I'm Dying Laughing

by Christina Stead

  Edward laughed. Maurice said, ‘This is a very boisterous party, isn’t it? I never thought with Anna here we’d become so suggestive.’

  ‘We’re not suggestive, hardly the word, we’re frank,’ said Emily.

  Lilias said, ‘I’m not going to be side-tracked. The workers here are vicious, really vicious. I know from a man I know that Edgar Hoover’s got everything organized to take over, and I hope he wins. He’s all we’ve got. Hats off. I’m drinking to the best man. To J. Edgar Hoover. Now come on, you parlour pinks over there, and you, Des, I don’t think it’s fair to eat with us and drink with us and all the time conspire behind our backs; so drink—’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Stephen, very pale now and rising from his seat.

  ‘Sit down, Stephen,’ said Emily.

  Anna looked at them both with hollow eyes.

  Maurice said, ‘Lilias, you oughtn’t to make trouble. We all believe in freedom of opinion. You know this is Anna’s birthday party.’

  Anna said, ‘Poor Lilias is sad now. She’s just lost her husband and she’s drinking too much. We mustn’t upset her. Let her feel she’s got friends.’

  Lilias said, ‘You don’t know. I heard them once in Paris in 1936. I was at school there then. Singing the “Marseillaise”. You know I understand French. It says, “Drag them away from their homes, drag them in gutters of blood and hang them to the lampposts.” Now by them they mean us. Drown in blood the enemies of the people and the damn aristocrats and the people with money; that’s us.’

  ‘A spirited bit of verse, if that’s what it says,’ said Emily.

  Stephen said, ‘Now listen, Lilias, you’re drunk but not stupid. Supposing you had to live on $200 a month—’

  Lilias broke in firmly, ‘I’d hate us. And I’d try to take it away from us. But I wouldn’t join any union. I’d be either a movie star or a best seller or an oil millionaire like I am now, or I’d marry a million. If you think I don’t understand the proletariat, I do. I came from there. I know the road. So does Emily. But she got herself all balled-up in some screwy ideas. The workers are gorillas.’

  Everyone laughed and the discussion broke up. Anna was taking Lilias home; and the Howards asked Des Canby to come home and stay with them. Their old friends Axel and Ruth Oates, also old friends of Des, were visiting them over the weekend and this was a great chance to ‘talk over everything from every point of view’.

  Stephen said, ‘God, what an ugly life! I’m sick of it. We want to start again somewhere else. But can we?’

  Emily said, ‘I always had a theory that people get what they want; and here we are—what about that? That’s what worries me. That we’ll always get what we want.’

  When they were getting ready for bed, Emily said, ‘Stephen, I was really celebrating for myself, for ourselves tonight. Didn’t you notice?’

  ‘I noticed something. I thought you were sky-high.’

  ‘Oh, it didn’t matter. I know nothing will dislodge this one. I feel so safe, so sure. This will be a girl and my own darling daughter, just as I want.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Yes, I’m pregnant. Oh, it’s so fine. It’s what I want. I always know because of this splendid rich full feeling, this wholesome creating feeling. Stephen, perhaps we will be happy with this one. Do you know a woman feels different each time she’s pregnant? I suppose that is the basis of personality; or it’s connected—well, this time, I feel as if I’m swimming in a bed of lilies, like those floating islands in Mexico.’

  ‘Oh, this is terrible,’ said Stephen.

  ‘Wonderful! Be happy with me.’

  In the morning, Des Canby, the Oateses, Porrez, Paolo and Maria-Gloria, the butcher, the greengrocer and the policeman on point duty congratulated Stephen. Emily, passing in her car on her way to school with the children, had told them all.

  PART TWO

  ‘Renounce, renounce, on every side, I hear’

  (Faust, Goethe)

  11 TWO LISTS

  DES CANBY WAS A British reporter, who attended wars, revolutions and congresses and was famous in many countries for his reports and scoops. His grandfather was Lord Cockaigne, a Victorian Queen’s Counsel, his father was once a Tory cabinet minister and Des had been educated at Oxford. He knew everyone at home and abroad. He had met the Howards at the UNO conference in San Francisco in 1945 and was now highly pleased to meet them again in such good society.

  ‘Of course, I remembered you from San Francisco, Emily. Brockhurst and I were sitting at a table and you were crossing the courtyard below, laughing, with a round face and round straw hat with poppies on it, your head nodding and the poppies nodding, and you nodding on your high heels.’

  They asked him where he was staying and he said, in a dull, dear, dubious, midtown hotel. His paper didn’t give him expenses; he was freelancing.

  ‘The reason I know everyone, my dears, is that I can get into embassy parties on both sides and have a free meal.’

  They begged him to come and stay with them. They wanted to discuss so many things; they were at a moment of great decision. They needed his advice.

  Said Stephen, ‘We’re standing now where you stood a few months ago.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘When you left the Party but left the door ajar to get back if need be. How neatly you did it.’

  Emily said, ‘You know how to survive. The British do, we don’t—an American failing.’

  Des said, in the delightful, asinine, British manner he thought would most captivate Americans, ‘Oh, I was hoping to sponge on you, stay with you for a night or two. I was fascinated when I found out Lilias was your relation, and it was sweet of her to bring me to your party. I must tell you about my new wife, not the one you met in San Francisco. You know I’ve had three; not my fault. Number One wrote fantasy stories and so we parted amiably. Then I met a girl on a plane; trouble was, I had only a Mexican divorce, it didn’t work. We married but how could I get divorced? I don’t think we’ve divorced legally yet. I do wish you could meet Manthea though. She’s a darling. An Honourable, she’s a blue-blood, darling girl, beautiful long hair, very impractical, our house is a pigsty. But she’s perfectly right always. How can she run a house in London? And we can’t get a maid. They’re all undernourished, or see ghosts—yes, I assure you, there is a ghost in our house, well, it’s a mansion flat—or they get pregnant. Manthea is wonderfully good at managing maids: but she cannot stand second sight or pregnancy or malnutrition.’

  ‘Where is she?’ enquired Emily.

  ‘Oh, she’s staying with her relatives, squires who ride to hounds, and all that, in a very unfashionable part, I assure you; oh, but Manthea doesn’t care, she likes dogs and horses in any part, and she was brought up that way. There’s an old castle somewhere, all falling down; old retainers falling to pieces, rattling their gold teeth, starving to death; ghosts rattling their false teeth, but where the ghosts hung out, it’s fallen down; nowhere to haunt, poor devils. They have rooms to live in and they don’t bother to repair anything. And it’s not good enough to become a national monument. Wonderful girl, Manthea. You must meet her.’

  The Howards picked up his bags from the midtown hotel and took him home with them, rejoicing.

  ‘We’re grateful to you, Des. I thought the aftertaste of that banquet with the harpies’ shit all over it would stay with me for a full week,’ said Stephen.

  Desmond laughed, ‘Think nothing of it. That’s just social talk. They’re simpler over here, that’s all. It’s la bouchotte.’

  ‘What’s la bouchotte?’

  ‘An American noticed a French friend taking a little spray of hair out of his pocket and smelling it. “What’s that?” “Zat eez ze pubic air from mes amies. Eet smell so sweet and eet ees so fine. Eet remind me of many lovely zings.” The American is very much impressed. Next time he meets his French friend he hauls out of his pocket a bouquet tied with rope and the size of a bunch of leeks. “You see! I did like you.” “What ees zees bouchotte?
” “Well, friend, I did like you. But yours was too small. I like something I can appreciate.”

  Des had many stories, but he did not tell them in a string. He placed them. And the Howards began to call things American la bouchotte.

  They told him their friends Axel and Ruth would be over.

  ‘We’re glad of it. We’ve so many things to decide. And the Oateses, like you, are outside, but inside, inside-outside, and that’s the only way you can help us.’

  The next morning they told him all their troubles.

  He murmured, ‘I know, I’ve heard.’

  ‘Where did you hear?’

  ‘In London somewhere.’

  ‘Oh, of course, we’re already internationally infamous,’ cried Emily. ‘In that case we can go right ahead. So what do we do? The Oateses want us to go to Europe as soon as we reasonably can, remembering we have a family of very refained children to bring with us,’ said Emily.

  The Oateses had come over. It was a hot, sunny day. They sat inside in the large airy living-room, decorated with broad flowered cretonne, light curtains and Cézannes, had long drinks in front of them, and Stephen displayed again his fears; that he would not be happy in a foreign country, that he might feel like a traitor, that it was not right to desert the country, the cause, the friends he had, in trouble.

  Emily pooh-poohed all this, ‘We’re not traitors and we can have friends everywhere. Communists have friends everywhere.’

  But Stephen did not want to fight, to join anything. He wanted to rest: to be a communicant, but to rest. But he wanted it to be known to everyone that he was not quitting.

  ‘I don’t want to be thought of as a traitor. Do you know that when I was a boy I wanted to be President of the United States? I thought it was the noblest thing any man could be. To be thought of as a quitter, as leaving the United States—and the cause, too—that would be the end. Nothing—my wife and children, success, family, money—nothing of that would mean anything to me. That’s my honour. That’s my soul. It is. There would be no future. It would be the black day: dies irae.’

  ‘Why worry about it? We’re not going to be traitors,’ said Emily.

  Des Canby, who seemed embarrassed, though perhaps, Emily thought, by their candour and simplicity, cleared his throat and said gaily, ‘Well, you’ve had so many chances to step out and you didn’t, why think about it now? You just want to step out for a while. Good idea. Have a holiday.’

  Emily said, ‘Oh, yes, indeed. We’re still on that all-stations train. That omnibus. How many stops has that train got, that started at the Finland station in March 1917? At every whistle-stop people got off. Not us.’

  Stephen said, ‘Romantics and mystics and people like ourselves looking for new energy, a new aim from the revolution. All there with a personal aim. Well, we’re still on the train that started from the Finland station.’

  Des seemed bored. He emptied his glass and looked at the drinks table. Emily got him another drink. He drank it thirstily and turned to them,

  ‘Ah, the omnibus! The crimes of the Soviet Union! I know the full calendar. The ones that dropped off at each station as you put it, throng like all the dead of the world. I think about the dead. The dust we walk on and breathe must be the dust of dead men since the beginning of the world, mustn’t it? Well, that’s how it is with the tribes of the awakened. Those who woke up one day and found the Soviet Union had betrayed them. Do you know how often the Soviet Union has betrayed?’

  The Howards were embarrassed now; but the Oateses began to laugh. Axel said, ‘Well, I know. March 1917, Lenin went through Germany in a sealed car; hence he betrayed the Allies and democracy.’

  Des said, ‘Right! And February, 1918, the Treaty of Brest Litovsk, Russia abandoned her allies and became the servant of kaiserist imperialism!’

  Oates laughed; he said, ‘And March 1918, Lenin dissolved the Constituent Assembly and in mock democratic elections was revealed as the new dictator. May 1918, Lenin in public said he regretted the assassination of the German Ambassador von Mirback, which proved Russia was lickspittling kaiserist imperialism.’

  They all began to shout and crow and to throw dates and events at each other.

  Said Stephen, ‘And 1918 passim. For example, Lenin’s book, State and Revolution demanded the dictatorship of the proletariat, dictatorship, you see, not liberty—’

  ‘I waited months to get that book: it was the title,’ said Emily.

  Said Stephen, ‘The betrayal of everything sacred in socialist democracy. Kautsky cried for war. And what happened in 1919? Russia failed to invade Germany, a clear case. She abandoned the world proletariat. 1924, Lenin is murdered, Stalin takes over the party machine, the State does not fall to pieces as all are hoping; and we have a great weeping and wailing for the betrayal of the greatest revolutionist, Trotsky. All the capitalist states weeping because the only true revolutionist does not get into power. A fine scene.’

  Des said, ‘1923, the party purge—’

  Oates said, ‘And 1926 the Soviet constitution, a fresh betrayal, for it gave more votes to the industrial workers in the cities than to peasants; this betrayal of democracy was too much for the liberals.’

  Emily said, ‘And 1927, Trotskyists expelled from the Central Committee; crucifixion of the old Bolsheviks, they cried. The revolution was betrayed definitely this time. 1928, Trotsky was expelled from Russia, Stalin became a grisly murderer, though no one was shot. And then, and then—in the USA and elsewhere began the legend, the real legend. Emma Goldman, old trouper, leading anarchist, could not bear the Russian tyranny and started violent propaganda against Russia and she suddenly was adored by the middle classes; and after living miserably and precariously as an outlaw, she sold her books. And Spiridovna and Matushka, the mother of revolution, a social revolutionist belonging to the narodniki, all the old fighters, the romantic revolutionists who had shed so much of their own blood, didn’t recognize the revolution once it was organized as a state. Yes, they got off the train in shoals at every station, giving the ticket-collector their paid-up tickets to the real revolution; and settled down—bought little houses in the suburbs, on the way. At each whistle-stop they found the social truth.’

  ‘I shall go on with that train to the end, the bitter end,’ said Stephen.

  ‘Where will the end be?’ asked Emily.

  Ruth Oates was drinking her drinks, laughing often, but saying no word. Emily said in an aside to her, ‘I didn’t think of giving up my ticket, but it was, a shock to me when the Soviets stopped legal abortion. The mother, not the State, should be the one to decide that.’

  ‘Oh, I agree with that,’ said Ruth Oates.

  The three men were still laughing heartily, throwing dates and historic events, long famous, to each other. Emily listened to them a moment; said, ‘And 1934, I remember that. It worried me at first. It was the era of the artists-in-uniform cry—people crying their eyes out over artists!—as if anyone ever cared for artists in or out of uniform! But the crocodile tears!’

  ‘And in 1936, in 1937—milk e tre, milk e tre,’ sang Des Canby.

  The men went on talking, Ruth listening; but Emily had sunk into reflection.

  Towards the end she listened to them again.

  ‘In the Pacific war, she failed to declare war on Japan, leaving us to bear the brunt of the war. She won the war, she could not have done so, but for large American lendlease aid and she is showing total ingratitude to the only country who saved her from extinction, the USA.’

  Axel said, ‘And what about the twenty-five million to forty million slave labourers—figures varied with passions—exterminated or worked to death in prison camps, the biggest slave system known in human history, not excluding the Romans and the Nazis?’

  Emily said slowly, ‘Well, honestly there have been moments when my heart failed. By golly, what a canticle you have made! We talk about the crimes of the USA, but, well, with that list, put that way, we’ve got a shining morning face compared with them—
at least you can’t blame readers of the morning papers for thinking so. And to think we’re losing our shirts and our face, standing up for such a nation, such betrayers of all that’s dear to the romantic hearts of the parlour pinks. It’s quite a record, isn’t it? It wouldn’t look good set down in black and white and pasted on the walls of the town. But we all have a terrible record, looked at that way. Think of the British. Well—heigh-ho! History doesn’t bear scrutiny!’

  They sat a long time over lunch, discussing the family problems of Emily and Stephen; and in the afternoon, while Emily was working, and Stephen out with the children in the car, the Oateses had a talk with Des Canby out in the garden, as they walked up and down from the riverbank to the orchard, or sat in the garden seats. The weeds were high and ripe, the autumn leaves falling. They were old friends, they talked about a lot of things. The Oateses were going to Antwerp as soon as they could get passage on cargo boats. There were few people going to Europe at that time. Desmond Canby was returning to England the following week, for the marriage of ‘an old girlfriend’.

  ‘If I’m not there, I’m not sure they’ll marry. I have to go. I’m best man.’

  The Oateses expected to sail about the end of the year. They begged Des to talk to the Howards and make Europe attractive to them, press them to go soon. Desmond asked why. Axel and Ruth were both quite frank.

  ‘The last few months their names keep coming up. They’re going to be called before the Investigating Committee very soon. We know this. They can’t stand up to it. You see the way they live? The American dilemma is tearing them apart and will tear each one to pieces, if they stay here. Something very bad will happen. How do you think they will stand up to days of hostile pestering? One of them will break, if not both. It would not only ruin them with their friends but smash them. For what? Let them go. Insist on their going, Des. You can do it. Say you’ll look out for them. We will, but then we’re poor and without name or fame. You’ll have more influence, son of lords and ministers!’