I'm Dying Laughing: The Humourist

by Christina Stead

  He dropped down on his side and moaned, ‘Leave me alone. I can’t cope with all this. I can’t take any more. It’s too much. I’d rather die. If I have your contempt like that I’d rather die. I only wanted to make you happy.’

  She looked at him with contempt, ‘I have given up the whole world but thank heaven, I have become a Howard. Now I must mention every one of their names with respect, four-footed, false-hearted Fairfield, four-alarm-bitch, dear Dale, who can tell you all about the Cecil Sharp collection, and the dead-head Dolittles and Mrs Humphreys with their loved Sevres. That is to be the field of battle henceforward of Emily Wilkes, who once fought for human freedom.’

  ‘Leave me alone. I don’t know what this is all about. I only know I make no one happy.’

  She was tired. She lay down, baffled. Stephen turned out the light. She began to compose her letter of renunciation to her former friends; but in a few minutes she was fast asleep.

  In the morning she got up about five and began at once typing her recanting letters. The first was to Ruth and Axel Oates, now back in the USA where Axel had set up another weekly and news service. She wrote to them first, thinking they were the only ones who might still be her friends; ‘and to get my bloodstained hand in.’

  She began with an intense burning hatred of the Germans for what they had done—to Europe, to France, to the Jews, to children—and mingled in with this civilities towards England, which in its faded conservatism and anaemic socialism, she still loved; and to Belgium, whose great wealth and kermis spirit and bad French she loved; and cowards Italy where they intended to go in spring, and to Geneva where they might one day reside. She then discussed English Labour, ‘childish, on a lower level, unsuitable when we live in an epoch of absolutes.’

  ‘What did Stephen say only last night? Ah, well, one can debate the socialist policies of parties in England and the USA. But actually it’s all shadow, no substance. Neither of these countries can or will produce any significant organization of the proletariat. Let us talk about Reality, History; for example, France, Italy—and ourselves in this time and place. Stephen is taking a new step, he will be learning, writing, and the old frustration will slowly disappear. I hope he will be at once appreciated; he needs it. The whole idea of Gaudeamus Press must be revised. Stephen has so many ideas; and they admire and respect him and wait on his word, I can see that. It is true that he hankers after a thing like the Labour English Review which, childish as it is, would be readable if it had the editorship of a man like Stephen. This is an interim. He may go on to something like that. As it is, without a period of reassurance, he cannot go down once more into that shadow struggle with gigantic, venomous, ever-changing pygmies. For Stephen now, another kind of life, the sunlight; no wandering in the amorphous mist but battle in the sun and struggle for reason, blessed reason, independent reason, which lives apart from shibboleths and apart from the darkness and flame that surrounded the Inquisition, the mysterious sects, the devil-worship, the Trotskyists and other sectaries. Yes, they say it all happened because they are small in numbers and cannot reach the people; perhaps that is so, but even in France and even in Italy where the membership is large, can it be said that the individual does not suffer? That no injustice is done? Are there no innocent martyrs whatever in the bloody dark unrevealed chronicle of Bolshevik history, no innocent people afraid to return to their loved country for fear of a rope or a shot in the dark? No people hauled out of bed and brought suddenly up on strange charges, ignorant of the denouncer, the accuser? Oh, the dread secret denunciation and private informer, meaning nothing and arising out of jealousy, envy, crime, lust or even a little cash, blackmail, pressure but ending up as only one thing—your name on the records of infamy now and forever. Your name pilloried innocently. How can the innocent person defend himself? He cannot. The innocent suddenly charged, behaves like the guilty, guiltier than the guilty. It is the criminals who get off and have false papers and friends in the police. But we, never—no, indeed, once accused how can we not take our stand with the other side? For terror and dishonour and misunderstanding await us on the side our hearts once chose. Oh, alas, dreadful dilemma which cannot remain a dilemma, for we are not obscure persons. We must live and work, bring up children nobly and why should we fail? For an error? A judicial error? And are communists, those pious stiff-necked people the pattern of the philistine, better than others? Indeed, as they used to say, Tammany is better for the poor, for you can buy them and they will listen to the broken-hearted mother who has a few dollars in her hands. And if you can buy communism, where is their virtue? So they remain unhuman. We must live on the side we belong to. I remember hearing my father talk about an engineer, Phil Brotherton, working in Mexico. He sympathized with the Mexican workers, but he said if his Mexican workers rose against the damn gringos (it was then) he would have to take refuge with the whites, and fight with them. And we too—with the whites! Ah, this waiting, this waiting; why are we always waiting? Is it a situation of our class in our age?

  ‘But Axel and Ruth, it is not safety now. We are no longer communists, we have been through all that and we no longer feel we are with them. We are post-graduate, we understand them; but we feel we are in a sense more sophisticated than they are. Everyone knows that the frustration of sexual and perhaps the other creative emotions frequently produces the alcoholic and even the drug-taker. Therefore people who imagine they have or actually do have frustrations, tend to become alcoholics and drug-takers almost by default. Similarly, communists produce a certain type, perhaps even two or three, but to me there is one master-type and this type becomes more noticeable across the decades. It is furthered by parasitic communist conformist literature and by ignorant outsiders conforming in their way as well. Besides, most moderns, lonely in the tragic years, find comfort in behaving according to the norm. One can see this, so far as communists are concerned, by examining personalities of the Russian Bolsheviks in exile. Say, in 1912 you have an enormous variation in personality; there were all sorts then, just men and women struggling for reason and revolution; there was no communist type in the days of struggle; but victory brought a change, conformity. Now in every country, communists strive to fit themselves into a mould. It is a good mould, perhaps honourable, perhaps even great. But people should be free. A form, a mould is a stereotype, it banishes the person, bleaches personal thought and dyes over it. Take our friend Vittorio, a man of great talent, if not genius, and with such gifts that he has carried over into manhood the freshness, capacity for love, sorrow and joy of a child. Surely a great trait. He has all sorts of facets and curves; an impressionist, a futurist, could depict him. He is a human being, intricate, delightful, convoluted. Or was once. Not long ago perhaps. Now he struggles to acquire a synthetic personality. He tells you about art, in which he is wonderfully learned; about literature, and they appeal to him as the high court on literature; and yet you feel too sure of his conclusions. They are banal, they are languid, they are dull. How sad! All this is a grim fatal limitation of his own intricacies of perception, his delicacy and charm. He is no longer Vittorio. He is party conformist number one hundred thousand. He is a poster, a poster comrade. Most communists not so endowed fit easier into the mould and perhaps might be called victims of history.

  ‘We don’t want to be victims. We want to see, smell, hear, understand. Yes, I have been considering the communist character. Let us take, in contrast, a great individual. Take Danton. Or Cicero. Their friends were overwhelmed by their characters, their own characters, rich, various, tortured, intricate and noble because human. They fill the soul with a great nostalgia because they are right, somehow entirely right. Reason, the fullness of humanity is so little considered in our doomsday world, that it is like a shock to discover man afresh. It is the ideal of man to see life whole, and these great, though perhaps much-mistaken men, call upon one’s own life-forces. And all these are the reasons, the reasons which we have suffered for, for our giving up our beliefs, Axel and Ruth, and feeling sur
e we are right in giving them up. Our souls were cramped, our lives miserable, there seemed no goal or hope and even our marriage was as painful as a fever. It is over. We are cured. I don’t ask you to rejoice with us—but be good to us, try to understand us and know that we did not act from the base motives we are accused of.’

  This letter was Emily’s springboard. After it, she wrote five or six others, much shorter, signed them, typed the envelopes and brought them down to breakfast for Stephen to read. She was very sorry that Suzanne was not there to hear them.

  ‘What is this?’ said Stephen suddenly.

  At the bottom of the letter to Axel and Ruth Oates, she had scribbled in her own loose handwriting, ‘$30,000’.

  ‘Oh, cross it out! I must have been thinking about the money.’

  21 TRIAL AND EXECUTION

  STEPHEN WAS IN HIS new job till nearly Christmas, when he found himself so ill that he went first to French doctors, then to his uncles’ medical man in London and last to his family doctors in America. They put him into hospital, got him ready for an operation and kept him in hospital for a long time. Emily was uncommonly upset; but she could not go over to him, because of the children.

  At Christmas, she had only Suzanne, the children and their old friend, the English journalist, Desmond Canby, whom she invited by telegram from London. Canby, once a communist, now a cautious ‘retired communist’ who had never denounced his former friends but, as they said of him, ‘always kept the door open’, was not living well and could not visit the continent as often as before. He was married to a well-to-do and titled woman, and was now living with her family, making a risky living by writing the witty articles for which he was famous and which had had a tremendous sting, long ago, when he had expressed political beliefs. The money he earned free-lancing could scarcely keep him and did not keep him, for he was fond of fine living. He telephoned from London to say he would be very pleased to spend Christmas with the Howards.

  ‘What will I bring?’ he said.

  ‘A bottle of gin.’

  ‘I will.’

  He came on Christmas Eve and stood in the doorway, tall and bulkier than before, dark, slow to speak, with the unassembled bogey look of a very drunk man.

  ‘Welcome to Turncoat Hall,’ said Emily, who was herself drunk. ‘There are only to be a couple of select apostates present, you and I. The Dolittles you’ll like, just ordinary nobodies, but your class, Des, and there’s Madame Suzanne, you won’t like her, she’s a menial, but a good friend to me. Come in, help decorate the Christmas tree. Where are your presents?’

  ‘My presents?’

  He smiled stiffly, and swayed forward, ‘Oh, in my little valise, some gauds for the tree and I shall go out and get something, as soon as I’ve had a drink.’

  ‘Did you bring the gin?’

  ‘H’m—no. I forgot it. I’m not very flush. I had to leave a deposit for my safe return with the family you see: more gauds. Never mind. I know you have drinks.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Come in, Des, we’ll have fun. It is so dreary and I’ve been weeping like the widow of widows. I am so glad you came. It was very good of you, drunk or sober.’

  He came in quietly, though almost toppling, not pleased by her words; but soon they were seated with drinks and then Des said he would never get to the shops. He would send her something magnificent from London.

  ‘I promise.’

  He went to bed very drunk, but got up early in the morning, apparently in good health, though he did not eat bacon and eggs.

  Christy was staying in the house, and the three children still made a fuss about the Christmas tree.

  They passed the morning quietly and at noon the Dolittles came with hallooings of joy and rapturous embraces from Emily; and they luckily at once took to Des.

  As usual Emily had insisted upon doing the decorations herself. A large Christmas tree in a tub, arranged by the porter, had a few strings of silver and luggage labels all over it, in blue, pink and yellow, while attached to it by thin pink embroidery floss were the five-cent candy bars, which Emily had got out of a crate of confectionery sent from the States. There was one for each person. They had plenty to drink and when Christmas lunch was ready, went in to eat in a small dining-room which opened out of the hallway, a dark room in which the table was dressed. In the centre, in a fine silver-and-glass vase, were some half-dead flowers, while the cloth was decorated by the paper streamers used for humble dancehalls and public houses in that season, and a considerable number of old postcards addressed to Stephen and the children. They were postcards from holiday resorts and from the family travels.

  ‘I did the decoration myself,’ said Emily, standing at the end of the table and smiling strangely, almost with derision.

  ‘What is this? What is the meaning of it?’ asked Des uneasily, looking at the untidy confusion.

  ‘Oh, Emily has been having fun,’ said Mrs Dolittle.

  ‘I don’t understand it,’ said Des, in the same tone.

  Emily, still with a strange expression, saw the food coming in on the dinner-wagon and sat down. She said, ‘What does it matter what you see, Des? Des Canby, celebrated lunch-detective and sandwich-snatcher, like all the English, sponges and toadies, who’ll do your dirty work for a drink, why not? Isn’t he here drinking my drinks, eating my food? I can’t say so, you mean?’

  ‘For shame, Emily,’ said Suzanne in a clear voice. She was sitting beside Des Canby who bowed his head, plucked at the paper streamer in front of him, but said nothing.

  ‘It’s Christmas, Mother,’ said Christy.

  ‘She’s drunk,’ said Mrs Humphreys in a low voice to her husband. ‘Take no notice.’

  ‘Well, why not, aren’t we all here to whitewash the rich, lick the spittle, kiss what should be kicked? You, Doug Dolittle, and you, Fabia Humphreys, come tell me, did you ever pay your debts? Haven’t you beggared tailors, dressmakers, grocers, butchers and interior decorators? Haven’t we all? And you too—oh, you’ll sit here, you’ll eat my food, you’ll be drinking all the afternoon, what about you, Suzanne?—’

  ‘What about me?’ said Suzanne.

  ‘Didn’t Anna, dear Anna, say she would take our Olivia away from you because she thought you were a little too fond of the little rich girl; “It’s not quite healthy, is she turning her wrong?” she said to Stephen. Not to me, because I’m only the poor helmet-maker’s unbeautiful daughter, the poor Arkansas rice-grower! And you Christy, don’t you write me foul, dishonest twisted letters? Put round the shrimp cocktails, Mario,’ she said to the butler employed for the occasion, ‘and eat, friends, eat. I’m the harpy who’s fouled the food, but eat, it’s Christmas, oh, joy. Oh, God,’ she said to Suzanne, ‘I wish Violet were here. Suzanne come upstairs with me a while and let me talk to you. I’m tearing in two.’

  And without an excuse, she left them. They looked at each other, murmured and ate. ‘What else is there to do? Something’s wrong.’

  ‘She told me she was going mad,’ said Mrs Dolittle.

  ‘Oh, she’s excitable. She isn’t going mad.’

  ‘She took me down to the basement where she had a brooding-room, she calls it,’ said Mrs Humphreys. ‘There’s a window on the courtyard, just below the courtyard and there she is working on her novel about Marie-Antoinette. She says she is too feeble sometimes to get upstairs and she has a couch there, she sleeps on it and she keeps her medicines there. Sometimes, the cook Fernande told me, she sleeps there half the day and half the night; and she has found her lying on the floor, asleep—or otherwise, something else. I went down there with her, she opened the cupboard, took out some headache powder, which she took, and she said to me, quite calmly and reasonably, that she is going mad, she knows she will never recover.’

  Dolittle said, ‘I don’t believe it. She probably has spent all her money. Of course she tipples: she’s probably been hitting the bottle. Pass the wine, Doug! Take no notice. She’s upstairs taking a pickmeup. She’ll be all right when she comes back.’
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  ‘Americans are very extreme, aren’t they?’ said Douglas Dolittle. Then to Christy, ‘Not you, Christy, you’re charming. But then you have European manners and you’re from a different background.’

  Canby said, ‘Americans are just like Russians, that’s why they’re at each other’s throats, brotherly hate. Just the same, I don’t believe the war will be between Russia and the USA. I believe it will be between America and Britain.’

  At this fascinating prospect they all began to chatter. Emily soon returned, in a good mood, with Suzanne, and the Christmas dinner from that moment went forward well enough. After coffee and brandy however, the Dolittles said they had an appointment for tea and they left.

  ‘Oh, Suzanne, I am no better than poor Violet. I remember the first time she came to us, I didn’t understand her sufferings at all and I thought she was mad. Now I know it was her misery. Well, no more of that. I was blue, very blue; but that’s all over. Now children, look after yourselves. I am going to show Suzanne my workroom.’

  So saying she took Suzanne down to the workroom in the basement described by Mrs Dolittle.

  The next day, Suzanne found her there again.

  It was a small, dark room with light from the courtyard. Glass shelves had been fixed in the windows and reduced the light: ornaments stood on the shelves. Under this structure was Emily’s work-table upon which stood a new electric typewriter, which they had bought because of her increasing rheumatism. Against the back wall was a double bed taking up much of the space, over it a rumpled, dark-green cover and on the floor an old, thin, green rug, also rumpled.

  Emily looked at Suzanne over her shoulder as she passed to a wardrobe fitted into the wall.

  ‘I am going mad, Suzanne. I know it. And I think I am glad.’

  ‘That’s nonsense, my dear. You’re just tired and lonely. You need Stephen.’