I'm Dying Laughing

by Christina Stead

  Giles came to her saying he was lonely; and asking when his sister would return. But Emily said, ‘Mamma is working, blessed work! Let Mamma work and presently we will get your sister back.’

  22 STEPHEN RETURNS

  THREE PEOPLE WROTE TO Stephen in New York: Suzanne, Violet Trefougar and the porter who, on a sheet of paper bought especially at the tabac, expressed it that ‘there was disorder in the house’.

  Stephen cabled that he would return immediately. A letter following said that he had to renew his passport and for that had first to make a trip to Washington, DC. Emily, full of joy, fluttered about the house setting things right, telephoned Suzanne to bring back Olivia and, at times, worked fast on her book also.

  ‘Stephen will be so happy. We are going to make a fortune this time; and this book is a monster, it has everything, not only fortune but fame!’ So she told Suzanne.

  Violet Trefougar took her to the airport to meet Stephen. He came off, assisted by an officer and leaning on a stick. Emily threw herself on his neck and when she stood back, tears running out of her eyes, she saw the startled, the hard look on his face.

  ‘Oh, I have been ill too, Stephen. But it is all over now. Now that we are two again, oh joy, I’m breathless with joy, now everything is right again.’

  But when he got home, Stephen, after greeting the three children who stood waiting for him, and the cheerful and relieved servants, went straight to bed. He had left the convalescent home too soon, made a very fatiguing trip to Washington, though a cousin had gone with him, and had boarded the plane against doctor’s orders.

  ‘But I am glad to be home. Whatever I have had to do, it is worth it to be here.’

  Emily had planned a celebration dinner; but she had to eat it with Suzanne and the children. Stephen, lying in bed and taking only soup, did not see the richly but strangely decorated table, with rosettes and scrolls of paper, all the long preserved wedding anniversary and valentine cards they had given each other since the day of their marriage, all the jewellery he had given her, and carelessly-tied ribbon bows from many Christmas days.

  Emily wore her black and white suit—Stephen did not like her in dressing-gowns—and had tied a pink ribbon in her straggling hair; but she was no longer the merry oaf she had been, she looked leering and wild, her eyes swam and one half of her face, grey and fallen, seemed many years older than the other. Of this she was not conscious, but continued eating and drinking with gusto, hurrahing and talking greedily between bites, her suspicious, greedy eyes watching them all, calling to attention anyone who did not look at her.

  Afterwards, Stephen called her to him and said, ‘My passport ran out. Did you get yours renewed?’

  ‘Passport! Oh, lawdy, Ah forgit dat passport!’

  ‘We must get it renewed at once.’

  ‘Any trouble?’

  ‘No trouble. I was told to go to Washington. I went with my cousin. They got me into the room there and asked me about a thousand questions, you, me, Christy, Florence; but they gave it to me. I had to give assurances, which I gave with pleasure.’

  ‘What assurances?’

  ‘That I would not talk against my country abroad, that I would assist them if I saw traitors and things like that that it was easy for me to agree to. Though I said to them, Where would I meet traitors?’

  ‘Then it was very easy. That’s good. I thought—many times I thought, oh, Stephen—that you would never get back; and I would have to pack up and take the family back to the States. I really saw Dear Anna coming for us. I fretted and mourned; if you knew the soreness and suffering—but you, poor Stephen, have been so ill, so sick, you have been crucified. Oh, lord, I should never have let you go back to the USA. We were separated and I here, so woebegone, saw you for weeks at death’s door.’

  ‘You and I are always at death’s door. I wonder why.’

  ‘That is exactly what Douglas Dolittle said: “The Howards are always at death’s door.” And I wonder why? Oh, Stephen, we haven’t been very happy. Yes, at times, rapturously happy, happy beyond hope.’

  ‘Perhaps only when there were the wrong reasons.’

  ‘You’ve changed, Stephen. You’ve been so ill, had such harrowings, you’ve suffered too much.’

  ‘That was bad. They gave me the wrong drugs and I nearly died from the drugs which were supposed to ease my pain. But that’s me, isn’t it? Nothing goes right with me. I was the one in a thousand they didn’t suit. It had nothing to do with the doctors.’

  ‘And I was not there. Only your family.’

  ‘Yes, I didn’t enjoy that. But Emily, what brought me back before I am well, is that I had bad news of you. They said, Suzanne, that is, said, you were seriously ill.’

  ‘Oh, I have been so well. I worked so hard on my book, The Monster, I call it; The Monster is half-way finished. It will make us a million, Stephen. Our troubles at last will be over and I have planned it so that it will also be my great book; the great novel of our times. It will serialize, sell to Hollywood as a block-buster; it will pyramid forever, you’ll see. It will be the success of our lives and all our troubles will vanish. I suffered from overwork, I used to stay down in my workroom day and night, days and nights together, and of course, the staff, who want orderly, bourgeois lives, for it is the working-class who are bourgeois—’ she laughed immoderately, ‘the staff didn’t like that. Madame should be upstairs ordering the household, seeing to the laundry and counting the coals; or if she is the grande-dame type, she should be out at les cocktails and les diners intimes.’

  He smiled, ‘I don’t think they want you out at diners intimes: but I don’t care what they want. I want to know how you’ve been living. You don’t look yourself Emily.’

  ‘I am not myself. I am someone else, someone better. I have begun to live my way, not yours; and I mean nothing bad by that, Stephen. I have filled in the outlines, lived as I should, working when I want to and not according to a programme. I have servants; let them look after the house. I have begun to live my life, which I never did since I was married.’

  ‘Did you live it before?’

  ‘Ho-hum! Does one ever, I wonder? I guess not.’

  ‘And so that is what François meant when he said there were disorders in the house?’

  ‘What! He wrote to you? And you dare to say you take notice of what a worm writes, a nauseating, dull, household spy? He wrote to you? I’ll call him at once. Let him say here what he said to you. How dared he? All the while I thought he was my friend. I told him everything. I let him look after me, because he said he wanted to. Oh, the flunkies! An army of servants is an army of spies and enemies. I suffer so much from this terrible affliction of spying and hate and distrust. No one to look to. How bitter! And I was fighting sickness, bravely, for I know I was brave, and I worked like a madwoman. Stephen, I will go mad, if this terrible world of cruelty, pinpricks and griefs continues. Why did you leave me? Everything has got worse. I have passed the signpost. I cannot go back. I passed it while you were away. I am going downwards now. Oh, grief and despair. I am despairing. And to think you believed a porter, less than a servant, a doorkeeper! I am stung. That means that I can’t think of you any more as a consolation! There never was a time in my life when I didn’t think, in all my troubles, But Stephen is there, I can rest my head on his chest, on his heart, and hear it beating for me. When we were first married, every night I rested my head on your heart and knew it was beating for me. It doesn’t now, does it?’

  ‘Yes, it does. I have nothing but you. More so now than before.’

  ‘Why, now?’

  ‘Because of what happened in Washington.’

  ‘That was nothing. The very least.’

  During the next few days, however, Stephen interviewed those who had written to him and it was Suzanne who told him the whole truth.

  ‘Because you must look after her, Stephen; no one but you can influence her. She can’t help it. She promises, in a transport of friendship, she’s happy, she’s going
to reform, her eyes sparkle, then she goes upstairs, has her drinks, goes downstairs, has the pills that give her this unnatural energy, works, falls to the floor, sleeps unnaturally—and this is one of the strongest, most gifted natures I have ever met. It is because of the excessive energy, the gaiety, the genius, yes, the genius, that I cannot control her. You can control her because she loves you.’

  Suzanne said nothing about the jockey, the cafe on the quays.

  Emily was so insulted when she heard of this that she went down to her cellar-room, stayed there three days and nights, refusing to answer Stephen’s messages. Stephen was still chiefly bedridden. She sent answer that she was working. She was very angry that he had not asked to see The Monster.

  The third day, aided by Marie-Jo, Stephen crawled down the two storeys to her room in the basement. The door, as always, was on the latch. They called, pushed the door and saw the dark, small room, a servant’s poor room, smelling dusty and unclean; Emily nowhere. But when they walked in, Stephen saw a bundle at the other side of the bed, and going round, he found her on the floor, deeply asleep, with sunken face. They were unable to wake her. He sent for the doctor and with the porter got her on to the bed. ‘Oh, my God, she’s dying!’ The porter said, No, he did not think so.

  ‘This has happened before. She has such a strong heart and physique that she can recover entirely. She will recover; but Monsieur should take her for a holiday. This house and this loneliness has been unfavourable: you might call it bad luck.’

  They put her to bed upstairs and, just as François said, she soon recovered, but she seemed overtired, somewhat pale, she looked older, almost an old woman.

  Stephen was unable to take her away then. As soon as he was able, he had to go to his work in the Gaudeamus Press. He took taxis there and back. He wanted the thing to be sailing along by spring, when Anna came to claim Olivia and to bring Fairfield. Anna intended an early marriage for Christy and Fairfield, if they liked each other; Stephen was despondent.

  ‘Will he have the guts to say no? It’s exactly the same as when I was his age. The parade of possibilities with Mother in charge. I saw so many that I could look at them no more. That cured me. But Mother has learned. It is one at a time now.’

  ‘Christy will never marry Fairfield: he is too refined and intelligent,’ said Emily. Even Suzanne remarked that Christy had many rude things to say about rich girls.

  They struggled along in this way until spring.

  Anna came, bringing with her Fairfield, and at the same time there arrived in Paris from London, Stephen’s cousin, Dale, a young middle-aged man, fair and gay, a bachelor. Anna hired two cars to drive Fairfield around Paris and then out to Versailles, where they were going to lunch.

  Emily, in her best mood and looking well enough, sat beside Dale and kept exclaiming, hugging his arm and kissing his cheek. Christy sat beside Dale, and in front were Stephen and the driver.

  Emily cried, ‘Oh, superb, oh, poetic, oh, colossal, oh, joy, oh, my darling Dale. To be cousins. You don’t realize how unusual, how impossible, this drive would be in the USA. We would all be biting each other’s ear and kicking the neighbour’s shin, yelling and insulting. But here, happy and free, innocent and really people of the world, mondains, innocent—Americans are not innocent. I don’t know what’s the matter with them. Europeans are not innocent but they know how to be calm. All Americans are hugging some ugly secret: they mope, they droop, they drink, they grouse. But here! I understood a lot of things since I came to Europe. At home you’re backward and suppressed if, to get over the dreariness, you don’t neck and drink at every turn of the road. In Europe people live full lives, and like each other for anything, as art, woods, motor drives, poetry, family dinners and just cousinhood! Oh, oh, joy! I’m free at last. With a great big sigh I push back to the Atlantic I hope, the last of my American bugbears. Because to feel you have to make love all the time to the opposite sex is to be afraid of it. There was one place this didn’t happen: the newspaper business. They’re good guys there—I wish I were back there sometimes—there guys are guys and girls are guys too. But outside any such profession, why, it’s hell … Anyhow,’ (she kissed him), ‘I love and adore you, Dale; for you’re not that sort. And oh, look at those heavy green sprays, those fronds, those sprays, those sprigs—in America, bah!—we don’t even think of using those words, it’s just plain woodlot to us. Why I wonder? We’re afraid, ashamed, again.’

  They drove on and on. About ten, they reached Versailles, parked the car and visited the palace. Stephen walked with his mother, Christy with Fairfield, Emily with Dale, courting and cajoling.

  ‘One cannot have désespoir on a day in May rolling, strolling, and with a loved cousin’ (she kissed him), ‘loved friends, loved husband and children. Think of the joy, oh, life is so full!

  ‘I’m so tired of our hotel, Dale, and the grandeur. I’m glad we came here to this greatest absurdity of all. And such a quiet day! Versailles for the Howards alone! Suppose we lived here? I think I’d like it. Would you, Dale?’

  ‘If we lived like they did. Have you read about the fetes they used to have?’

  ‘Oh, yes, oh, yes. Hunting the girls on horseback, and the parties in the woods.’

  But Dale, interested in history, explained to her all about Versailles, its splendour, the money it took to build it, what the rooms meant, the way the court lived. He was very enthusiastic. He had often read about it, but not seen it before.

  They walked through the halls, rooms, the salons, past long windows, through apartments as if in a crystal, past strange little corners and washrooms. The living quarters seemed small and dubious enough.

  ‘Well, I’m glad we’ve done better than that in America,’ Fairfield said.

  Emily said, ‘Oh, darling Christy, my own Christy, how do you like Versailles?’

  ‘It has old age and crumbling charm,’ he said.

  ‘Listen to him! A European aesthete,’ said Emily, delighted.

  ‘Let’s quit this boneyard,’ said Fairfield.

  Emily declared that Fairfield, now sixteen, was the picture of Marie-Antoinette when, as a girl-bride, she came to Versailles from Austria to marry the prince and become the dauphine.

  ‘What a fairytale! And there is sweet little Fairfield, always coolly complete by herself, untouched, as if the place belonged to her. I alas, am also untouched—but with me, it is alas, old age! And look at my darling Christy, oh, Dale, explaining it all so soberly, just as you are to me; oh, wise youth, a man already! There are tears in my eyes, Dale!’

  They went to lunch. Emily was delighted. There were French ladies in charming clothes, ‘Just as then, but not the French of then, the French of now, of the rue de la Paix, the rue St-Honore, the avenue Matignon. We all belong here, Dale, now. Except me, the Cinderella, perhaps. But I’m a happy one, the prince married me long ago, and here I am with three or four beautiful kind sisters and brothers! Ah, me, what happiness!’

  She leaned close to Dale so that her shining fair hair touched his forehead and said aloud, ‘Dale, I must keep this mine forever. I am going to write Versailles and Emily Wilkes, their lives together! Or no, I will write it all into The Monster, my masterpiece.’

  Dale laughed, ‘How queer you are! But not dead, and like nothing ever before.’

  ‘But I’m vulgar, Dale.’

  ‘Well, you have a right to be anything you like, you’re a great woman.’

  She put her hands to her head, ‘My goodness. The hair rose on my skull. In the USA no one would ever say that to a woman. It’s the spirit of Versailles.’

  ‘Versailles is great and vulgar, magnificent and enduring,’ said he.

  She said, ‘We are gently and languidly involved with all sorts of pasts. Henri IV said Paris is worth a mass and I guess I would say the same. Then my past, your past, so different from mine, so enchanting and the little lakes here with their long-ago pasts and the special past of Stephen who was here when he was twelve, for he too, golden scion of th
is golden family, has seen it all long ago and almost forgotten it.’

  Stephen said, ‘Yes, I thought it was something I had dreamed.’

  ‘Ah, Dale, what a family, to have such dreams! To be able to think that Versailles was only one of their dreams! I shall bring my little Giles here, so that he too will think it is something he dreamed. Yes, Giles shall have such dreams. Ah, my God, the beauties of this life! How strange that the rich, the bourgeoisie should have such a beautiful life! What a dilemma! What a puzzle! For surely their minds and lives are finer that those whose dreams are back streets, garbage cans, vacant lots filled with rubble, howling landlords, roaches in the kitchen! What horrible dreams they are! They make me shudder, make me suffer! Well, well—life, dear sweet, difficult, promising life.

  ‘And now this is going to be one of Fairfield’s dreams too. Fairfield had such a dream on her sixteenth birthday! I cannot say what manner of dream it was! Ha-ha. For Fairfield will not admit she ever saw the boneyard.’

  She passed along with Dale to Anna and linked her arm in Anna’s.

  ‘Dear Anna, what poetic joy! Versailles is now part of the lifeblood of all of this wonderful dear family of Stephen’s and mine. How strong, how intoxicating, how insistent the dead past is as it lives at Versailles. It overhangs, it is imminent, it threatens. It threatens only because it is empty. Empty—’

  She broke away from Anna and said mournfully, ‘Yes, it is past and grey, cold, strange, formal, inhuman. And yet, with the Trianons, the woods, the paths, the islets and the shadowy couples and the lone walkers—what are they thinking of? Not the grey and cold. Even the lovers here cannot be thinking what our lovers think of in Central Park and Far Rockaway, not quite the same nuances, eh? Oh, well—that was my dream when I was young. I wish I had been Fairfield. I mean in Fairfield’s lucky place.

  ‘Think of it, the soft hush of green young May—

  ‘Think of it—this past that is Lethe, this deep, soundless, overwhelming of individuality, this dream-past rushed on us, over us, and spoke silently to us, rushed over us without seeing us perhaps, in its tranquillity. To have lived like that, in this magnificent happy past, and to be gone now, but to have this for your life-dream. Ah, me. We are sad creatures. What are our lives compared with theirs?’