The Laughing Matter

by William Saroyan

  Evan did as he was told. At last his brother slept. He’d lost a lot of blood. He was in bed two weeks. Then, still weak and unrestored, he got up and drove off. He came back a couple of days later by train, and stayed three months. He left three thousand dollars with the old man, and a thousand with Evan, for school.

  “For God’s sake,” Evan said, “at least let him know where you are once in a while. He knows I’m all right, but he worries about you. He’s too proud to ask you himself. Phone or wire or write once in a while.”

  “I can’t,” Dade said. “This one last time, then I’ll come home, and we’ll figure something out. California maybe. A lot of his friends from the old country are out there. Tell him so, if you want to. I don’t want to, in case it doesn’t work out. I think it will. It may take a little time. Can’t you come home over the weekends?”

  “I come as often as I can.”

  “We’ll figure something out when I get back. You doing all right at school?”

  “I’m doing all right.”

  “We’ll go to California,” the older brother said. “Buy a vineyard. All his people have vineyards out there. We’ll put a house on it. It’ll be his house. We’ll buy a car. We’ll drive him around to his people. Whatever it is that you’re going to be doing, you can do out there. Tell him these things. I don’t know how.”

  “I’ll try, Dade.”

  “Thanks. What are you going to be doing?”

  “I’m going to try to write.”

  “Books?”

  “Yes, Dade.”

  “You know how to do that?”

  “Well, no, but it’s what I want to do. I guess I’ll have to teach for a living, though.”

  “What’ll you teach?”

  “Literature, I guess.”

  “That’s pretty good,” Dade said. “You tell me some books to read sometime.”

  “Take this one with you,” Evan said.

  He handed his brother a small book that Dade slipped into his coat pocket without first finding out what the book was.

  “Thanks,” Dade said. “I’ll read it. I’ll read every word of it. I promise. Just look after the old man until I get back.”

  Evan had looked after the old man as well as he’d been able to, getting in over the week ends, talking to him, eating the old-country food the old man cooked. But Dade was a long time getting back. One weekend when Evan came home he found the old man sick in bed.

  “Why didn’t you phone?” he said.

  “Ah,” the old man said. “It’s nothing.”

  It was pneumonia, though, and after six days Petrus Nazarenus died. Three months later Dade came home, and for the first time in his life Evan saw his brother weep.

  He saw Dade stand in the old man’s room and weep like a small boy.

  “My dirty luck,” Evan heard his brother say.

  Years later, more than twenty years later, walking to the airplane with his brother, on his way back to Swan and Red and Eva, the younger brother said the words back to the older one.

  “What’s the matter, Dade? What did I do? What did you do? What did the old man do? He comes to America, works hard, after three years sends for his wife and son. They come, another son is born, he thinks he’s going to have the family at last that he’s always wanted, a lot of boys, a lot of girls, all of them well, their mother well, their father well, but two years after his wife reaches America she’s dead, and he doesn’t want to look at another woman. He can’t. He becomes a sad old man in a silly little cigar store in Paterson, New Jersey, living for his sons. You know what’s happened to you, Dade. And here it is happening to me, too. What for, Dade? What’d he do wrong? What’d you do wrong? What’d I do?”

  He stopped, began again suddenly, speaking softly but swiftly.

  “You know you want to see your kids, Dade. You know the only thing you live for is your kids. You know the only thing you think about is your kids. You know you’re here in San Francisco to get more money to send them. Is it right to live a life of pride and loneliness?”

  “It is right,” the older brother said in their own language.

  “You’re fifty now, man,” Evan said. “You’re not a swift kid racing around Paterson any more. What are you going to do? Are you finished, Dade? Are we all finished?”

  His brother only looked at him.

  “What am I supposed to do?” the younger brother said. “Be finished, too?”

  He stopped again, trying to think what to do, what to do next.

  “I can’t leave Red. I can’t leave Eva. I don’t know them. I don’t have the faintest idea who they are. What’d I do wrong, Dade? I went away to work for eight weeks, to get money for a car, so we could ride around a little. Two months, and she wrote every day. Yes, every day. And I wrote her. What’s the matter, Dade? What’s the matter with us?

  “Listen,” he said suddenly. “I’m not going back. I can’t look at her any more. I’ll never be able to look at her again. There’s no use going back. All right, Red’s dead, Eva’s lost. All right. That’s how it is, and I can’t go back.”

  He began to walk swiftly, though.

  Dade watched him climb the steps and get aboard. He watched the plane turn on its wheels and roll slowly to the place for the take-off. When it was up and going, he went for a taxi.

  The book was The Oxford Blake, a small book with thin pages. Dade hadn’t finished reading it yet, but any time he wasn’t home the book was with him. He brought it out of his pocket now, in the taxi going back to San Francisco, opened it, and began to read.

  Chapter 13

  Red was too busy to be frightened, but the thing was dangerous. It was a thing in which an enormous fire burned, in which a great deal of heat gathered. It was a thing on enormous wheels. It was too heavy to move, because movement is a light thing, but it did move, and he himself started it moving. Cody Bone put Red’s hand on the lever, helped him move it down, and then, sure enough, the thing made noises and began to go. His father and his sister watched him, standing far below and waving.

  He tugged at the whistle handle, but once was enough. He pulled the bell cord, but once was enough for that, too. Now, here they were slowing down to draw up alongside another locomotive on another track, the other engineer leaning out, waiting for them.

  “Hi,” Red said.

  “Hi, boy,” the engineer said. He was a younger man than Cody Bone, a man who chewed tobacco and spit, his face smeared here and there, a man who smiled only with his eyes.

  The two engineers talked a moment, then the new one said, “Is that your grandson, Cody?”

  “Yes,” Cody said. “Pat’s boy. We call him Red.”

  When the engine went off Red said, “I’m not your grandson, am I?”

  Red thought perhaps he might be, but hadn’t heard.

  “Well, not really, Red,” Cody said. “I just said that because—— Well, I guess I wish you were my grandson.”

  “If I was,” Red said, “would I lose my father?”

  “Oh, no,” Cody said. “Evan’s your father. You can never lose him. Your father is always your father, and so is your grandfather.”

  “Who is my grandfather?” Red said.

  “Evan’s father.”

  “But he’s dead.”

  “Your mother’s father. He’s your grandfather, too.”

  “Why do I have two grandfathers, but one father?”

  “You’ve got two grandmothers, too. Your father’s mother and your mother’s mother. Now, we’ve got to go along here a little, pick up three boxcars, and push them back in front of the depot. There you’ll see your father again. And that will be the ride in the big black baby. What do you think of it?”

  “It’s awful big,” Red said. “Hot and heavy, too. Does it scare you?”

  “Yes,” Cody said. “It does.”

  “It scares me, too,” Red said. “If you want to be my grandfather, I want you to.”

  “All right,” Cody said. “I’m your grandfather and yo
u’re my grandson, but call me Cody. That’s what I’d ask you to call me if you were Pat’s boy.”

  “Does Pat’s boy call you Cody?”

  “Pat hasn’t got a boy. He’s got two girls, but when he gets a boy, the boy is going to call me Cody. Now, look, Red, we’re going to bump these three boxcars and push them to the depot. Ready?”

  “Ready,” the boy said.

  They bumped the three boxcars. The man standing near the track went quickly to where the engine had bumped them, worked there a moment, signaled Cody, then Cody made the engine push the cars ahead.

  After a few minutes they saw the depot, and there was his father Evan Nazarenus and his sister Eva.

  When he came down with Cody Bone from the engine Red went to his father and put his arms around him, hiding his head in the small of his back, not saying anything, because the truth was that something lately had made him feel he might not see his father again.

  Chapter 14

  When the man got home he found the woman lying on the sofa in the parlor, and he saw that she had been crying. He saw that she was desperate and needed help. He saw her eyes say to him, Help me, you’re my husband, you’re the father of my kids, whatever I am, whatever it is that I’ve done, whatever it is that I may do if you do help me, help me, it’s not wrong to help those who have betrayed you, they too are alone, they too are betrayed, help me, Evan.

  “I drove the locomotive,” Red said. “I drove it myself. Cody Bone sat beside me, but I was the one who drove it. Wasn’t I, Papa?”

  “Yes, you were.”

  “Yes, he was,” Eva said. “I saw him. He went up with the man, and he was the one, Mama. Yes, he was. Weren’t you?”

  “Ah, Eva,” Red said, “I just said I was.” He turned away from Eva to the woman, who was standing now. “I wish you’d seen me, Mama. Papa saw me. I wish you’d seen me, too.”

  “The man phoned,” the woman said, her voice itself saying help me.

  “What man?”

  “I forget his name. He said he was sorry but the children wanted to go away.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The one you asked to dinner. He said they couldn’t come.”

  “Who is it, Papa?” Red said.

  “Warren Walz,” the man said.

  “Yes, that’s the one,” the woman said. “He said they’d love us to go to their house sometime.” She looked at him, to ask for help again, but again he couldn’t look at her. He’d glanced at her when he’d come in, and then he’d not looked at her again. “I’ve got lunch for the children on the table,” she said. “I wonder if they both shouldn’t have naps after lunch. It’s a hot day and so many things have happened, I wonder if—— Wouldn’t you like to lie down and rest after lunch, Red?”

  “Well,” Red said. “Well, Mama, I didn’t think of it, but I could go to my room and close the door and just be there a while, I guess. I might lie down, too. I don’t know.”

  “I thought,” she said to the man, “perhaps we could speak quietly while they rested.”

  The boy watched them, feeling, but not understanding, what was going on. The smell of the locomotive was still with him—the smell of coal, fire, steam, and steel—but he could still smell the rocks, too, only he hadn’t found any rocks in the house. He smelled something else now, too. It was something that didn’t come from things but from people. It wasn’t a glad thing at all.

  “I thought——” she said.

  “How about washing up, Red?” the man said. “You, too, Eva.”

  Red and Eva went off together to the bathroom.

  They were alone in the parlor, the woman waiting for him to look at her, but he couldn’t. All he could do was stand there. He couldn’t go, or talk.

  “I thought——” she said again.

  “You didn’t think anything,” he said. He spoke quietly, perhaps because there was no other way to talk to her now, or because he didn’t want the children to hear.

  “You didn’t think anything, so just shut up.”

  She went to the kitchen, and he went out to the front porch, but that was where she’d told him, so he went down the steps, across the lawn, and then into the vineyard. The vines he saw were ribiers. The grapes would be ready in another couple of weeks. Some of them were ready now. They were a magnificent grape, big and black. He pushed leaves aside to look at some of the bunches that were hidden and found a number that were ready and just about perfect. The leaves were drying now, but they were still green, especially the shaded ones.

  Have pity, he thought. What’s the good of not having pity?

  I’ll have Dade find somebody to help her, he thought. He’ll know somebody. Somebody in San Francisco. I’ll take her there. I can’t help her. Whoever helps her, he won’t know who she is, he won’t know who I am, and he won’t know why he’s helping her, he’ll just help her. He’s helped others. He does it every day. It happens every day. It happens to all kinds of people.

  He wandered among the vines and came at last to the end of the vineyard, bordered by a row of alternating pomegranate and olive trees. The pomegranates were still small, their casings still whole, not burst as they would be when they ripened. They were red, their crowns small and perfect, the spears straight now, not curved as they would be later on. The olives were small and green, the branches heavy with them. He wandered down the row until he came to another end of the sixty acres. The border here was an irrigation ditch only about a fifth full, the water moving slowly. He sat down on the bank of the ditch, looking at the weeds growing in the bottom of the ditch, growing in the water, being bent a little by the slow flowing of the water.

  We couldn’t wait to have the third, he thought. Well, here’s the third. If it’s not mine, it’s hers, it’s at least half Red’s, half Eva’s. What do I do about it? What do I do about her? Go away? Do I go back to Paterson? Do I go to the slums we lived in, take a furnished room, write the story of my death, writing it until I am dead? What do I do? Do I pick up Red and Eva and go back to the house in Palo Alto and tell her to go to her man? Do I ask her to introduce me to him, so I can speak to him about what’s happened? Do I say to him, “What do you want to do? Do you want to start a family with her? Is that it?” What do I do? Do I speak calmly, and then stop his breathing?

  He got up, wandered back to the house, searched through the fig tree, picked a dozen, and took them into the house. He put them on the tile table in the kitchen, then went into the parlor. She was lying on the sofa again. He saw her sit up, and he turned away.

  “What do I do?” he said.

  “The woman just called,” she said. “She was very nice. She said they would come, after all. The little girl has a cold. They decided it would be better not to go. They’ll be here at six. It’s not a bad cold, it’s just that they thought a trip wouldn’t help it any.”

  “It must have meant a lot to you,” he said. “It must have meant more than anything else in the world, more than Red, more than Eva, more than——”

  “If they’re coming,” she said, “I think we’d better try to talk, first. I don’t want anything like what happened last night to happen again. I slammed the door in her face. I don’t want to be rude to people who are trying to be nice.”

  “You don’t?”

  “We’d better try to talk, first. The sooner the better. I know you can’t look at me.”

  “You do?”

  “I found a stick. I’d heard about it at school. I couldn’t do it, though. I can’t be brutal.”

  “You can’t?”

  “I’d like to think that I might tell you—— I’d like to think you might——”

  “Might what?”

  “Understand.”

  “No,” he said. “No, I don’t understand. You could tell me, but I wouldn’t understand. I’ll listen if it’ll do you any good, but I won’t understand. I went away for two months. You hadn’t been feeling too well. I thought being alone would do you good. Your letters said it was doing you g
ood. It must have meant a lot. Are you in love with him? Is he in love with you?”

  “I don’t know,” the woman said.

  The man leaped upon her, pushing her head, even in helpless anger trying not to strike her face, and wanting to stop. He couldn’t, though. Remembering Red, even, he couldn’t.

  The woman had fallen, first to the sofa, then to the floor. He was bent over her, unable to stop.

  He couldn’t stop even when he heard Red shout at him, “You stop that, Papa! God damn you, Papa! You stop that!”

  He couldn’t stop even when Red was striking him in the back and sobbing, “God damn you, Papa! I’m going to kill you, Papa!”

  Chapter 15

  The big girl was Fay. She was twelve and beginning to be like a woman. Red liked her. She seemed scared, and he wanted to tell her not to be. Eva liked her, too, because she was almost a woman and yet still a girl.

  The middle girl was Fanny. She was nine and more like a boy than a girl. Red liked her because it was interesting to watch her do things the way a boy did them. Eva didn’t like Fanny very much because Fanny might do anything, and was loud instead of thoughtful.

  The youngest girl was Flora. She was almost seven and beautiful. Even when she smiled and Red saw the same front tooth gone out of her mouth that was gone out of his, he thought she was beautiful. She was very quiet but not frightened of anything, and she seemed able to stay beautiful no matter what she was doing. Red didn’t simply like Flora, he loved her. Every time he looked at her, he laughed. Eva loved Flora, too.

  “She’s my best friend,” Eva said to Red.

  Red had found Eva in hide-and-seek and he’d brought her back to the fig tree. Now, he’d go back and find one or another of the three sisters, or two of them in one place, or all of them.

  “You’re It next,” Red said, “So stay here while I go get the next one.”

  “It’s dark,” Eva said.

  “It’s not dark,” Red said. “It’s because you’re standing in the shade of the fig tree. Stand over there by the water pump.”