The Thousand Deaths of Mr Small Read Free

specially for you—eat it all up—all up!”
    “I’m not hungry.”
    “But I made it specially for you.”
    “But I can’t eat it.”
    “What’s the matter with you? Do you want to kill me? Look at me! Look at me! See how tired I am! Feel how wet I am! For what do I sweat? For whom? Why? … Eat it up! ”
    “But Mama, please! Please, Mama!”
    “I’ve killed myself for you. To please me, eat, for God’s sake!”
    “I’ll be sick, Mama.”
    “To please me … please?”
    A great lump of hot, wet dough is stuffed into Small’s mouth, while the voice says: “There, there, nice, nice, there, nice…. Mmmm!”
    The hot damp dough is in his nostrils—Small’s head must go backwards before he can breathe, and then he is compelled to eat kreplach, the sort they make out of curd-cheese … there is a taste of sour milk, and he is sick. “‘There there, there,” says the voice; and he is floating over a mountain, upside-down—he is dizzy, because he has been swung and swayed here and there. He knows that the mountain had a cratered peak. It is an ancient volcano in eruption. Swung high and low, he grabs with clutching hands. “Drink it, then,” says the voice; and his mouth is full again.
    Sucking milk, and gasping between breathless swallows, he sobs: “ Ma-ma .”
    “He’s talking!” says the voice.
    “So soon! It can’t be!”
    “I should live so sure—he said mama.”
    “ Maa-maa ! ”
    “Would you believe it! Bless him!”
    He is struggling desperately, striking out with an impotent square inch of hand. He has no strength: he is enraged. They have pinned him up in something rough which chafes the tenderest parts of him. Moistening itself to cut more efficiently, this rough thing is filing away the soft skin between his thighs. He shuts his eyes, opens wide his toothless mouth, and empties his lungs in one terrible cry.
    “Quick! Quick! For God’s sake, quick! He’s holding his breath! What shall I do? Send for the doctor!”
    “Give him to me, Mrs. Small.”
    He is picked up like a straw on a high wind, thrown on his belly upon a canopy of stinking black cloth, and beaten in the ribs. Drawing breath again, he weeps. His head is down, his heels are up, and since he has no muscles to hold what remains of the sour liquid stuff inside him, he is sick again—whereupon everything spins and he is passed from hand to hand, until he lands on his back, exhausted.
    “I had such a fright….”
    “It’s nothing.”
    “I thought it was convulsions.”
    “Convulsions! All your life you should have such convulsions! Change him, go on.”
    Something clicks and the coarse wet stuff peels away. For a second or two—only for a second or two—he feels free and cool, so he croons a little, while they dry him and powder him before imprisoning him again. But now he is completely empty, empty with an emptiness that hurts. Feeling pain, he cries out, and gropes for something to make him feel better.
    “You should feed him now, Mrs. Small.”
    Jerkily, buttonhole by buttonhole a darkness is split by a great white triangle, out of which bursts another mountain, from the purple summit of which a reticulated pattern of blue rivers runs down into the dark. Maa-maa he bleats.
    “ K’nehora , already he understands everything. Imbeshrier, he’s talking!”
    The mountain falls. Charles Small’s mouth finds what it has been seeking. A gentle warmth fills his belly. Now he is content; he will sleep. But the voice says: “He hasn’t had anything! For God’s sake, look! Look! He’s closing his eyes! He brought everything up, and now he won’t eat! What’ve I done! What’ve I done to deserve it?”
    “He’ll eat, he’ll eat, please God, he’ll eat, Mrs. Small. Believe me. Encourage him, and he’ll eat.”
    The purple-summited pale mountain darts at him as a terrier attacks a rat. He claws the air with nails that are soft as films of transparent pink varnish, and screams, throwing his head back. This head