Too Much Man

by WOLF MANKOWITZ

LENNY runs this salt-beef bar “The Roll-Mop” near ‘Windmill Street. Whenever I am round that area I drop in for lunch whatever time of day, because Lenny is a fellow who carries a good twenty stone. This makes me feel like Gary Cooper. I am also highly partial to salt beef.

The Roll-Mop does great business because the truth about selling people food is you should look like you enjoy it yourself and want them to get the same fun out of life. This Lenny does with his big fresh fat face, in which the eyes, nose, and mouth are set with a strong delicacy as tasteful as his menu. Sometimes there are ten of us pretty fat men with a lickerish tooth for delicatessen in The Roll-Mop at the same time. But believe me, though we are packed tighter than roll-mops in a bottle we are all feeling very slim because there is Lenny bigger than any of us and proud of it.

“Have another lutka,” he philosophizes, “try the strudel. Take another vienna. Don’t worry — how many times do you live anyway? And if it knocks five years off your life, so you will drop dead with a good flavor in your hollow tooth.” This spiel helps morale and it doesn’t do business any harm either.

And that’s how it was, a long delightful gorge without, conscience—till the rot set in. The rot was called Renée and she was in the front row of the show round the corner.

Of course, The Roll-Mop was headquarters for a lot of the girls from the different theatrical productions which are such a colorful feature in the Shaftesbury Avenue vicinity. But though Lenny was prone to a laugh and a joke and maybe even a slap now and then here and there, the rot itself had never before set in to his slightly enlarged heart-works.

I first saw Renée on a Tuesday morning about eleven when, happening to pass that way, I dropped into The Roll-Mop for an early lunch. The bar was empty except for good old Lenny talking with (and this was unusual) sad brown eyes and a serious worried expression on his usually joyous chops to this strawberry blonde, or maybe the color her hair was dyed is called pink champagne. She stood a bit less than average height but with a more than average build on all sides and with big eyes and, it goes without saying, longer than average legs. What you might call a pocket Venus if you can afford to carry such things in your pocket.

“But why not, Renee?” Lenny was saying as I came in. “We can have a marvelous time. It’s a first-rate occasion and the eats will also be firstrate, not to mention the band, which is a specialist in South American.” He swayed his hips a little, clicking his teeth and flicking his fingers gaily.

“I can’t,” said Renee, looking embarrassed at me. “Serve the gentleman,” she continued as Lenny’s face collapsed into depression. “I have to pop now for rehearsal.”

As she popped, both Lenny and I watched her.

“Seems a nice class of girl, Lenny,” I said.

“She’s real class, Wolfie,” he sighed. “What can I give you, Wolfie — the usual?”

He sliced me the usual, sighing. He sighed as he put mustard on it, and as he slipped a pickled cucumber onto the plate sighed yet again.

“Business so bad, Lenny?” I asked him.

“What’s business against a happy life?”

“I thought you was married,” I replied through a mouthful of the best salt beef in Soho.

“Me? Never,” he said, “and it looks like I never will.” Then, with tears in his eyes he told me.

“The truth is,” he said, carving off a little slice of beef and popping it into his mouth sadly, “the truth is, the weight is an embarrassing thing for her. I read somewhere a famous writer says inside every fat man is a thin man screaming to get free. First time in my life, Wolfie, I can hear him screaming.”

I finished my sandwich but the second half didn’t have the taste — not with Lenny mooning around. How can you enjoy delicatessen served by a lovesick salt-beef sheer? I wasn’t the only one. Within the next few weeks The Roll-Mop’s business dropped off. Fat men like me just, don’t enjoy the disapproval of eating that radiated from Lenny like heat waves off freshly cooked pastrami. Also Lenny was getting the sagging look of an empty salami skin that tells you a man is murdering his gluttonous metabolism by enforced starvation. No more the big fat smile of encouragement as he cut your sandwich. As for lutkas—they were right off the menu.

“You look like you’re wasting to death,” I said to him one afternoon as I chewed a late lunch more out of nostalgia than enjoyment.

“I’m down to eighteen stone,” he replied, a sad pride lighting his sallow features. “Renée says if I take off another few stone maybe she will reconsider things. The weight was an embarrassing thing to her.”

“You already told me,” I reminded him. “I think you are up the pole to throw away your business and your substance for a doll-face who makes such demands. There is nothing in history that says a fat man can’t be a husband.”

“I am now trying the banana and milk diet,” he replied. “Next month I go on to a vegetable juice torture which is guaranteed to produce startling losses. Tonight Renée has consented to come to the pictures with me, so I’m making progress.”

This progress Lenny finally completed after working through a raw potato diet, an all-meat regime, a fortnight session devoted exclusively to acid fruit, and a five-day stint on nothing but glucose. He was a pasty miserable fifteen stone when he told me that he was going to close the shop for a month’s holiday at what is laughingly called a “health hydro.”

“How’s Renée?” I asked.

“Life is very difficult,” he replied. “Now she says I am not jolly like I used to be — a thing which she always very much appreciated in me. What can I do? I’m slim but I don’t feel jolly. Thank God Renée gets on with my mother. That at least is something to be thankful for.”

“Have a nice holiday,” I replied.

Lenny told me that at that hydro they gave him the works with massage and sunray and infrared and ultraviolet and various other rays which are hardly on the market, yet. Also with vitamins, enzymes, and gland extracts. Also massage, bodybuilding, muscle development, and fresh air — not to mention a special juice from pressed mangoldwurzels which is the richest drink in something or other ever discovered.

“(Give me the address,” I asked Lenny, because he looked in great shape when he got back, especially since his suits didn’t look like tents any more. Even his personality was changed. He had a feeling about him like he was studying in his own mind the real meaning of life and was about to come to such a miserable answer you wanted to hug him to cheer him up. Not me, that is. I thought it was all a tragedy for the salt-beef business. But Renée, she was always in there hugging him. “Didn’t I tell him he could change himself?” she chortled.

Needless to say they got married, although I don’t know which health hydro the honeymoon was spent, in because frankly the whole affair disgusted me slightly. I hate to see a fellow’s nature put upon by a pocket Venus of whatever size. There are other salt-beef bars in Soho, so I went to them.

One lunchtime I was in the vicinity of Lenny’s place, so I thought for old time’s sake — why not? I looked in. I say look — but it was more like a squint, the place was so packed with fat men all knocking back salt-beef sandwiches by the gross. Surprised, I pushed my way through to the bar.

“Wolfie,” greeted Lenny as he handed plates past a buxom pretty brunette who looked after the cash register. “Where you been? The usual? Go on — enjoy yourself. How long have you got to live anyway?”

“You put on weight, Lenny,” I said, because there he was back with more or less the same twenty stone he had before the rot set in.

“Listen,” he said, “is it a better thing to be a bit on the plump side and contented or to have a figure and cry like Johnnie Ray the whole time?”

“Johnnie Ray?” said the buxom brunette. “I’ll say. With that miserable look he couldn’t keep the girls away.” She punched the cash register steadily as she talked. “But a couple of months’ real eating got him back to normal,” she continued smugly.

“She took me to every delicatessen in town. And eat — I had to eat my best to keep up with her,”added Lenny. “You know my wife Renée of course.” He introduced me to the brunette.

“Didn’t you used to be blonde?” I asked.

She shook her dark curls. Already she was getting ihe dew-lapped look of the constant-eater-betweenmeals. “ Blonde is not really suitable for the eating business,” she explained. “Lenny, dolly, you want more butter on your bagel?”

“You see,” Lenny explained out of the side of his full mouth, “now we are married the weight is no longer embarrassing to her.” He patted his enormous stomach. “What do we always say, Renée?”

She stretched out her hand and also patted. “What we always say is,” she said, “if you got the right man, how can you have too much?”