfoot.”

“No brothers or sisters, of course?”

“My mother couldn’t have any more after me. You seem to know as much about it as I do myself. Were
you
——”

“My mother disliked me intensely, for which I am not sorry and do not blame her. I disliked her in return. But go on,” said Proudfoot. “Did your father use to beat you?”

“Good Lord, no! He was a mining engineer, by the by. Talking of being beaten, I’ll tell you something that’ll make you laugh, Proudfoot. It’s by way of being
àpropos.
When I first went to school I heard another boy yelling his head off while he was being caned for impudence, or something of the sort. Do you know, it made me sick? And a little later we were asked who drew a certain picture and wrote a certain word on a wall: would the culprit confess? I was so terrified of hearing any more screams that I put up my hand and said: ‘It was I, sir.’ And I got six. My father was informed and he said to my mother: ‘You see the sort of son you’ve given me. Some men are blessed in their families. I’m cursed.’ Oh, the tears, Proudfoot—the weeping, the wailing, the hair-tearing, the reproaches! What was I to do? How could I explain? Mother said: ‘I can forgive, but not forget.’ Dear God, how I cried myself to sleep! You know, I wasn’t allowed any pocket-money. Father said I didn’t need it. There was a boy called Nicker Tott with a hare-lip who liked me. One Guy Fawkes Day he gave me some fireworks, and we let them off together. A few days after, he told me he’d stolen five shillings from his mother to pay for those fireworks and that hell was to pay. So I stole five shillings from my father and gave the money to Nicker Tott, and confessed. I said I’d spent the money on fireworks. Mother wouldn’t let me have fireworks because they were supposed to be dangerous. I did get beaten then all right—Oof!—with a malacca cane, Proudfoot. I was born that way, you see—soft, silly, sorry. You see what I mean? It was always easier to take a beating myself than to see someone else suffering or even to think of it. My father said he wanted me to be—don’t laugh—a barrister. I never could have been, never in a million years! I wanted to be a writer, a writer of books. My father was dead by then. We had nothing to live on. One of my father’s brothers gave my mother a pound or two a week, and a lecture with every shilling, Proudfoot, I give you my word of honour. The shame of it, Proudfoot—the misery of it—the hate! I tried to hide myself. No use. I’d sold my father’s watch to buy a typewriter, and I worked, Proudfoot, as God’s my Judge, I did! ‘Patience,’ I said, ‘patience, Mother; in a little
while everything … everything …’ God Almighty knows I wasn’t a lazy man, Proudfoot. But they thought there was a sort of devil in me—something to be driven out. ‘What does Pym do?’ ‘He types all night.’ ‘Types what?’ ‘Types stories.’ One day when I was out … Oh dear, oh dear, poor woman! Poor woman!”

“Well?”

“Proudfoot, I swear to you that I was earning as much money as I could.”

“So?”

“Well, one day when I was out—it was not her fault—they tore up everything I’d ever written.”

“They?” said Proudfoot. “Who were ‘they’?”

“Well …”

“You mean
she.
”

“I suppose so. I’m afraid so. Poor woman, what a state she must have been in to go and do a thing like that! The idea was that she might cure me of this writing madness by tearing up what I’d written,” said Pym, with a tearful laugh. “The pity of it, eh? There’d been a family conference or something of the sort—Mother wouldn’t have done it of her own free will. She never had any free will.”

“What did you do then?”

“I went into a mad rage, packed my things, and left the house. It was heartbreaking to hear her cry. But I walked straight out,” said Pym, not without pride. “But my conscience gave me hell, especially when Mother died a year later.”

“I put it to you that your lady mother would have died in any case.”

“Maybe. I don’t know. I kept my whereabouts secret—I didn’t dare to let her know where I was. She’d have written, you know; oh, the most pathetic letters!”

“‘Didn’t dare’ is what you said, I think? That is the operative word in your case. You are a cringing little creature in many ways, Pym, I’m afraid. I begin to believe that your so-called Pity, your fear of hurting other people, is nothing more than fear of hurting yourself.” Proudfoot, now, was Proudfoot For The Prosecution. “I put it to you that you have systematically
misrepresented yourself, and over a period of years falsified the true state of your emotions. Your much-vaunted Pity is nothing but Self-Pity: weakness, looseness, slackness of soul. Selfishness, Pym—flabby egotism! A
great
man must master himself before he can do his own bidding and fulfil his destiny. You are not master of yourself. I warn you, Pym, that you are destroying yourself. You are making yourself impotent with your damned diffidence—your incapacity to meet your own eye!”

Pym said nothing.

“Speaking of impotence,” said Proudfoot, in a changed confidential voice, “reminds me of something I intended to talk to you about.”

Pym nodded.

“You’re dead beat,” said Proudfoot. “Better get to bed. I’ll tell you about it to-morrow, or the next day. I’ll see you home now.”

“Whatever you say,” said Pym, drowsily. In the taxi he said: “Poor Win; she was ever so decent to me once upon a time, Proudfoot. She was a fine girl. It was my fault, really….”

“That young lady,” said Proudfoot, “is a born cheat, a congenital petty-larcenist, an accomplished liar, and a prostitute by vocation. She has been in and out of bed with every
blackguard
in London, and is designed for jail like a convict’s uniform. ‘Poor Win’—you poor fool! Are you in love with her, or what?”

“I can’t bear the sight of her,” said Pym. “Only it seems a pity … such a pity….”

“Stop that and go to bed. Get some sleep, get your
typewriter
out of pawn, and go to work. Do you hear?”

“Yes. I’ll do what you say.”

“To-morrow, or perhaps the day after, I’ll put you in the way of earning—honestly, mind you—some real money. Now go and sleep.”

“My one and only friend!” sighed Pym.

Too tired to undress, he threw himself on his bed and slept heavily for ten hours, snoring in his throat because he could not breathe through his broken nose.

*

Through the keyhole and under the door crept an oily, malodorous smoke which hung in a white curdy cloud, obscuring that end of the room. The cloud contracted. It blew bubbles. The bubbles blistered and became swollen breasts. A twisted neck of smoke swung like a glass-blower’s pipe, and let a shimmering bladder which burst with a slobbering gasp and shrunk into the likeness of a face—Mrs. Greensleeve’s face, disgustingly scorched, with black-edged flames in the eye sockets. She was smiling and licking her shrivelled lips. Her left nipple puffed a smoke-ring: it came over like a lariat photographed in slow-motion, and crept taut about Pym’s neck. Smoky coils encircled him. He could not move. “Now, dear,” said a voice that sounded like frying meat, and the ponderous smoke enveloped him. He struggled and sat up, striking right and left.

The dream had been so horrible that he was happy to find himself alive in Busto’s house.

“Yes,” he said; and looked at the table at which he worked.

Then Pym rolled off the bed and looked again. “What? What?” he said. The typewritten pages of his unfinished novel were not there: the table was clean and bare. “
Hey!
” he shouted. “
Thieves!
” He opened his door and howled like a dog. People came running.

“Wassup? Whassamatta?” said Busto.

“My book!” cried Pym, striking the bare table with his fists. “Two years’ work! Who took it? Where is it? Quick, or by Christ——” He gripped Busto by the lapels of his coat and shook him. “Quick! My book!”

“Oh, Annie,” said Busto.

“To hell with Annie! Where’s Maud? Where’s Maud? Who took my papers? Where’s Maud? By——”

“Maud’s left, two days-go,” said Busto. “Gotta betta girl; Annie.”

A thick-lipped, thin blonde girl with heavy eyelids and upturned eyes said: “Well?”

“Did you touch my table?” asked Pym.

“I cleaned your table up—and about time, too.”

“Did you move any papers?”

“Papers! You ought to talk about papers! All over the floor.”

“How—all over the floor? When—all over the floor?”

“Don’t you shout at me in that tone of voice. Nobody could ever call
me
dirty. I swep’ up.”

“You swept up! Two years’ solid work! Two years’ hard labour!”

“I don’t know nothing about two years’ hard labour. I see paper all over the floor, I sweep it up.”

“And what’s my window doing open, wide open?” said Pym. “Who opened my window without my permission?”

“I did—to air the room,” said Annie.

“And it didn’t occur to you that the paper all over the floor blew off the table, you idiot?”

“I put the clean paper back under that plate, if you don’t mind,” said Annie. “And I put the dirty paper in the dust. Nobody could ever call
me
dirty, or a thief, either.”

“I must get it back!” shouted Pym. “I’ve got to get it back! Christ above!”

“You can keep your filthy talk to yourself, if you don’t mind, because I’m not used to it,” said Annie.

“In the dust! In the dust! She put the dirty paper in the dust! What dust? Where? When?”

“In the dustpin.”

“That was my work; do you understand? That was my book!”

“How was I to know, with it all over the floor? I thought you’d threw it away.”

“Where’s the dustbin.”

“In the yard. Where d’you think?” said Annie.

“Show me—quick!”

“You never gotta touch paper,” said Busto, with perfunctory severity, half yawning. “I forgotta tell you before. Okay, you know now. Never no more touch paper.”

Annie led Pym downstairs to the backyard. There was a heap of broken matchboarding that had been painted red, a rain-soaked tea-chest battered into a splintery rhomboid, a burst tub of dirt with a dead shrub in it, some broken bricks, the rusty frame of a ruined bicycle, and a dustbin.

“Don’t blame me,” said Annie, lifting the lid. “I’m new here.”

“I don’t blame you, said Pym. “I’m sorry I was so abrupt with you. But you don’t know what I went through to dirty those bits of paper.”

“What’s the matter with your nose?”

“Nothing—some man kicked me in the face.”

“And you cut your hand.”

“A graze, a skinned knuckle … I see no paper here.”

“I daresay they came and got the dust.”

“‘Came and got the dust?’” said Pym.

“I’m very sorry, I’m sure,” said Annie. “But I wasn’t to know, was I? I wouldn’t do it on purpose.”