I'm Dying Laughing

by Christina Stead

  One said, ‘We must not take the opinion of the organizer or of the Howards, or of anyone. If we have not enough theory, we must use this as an opportunity of sharpening our minds.’

  A third branch member, a woman who worked in a bookshop, said they must remember that they themselves at a meeting some weeks before had asked the Howards to make a report in writing, explaining their criticism of the committee’s report. Said she, ‘Since this report is made at our request, we ought to consider it seriously; and each member take the responsibility of his own criticism and his own views.’

  Stephen said he would read the report at the next meeting. At this they all rose with relief and almost all left.

  But the Howards still had with them Axel and Ruth Oates, an Argentine engineer, Porrez, friend of Axel’s, staying overnight; Silvermine, out of a job and about to go into hiding. They were all passionately interested in the Howard document and in the Howards’ situation. They were all Party members but believed that the reformism then current, had vitiated the leadership and press of the Party; they thought a house-cleaning was needed and might come at this moment of hesitation.

  The Howards thought that it was wrong to choose between the old reactionary parties, Republican and Democratic, the same party under two names; they should attempt to found a third party representing labour; that it was wrong to support the quixotic erratic millionaire Henry Wallace, who would change his mind when he pleased, like other rich romantics; that Rooseveltism had not been the hope of American labour, but a romantic form of capitalist consolidation, that Roosevelt had saved American capitalism from its sharpest threat and had only been opposed by the Republicans and Wall Street, opposed merely on gang principles by what they called the Black Hand or true fascist tendencies brought up by war and oppression.

  ‘The next few years will probably prove us right,’ said Emily.

  Said the Argentine Porrez, revolutionary from childhood, ‘Your friends will go to gaol being wrong and be martyrs. It has often been seen; and they will lead the whole army of children and rats into the fastness with their piping.’

  The notion that the police had infiltrated the branches, that there was a spy in every branch, was discussed. ‘In our branch there is a man who will never be photographed … I am sure one-third of the top are police spies, but what does it matter? Why, in any case, do the rank and file stand for their policies? It is the duty of the rank and file to rebel … Yes, but no true communist wants to rebel and risk being expelled, it’s his life. They know it, these bastards, the supine and the crooked and the blind and the office-holders, and they hold on stubbornly and always will to that sacred invulnerable name. It’s theirs. And you can’t set up another one. They’ve got the sacred name. In gaol, out of gaol, wrong or right, they are what they are and you can’t take it from them. That is their strength.’

  Some said ‘spy fever’. But Emily said, ‘No, we’ll end with every citizen on file, like Tsarist Russia or the Nazis.’

  ‘No such files ever stopped revolutions,’ said Porrez.

  ‘What no one foresaw,’ said Axel Oates, ‘was this immense white-collar class, which has to be supported somehow and jobs made for it, as service agents, ad-men, and secret service spies.’

  They began to laugh, and told amusing stories.

  The Argentine, who lived in a suburb among green hills, red barns, dust roads and pied herds, said his neighbours, his employees and his friends had been called upon by plain-clothes men for information about his habits and his political views.

  Emily said in rather a melancholy and sullen way, ‘They have no need to question us; our views are only too well-known and they’ll be even better known before the month is out. I know we’re going to be blackballed. I know we’ve got our feet on a road from which there is no turning back. I don’t know where this road is going,’ she said sadly, ‘but I know in the night, one night, we passed a signpost, I dreamed about it and when I woke up I shuddered. I shivered all day long, for we had passed the sign in the night, in our sleep and there was no going back.’

  ‘What is this road?’ said Silvermine, looking at them intently.

  Stephen said, ‘Emily is afraid. She thinks she knows we are going to get no quarter. At least we’re giving none. She thinks we’re going to be expelled. What did that crazy nut yell just now? “In like me, not out like you.” I think she is right. But what is to be, will be. The only road I won’t take is to be an enemy of the Soviet Union and an enemy of the Party. My belief in them is my life. And if I didn’t believe in that, what would I believe in? It would be as if I suddenly did not believe in the ideas of Galileo; or after being an atheist all my life, woke up one morning believing there was an old bearded tribal God. I should become a stupid, doddering old man, I should sit on a bench outside the village store and talk about my rheumatism. Perhaps that will be my end anyway. I won’t be a stalwart old man, I’m sure.’

  Silvermine said quietly, ‘Well, that will probably be my end. You know I’ve been before the McCarthy committee three times, now; and they have got me out. My answers were good, my work is good. I have never betrayed the USA and never could. I would not spy for my own country, let alone anyone else’s. However, you will see. Every single one of my friends has been approached, you, too, no doubt—and most of my friends are afraid for themselves.’

  Emily said discontently, ‘I don’t know. I believe this fight with the Party will bring us only ruin. What use is ruin? Communists should not be ruined: they should stay on top. I have a sense of tragedy for us and you, Silvermine, for us all. I feel ashamed before real revolutionists like some of you, who would live on grass rather than give up; but I wish quite a lot that Stephen and I had just been yea-sayers. We could have sat this one out. Those about to die salute you. I never cared for that. To die for one’s country is so fine a fate, that everyone would wish for it, but to die knowingly, meaningfully. H’m, and yet I don’t care for that either. I don’t want to die or go down battling bravely, while the ward heelers win. Ho-hum, there’s bright old Wilkes, who knew all the answers and she’s dying for the most up-to-date lost cause.’

  To the surprise of everyone, Silvermine, one of their heroes, said, ‘Yes, it’s hard. No one accepts that willingly. We should win, not lose. We should fight to win. It’s stupid to fight to lose. But we have not fought very much yet in the United States.’

  ‘We will fight and we will lose,’ said Stephen.

  Emily said cheerfully, ‘Oh, who would believe, who reads about the USA and the gilded lives of writers and the middle-class, that it is so intricate and full of fantastic difficulties? It’s unbelievable. And we’re men of goodwill and try to understand the world we live in. It’s confusing I guess. Don’t notice me. I’m gay. We didn’t sleep last night till four in the morning but it suits me. I’ve been dieting for weeks, so I went off and now for two days I’ve been eating melted butter, sweet corn, mashed potatoes, mushroom cream sauce, hot popovers, chocolate sundaes, glazed orange slices and chicken supreme. So I can’t be as blue as I should be. Stephen, we’re making our guests blue.’

  She turned to Porrez and said with a laugh, ‘But the situation is really getting desperate, isn’t it, Porrez?’

  When the ‘customers’ as they called them, had all gone, the Oateses home, Porrez to bed, Stephen begged her to come to bed, not to clean up as usual. The servants were all asleep. She refused.

  ‘I can’t get breakfast tomorrow morning in the muddle; and I still have the puritan conscience of my old stepmother.’

  When she had finished she went into their bedroom and found Stephen awake. He said, ‘Oh, I’m relatively calm and happy. We’ve passed the first milestone on the way out. It’s a rough road and we’re going to be sore and angry. That was a nice girl Coriolis brought with him. Is he going to marry her?’

  ‘The Doc never marries. I was furious with him for springing that girl on me. That was why he was so coy. He behaved badly and he knew it. How ridiculous she looked with
that intellectual, sad face and those harems in her hair.’

  ‘Those what?’

  ‘Harems. (Hair-ribbons.)’

  Stephen laughed a long silvery laugh, ‘I thought she looked a nice, lovely woman, very pretty, very sexy.’

  ‘You’re hideous,’ said Emily.

  Stephen laughed.

  Emily turned her face away.

  ‘Don’t be angry with me when you’re angry with him,’ Stephen giggled.

  ‘Oh, you’re a sickening bird-brain; I’ll explode,’ cried Emily and began quietly to weep. Stephen said no more but soon was sound asleep.

  Emily was in revolt and thought of Coriolis only with cold revulsion.

  ‘I have his measure, I understand him now. What a life! How sinister! I’ve made a fool of myself and I’m a bad mother, bad wife, bad writer. I’m every day more corrupt, we’re every day older, the children we’re fighting for are every day growing away from us and there we will be, the typical failed American middle-class couple.’

  She tossed and groaned. Stephen woke and complained. She said, ‘What are we to do? Stephen, help me.’

  ‘We’ll talk it over in the morning. Let me sleep.’

  She sighed, put on the bedside lamp and took some aspirin. After a few days’ respite, her sinusitis had come back.

  ‘Why do I enjoy squandering money when I know the misery of getting it and in such quantities? A worker on weekly wages worries too, but not like we do. With us quantity changes to quality of agony. There he sleeps and breathes at my shoulder, a man who is incapable of helping me, who is only a burden. And Coriolis is lost. I must have someone, even a dream, to help me. And I am thrown back on this breathing, armless log, my fate. Oh, my, supposing I picked the wrong man; and that there is somewhere the right man for me? And yet we’re as happy and as well off as anyone in this howling American swamp. Are people really happier in Europe where they don’t call names? Or are they suppressed? More suppressed, I guess.’

  Her thoughts faded in and out of the sinus pain. She believed her last operation had made her disease worse. New Canaan was a low place with much water about and they all smoked and drank too much, but Stephen. Sinus trouble was the white plague of New York. Everyone had it.

  ‘I can’t nurse this damn thing, I must work.’

  When it was like this, with dope and pain, she knew that the next day she would be nauseated and groggy, but work she must.

  ‘What I want to know is, is this going on for years; for the rest of my life? I’m wasting time on such thoughts. I’ve no time to be ill and self-sorry.’

  At five-thirty, she looked at the time, took more pills and, thinking through a web of pain, she sank into unconsciousness, a sick groaning sleep. At six-thirty the alarm rang and she got up. Paolo and Maria-Gloria, having worked yesterday, had today off. She had to get the breakfasts, see the children to school. She could scarcely see, black waves of nausea rose over her; but she had driven a car from the age of twelve and had a strong physique, a solid back. She picked up a neighbour’s child. When she got home Stephen was up and pottering cheerfully round the kitchen.

  ‘I started some coffee, Em. How do you feel?’

  ‘I feel as if a sledge-hammer has been operating all over my head and neck. I’ve got to have another operation. And I’ve got to reduce. I put on five pounds yesterday I know.’

  ‘Oh, that’s nonsense. Have some coffee. You’re always impossible as a wife when you’re reducing. I’m happy. Don’t depress me. The waiting is over. The wheels are beginning to turn.’

  ‘I wish to God I could live like other people, like the Oateses or Silvermine. Why all this agony? I shall never understand. If only I could understand. I’d feel better, I think. And this operation, I wish it were over. I must have it. Dr Tripod said it would take three days to heal the septum and it still hurts. The last time it was such damn agony, I’d rather have another baby.’

  ‘Don’t say that, for God’s sake. That would put the cap on. There’s the toast burning.’

  He had the mail open, including Emily’s letters, and he handed her her letters, commenting variously upon them. One of her stories had been rejected by a high-paying magazine, not funny enough. Another was a letter from Gordon Pymble saying that he was not accepted for a Wall Street press job which Maurice had suggested for him; but that he thought he could offer it to Stephen. Stephen’s experience was good, his reputation high, even thought his books were progressive, his family background so good that ‘even during the present witch-hunt’ they would like to have him. It was a mere suggestion; but he had happened, as a friend, to hear them complaining that now Stephen had no occupation and was troubled by it. Stephen just glanced at the letter and threw it aside.

  ‘Listen, darling, you might like this; just listen, darling, it’d be wonderful if you could work in Wall Street.’

  ‘Why? They wouldn’t take a man with my record.’

  She cried, ‘Oh, damn and blast it, you can listen.’ Then she softened, ‘Poor old Gordon: it is decent of him. It’s 4.30 p.m. to 11. Bad hours of course, but still—you could drive home or get a room in a hotel. It’s a high-sounding title, Foreign Financial Editor. Not bad eh? You’d be the New York man. There are foreign financial correspondents in Paris, London, Tokyo—ah’hm, maybe elsewhere. And the idea is that the man in New York would co-ordinate the dispatches, edit the currency quotes, translate them into dollars, write a daily leader to go on the financial pages for financial events abroad; and of course, you’d be syndicated. Wow! A coast-to-coast name in Wall Street, that’s damn good. Your family would respect that.’

  ‘Thanks! You think that shnook Gordon Pymble knows what it’s all about? All he knows is that he didn’t get it.’

  She stuck out a rebellious underlip. ‘Why, I think it’s decent of him. He’s trying to pay us back for helping him with the house and the money loan and Uncle Maurice.’

  ‘What a crawling bastard, trying to shove me into a desk job and thinking it’s wonderful. Well, I guess I deserve it. Who am I to criticize? Probably they all, including this masterpiece of slime, go about thinking I’m a snake, toad, living on my wife. Why not?’

  She said gently, ‘Listen, Stephen, I know it sounds dull. I’ve done newspaper work and plenty. I’ve worked hard for a lot less than this and it’s the same pay as you got on the workers’ paper. It’s $90 weekly, chicken feed right now in NY financial papers, and damn cheap and low; and he says he knows it is a lousy outfit to work for, poor pay, rotten hours, no security, no gratitude, bosses hate you and treat you as Senegalese hirelings and—still Stephen, you wouldn’t be planning a career with them; it’s a dead alley, everyone knows it. I mean I know, darling, you know about eleven million times as much about foreign finance and finance in general and about general conditions than they’ll ever print; and you’ve got even a sort of knowledge of rewriting cables, making the deadlines, what? They couldn’t hope to get another man like you.’

  ‘Don’t flatter yourself. There are a hundred men in Wall Street who know more than me; who’ve spent their days there since they started at fourteen carrying packages, and know the Big Board standing on their head and can do arbitrage asleep, things I just know the names of. I don’t even know about stocks, and bonds. Even as a rich man’s son, I’m a failure.’

  ‘Oh, Stephen! I wonder if life is worth living. Our life, especially. You don’t have to stay there. Tell them you’re wildly interested and stay as long as you like.’

  Stephen was absorbed in a letter; and merely threw Emily a postcard. She whooped with joy.

  ‘Oh, goody. And he’s a gourmet. Of course, we’ll go.’

  It was an invitation from Uncle Maurice to a restaurant in town to celebrate the birthday of dear Anna, his sister, Stephen’s mother; and it was for the following evening. They expected a very lively cousin of Stephen’s, Lilias, and with her a famous English journalist; Maurice’s friend William; some other members of the Howard-Tanner family.

  10 ANNA
’S BIRTHDAY

  IT WAS A RESTAURANT for the rich, built in a horseshoe, with room for the floor-show. Everyone was there but Lilias and her escort.

  ‘She’s late as usual,’ said Stephen, ‘just to show she had a good many other appointments.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s very funny,’ said Anna.

  ‘No, I don’t either,’ said Stephen.

  The others were drinking their cocktails. Uncle Maurice had been directing two waiters and looking at the wines and, after pinning a flower to Anna’s dress, he looked brightly around.

  ‘Well, we won’t wait for Lilias and Des. They’re at a reception at the Russian Embassy. It may be any time.’

  ‘The Russian Embassy? Lilias at the Russian Embassy?’ said Stephen.