The Song of the Flea (15 page)

“No. Don’t let it worry you, Annie. But after this, be a good girl and leave things alone, will you?”

“Now you’re sad. You’re annoyed with me.”

“No, I’m not annoyed with you—only fed up.”

“Don’t be fed up,” said Annie.

“All right, I won’t be fed up.”

“Promise?” said Annie, brightly.

“Yes, yes. How were you to know? My own fault: should have put it away,” said Pym.

“What was your book about?”

“Oh, about a man and a woman and a child.”

“Oh, that?”

“That. Where does the dust go when they take it away?”

“I don’t know I’m sure. Why? You’re not going to try and find them papers, are you?”

“I don’t know.”

“On my God’s honour I didn’t know you wanted all them papers. They was on the floor. I mean, how was
I
to know? And now you’re sad.”

“I’m not sad, and it wasn’t your fault. There now, you mustn’t cry,” said Pym, giving Annie five shillings.

“You’re so nice I can’t help crying,” said Annie, blowing her nose.

“There, there, there,” said Pym, stroking her hair.

“Oh, you must have electricity in your hands!”

“Good-bye,” said Pym. He returned to his room, turned
away from his empty table, and lay on his back, staring at the ceiling. The light faded and he fell asleep again.

He was awakened by an exploratory caress and became conscious of an odour of “Ashes of Roses”.

“I hope I didn’t wake you up,” said Annie.

“No, no, of course not.”

“You didn’t look well and I wanted to see you was okay.”

“Thanks.”

“I like you because you’re nice and kind. Can I sit down on your bed?”

“Sit anywhere you like.”

“Are you tired?”

“I was. I’m not now.”

“I’m ever so sorry about those papers.”

“Never mind. It may be all for the best.”

“Do you mind if I kiss you?”

“Not at all.”

Having kissed Pym, Annie said: “I’m lonely.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“No, you don’t care.”

“Why do you ask? Should I care?”

“If you think I make a practice of making myself cheap … Oh, I know! I know!”

“There, there …”

“It’s only because I was so sorry about all your papers.”

“It doesn’t matter. It can’t be helped.”

“You don’t mind if I take my shoes off? Just for a second?”

“You can take anything you like off. Take yourself off. Only leave me alone.”

“Was it a long book, that book of yours?”

“Yes, long.”

“I heard about somebody once, so they lost a diamond brooch in the dustpin, and so they went to where all the dustpins are emptied out and there it was in a salmon-tin. Should I go to where all the dustpins are emptied out and try and find your book?”

“Don’t talk about it any more. Just go away and leave me alone.”

“You looked as though you wanted to kill me, but you’re ever so kind really,” said Annie. “And then you went and gave me five shillings. I wouldn’t of accepted it only I was so
surprised
. Why did you do that?”

“You looked so sorry for your silly self.”

“Would you do me a favour?”

“What—what now?”

“Stroke my ’ead again like you did in the yard.”

“You can get plenty of people to stroke your empty little head. Leave me alone.”

“Not the way you do it. Just one stroke.”

“Oh all right, all right!” Pym felt like a saintly hero in one of Dostoevsky’s novels—crazier than all the wild Rogozhins put together, stroking the bullet-head of Ignorance, sucking the sour mouth of Misery, and—epileptic self-swindler—toying with the flat little teats of Frustration, peeling off the knickers of Hunger, and pretending to enfold in a Christ-like embrace the suffering of all womankind.

About ten minutes later Annie sighed and said: “I never knew what love could do till I met you, my dear!”

“Isn’t that a song?” asked Pym.

“That’s right. Isn’t it true? Isn’t it funny to think I’m not a Maiden any more?”

“Do you mean to say——” said Pym, sitting up.

“—Lay your weary head upon my shoulder, just remember I love you. Every cloud must have a silver lining—wait until the sun breaks through. My Melancholy Baby! Do you tingle from head to foot? I do. Isn’t it nice to think I gave you my body? Utterly, didn’t I? Don’t you glow?”

“Absolutely,” said Pym.

“Tingle?”

“Sure. Look, Annie; am I the first man you ever went to bed with?”

“What did you take me for?” said Annie. “Do you think other fellows ’ave their way with me? Oh, what am I regarded with now? Contempt. Lover——” She twined her moist arms about Pym’s neck: “—Dear lover of mine, you took me when I gave myself utterly; for you know, honey, you’ve
always had your way——”

“More magazines? More songs?”

“What if it is, if it’s the truth?”

“You think I’m soft, don’t you? Well, I’m not. I’m hard,” said Pym.

“You were the only living creature that was ever kind to me, and I gave myself to you utterly, and you cast me off!”

“You read that in a twopenny paper!”

“What if I did, if it happens to be God’s honest truth?”

One of her shoes would not slip over the heel of a swollen foot. She kicked off the other, drew herself up and said: “One of these days you’re going to miss me, honey.”

“Another song-lyric?”

“I’d be better off dead. I better end it all.”

“Now look here,” said Pym, pleasantly exhilarated by his own firmness, “I want to tell you once and for all that you can’t shake me with that sort of talk. You don’t know me. No doubt you think I’m soft. Well, I’m not. You never made a bigger mistake in your life. Did I ask you to come creeping in? Didn’t I tell you to go away? Did I invite you to come slobbering over me? No, I didn’t, and you know I didn’t. You came to my room uninvited, of your own free will, with a set purpose in mind——” He had fallen into a slow, implacable,
scrupulously-weighed
manner of speaking, strongly reminiscent of Proudfoot. “You achieved your object. There is the end of the matter. Now go home like a sensible girl and let me go to sleep.”

“All right, you wait,” said Annie; and went out silently, her shoes in her hands.

Pym lay back, smiling. He had never felt so strong and
self-assured
. This was the way to be: hard as steel. In order to cut his way a man had to beat himself into a blade. Whoever shaped a statue with a rubber chisel, or hacked a path through a jungle with a wooden machete?

Pym went back to sleep, feeling strong and victorious.

W
HEN
the forewoman of a paper-box factory had told Annie to go and get her cards because she was a Dreamer, Annie had replied: “I’m a dreamer, aren’t we all?” She talked in song lyrics. When she was pleased there was a rainbow round her shoulder and it fitted her like a glove. When she was sad it was: “Can’t go on, everything I had is gone, stormy weather.” Most of her dreams were of love. Once, having wriggled to the front of a crowd outside a stage door, she had said hullo to Ivor Novello, and he had smiled and replied: “Hullo.” This was the most wonderful moment of her life. She was drunk with the glory of it for weeks afterwards. At that time she was working for a manufacturer of radio sets: she had nothing to do but put a looped wire on a terminal and tighten a screw every ninety seconds. But the terminals became fingers, the copper-wire loops were transmuted into golden rings, and the foreman was metamorphosed into Ivor Novello. Annie got the sack. Similarly, she could not keep her job in a potato-crisp factory, where she was paid good money to screw up pinches of salt in little squares of blue paper which were to be dropped into unsealed greaseproof crisp bags. She was in love with John Barrymore then, and would have given herself to him freely if he had but said the word. Here, again, she was described as “dreamy”, and sent home with her insurance cards and a week’s wages. In the paper-box factory (she was doing her hair like Greta Garbo then, and talking in a deep voice) she was hopelessly infatuated with Milton Sills. Annie confided to a girl friend that she had given up beautiful men, experience having taught her that the big, brutally virile types were much more reliable. However, it was not long before she threw over Milton Sills and flung herself into a mad affair with John Boles, who went the way of the rest when she discovered that it was Victor MacLaglan she really loved. Yet, for many months she had regarded Victor as just a friend. “Good pals—let us be just pals,” she had said on the night of the party in her palace when Ricardo Cortez and Adolphe Menjou came to blows
during a quarrel about a dance. With what whimsical sweetness had she brought them back to good humour! “I will dance with you both together, you naughty boys,” she said; and surely enough, with Adolphe on her left and Ricardo on her right, she danced a new, undreamt of sort of waltz. This, as the whole world knew, was the Three-Handed Waltz that swept the world. But how Buddy Rogers had glared and ground his teeth! And why should Joan Crawford call her “a cat”, just because Ramon Novarro had kissed her hand?

On this occasion—in an interval, just before Annie, ever so sweetly, told Wallace Beery that he could be a brother to her if he liked, while John Gilbert was drinking champagne out of her tiny slipper—her father cuffed her head and shouted: “’Oose going ter keep yer, yer bloody lazy little bitch? Eh? Whadda ya take me for? The Dook o’ Westminster? Eh? You lazy little cow, do I
look
like the Dook o’ Westminster?”

“No.”

“Whadda ya mean—no?” He slapped her again. “Not good enough for yer? No bloody respect for yer parents? That’s what you get fer edjucatin’ ’em! Read, read all the time! I’ll read you!” He tore up Annie’s library—thirty-two copies of
The
Lover,
published at fourpence a copy and bought
secondhand
for twopence. If you brought your copy back clean, you could get another for a penny.

“I’m sick and tired of it! I’m going to end it all!” said Annie.

“End it all? End it all? Is that what you get out of books? I’ll end you!” said Annie’s father, hitting her in the face. “You go and do some work; go on! Go into service—that’s all you’re good for. To-morrow, my girl, you go into service. Got that straight?”

Now it happened that Annie had seen a screen version of Tolstoy’s
Resurrection.
When her father said “service” she saw herself seduced by a handsome officer and romantically suffering. She was already in the snow on her way to Siberia, faithfully followed by Rod la Roque.

“Yes, father,” she said, rolling her eyes.

“Don’t call me ‘father’! Isn’t ‘dad’ good enough for yer?”

“Dad.”

“Firs’ thing termorra mornin’ you go orf to the Labour Exchange. Go to bed and shut up.”

Annie did as she was told. She went to work for Busto. She would have preferred a lady’s household with a garden to catch moonlight. It made no difference, however. She was a martyr, a martyr miscast. Now she had only to wait and the Prince would come along and seduce her, and that would be lovely. (Busto caught her in an attitude expressive of agonised
supplication
in front of his Mona Lisa, on the very first day: she was already Katusha, six months gone. He said: “Say your bloody prayers in bloody church; don’t you say no prayers to my bloody Madonna. I don’t pay you to say prayers.” He was
half-inclined
to take something out of her wages for wear-and-tear of his Madonna, as he would have done if she had broken a saucer.)

Annie picked up her broom and went out of the wash-house, dragging her feet in an oddly deliberate way. “Crazy cow,” muttered Busto. He did not know that she was already on her way to Siberia and that her broom was the staff upon which she supported herself in the endless wastes while the Prince, very sorry indeed for what he had done, walked by her side, sharing her punishment.

Katusha, in the film, was always neat and clean, always on the go, sweeping here, dusting there, up to her eyes in work, yet unaccountably immaculate about the hands and face. Hastily remaking her mouth, which she had shaped to resemble the mouth of Dolores del Rio, Annie went to work. She scrubbed with all her might and swept with such vigour that Busto began to believe that he had got a bargain. From time to time she burst into song:
Could
I
Reveal
Exactly
How
I
Feel,
and
Ramona,
Lover
Come
Back
To
Me,
and
Rose
Marie,
I
Love
You,
The
Indian
Love
Call
and
Less
Than
The
Dust
Beneath
Your
Chariot
Wheels.
Busto did not need to stand over her and supervise the work. He relied on his ears rather than his eyes, and he knew enthusiasm when he heard it. While Annie was washing the stairs she kept an eye open for princes. None appeared—not one. She worked her way from floor to floor, washing, dusting, sweeping, making beds, and tidying up. She was Katusha, the gem.

The Prince came home—travelling under the name of Pym.
It
happened in no time at all—in fact, she had beaten the motion picture by a short head—and here she was, betrayed and cast aside like a worn-out glove in twenty-five minutes.

Well, she had lived her life and had no regrets. A short life and a merry one, ha! ha! Annie went into the little kitchen of her father’s three-room flat in Stumps Buildings to make herself a cup of tea and get a slice of bread-and-cheese (a foaming bottle of champagne and a pineapple). Waiting for the kettle to boil she dreamed on. Now she was overtaken by melancholy.

Annie saw herself lying, white and beautiful, on black velvet between two stately candles that burned with smokeless, clear white flames. She was surrounded with lilies. In the shadows stood men, bare-headed, broken with grief. The nobility and gentry were paying homage. Starred and bemedalled bosoms heaved. Royalty was represented. Prince Pym, Ramon Novarro, Milton Sills, Buddy Rogers, Victor MacLaglan, Ivor Novello, Ricardo Cortez, Adolphe Menjou, Rudolf Valentino—they were all there, all her old lovers, speechless with sorrow….