I'm Dying Laughing: The Humourist

by Christina Stead

  ‘I do not say “waitah”.’

  ‘The prince and the pauper.’ She began to take off the necklace, tugging impatiently at the catch. ‘Help me with it, Stephen,’ she continued in a hearty, husky tone, ‘it’s lovely, I love it, but get thee behind me, Satan. I guess you don’t know me after all. Hasn’t any woman ever told you it’s a damned insult to try to buy a woman’s affections with Russian crown jewels and a fur coat? Is—our—whole—future,’ she continued, breaking into sobs, ‘to—be—built—on my selling out my belief in the future of the world for some gewgaws of Tsarist Russia? It’s a symbol, all right. I guess that’s the kind of women you’ve known though.’

  ‘Oh, Lord!’

  ‘Of course, your mother and your sister are like that; they believe in Cincinnatus labouring the earth with a golden plough share. And what is the harvest? The corn is gold. The country’s rich and right. Why Dear Anna, your mother, would think it the hoith of foine morals intoirely to give up dirty radicalism and wear a clean fortune round your neck. I don’t say sister Florence. Florence is not all lucre. She’d pawn it at once for a hundred cases of Bourbon—‘

  ‘I got this from Florence. I’ve got to pay her for it, somehow.’

  Take it back. It’s for her sort,’ said Emily decisively pushing it along the table. ‘I like it; but after you saying you’d divorce me if I didn’t believe in the American way of life—‘

  ‘I did not!’ he shouted.

  ‘American exceptionalism! What else is it? And you’d leave me for not believing in Hollywood, the art of the masses; do you think you can buy me back with a stick of candy? I don’t think you could have done that to me, even as a child. The only thing you could buy me with then was affection. I loved people. They didn’t love back.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings; I don’t seem to do anything right. So I’ve lost you!’

  ‘Will you give up your belief that revolutionary Marxism is right; and consent to be led by the nose by the quiet men from nowhere (Earl Browder) all for an amethyst necklace?’ said Emily loudly and scornfully; and throwing the box with the thing in it on to the carpet, where she kicked it away. ‘Pooah! What triviality! Is that what you think of me, Emily Wilkes? You can buy me with a string of beads? When I whore, I’ll whore for plenty, for the whole works. They’ll have to come to me with the whole world wrapped up in their arms! And with the Bible too and the whole of revolutionary history, man’s struggle too, and say: “Debs says you can, and you can prove it by the Haymarket Martyrs, the crimes of Cripple Creek; lynched labour organisers led to it and Sacco and Vanzetti died for it.” Manoel! Is the car ready? Put my bags into it. Drive me to the airport. Stephen, I’ve left everything arranged; the children’s diets, their dentists’ appointments, when to change their clothes; everything; I’ve paid all the bills, I was up all night. Now, this is final. You can divorce me if you like.’

  ‘Forgive me, Emily,’ said Stephen.

  ‘I don’t forgive you. I’m goddamn mad and I’m going to stay mad.’

  But Stephen ordered Manoel out of the car, got in himself; and while he was driving Emily to the airport, he talked her round. In tears, quite overwhelmed with shame, Emily was brought back to the house. They spent the day together talking over many things quietly and sincerely; kisses and endearments were exchanged in the vegetable garden, down by the shore, behind the trees that screened the barbecue, by the children’s swing, in the dark of the garage and while they were spraying the vines with DDT against the Japanese beetle.

  Not far off, Manoel and Maria, in their rest house, could be heard talking and laughing; once they screeched with laughter. Two or three times Emily ran to the children, who were being kept together by the English governess named Thistledown. Emily hugged them all, kissed the eldest, their adopted child Leonard, in the dark curls that fell over his pale narrow forehead. ‘Oh, my darling,’ she said to them once, ‘if you only knew what a mother you have! You’d do better with a snake, a Gila monster, than an earthworm like me. Oh, Miss Thistledown, I’m a poor weak woman without character.’ She hugged the governess. ‘Let me kiss you,’ she said, pressing her wet round cheeks, rough and warm as fruit, to the middle-aged woman’s thin face. ‘You English are all so strong, you’re just and strong. My God,’ she said, turning away, and aloud, ‘if my fighting forefathers heard that blather! I’m fat with the buttering and the licking afterwards.’

  At dinner, Emily made the crêpes suzette as planned. She was wearing rings, a hair-jewel and bracelets. She was flushed and her tongue wagged frenziedly. ‘Oh, if only we were Jewish,’ she cried; ‘we’d stick together. What a beautiful family life the Jews have, so close-woven; and they make more of blood than we do. It’s beautiful, that tree of life with all its branches, under the mantle of all its leaves. Oh, how lucky you are, Lennie, to have had a Jewish father. If only I had Jewish blood I’d make you happy. I’d have the art of keeping the fire in the hearth forever. I used to go down to the Jewish quarter as a child and just stare in, glare in hungrily through their windows on Friday nights, when they had their candles in the windows! Oh, how tender it was, how touching and true! The family is the heart of man; how can you tear it open?’

  Stephen listened, smiling, grinning: ‘Christopher’s father, my brother-in-law, Jake Potter, was a nasty little man! Family life is poison. I’m sure Miss Thistledown and Manoel think they’re having a season in hell. Read what Plato said about the family!’

  ‘Plato was a homosexual!’ declared Emily. ‘Stephen, listen to what I say! Family love is the only true selfless love; it’s natural communism. That is the origin of our feeling for communism: to each according to his needs, from each according to his capacity; and everything is arranged naturally, without codes and without policing. Manoel, why don’t you bring in the coffee? This coffee is not like we get at your sister Florence’s. But of course, there’s only one liquid that means anything to her—‘

  ‘Stop it!’

  But she did not stop and held them at table while she discussed Stephen’s family and their money habits, for a long time. Christopher’s grand-uncle had dieted himself to death, being a miser; having apportioned his estate among his children to escape death duties and family hatred, he found them all sitting like buzzards around his semi-starved person to tear the pemmican from his bones. Stephen’s mother, Stephen’s sisters, the rich girl the family wanted Stephen to marry—

  Miss Thistledown, embarrassed, half rose from her chair. ‘Stay where you are!’ roared Emily, ‘I haven’t finished speaking. You’re the children’s guardian. If I leave, you’ll be their mother! You may as well know what’s in them!’ At last, with an imperial gesture, she dismissed them, the children to their homework or beds; and when they had sung the Giles song, she said to Stephen, ‘Let’s go to the movies; I have a need to sit in the dark with you.’

  They went downtown. At night, they went to bed but did not sleep. In the film, the word ‘fascist’ was used and Stephen exulted, ‘There you are! Hollywood is not all poison. Reaction is on the way out, when the radical writers in the studios can put over their ideas like that.’

  ‘Oh, poohpooh,’ said Emily: ‘people don’t even know what it means. It went by in a second! Who heard it but politicomaniacs like us?’

  And with this one word, the bitter wound opened again.

  ‘I shall be ill if you don’t let me sleep,’ said Stephen. ‘Last night too—‘

  ‘Sleep! When our futures and our souls, I mean that word, it’s all we have that’s worth fighting for—we’ve got to think this thing through. We can’t sleep anyway.’

  ‘I could if you’d let me. I’ve got you; my children are with me; I have no other wants. I don’t want to have ideas. Ideas are civil war. Let us drown our ideas, Emmie. Let’s live in a friendly fug. I’m sick of it.’

  ‘In the first place, what are we fighting about, Stephen? Let’s get that clear. We’re mixed up. We like New York, but you want us to stay here and make a fortune in
the movies, so that Dear Anna and Florence the Fuzzy and your English Uncle Shongo—‘

  ‘I have no Uncle Shongo!’ he squealed.

  ‘Your English Uncle Mungo and Uncle Cha will see you are not a failure; you, too, can make money. I don’t mind being a failure because my people remain in the mud of time; but you do. I’m from hoi polloi and you’re from hoity-toity—‘

  ‘Stop it! Was there ever such a fool! I married a clown!’

  ‘Anyway, for some reason, we’ve got to believe in MGM and the mistakes of the left.’

  ‘Goddamn it, they are not mistakes. Who are you and I—‘

  ‘For myself, the writers like what I write when I like what I write; but the agents don’t and you don’t and even—but leave certain names out of this shameful story. If I write the way I like, it’ll be poverty for us; not this monogrammed sheet, but mended shoes and tattered pants and not enough vitamins; and that’s not fair to the kids.’

  ‘We’re not philanthropists. It’s theory and practice for everyone in the world, except the unquestioning and thankless rich—lucky dogs! You don’t want our kids to grow up like Clem Blake’s, eating out of cans with many a fly twixt the can and the lip.’

  ‘Golly!’ she laughed: ‘I guess they’ll grow up, too.’

  ‘If they don’t die of botulism.’

  ‘I thought that was from botflies.’

  ‘What are botflies?’

  ‘It shows I’m a farmer’s daughter. Well, they’ll grow up, too.’ She sighed. ‘Oh, well, what the hell! Maybe the oral hygiene and the handmade shirts are just hanky-panky. Maybe that’s no way to raise heroes of labour.’

  ‘I don’t want to live with heroes of labour,’ he said pettishly. ‘I’ve seen lots of them. Starvation and struggle are no good for the soul; nor the stomach. What are we fighting for? Not to make people like the workers are now. Good grief! I had a “love the worker” phase; but I wasn’t sincere. I walked along working-class streets and saw their stores and their baby-carriages and hated ’em. I wouldn’t raise anyone to be like them. Why are the French so revolutionary? Because of their good cooking and good arts of life. And what the devil—you can make money, so make it! If we starved, it would be a whim, the whim of the rich. Why should we starve? You’ve only got to do two days’ work and we’ll be in for $30,000. It’s a whim and a selfish one to throw that kind of money back in the studio’s face and talk about art and poverty and your soul. And if you’re a red, you ought to show you’re one just because you can come out on top; so they can’t say it’s grousing. You ought to be a shining—red—light. The rest is just moral filth, mental laziness and infantile behaviour. You want to be back in Tacoma, the schoolgirl who read through Shakespeare once every year, and dreamed about making a noise as a great writer. Fooey! You know I hated Princeton. Well, one of the reasons was, I spent my time trying to live up to the noble secular trees and noble secular presidents. I starved myself trying to live on what I thought a poor scholar would live on; and fancied my parents admired me for spending so little. Rich imbeciles like me think there’s something mystic, some intellectual clarity and purification of the soul in sobriety, austerity and poverty. I got over that. Now anyone can keep me, my family, you—‘ he said bitterly, ‘or Christopher or my son.’

  ‘Christopher is your son,’ she said.

  ‘My lazy vampirism feeds on my nearest and dearest: I gnaw their white breasts.’

  ‘Oh, Stephen,’ she wailed, ‘oh, don’t say that. I love you. Don’t say those things. If I have a vulgar streak which enables me to make more money than you, aren’t I, in those moments, like your moneymaking grandfathers that you despise? And I feel I’m tanned like a tanned rhino hide: I’m secretly afraid you’ll leave me and get some decent woman who never sold out. Despise me; but don’t despise yourself, Stephen. What else am I working and selling out for? You’re my whole life, my rayzon d’ayter. If we haven’t got each other, we’ve got nothing. Our life is so hideous. With each other, we can work it out, we can hope. Otherwise, what has it all been for? You gave up millions, I gave up my hopes, dreams and ideals; and our hearts are being squeezed dry.’

  ‘You’ve made me better than I was,’ said Stephen. ‘First out of Princeton, I used to hang around with those wistful, carping critics of the critics’ group. I was young and stupid and I think I still am. I hated those arty people, Emily—all—with the bitterest hate of envy; and then I took up Marxism because I thought it gave me a key they didn’t have; it raised me above them. I got out of the grovelling mass in the valley and felt the fresh air blowing on me; but it was all selfish—‘

  ‘It was NOT,’ roared Emily, ‘don’t be crazy!’

  ‘Yes, it was. They seemed to get women without even trying.’

  ‘Jee-hosaphat! Did you want to get women?’ She began to laugh, rolling about on the bed and looking at him with her red and yellow face, surrounded by loose fair hair. Her face was made for laughter—a pudgy comic face with deep lines only when she laughed, the deep lines of the comic mask. ‘Oh, Stephen! And you so beautiful! Why on earth you picked a puttynose, a pieface like me—‘

  ‘A what?’

  ‘I look as if some slapstick artist just threw a custard-pie in my puss—’

  ‘Don’t insult the woman I love!’

  ‘And those freckles remind me of the oatmeal in a haggis—‘

  ‘You’re the most beautiful woman I ever had in my life, that’s all. It’s the beauty of the mind—‘

  ‘Oh, if we could wear the mind inside out! I don’t get it. You’re fascinating, Stephen.’

  ‘Well, the only women who go for me are those who wriggle down to the platform after meetings and ask me to explain. You know what that fellow in the bistro in Paris said to his son that day? “Don’t fret son, study cats. The females always go for the ragged, bleary-eyed, whiskery, dirty old torn with cobwebs on his eyebrows.”’

  ‘But is it true?’

  ‘I envied them all,’ said Stephen sourly, ‘and you provide the final revenge against them. You’re so wonderfully, truly, profoundly potent and you’re nothing like them. They were so genteel; they wouldn’t be caught in an enthusiasm: the sad little band of nil admirari. I had my intellectual revenge when I studied a few scraps of Marxism too. I learned they stood for nothing. They, if they learned a bit, they dropped out halfway. They married a bit of money, a schoolteacher with cheques appeal, took a house in a restricted suburb; no Jews, Irish or Italians, they’re all too enthusiastic. They begin to owe money and have plenty of nothing; they get sleek and terribly bright and wise—and so terribly empty. There’s nothing to prevent them jumping off Brooklyn Bridge right now. Because only an idea and a belief can prevent you doing that.’

  ‘Oh, well, who the hell cares for them? You got out.’

  ‘Yes, but they’ve no doubts. I employed a poor scholar, a tailor’s son, to teach me Marxism: the old noble getting out an insurance policy against the revolution! You’re real. I knew right off you were a genuine person, a wise and rich woman, strong and meaningful.’

  ‘How did you know that?’

  ‘That awful dress you wore!’

  ‘Stephen!’ she cried, blushing; ‘and you always said you loved it.’

  ‘So I did and I do. I made you keep it forever. I love it. The vines and the grapes and the flowers—‘

  ‘Stephen! I did think it was lovely and warm,’ she added thoughtfully. ‘I loved it too. I still don’t think it’s awful. Of course, dear Florence wouldn’t have—‘

  ‘Don’t spoil it. And the story you told me of your growing up and the things that happened to you! The man in the house that fell down when you were in it: Jimmy—the man who rented out condemned buildings and introduced you to Donne—well, I never met such people. And then the rotten men—whom I understood, with all my failure, better than you. It all showed me the depth of life and love and passion and ability that could be. And lacking just one thing, the ability to be warped.’

  Emily said
nothing.

  ‘I felt so cut off from the rest of mankind and you bridged that for me. I felt I was still up in that hospital in the snow slopes and pines, where I was cut off for three years. But I know I’m down on earth again when I’m with you. And I live for you,’ he said obstinately, ‘and only for you. Would I live for myself? You don’t like me to say that; but I must. I want to call it out, to shout it out. I thirst for what you give me. My life drives me into sterility; I can’t give and nothing bears for me. But you did.’

  Emily turned about restlessly. ‘You mustn’t say that. I told you not to. It makes me feel ill. Suppose I died? Anyone can die.’

  ‘Don’t say that, please.’

  ‘All right. But you mustn’t found your life on one person. It’s dreadful. You throw yourself on another person’s back and bear them down. They bow right down to earth with weeping and sobbing for you and them. You kill them. The feeling’s unspeakable. I’ll die.’

  Stephen laughed. ‘Well, that’s me though. Too bad. You must live for something. I think I’m lucky. A lot of those men I knew had nothing to live for and now they’re slipping along a moral skid row. They’re looking sideways furtively at the milestones. I guess the only thing that stops them putting their heads in the gas oven is that all they’ve got is an infra-red grill. I know what I’m living for: for you. For anything you live for. I don’t care what it is.’

  ‘That’s fabulous. I won’t have it,’ said Emily angrily.

  ‘Perhaps I could be different in another society. I wonder. But I think a bad man, a real bastard but a strong villain, would be better for you than me. At least, he wouldn’t pretend to be an intellectual or a moral hero and take up your time and waste your affections.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know what to do,’ said Emily frantically. ‘I’ll give you a beating. It’s more than I can stand. I’m going mad. You’re killing me.’ She threw herself from side to side as if avoiding bees. ‘I’m burning. Don’t, don’t, don’t!’ She threw herself at him. ‘Stop it, do you hear me! It makes me feel desperate. I’ll burst.’