I'm Dying Laughing

by Christina Stead

  Stephen stood by Carlo and said, ‘A man like that will get nowhere with Emily. She’s sturdy; this is just childishness, a sort of dare; a prank she’s playing on me. At most it’s a passing fancy. I’d like to spank her, but that wouldn’t help. I have to laugh at her instead.’

  ‘Emily’s serious and completely loyal,’ said Carlo.

  ‘I know she is.’

  Meanwhile, Emily was walking around the grounds with Dr Coriolis, showing him the hen-yard, the orchard, the vines swarming with Japanese beetles. Then she took him through the wild patch down to the stream and beyond, to the old mill; and all the time she was waiting for Coriolis to say something about her letter to him; pleased with herself, glad of what she had done. She did not believe for a moment that he would reject her. He said nothing. She chattered.

  Coming back they looked at the cultivated patches. On one grew sweet corn, rows of vegetables. The fence was draped with grapevines ruined and burned by the DDT spray. Between the green cornstalks, six to eight feet high, Emily and Dr Coriolis walked, picking cobs to be cooked right away for lunch.

  She said, ‘And for supper, lobsters fresh too—just caught. That is the only way to eat them. And I am making cardinal sauce. Do you know it? It’s exquisite. Exquis. One pint béchamel, half pint fish fumet, truffle essence, finish with a lot of cream and some lobster butter. Wait till you taste it, Alfred! It’s my shay doover. I’m a very good cook, Alfred. I even put it in my mamma books, though I blush at that. Alfred, watch it. Beetles have got into the cobs, the tassels and leaves. Alfred, didn’t you get my letter?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Yes; is that all?’

  Leaning from one row through to the other, she thrust her rosy face into Alfred’s, and kissed him twice above the moustache and to the side where there was a descending ridge of soft flesh.

  ‘Alfred, I’ve had an obsession about that, just kissing you there.’

  She laughed, blushed, turned her back and went along the row. She looked through the corn at Alfred, who caught up with her. He said thoughtfully, ‘You know I was afraid of you till just now.’

  Emily laughed and walked on. ‘Oh, I was afraid of that. You see I am so nervous I broke this cob in two.’

  ‘Are you really nervous?’ he said wonderingly, looking her over.

  ‘Oh, yes, terribly.’

  They came out of their rows at the other end. Here the fence divided Emily’s house from the neighbour’s. The fence was overgrown with heavy grapevine, quite sterile, swarming with beetles.

  ‘The neighbour is responsible; they do nothing about pests,’ said Emily.

  Old trees grew along the fence and the vine had reached up to them. At one end was the rest of the vegetable garden with tomato plants protected on one side by plastic sheets; then there was a light fence with shrubs and trees, beyond which could be faintly seen the children’s lawn. Here Miss Groyne, the new governess, was playing with Olivia and Giles.

  Emily stood looking, then said, ‘Put down your basket.’ She put her own down.

  ‘Don’t you want to kiss me?’

  He was hesitant but put his arms around her and kissed her, a cold, loose kiss.

  She put her arms round him and hugged him, stood back, said breathlessly, ‘Alfred, we are all going into town to an opening next week. Dear Anna has a box and you must come too.’

  ‘Dear Anna is your mother-in-law?’

  ‘Yes. She’s full of money. They all are, all but us, we’re the underprivileged Howards.’

  ‘Is your father-in-law here?’

  ‘The real one’s dead. Twenty years ago. But there’s a new one. Anna lives for the family. When there’s no war, she goes over to Paris and London every year to visit far-flung branches of the family tree. Ah, Alfred—’

  He put his arms round her and she flung herself on his chest, kissing him on the jawbone and neck without thought of self, quite wild with affection. Then she withdrew and said, ‘Let’s go back to the others. I need three more cobs. Let’s get them.’

  At the end, she had a few cobs over, but they piled them all into the one big palmleaf basket, which was lined and overflowing with cornleaves. She said, standing back, ‘Oh, that looks grand. Everything must please me today.’

  She put the baskets on the ground and led him towards the fence near the hen-yard. The hens heard her and became excited. She pulled Coriolis by the hand, as he stood in the furrow of warm earth, with his back against the thick rusted vine and began to kiss him all around the mouth.

  He closed his eyes. Emily laughed and rubbed the lipstick off his mouth. Coriolis frowned, and looked sharply at her. Emily ran, picked up the baskets and hurried before him through the opening into the big lawn which stretched from there towards the barbecue. People had strayed among the flowerbeds, and into the goat-field in which the weeds had grown high.

  She yelled, ‘Look out, poison ivy. Stephen, did you tell them poison ivy?’

  She said to the doctor, ‘Join them!’ and ran towards the kitchen with a triumphant smirk. She said to herself, laughing, ‘I cornered him, I made him pay up. Well, a good job done. I’m damned if I’m going to lie awake for Coriolis.’

  She had muttered one thing to him while they were kissing under the ruined vines,

  ‘I began to stay awake because of your long lashes—they sweep your cheek.’

  ‘Yes—’ he said.

  ‘Yes—’ she repeated giggling; ‘So that’s what the other women said? Do you know they say arched eyebrows are a sign of deceit?’

  ‘No,’ he said crossly.

  ‘And eyebrows that meet are and narrow eyes are and feminine buttocks in a man are and you have them all.’ She shrieked with laughter.

  She smiled to herself as she delivered the corn to Paolo, the new butler, gave orders about the steaks, the hot dishes. The tables were already put outside, and the baskets of linen and silver and the trays taken out.

  She kept away from Coriolis the rest of the day; but noticed him having long serious talks with Anna and Maurice. She could not help thinking him funny from a distance, a middle-aged, middle-sized podgy man, dark and eager, yet passive, like an invalid in a wheelchair. She detailed his defects to herself with malice.

  This Coriolis affair went on till the Labor Day weekend, when the Howards always gave a big party.

  Their Labor Day lunch was one of their most festive and, for the Howards, for long memorable. Anna had no car, as she always lived in a hotel when in New York and took taxis. She drove out for the Sunday and Monday with Dr Park. Dr Coriolis arrived by train on Monday morning; Paolo went to the station for him. Emily had been gardening, fixing the barbecue, and still wore washed-out denims with a tublike white middy jacket, white socks and brown saddle-shoes. Her sleeves were rolled up above the elbow showing her strong, fat arms. Her face was a freckled rose and her fair hair hung untidily but comically round her face. She was smiling, laughing all the time. At the corners of her wide-open blue eyes were two small wrinkles. Her hair, the colour of yellow loam, fell over half her summer-baked broad forehead. She was on an eating spree. Her face had become queerly caked with flesh, thickened, yellow and red. The middy jacket emphasised her portly figure, but suited her. Emily had not seen Dr Coriolis for some time. She knew he had had a heart attack; but she had not telephoned. She rolled forward to meet Alfred Coriolis and Ruth Oates, who had come up from the New York office on the same train. She kissed Ruth, Alfred was next; she kissed him on the cheek twice and rolled back on her heels making a sound of jovial relief. As they entered, guests with Anna came out into the hall.

  ‘Haven’t you something to wear, Emily?’ said Anna, in her usual cool, brief style.

  ‘Oh, this is just a picnic, but if you like Anna—’

  When she got upstairs, she quickly put on the new dress she meant to wear, all black with a draped skirt to conceal her prepotent belly, a black, fringed bolero to conceal her bosom. It was well made, it improved her looks. It had a low square neck and sh
ort sleeves. She put on a necklace of small rubies with a ruby sunburst given to her recently by Stephen, to match Anna’s. She combed her hair back and up; it fell loosely down the back and curled slightly—nothing could be done about it. She fixed in half a dozen small combs carelessly, made herself up lightly, and stepped into her small black slippers. She looked much the same; but now she had a coquettish, cunning smile and her eyes shone piquantly. She put on some gold bracelets, some drops of fine perfume, took a new lace handkerchief from its envelope. She did not even now seem like a woman, but like a thick, loamy sprite, taking advantage of feminine forms and tricks. When she entered the newly-papered living-room with modern paintings in it, she smiled and waved her plump hands, she swooped across the room, behaved as she had often seen her cousin Laura behave. But her cousin was an ordinary siren with nothing original, and this same air and behaviour in Emily was quaint, even breathtaking. Everyone looked at her and laughed in sympathy. She began to chatter, to talk without stopping. Dr Coriolis had been talking intimately with Cousin Charlotte, one of Stephen’s cousins, a woman poor and a rebel from her family just as Stephen was a rebel, then an amateur playwright and actress, who was at present dressed in a splendid blue and black, corded silk suit, a French hat and shoes, the gift of her Aunt Anna; she looked liked the heiress she would in the end be.

  ‘But I am poor, really poor,’ Cousin Charlotte was saying to Coriolis, with a delightful artificial laugh, a stage laugh, with a roguish roll of her large, tired eyes. She was about forty. She was made up as ladies are made up, not actresses, she spoke with a drawing-room tinkle or drawl: she behaved modestly as if Anna were her protectress. She drew out a monogrammed black and gold vanity case with a cigarette compartment and offered a cigarette to Coriolis. Emily, seeing this, bounded over to the couple and began talking fast. She saw the eyes of Dr Coriolis fix themselves on her own ruby necklace and star brooch, her bracelets and rings. She was gleeful. She hurried Paolo to bring the drinks, to get Olivia and Lennie to present the hors d’oeuvre, she offered Alfred a cigarette, from a handsome wood box presented by Anna.

  She said possessively, ‘Did you know we are going to Europe to live as soon as we can get a boat, Alfred?’

  Cousin Charlotte said, ‘Are you really? Oh, how wonderful, oh, how good for all of you! Oh, I shall come and visit you. The five years of war have been nothing but a waiting period. We have all missed Paris so much. And there is London. Dear battered London. And even Brussels. Do you know I once played in Brussels, Emily? Oh, shall we all meet there next spring?’

  The talk continued. Charlotte wailed fashionably, ‘Yes, but what am I to do? I’m so poor. I won’t ask Mother to keep me. I must get a job. I really must, Dr Coriolis. But it must be something in the theatre. That was my job with the troupe. I organized theatre.’

  A discussion started, some saying, How could anyone go back to Europe with the danger, uncertainty and shortages and revolution around the corner? Dr Coriolis said that there were dilemmas. For instance, though he himself had had to run away, if he went back, he would find enemies who would blame him; and then the gulf of experiences and years between him and those who had stayed would be too great. Some friends had been Nazis, come collaborators, some in the Resistance, some passive and glad to survive ‘like the Abbe Sieyes’; and some, like the English, out of it, except for the bombings, the mute dread and death.

  But Stephen said Silvermine, their Washington friend, had proved that fewer had died in England from bombings than from motor accidents on the bad English roads with the feebly powered English cars, ‘they boil over on a 1 in 8 gradient.’

  Emily laughed and said enthusiastically, ‘And think of the young people who died in the army and the bombings, who will never die in childbirth, from bad English medicine, from lack of sulphur drugs, from corrr’nry thrombosis, canc’rrr, advanced arrthritis and the diseases of old age. Dr Park was telling me about old age. It’s the worst disease of all, so think of the statistics saved on that alone. After all they had to die sometime, it just bunched the statistics.’

  Dr Coriolis laughed, while cousin Charlotte looked frightened.

  Emily cried, ‘Heirs and murderers waiting for fortunes would agree with me—and why, it reduces the murder rate. Think of the murderers who died and of their victims who won’t be murdered.’

  ‘Because they were,’ said Stephen.

  ‘But think of the injury to health and the genocide,’ said Dr Park, feeling ashamed because he had laughed, too.

  ‘What’s that—genocide?’ said Emily.

  ‘Killing off a race, as the Nazis did: and preventing people from having children. And other things—American soldiers in hospital suffering from social diseases either ruin the maternal chances of clean women, or themselves may never become fathers. Syphilis and other diseases, like tuberculosis were almost ceasing to be plagues; now they are raging. All this has genocidal tendencies. The USA won’t feel it, we have suffered so little.’

  Emily said roughly, ‘So what do we care? We will survive and work out our destiny. We don’t want Europe on our backs. Let them die and genocide. Russia can take care of herself. It won’t make any difference to Asia. And the American soldiers who were infected, let them stay over there and infect foreign women. We don’t want them either. What do these plagues and epidemics and the wars mean? It’s nature protecting us. It’s the balance of nature. We breed too fast anyway. There isn’t enough to eat in the world anyway. If anyone gets a disease or a woman can’t have children, it’s because they’re unfit anyway. Let them all stay over there till no one is alive but the fit and clean. Look at the Black Death! A lot died, but a lot survived. The ones who survived were our ancestors. The others were born to die; they were weaklings. Of course, I realize,’ Emily hesitated, ‘h’m, well I know that under socialist methods of production we’d have more to eat and not have to throw coffee into the Gulf of Mexico and burn up elevators full of grain as we had to do until we had war to pay for everything. But supposing under socialism every woman could have as many children as she wanted and they were taken care of, no infant deaths and all healthy, no childhood deaths and growing up—there’s going to be a terrible problem. We won’t get enough to eat. I don’t see that it’s such a bad lookout for us that Europe has been decimated, as you say, Doctor. There were too many people, hungry, dirty, weak, ignorant, anyway. And they’ll spring up again. That’s one of the awful powers of the human race, that they’re like birds, or roaches or weeds. Gee—it’s a terrible problem. It frightens you for us. There are too many of us. I don’t see why they don’t permit abortion. Any foetus that aborts is abnormal, weak or something anyway.’

  ‘But this is not scientific fact,’ said Alfred, laughing somewhat.

  Emily said jovially, ‘I don’t care about scientific fact, I care about survival. I can’t weep for victims or abortions; it’s bad for me. It’s not my nature. It weakens me. I don’t like misfits and sick people.’

  Coriolis said seriously, ‘This is a different matter. This, I understand.’

  Emily took him by the arm, saying, ‘Phew, phew, the heat. Come and walk around the garden, Doc. There is still some of Stephen’s garden left.’

  Coriolis hesitated, glancing at Cousin Charlotte’s fine silk revers and the lace frill of her blouse, at the earrings she was wearing.

  ‘Come on, Doc, I want to talk to you!’ Emily marched him out of sight into the small orchard.

  Anna was talking with Axel and Ruth Oates about ragweed, sheep, rose-pollen, blankets, cats. They all had allergies and did not like to go into the garden, even in September. Paolo could bring their food inside to them, from the barbecue. Anna and Cousin Charlotte thought they would try the garden. They both had allergies, and went out discussing the merits of sea-trips and mountain resorts.

  ‘You’re going to stay in the States?’ said Emily to Dr Coriolis.

  ‘Yes. I like it here. If I go back I shall be a has-been. I am bringing over my daughter too. She is n
ow in Holland. She was married to a Jew; he escaped and they let her alone. Now we will be reunited.’

  ‘Three cheers, put out the flags,’ said Emily drily.

  They could see the barbecue party. The evening was cooling. The sun sank below the treetops, the mosquitoes were thick, everyone was jigging and slapping to get rid of them.

  ‘Well, then we won’t see you any more, Doc,’ said Emily calmly.

  ‘I am sorry. You are a thrilling woman,’ said Alfred.

  ‘Ah, you can’t warm me up again. You let me get cold,’ said Emily.

  ‘I was sick, Emily. I was in the valley of the shadow.’

  She said, ‘Yes, Anna told me the old ticker was on the bum, Doc. Too bad.’

  ‘I think I will go inside now and lie down if you permit.’

  ‘Sure. Go right ahead. Call the ambulance. Call the district hospital. I’ll tell Paolo to go and look after you.’

  ‘You are angry with me.’

  ‘I don’t give a damn for the whole thing, Doc. Include me out.’

  Alfred Coriolis, deeply offended, left her and went into the house. Emily watched him go in; and then herself went upstairs to get one of her pills. She came down in a reckless mood; but she did not feel angry, defeated or sad. She felt that this affair, which had at first seemed to her real love, was just a springboard: she knew more about life now. She was full of an unknown, a fresh energy; and was able to look abroad for some new affair.

  ‘But it has taught me one thing. I am not going to be the little girl I was before. Through Coriolis I grew up.’

  She went over to the people near the barbecue. It was getting cool and darker. She took a drink from Paolo and said to him, ‘There’s a man inside lying down. Don’t bother about him. Let him rest.’

  She went up to Maurice, hooked her arm through his arm, and walked about feverishly.

  ‘I’ve got an idea. I’m going to write a horror book, about that most-dreaded figure in American society, a failure. There she is, my Aunt Rose, with quietude, lassitude, hopelessness, accepting her fate—she is despised by the family. And then there’ll be a girl who makes the world her oyster like my Cousin Laura and my Grandmother Jane Morgan; and the different ways they do it. And there are those who are cunning in a way and sneak up on American life, like my sister Beth, who’s always looking round corners, for a man; and one who accepts the world and lives for it like my Cousin Fivie, an ideal wife and mother, and the brown working-mouse like me—yes, I am that, Maurice, though the others are rolled up in me, and God I envy them and try to imitate them.