Free The Thousand Deaths of Mr Small by Gerald Kersh Page B

good health!” said Charles Small, sipping his shandy, while the landlord snorted and swallowed his brandy…. “Yousay you’ve been here thirty years. I wonder if, by any chance, you remember some people called … let me see … yes, Small, that’s it, Small, who used to have a shoe shop in this street?”
    At this the muscles twitched in the landlord’s face—he was trying to smile, but he had lost the knack. While his face was twitching and quivering, he blew air through his nostrils; he was laughing. Then he said: “Shoe shop? I remember them. They came here and opened a shoe shop. They must have been off their heads. They didn’t last five minutes. They went broke in no time. That’s how it is with them Jews, here to-day, gone to-morrow. Give ’em an inch and they’ll take a yard. It’s your money they want. That’s how they rule the world. What’s the idea of a boot shop in Noblett Street? If you want my opinion, there was dirty work going on somewhere. Boot shop! I’m too old a bird to be caught with chaff. There was more in that than meets the eye, but I never got to the bottom of it….”

CHAPTER V
    T HEY put the Noblett Street shop in order. Millie wanted it painted white. Why? Because white was a nice clean colour. The estate agent suggested varnished brown, grained to look like walnut. But Millie insisted that white was the only respectable paint. One speck of dust, on white paint, showed up like a fly in a glass of milk, so that if a woman kept the place clean (she looked sideways at Lily) there was no question about it. Who went in for brown paint? What sort of a colour was brown? White!
    So the woodwork was painted white. The shop was fitted and stocked. The family called a secret conference and it was agreed that everyone should buy a pair of boots or shoes from the Smalls of Mayfair, if only to give them a little encouragement. Sisters, brothers-in-law, uncles and cousins came and bought boots, shoes, dancing pumps and slippers. Millie insisted on their paying no more than the wholesale price. It looked bad, she said, to make money out of your own flesh and blood. So they emptied eighteen shiny oblong boxes in the first week—at cost price. After that business fell flat. Millie, who had large ideas, and had conversed with people who had brains, knew something of the strategy of modern commerce. She said: “We must advertise!”
    “What advertise? Where advertise?”
    “What’s the use of talking? Oh, what’s the use? ”
    “Then don’t talk!”
    “So now he wants to shut me up! What marvels have you done? … Advertise! For God’s sake, advertise!”
    They bought six lines of space in a local newspaper. Nothing happened.
    “Ha! A bargain we got!” said I. Small, angry but satisfied.
    “Then send out circulars!”
    “Who to?”
    “What’s the use of talking if he’s ignorant?” cried Charles Small’s mother. (She and her husband had already acquired the habit of quarrelling in apostrophe.) “Send out letters. Who to, he says. Everybody!”
    “Go on then, send out letters, send! To everybody send letters. Na — Nadir a pen, nadir a bottle ink—go on, to everybody write letters, quick! Tell them they should come at once, quick!”
    “What’s the use of talking to him? He’s ignorant.”
    “What does she mean, he’s ignorant?”
    “You’re ignorant!”
    “All right. Take the pen, take the ink, write letters to everybody . Go on, educated woman, schreib! Write!”
    Yes, the business was a failure, and Millie was ashamed. They were in debt, and after the next quarter’s rent had been paid there would be less than two hundred pounds in the bank.
    I. Small was bored because he had nothing to do. Noblett Street was too quiet. He missed the hammering and the grunting of the cobblers in the workshop. He was unhappy. So one day when somebody’s manservant came into the shop and asked him if he did repairs, he said: “Well, why not?”
    “Well look, let you and me have