About a week later there was a knock on my door and Mr Smeltzer sauntered in, coat over his shoulders, hands behind his back. Somehow he was not totally unexpected, but his calm manner was.
‘This your place?’ he said, looking about. ‘It’s very nice. Compact.’ He brushed some dust from a chair and sat down. ‘Yes, very nice. This type of place is getting fashionable again. Everything gets fashionable if it remains around long enough. I like your wallpaper. All these trees and cottages must make you feel you’re in the country. They’re almost as good as fresh air.’
‘They cover the wall,’ I said.
‘And that painting over the mantelpiece, did you do it yourself?’
‘It’s from a chocolate-box.’
‘Very pretty. I see you’re a man of some taste, and books too. I think I must go out and buy a book myself one of these days, you make me feel an Amalekite.’
‘A Philistine.’
‘You see, I’m such a Philistine that I don’t know the word for it. Yes, very nice indeed. Is that cabbage soup you’re boiling over there? Lovely smell, cabbage soup, cosy, heimisch. It somehow brings back memories of my mother, bless her, she was a great believer in cabbages—cabbage soup, cabbage borsch, chopped cabbage, pickled cabbage, beef in cabbage——’
‘If I can interrupt you, Mr Smeltzer, did you come to talk to me about cabbage soup?’
‘Well really, between ourselves, I haven’t come to speak to you at all, because as you know, I shouldn’t be speaking to you. All I came to tell you was that that wasn’t nice.’
‘What wasn’t?’
‘The way you ran away from my sister, it wasn’t nice at all.’
‘I’m sorry but you see——’
‘It was disgusting. In fact, if it wasn’t for the fact that I’m chock-full of tranquillizers, sedatives, laxatives and heaven-knows-what other poisons, I would have knocked your head off.’ His voice rose. ‘In fact, tranquillizers or not, I’ve got a good mind to knock your head off right now. The way you ran off at the suggestion of my sister’s name, I thought that perhaps I had insulted you. Perhaps you’re a prince in tramp’s clothing, a secret Rothschild, a younger brother of Isaac Wolf-son. You can never tell nowadays. Juvenile delinquents dress like millionaires, so millionaires can dress like tramps. I thought to myself, ass that I am offering that gentleman my poor, broken-down, half-witted, musty old woman of a sister. Anyway, I became curious and decided to find out something about you. Now shall I tell you who you are?’
‘Please do.’
‘You’re a nobody, the son of a nobody, the father of nobody, who knows nobody, is connected to nobody, and who’ll never be anybody but a nobody.’
‘Who said I want to be somebody?’
‘Who said? As if you had any choice. But even a nobody can have a bit of luck, and your bit of luck is my sister.’
‘Your sister?’
‘My sister. And what do you do? Run away from her, insult her, mock her, and me, and my family and—quick, a glass of water.’
I hurriedly brought him a glass and he gulped it down with two small pills.
‘You humiliated her, poor, silly old bag that she is.’ He said this quietly and sadly, with his head shaking.
‘But, Mr Smeltzer, I admire your sister, I think she’s a very fine person——’
‘Thanks very much.’
‘I wasn’t running away from her. I was running away from marriage. I would have run if you had suggested Elizabeth Taylor.’
‘And I wouldn’t have blamed you, but my sister, thank God, is not Elizabeth Taylor. She’s a woman from a fine family, from a fine background and, if I may say so, with not such a bad foreground either. She was very attractive when she was young. She’s been married twice before, and neither of her husbands, may they rest in peace, gave up before they had to. It isn’t as if she’s divorced. She’s widowed—well-widowed.’
‘Look, Mr Smeltzer. Nobody knows your sister’s qualities better than I do.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘I mean what I say. She’s a woman any man would be lucky to have. I was running away from marriage in general.’
‘And what’s wrong with marriage that you have to run so fast?’
‘And what’s right with it that you’ve been a widower for so long?’
‘Are you comparing me to you?’
‘I’m comparing nobody to anybody. I’m just asking.’
‘To start with, I’m a millionaire compared to you. It’s true I may not live in a palace, but when somebody comes into my house they don’t have to hold their breath. I’ve got daylight coming in. I’ve got a housekeeper, that’s important, a housekeeper, less expensive than a wife, less bossy, less—well there’s the other thing. You’ve been married, and you know as well as I do, how often do you have the other thing? And if you want it that bad it isn’t all that difficult to get. If I had been able to afford a housekeeper when I was a young man I don’t think I would ever have got married.’
‘But you just said they’re less expensive than wives.’
‘If you’re wealthy they are. The cost of a wife goes up with your income, but the cost of a housekeeper remains the same.’
‘Well, thank God, I’ve managed without.’
‘You’ve managed without?’
‘I’ve managed without.’
‘Here in a room the size of a pantry, with cabbage soup simmering on the stove, steamed up walls and a view of somebody’s lavatory, that’s what you call managing.’
‘It’s near the park.’
‘Even if it was in the park it would still be like living in a dustbin. If it was like this in prison people would be asking questions in Parliament and writing letters to papers. The things people do to themselves, their worst enemies wouldn’t do for them. Do you mind if I open a window?’
‘There’s these books. The radio, the gramophone, I borrow records from the library. You’ve never had a chance to find this out, but the more the world is closed the more your mind opens.’
‘People who live off their minds go out of their minds. You’re in this world, you’ve got to have a share in it. We’re both Yidden, aren’t we? I know Elijah lived in the wilderness and was fed by the birds, but Elijah was a prophet. We’re talking about sane, normal, ordinary human beings like you and me. Yidden with their feet on the ground. I know all Jews have been promised a portion in the world to come, but promises are only promises, so just to make sure we try and enjoy our portions in this world—a fine bit of fish, a good bit of meat, a good sleep after a good meal, a short walk after a good sleep.’
‘You don’t have to be rich to enjoy all these.’
‘But you do have to be solvent.’
‘It doesn’t take much to be solvent. The best things in life are free.’
‘True, if you can get them, but you often have to settle for the second best, and the second best are expensive. You say you can manage with what you’ve got, but is there anything you’ve got that you’d be sorry to lose?’
‘Independence.’
‘Inde-who?’
‘Independence to do what? I know men who want to be independent so that they can run after other women, or travel, or—or—or——But what do you want it for? What are you doing with it?’
‘Plenty. I can snore in my sleep without being woken up. I can eat sandwiches in bed. I can listen to the radio whenever I want to. I can read with my meals. I can read in the toilet and stay in there for as long as I like. I can spend an afternoon having a bath. I can read in bed till any hour I want, I can——’
‘Is that all you can do in bed, eat sandwiches and read? I may be thirty years older than you, but I can think of better things.’
‘Such as?’
‘If you don’t know what I mean then perhaps we had better not speak about it.’
‘You mean fornication?’
‘That’s a word they only use in the Bible. It isn’t a word I would ever use. I mean, well you know what I mean.’
‘I know what you mean, but I didn’t think it would be all that important to you at your age.’
‘At my age. How old do you think I am, a hundred and twenty? I’m sixty-nine, seventy, all right I’m seventy-two. That isn’t old nowadays. Life begins at seventy, I’ve always said. No, as a matter of fact these things aren’t important to me, but they would be if I couldn’t have them. My sister always says I’ve got a dirty mind, and I tell her that a dirty mind goes with a healthy body. And tell me, who’s got a clean mind? I can tell you I’ve been around in this world, and people can be divided into two types—those who can and do, and those who can’t and say you mustn’t. What’s wrong with it? If it was good enough for our father Jacob, and it was good enough for King Solomon, it’s good enough for Simcha Smeltzer. I’m leading the sort of life half the world would live if it had half the chance. The good life means making use of your chances, and I can tell you honestly, candidly and as a friend, the best chance that ever came your way, is my sister.
‘When I suggested you should marry my sister, I thought you’d jump at the idea—well you did jump, but in the opposite direction. I thought my trouble would start with her. I thought she’d jump down my throat at the very suggestion. “What?” I thought she would say, “me marry that little rat of a man? That squat little tramp? I’ve fallen low in the world, but I haven’t fallen that low.” But no, on the contrary, she told me that for years she hadn’t thought of anyone else. Now what do you think of that? I thought she must be ill. I felt her pulse, I took her temperature, but she was perfectly normal. She—I don’t like to use the word, but it’s true—she loves you.’
I didn’t sleep all that night, though happily, as I wasn’t busy, I was able to catch a bit of sleep the next morning. It was a problem. Men with no opportunities have no problems and here was an opportunity, one of the very few which ever came my way. A woman who loved me. It was a word I have never heard used in my connexion. And it wasn’t likely that she wanted me for my looks or for my money or my family connexions—or that she was pregnant. She wanted me wholly, completely and entirely for myself. It was good to know. But what worried me was what she would do with me if she got me? Mrs K-P certainly looked a good, kindly soul, but then, people had always said that my wife was a good, kindly soul, and in a way she was—only she couldn’t say no to anyone, and sometimes she even volunteered a yes where she wasn’t asked. You never really got to know people till you married them, but Mrs K-P and I had been as good as married. We had never lived in the same bed, but we had been under the same roof—she as cook and me as warden—for twelve years, and we had never had a cross word. (I might have had a cross thought every time I tasted her food, but thoughts don’t count.) But was living together enough? It’s being in bed together that counts, that’s the real place of discovery, a virgin territory for every man to explore. I couldn’t exactly have called my wife virgin territory. A few years after we married I learned that she had been a sort of Clapham Junction of her generation, a stopping-place for most young men on their way to maturity. Not that I minded that. As I mentioned before, we all have our small imperfections. What I couldn’t stand about her was that as long as we were together I was conscious of a simmering displeasure over everything I said or did, and eventually, over the very fact that I existed. She never had anything to say to me except to give orders, and this I couldn’t know until we were married. How was I to know that Mrs K-P was not the same? And with my wife things were always brightened by the fact that she sometimes ran away with someone, or someone went off with her. Mrs K-P was not the running-away type. To be married to her would be a life sentence without remission for misconduct. And I couldn’t forget that she had already been widowed twice. She was prone to widowhood and I did not want to add to her total. Besides, she was older than me. She admitted to being forty-five, which meant that she wanted to give the impression of fifty-five, which means that she is at least sixty, probably sixty-five, possibly seventy. I liked a mature woman, but she was verging on the over-ripe. No, was my last thought of the night, not yet.
But when I woke the next morning to the sound of rainwater splashing on the tin roof outside, and the sight of my wallpaper speckled with grease, and the frying pan with half a kipper on the gas-ring, and the half bottle of milk with the broken cup over it, and the drip of my drip-dry shirt drip-drying in the sink, I decided to think again, and after I had thought again, I dressed, had a bath in the public baths, dressed again and went round to her brother. But outside his door I thought once more and went back home. Once home, I set out for her brother’s again, but after coming and going in this way three or four times, I returned with such a headache that I borrowed four aspirins and went to bed.
I thought they were aspirins, and so did Mr Mushtaq, my landlord. They had been left behind by a former lodger in an aspirin-type bottle, but whatever they were they certainly cured my headache and nearly everything else I was suffering from. I remained unconscious for a week. Mr Mushtaq discovered me after three days and thinking I was dead he called an ambulance, the police, an undertaker and a member of the Pakistani High Commission.
Being unconscious didn’t bother me at all, it was coming to I didn’t like. For two days I was too weak to move and lived only on beef tea. On the third day Mr Mushtaq prepared me a curried meal, which at once put me right back on my back. I kept myself sane by looking at the stains on the ceiling and pretending they were landscapes or beautiful women with flowing hair. After a few days I could stand this no longer. I dressed, went shakily down the stairs, out into the street, and moving and resting, moving and resting, I went into the park. And it was there that I finally decided to marry Mrs K-P.