Kersh The Song of the Flea

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ISBN: 978-0-571-30457-8
Verlag: Faber & Faber
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 364 Seiten

With The Song Of The Flea (1948) Gerald Kersh revisited the demi-monde of his famous Night And The City; but this novel concerns a writer, striving doggedly to make his living. 'A remarkable novel... with this book Mr Kersh has taken a big step forward.' Sunday Times '[Kersh] has a remarkable talent... he is one of the comparatively few living novelists in this country who write with energy and originality and whose ideas are not drawn from a residuum of novels that have been written before... [The Song of the Flea] is the story of John Pym, a young man trying to earn his living as a writer... Mr Kersh draws on his picturesque and convincing knowledge of human vileness in a manner which is both entertaining and instructive.' Times Literary Supplement.

Gerald Kersh was born in Teddington on August 26 1911. He quit schooling early, and took a succession of jobs while developing his ambition to write. In 1934 he published a roman a clef, Jews without Jehovah, immediately suppressed by members of his family who took exception to its contents. Following the outbreak of war Kersh joined the Coldstream Guards in 1940. The following year he drew on his Guardsman experience to write the bestselling They Die with their Boots Clean, a classic fictional account of basic training. A sequel followed, The Nine Lives of Bill Nelson, and the pair would be re-published together as Sergeant Nelson of the Guards. Thereafter Kersh was hugely productive: a writer not merely of novels(such as The Song Of The Flea in 1948 and The Thousand Deaths Of Mr Small in 1950) but also stories, journalism, sketches and columns, radio and documentary film scripts. His stories are collected in volumes including The Horrible Dummy and Other Stories and The Best of Gerald Kersh. His success was tempered by troubles over money, health and personal affairs, but through this turmoil he wrote some of his best novels: Fowler's End (1958), The Implacable Hunter (1961) and The Angel and the Cuckoo (1966). He died in New York on 5th November 1968, aged 57.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Kersh, Gerald

Leseproben

CHAPTER TWO

PYM will never forget how he went downstairs that morning. The whole house was squealing Awake! Awake! Awake! For one mad minute he considered the possibility of sliding down the banisters, but he realised that in doing this he would make a strange noise. Be calm, he said to himself, remembering old stories of wild-beast trainers. Pym convinced himself that he was not in Busto’s house; it was a bad dream; he was a respected guest in a big hotel. He walked steadily downstairs. But as soon as he closed the street door behind him Pym ran away, braking down into a walk as he passed the policeman on the corner.

He had fivepence to spend and four hours to kill.

Pym went to Carnero’s café, which was open day and night, and sat inconspicuously in the corner behind the pin-and-marble machine, pretending to write notes on the back of an envelope. The waitress, Gina, found him in three minutes.

“Sir?”

“Oh, just a small white coffee,” said Pym.

“Piccolo bianco-o-o-ooo!” cried Gina, whisking away dust and ashes with a red-edged cloth. Pym described a letter “W” on his envelope and paused, gnawing his pencil. Everyone else was eating. Gina was screaming orders over her shoulder.

“One piccolo bianco,” said the waitress, banging down the little cup. “You gonna eat something? Sangwitch?”

“No, thank you, Gina, I’m not hungry.”

“What about a nice omblet?”

“I don’t want an omelette, thanks. I’ve got a stomach-ache.”

“What you want is a nice plate of minestrone.”

“I don’t want a nice plate of minestrone. Thanks, all the same,” said Pym.

Gina, the waitress, would not go away. She leaned over his shoulder, dusting the table, steadying herself with a big red hand on his shoulder. She said: “Ain’t you got nice hair? Is it naturally wavy?”

“No. I go to my hairdresser every morning to have a perm and set—I’ve got nothing better to do. Didn’t you know that?” He was carefully smoothing out the wrinkles in his last cigarette. “If you want to get me something you might get me a light.”

“You wanna box of matches?”

“No; just a light.”

“Ah-ha!” said Gina, “I get it.”

“What do you mean—you get it? You get what?”

“You broke, ain’t it?”

“Don’t be silly.”

“Listen: you want to order something to eat and a packet of cigarettes, that’s all right. Pay another time.”

Pym swallowed saliva, shook his head, and said: “Thanks, all the same, darling, I couldn’t touch a thing.”

“Okay,” she said, and went back to the coffee-bar.

Pym sat, drinking his coffee in tiny sips and carefully smoking his cigarette. He drew a figure five on the envelope, shaded it and embellished it; turned it into a banjo, and then into a round human face, upon which, hair by hair, he hung a luxuriant curly beard and cavalier moustache. The hat, an ornate Mexican sombrero, took him a long time: and then there had to be a little embroidered jacket. He was trying to outline his plans for the following day; but his plans had no outlines—they were wavering, amorphous, tenuous, smoky little things; the sort of vapours that arise when hope reaches melting point.

He drew a poppy with a hairy stem. Having used up the back of the envelope he cut the edges with his coffee-spoon, folded it back, and tried to outline a clenched fist gripping a dagger, but he could not get the thumb right. So he shook his head gravely and drew a padlock. He had the air of a man who, after years of toil, finds himself on the verge of a masterpiece. Now, the name of Carnero on the glass door was black against a gold oblong of autumnal daylight.

“Artist?” said a shy little voice. He looked up with a start. A small, slyly-smiling man in a shabby overcoat was sitting at his table. He, too, had sidled into an inconspicuous corner.

“No,” said Pym, covering the paper with his hand. “No, I’m not an artist.”

“You’ve got artistic hands,” said the shabby man. “I could have sworn you were a bit of an artist. Pardon the liberty.”

“Not at all.”

“In a very small way, I’m what you might call a bit of an artist myself. That’s why I took the liberty.”

“A painter?”

“A musician, sir, in a smallish kind of way. Yes, I’m a musician.”

“Violinist?”

“Well, no, not exactly a violinist. I perform on wind instruments.”

“The flute?” said Pym, merely for the sake of talking.

“Well, no, not exactly the flute,” said the other; “as a matter of fact, no, I don’t play the flute. But I did use to play the trumpet.”

“Did you now!” said Pym, with an expression of awe. “And don’t you play the trumpet any more?”

“Well … not exactly, no. I lost all my teeth, and that was the end of me as a trumpeter. And I had to give up the trumpet. As a matter of fact, I sold it when I lost my teeth. You have to change with the times.”

“True, true. And what instrument do you play now, if I may ask?”

The small shabby man took from his pocket a broken tin whistle and held it up for Pym’s inspection. “This is about all I can manage these days,” he said. “And look at it.”

“It does seem to have got knocked about a bit, doesn’t it?”

The little man put the whistle to his lips and blew. Nothing came out but a hiss and a squeak.

“A great misfortune, sir. I was playing to the ladies and gentlemen at the Lyceum——”

“At the Lyceum!”

“Just outside. I was playing there this evening, and I’d just got started when somebody bumped into me and knocked it out of my hand, and somebody else trod on it. It cut my gum, too—look,” he said, opening his little chapped mouth and pointing. “People really are careless and inconsiderate. I said to the gentleman: ‘Now look what you’ve been and done, sir. This is my living, this is.’ You’d think in a case like that he would give you a shilling or two, wouldn’t you? Well, he didn’t give me anything at all—told me to look where I was going. I said to him: ‘In my opinion, sir, the boot is on the other foot.’ He just walked away without even saying he was sorry. What would you have done then?”

“God knows. I haven’t the faintest idea.”

“If I was versatile I could have sung a song, or done a little dance. And now I come to think of it, if I’d had any sense, I would have done as my wife told me.”

“You have a wife?” asked Pym, incredulously.

“Oh yes. She said to me: ‘Why,’ she said, ‘you silly little fool, you! That was the time to go round with the hat and cry a bit and say look what they did to my instrument,’ she said. ‘But no,’ she said, ‘not you,’ she said, ‘you’re not a man you’re a little worm,’ she said; and I don’t blame her, either. ‘You get out of my sight,’ she said, ‘and don’t dare show your face inside this door until you bring the price of a bit of something to eat,’ she said; and she picked me up bodily and threw me out. I was too well brought up to raise my hand to a woman, sir,” said the little man sadly, contemplating a dirty fist remarkably like a chicken’s claw, “so I’ve been walking about all night. This morning I hope to pick up the price of a new whistle.”

“How much do they cost?”

“I can get one for eightpence,” said the little man, looking up hopefully and talking very fast. “I’m sure I could get one for eightpence or ninepence. If I had a couple of shillings I could get a new instrument and buy some sausages to take home, and then get an hour or two’s sleep and start again this evening like a lion refreshed, as the saying goes. If you could help me, I should be very grateful indeed. And I should be able to repay you in a day or so. You would probably be saving my life. I’m not a bit strong, and I don’t eat much, but the little I do eat is necessary to keep body and soul together, and——”

Pym, writhing with embarrassment, said: “Look here, friend, excuse me just one moment. I’m very sorry indeed if I managed to convey that I was prosperous. I’m terribly sorry. But the fact of the matter is, I’m absolutely broke. That’s why you see me here at this hour of the morning. You see,” said Pym, in almost abject apology, “in a way I’m pretty much in the same boat myself. I’m a writer, you see—an author, and I’m in a similar kind of jam. You’ve got to get your tin whistle, and I’ve got to get my typewriter. I can’t get along without it: I can’t sing or dance, either. And what is more, I’ve got to pay my rent, because I’ve got to have somewhere to work. You see, I’m just finishing a book, and when I’ve finished it a publisher is going to give me fifty pounds advance for it. Do believe me; when I’ve paid for my coffee I shall have just about...