I'm Dying Laughing

by Christina Stead

  Next day, about ten, they piled their baggage, three children, three typewriters, new linen, into three loaded taxis, and made off for the rue de Varenne, faubourg St-Germain (‘you must speak of le faubourg only, said Stephen) where they had found their little house. They rang at the gate, were admitted by the porter; crossed a small, semicircular paved courtyard and found the doors open, the agent waiting for them.

  There was a small, slow, creaky elevator, (at any one time, two adults or three children) serving the three floors. On the ground floor were one large room, two small rooms, closets, and a long, cold corridor lighted by numerous windows; the same on the next two floors with small unheated rooms in the attic for servants, a cellar dug in the backyard for wine and coals. The division of the house was difficult but they arranged it in this way: no dumb-waiter, so the dining-room next to the kitchen and pantry, ground floor. First floor, Stephen’s library and study, the largest room; a sitting-room and bedroom for Christy. In Christy’s sitting-room was a bath, covered to look like a trunk. On the second floor would be Emily’s small study, Olivia’s large bedroom and a bathroom. They just fitted in. They had to have two servants, a housemaid and a cook. They had scarcely got their baggage in downstairs when the porter introduced a plump, middle-aged woman with grey hair, a cook, named Fernande Morand. They engaged her for next day: she was to live with them. She investigated the kitchen, the backyard, the attic and, with good-natured phrases which they found elegant, she went. They turned down several more cooks that day. They also engaged a housemaid, not the first, but one of the first, for the next day.

  Meanwhile, Emily was hurrying round, jovial, harassed, exclaiming over the stupidity of her life, the gaiety, the happiness, the anything you like. The sun was shining and Stephen was happy rearranging the furniture and making a list of all the extras they needed: so many new bulbs, where to put the iceboxes, running out to telephone about the telephone and taking Christy with him (Christy’s French was esteemed the best), buying salt, pepper, herbs, flour, oil, butter, paint, nails, hooks, a hammer, a chisel, shelf-paper, towel-rails. Giles and Christy came back loaded several times and darted out again for forgotten items. Olivia was supposed to unpack. She unpacked her dolls and her own clothes and refused to do more, arguing that at least several cases were now out of the way.

  Stephen said, ‘Ah, you’re adorable, my pet, a real woman. Grrr! What are we to do, Emily, with this revolting success in life, the perfect woman?’

  While Stephen tried to find out what was in the packing-cases (lamps, skillets and casseroles?) the success in life was reading with negligent grace, an article in a movie magazine about the sex-life of one of her Hollywood favourites. One of her favourite dolls (she was too clever to have only one favourite) was held in the crook of her arm.

  Stephen sighed, ‘What a repugnant sight, to see one’s favourite daughter so perfect!’

  Olivia smiled faintly as if at what she was reading.

  ‘Come and help, Olivia!’

  Olivia looked up, made a charming grimace, put down her doll and magazine, and came over. She helped them for thirty full minutes, in a very practical way. She knew where things should go, she was orderly, sensible, had a natural sense of housewifery and a very good conceit of herself. Often they were surprised into taking her advice, only to change everything a few hours later.

  Their household goods not having been unpacked, Emily sent Stephen to buy a frying-pan and some fat and meat. The butcher asked, ‘Why do you want to chop the steak? It’s good steak and you spoil it hashing it.’

  ‘I like it hashed,’ said Stephen with dyspeptic asperity.

  He bought some wine for Emily, some spa water for himself and orangeade for the children. He bought bread, coffee, a coffee mill, a pepper mill. There was no milk to be had. He got some American canned juices and powdered milk. They managed by taking a taxi round Paris, to get some white bread too, some real butter, and salad. Their first meal, on wrapping paper but with orange juice, hamburgers and fried potatoes, coffee and cakes seemed to them home. They had got the heating going. The porter had been wonderfully helpful.

  Emily said blissfully, emptying the bottle of twelve degree ‘van ordinary’(so she called it), ‘Home at last. Is it possible? After being beggars and tramps, pleading and weeping, humiliated and disgraced, sneered at and flouted, deceived and disappointed, the humble, the desperate, the “noo churchon see voo play”, the esperanters, the exhausted, insulted and injured, is it possible that we are fervently feasting in our own home? Oh, I’m glad my supposed pre-war famousness made Mr Johnny Ledane’s trusting nature expand at the American Trust Company. I’m glad we missed all the other houses because still, oh boy, it’s something to have a porter and two maids of our own and a house in Paris and I guess we’re giddy with success; I am. To us! To us and to Mummy who’s going to work like hell to make money fast so that we’ll all be happy and to Daddy who’s going to work and make public and financial and political glory! And to our darling Christy who’s going to work and be a great Latinist, able to repeat all Cicero backwards and go to the Sorbonne; and to sweet, lovely Olivia, our darling, our own little beauty, who’s going to be a genuine Parisienne and speak French like angels (if they speak French of course) and to my little Giles and Daddy’s little Giles, who is our heart’s darling!’

  ‘But what am I going to do?’ enquired Giles, who had followed all this attentively.

  ‘You are going to be a doctor or a lawyer or even an engineer perhaps,’ said Emily.

  ‘Why not a writer, an artist, a scholar?’ said Stephen laughing.

  ‘Oh, God, never. It’s too much agony. It’s unsafe, a gamble. Then to be, at one and the same time, gimlet-eyed and rapturous, profound and sophisticated, sentimental and wordly-wise, a success and not afraid of living in a dirty backstreet on crusts, it’s a tightrope trick you have to be born for. Most writers are shnooks, stinkers, bores, fatuous, eloquent on a single subject, me; or stuttering only with their ultimate unique profoundness. Ugh! Double ugh! No, no, no; not for Joe.’

  They all at once began to sing this, one of the Family Songs, taken from an old blood-and-thunder recently revived in the Village, so they said:

  ‘No, no, no: not for Joe, Not for Joseph, if he knows it;

  No, no, no: not for Joe. Not for Joseph, not for Joe.’

  This ditty had been arranged for them by Stephen at the time of the SHAPE (Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe) Pact. The children took it up now, led by Papa and with Mamong chorusing away, out of tune. There was beating of spoons, kicking of chair legs, with Giles doing a double-header beside his chair.

  Emily said, ‘A good thing we didn’t take any of those satin and brocade mausoleums with the family heirlooms all ticketed. Not for our brood.’

  Papa now obliged with a little song he had known as a child, taught by his French governess.

  ‘Ah, little Bi-bi-bi-neah,

  He sucked his mandoline-eah!

  And played his tangerine-eah!’

  This they all sang, too; and :

  ‘I am a little Italiano!

  I do-do-do on my piano!’

  Emily exclaimed, ‘Oh, how glorious, restful, to be at home at last!’ They cleared up, made the beds, gave the children lukewarm baths, sent them to bed.

  Stephen sang evening songs to Olivia and Giles, both of his own composition:

  ‘Oh-livia, livia, livia, livia-livia, light! Methinks she makes the candles to burn bright!’

  Giles shouted, ‘Me, me, me, me, Papa!’

  When Stephen went in, Giles asked if this was now really their home. Really, for good. ‘Yes,’ said Stephen.

  ‘I’m glad of that. But anywhere’s home when we’re all together isn’t it?’ Giles was studying the painted ceiling, encrusted also with ornamental plasterwork.

  ‘A truer word was never said or sung,’ said Stephen and went on to Giles’s bedtime song.

  Christy was downstairs studying French, a dogged, gentle, ambit
ious lad.

  ‘Go to bed by ten, Christy.’

  ‘Oui, Maman!’

  Emily beamed, ‘Oh, he is going to be so French.’

  Stephen said, ‘God knows what we’re doing. When they go back to the States, they’ll all be out of step, they’ll offend, they’ll grizzle and growl and make nuisances of themselves.’

  Emily said, ‘But they’ll get jobs in Washington, they’ll be attachés or diplomats. Olivia will marry some rich man and shine in society. Anyway Christy’s a gentleman, he can live abroad forever if he likes. Like Uncle Maurice.’

  They soon went to bed and slept tranquilly.

  The next week was taken up with servant worries. Servants came and went, or did not come. Emily, the ambitious, enquired about courses at the Cordon-Bleu cooking school; they found schools and tutors. One tutor declared Christy was dull-witted, another said he could never make up for lost time; his answers were either ludicrous or heart-breaking. Stephen began to explain the case beforehand: ‘An American boy without any advantages: he’s been brought up in America.’

  They engaged a French tutor for themselves, a dark, thickset, middle-aged woman, unmarried, who called herself Madame Gagneux. She came to them nervously and dubiously; but she was a woman of experience and seemed to understand them at once.

  ‘I was afraid to come to teach Americans, but I see that from you I will learn as much as I can teach.’

  They were pleased. She soon began to manage the children’s schooling calendar and their outings; and now, though Stephen was unwilling, Emily had time to think about their first dinner party. They invited the Wauters, who had not yet gone to Brussels, Madame Valais, Mademoiselle de la Roche and others to whom they owed a dinner. They were nervous, as they had never yet seriously tested their cook, Fernande; but they obeyed her when it came to their dinner menu.

  With cocktails, sherry, port wine, hors-d’oeuvre of 20 sorts.

  For dinner:

  potage queue de boeuf (oxtail soup),

  turbot hollandaise sauce,

  tournedos chasseur,

  poulet rati,

  salad,

  new peas, French-style,

  orange soufflé

  With this: wines, champagne, still and sparkling water, white bread, butter, coffee, liqueurs, petits fours, chocolates etc fine champagne.

  When Stephen complained of the expense, most of the above not only being dear but black-market, poor Emily, who wished to show she was not an American barbarian, as she was not in fact, but a gourmet with a fine palate, hurried out by herself in the car, in the intervals of resuming her book, and so built up the food she felt was necessary. When Stephen made a fuss, she explained, ‘Yes, but this is just practice for Uncle Maurice, who will be here next week and for dear Anna when she comes in the summer. Once they see us, a la frongsay, they will be convinced we’ve reformed and have quit the fifth column for ever and are members of the Howard nobility; they will even give people our address.’

  ‘Leave my family out of this,’ said Stephen. ‘Can we?’

  ‘God forbid! We’ve got to pay these bills some time.’

  ‘Oh, in Europe they let you run on three months or six months. We’ll give them our references. The whole aristocracy of every country has always lived on debts. What are banks for? Not for savings deposits. Forget it. Quit worrying, Stephen. We’re going to live high, wide and handsome and to hell with the consequences. When the revolution comes we’ll have helped to hurry it on.’

  ‘We oughtn’t to talk like that,’ said Stephen thoughtfully. ‘Oh, I’m going to say what I like. I won’t be hemmed in for any conventions. Let’s live first, think afterwards.’

  They had been tormented from the first by a mysterious quarrel that had broken out between the indoor servants, the porter and the daily cleaner. These four seemed to know all about it—angry, sneering, witty, and low, biting voices floated round them: they could not make out what was wrong.

  The housemaid, Marie-Jo, was thoughtful in their company: she served poorly and was edgy, worse, hysterical in the company of Fernande, the cook. The porter took her side, the cleaner seemed to be mediator.

  Giles reasoned about his new, strange surroundings. People did not understand him; he drew deductions. Olivia wept because she was not appreciated. She did not like the French and did not try to learn the language. But for the hour before the dinner party when she was to see the company, Stephen bought her, somewhere in the rue St-Honore, a delicious, ruffled muslin, with new socks and shoes, so that Olivia, who knew all about these things, at five o’clock was ready to appear as the modern French girl-child, her curtsies and her small-society French ready. ‘Bonjour, Madame, bonjour Monsieur,’ she said, curtsying to the pier glass; and the boys were ready, Giles in a new French costume and Christy in a tailor-made from Uncle Maurice’s New York tailor, to whom he had written his new measurements. They and a temporary governess were running about the courtyard while Emily finished dressing. She wore a silk muslin in pinstripes of pink, silver and white, gay and oddly like herself. This was Stephen’s present to her for ‘our home in Paris’. Stephen had just received his quarterly allowance of $3,000.

  The party and the evening were a great success. Fernande was so good a cook, and Marie-Jo, for the occasion, so good a waitress, that the ladies, after dinner, settled down to a plain-faced discussion of what she cost and where she must have cooked during the occupation. They then went on to the prices in the black market and the simple fact that it was their duty to keep up their strength to resist the threat of revolution, while the Americans were perfecting their plans for saving Europe.

  Mademoiselle de la Roche said, ‘It was the fifth column which lost us France. But it is too much to expect the Americans to do everything for us. It is true, with the atom bomb the problem is different now; and one wonders why—tell me why, your President doesn’t use the bomb now, before it is too late, before things can leak out and be copied by the other side?’

  Monsieur Valais was an elegant, long, amused and vain man who, it seemed to the Howards, was laughing at them and their undercover tactics. He said, ‘Yes, unfortunately there is no way of keeping science secret. The Russians will either catch up with you or invent something else. I am certain they are experimenting in two other ways—with radioactive rays, that is, death—rays; and that their atomic research is directed towards industry. In a few years, if they don’t have the atom bomb, they’ll have an industrial efficiency in perfection and output to overtop the USA. In ten years say.’

  He laughed at the long faces of his hearers. ‘I am sixty-eight. It’s indifferent to me, you understand. But it is to your interests to stop it now. I don’t think you can stop Russian progress with biological warfare. The Germans tried genocide: it seemed so good; and now the French birthrate is going up.’

  Johnny Ledane, from the bank, said, ‘The fifth column is the X-factor. Things are blowing up now, every few months, an armaments factory, a war-experiment-plant, in Japan, in Spain, in England, in Germany—I attribute it myself to fifth columns, an anarchistic band determined to leave Europe defenceless against the Russians. You Europeans have got to get on your toes and root them out. It isn’t the collaborators who are the danger; they were realists. It was the damn Resistance; they’re all reds. Everyone’s trying to say he was in the Resistance now. I’m damned if I know why. Why not say they were all reds and try them for treason.’

  Madame Valais agreed, suddenly, briefly, ‘They were not fighting for us, but for the Russians. They expected to stir the country up to revolution. They expect it now. France would never have been invaded if the reds had not so divided the workers that they didn’t want to work. They thought only of Utopianism, no work and all pay.’

  Ledane said, ‘What’s needed is a house-cleaning and America has the right to demand that of every nation it helps get on its feet.’

  There was agreement on this.

  ‘Jealousy made the French revolution!’

  �
�My grandfather built up a business with his own hands and anyone could do the same but they prefer to take. The Russians hold out the hope to them that when they come here they’ll hand it over free. They’ve got a big surprise coming to them.’

  ‘They won’t come here. The Americans will see to that.’

  Emily turned to the immense double-cabinet radio-phonograph with automatic changer, which had been Stephen’s present to her with his previous cheque; and brought out some of the private Beethoven recordings, which had been her present to Stephen after that. These she put on full-blast, using the amplifier. The audience had stone-struck expressions, like people about to fall through a crack in the earth.

  ‘Oh, heaven, not so loud,’ cried Mademoiselle de la Roche.

  Emily sparkled and impudently grinned. ‘But this is the latest American machine. You hear the same volume as in a concert hall.’

  ‘But we’re not in a concert hall,’ said Monsieur Valais, looking uneasy but firm.

  Emily cried, ‘But you must imagine you are in a concert hall. In this way you have the full beauty of the music’

  She was shouting, for the music was very loud.

  One lady got up with an aching expression, ‘As for me, I can’t bear anything so loud.’

  Emily shouted, ‘Sit down, come back. You’ll lose the beauty of it all in there. Here you get the full sonority. Just imagine you’re at a symphony concert.’

  The lady said, hesitating, ‘I have very small ears, I can’t bear noise.’

  Emily roared, ‘Sit down. Don’t go away.’

  Stephen turned the amplifier down. Emily shouted, ‘Stephen, let them hear the values! There isn’t a better machine!’

  She turned it up, Stephen turned it down, she turned it up. The astonished and troubled guests sat fixed on their chairs; one woman had put her fingers to the side of her face. Stephen disconnected the amplifier.