The Laughing Matter

by William Saroyan

  “Is she different?”

  “She’s different from every girl I ever saw.”

  “How is she different?”

  “Well, she is pretty, isn’t she?”

  “Yes, she is.”

  “A lot of girls aren’t,” Red said. “And then the way she talks makes me laugh. I mean, the way her mouth moves, and the sound of her voice. Then, the things she says are so different from what other girls say.”

  “What does she say?”

  “Oh, she says different things,” Red said. “I forget, but she says them as if she understood them. But most of all, she’s different because she likes me.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Well, I’m not sure,” Red said, “but I think she likes me.”

  Was he sure Swan had ever loved him? Wasn’t it a theory? Didn’t it happen that he felt she loved him because he felt he loved her, each of them never actually sure of the other, though, each of them guessing, or working on the probability that the theory was a valid one? Hadn’t he come to believe she loved him because they had been able to talk to one another gladly, to look at one another and notice identical desires? But might not these identical desires have occurred in each of them in relation to others? Of course they might have. Then, what was it that more nearly definitely established that they loved one another? Was it not their believing it was a thing to prolong indefinitely, forever, with sons and daughters coming forward out of it, as Red and Eva had come out of it? Wasn’t that the thing that had made their love—made something— definite and meaningful?

  “Would you be unhappy if Flora didn’t really like you?” the man said. “Or if she liked you no more than she liked any other boy she might happen to meet? Would that make you unhappy?”

  “Who is the other boy?” Red said.

  The man laughed, actually burst into laughter, for the question was the kind he himself, at forty-four, might ask under similar circumstances.

  “I don’t know,” the man said. “Any boy, any other boy. If she liked you no more than she liked any other boy she happened to meet or know, would that make you unhappy?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t like it,” Red said. “Does she like another boy? Do you know, Papa?”

  “No, I don’t know,” the man said. “I was just wondering if it would make you unhappy, that’s all.”

  “Well, it would,” Red said. “If she’s my favorite—and she is—I want to be her favorite. I don’t want her to be my favorite, and have a favorite of her own.”

  “Suppose you were her favorite,” the man said, “but still she liked other boys, too?”

  “How could she do that?”

  “I don’t know, but suppose it happened? Suppose it were true?”

  “I wouldn’t want a favorite like that.”

  “No, perhaps not, but suppose she was still your favorite, even though you knew she liked other boys, would that make you unhappy?”

  “Very unhappy,” Red said, “because I want my favorite to like me the way I like her.”

  “Why do you want that, Red?”

  “I don’t know,” Red said. “I just want it. Before we go back to Palo Alto I’m going to tell her she’s my favorite, and I’m going to ask her if I’m her favorite. If she is, then when we come to Dade’s house for another visit, I’m going to go to her house alone, to see her, because she is my favorite.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yes,” Red said. He waited a moment, then said, “She said her father hates her mother. She said her mother hates her father. Why do they hate each other? They’re Flora’s father and mother. How can they hate each other?”

  “Well,” the man said, “she may be mistaken. Maybe they fight—a husband and a wife fight—a father and a mother fight—a man and a woman fight—even a boy and a girl fight—and when they do I suppose they hate something in each other, but that doesn’t mean they don’t go right on loving each other, too. That doesn’t mean they don’t love a great deal more in each other than they hate.”

  “I don’t like hating,” Red said.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t like it. There’s something the matter with it. Why do people hate?”

  “I don’t know,” the man said. “I don’t know why they hate. Why do they?”

  “I think it’s because they’re scared,” the boy said. “I don’t know what they’re scared of, but they’re scared of something. I was scared of Milton Schweitzer. I don’t know why.”

  “People do scare you,” the man said. “Some people do scare you.”

  He glanced at his watch when the car drew up and stopped where it had been. He had been gone about two hours, and it was almost half-past eleven. Everything seemed about the same, except that May Walz had Flora in her arms, the girl apparently asleep. Red went straight to the girl and looked at her. She opened her eyes, sat up, then got off her mother’s lap.

  Evan Nazarenus greeted everyone quickly, poured fresh drinks for those who needed or wanted them, poured himself one, then went into the house. He found Eva asleep on top of her bed. He sat on the bed beside her, drinking because he needed the drink badly.

  “I didn’t mean to make you cry,” he said to the sleeping girl.

  When he turned he saw Swan standing in the doorway.

  “They’re going,” she said.

  “I’ll be right out.”

  He went out and saw Red and Flora standing together, talking.

  “No,” he said to Warren Walz, to May, to Cody Bone, to Bart. “You can’t go now. It’s too early. Please don’t go.”

  “The kids are tired,” Walz said. He was sober now, and his wife seemed hushed.

  “We had a wonderful time,” May said. “I’m so glad you asked us. Swan and I had such a nice talk. Please come to our house one night before you go back, only I wish to God you’d never go back. Come to Clovis and live on a vineyard.”

  “That’s right,” Cody Bone said. “Come and stay, so I can keep an eye on Red. It’s not the worst place in the world. Where else can you find an evening like this? Look at the stars. You don’t see a heaven like that many places.”

  They were gone in five minutes. The place was quiet now, desolate and deadly.

  Red sat on the steps of the front porch, his chin resting in the palm of his hand. Swan was putting stuff on a tray to take inside and put away.

  “They had a nice time,” she said. She spoke to no one in particular. “She’s an awful nice girl. She’s got real intelligence and manners.”

  “Who?” Red said.

  “May Walz,” Swan said.

  Evan Nazarenus went to the table, put a few things more on the tray, picked it up, and went into the house with it.

  Chapter 21

  The woman went to work in the kitchen, holding glasses under the hot-water tap.

  “When you’re through in there,” the man said, “I’d like to talk to you.”

  He spoke quietly, from the end of the parlor, leaning against the piano, but he knew she would hear him.

  She came out of the kitchen into the dining room.

  “The water was running,” she said.

  “I said when you’re through in there I’d like to talk to you.”

  “I’m afraid to talk to you,” she said. “I don’t know what you’re liable to do.”

  “I’m afraid to talk to you, too,” he said, “but I think we’d better just the same.”

  “All right.”

  She went back to the kitchen.

  He sat at the piano. After a moment he touched a key and heard its high note. He touched it again and heard the note again. He rested his head on his arm, closing his eyes, falling into instant sleepless dreaming.

  He awoke suddenly, knowing she stood near, waiting. He moved to the hall, out of sight, and from there said, “If there is any charity in your soul for yourself, know there is charity in mine for my own self, and for you. Know this and allow me to help my son and my daughter, allow me to help you, whoever you are, my
wife, the mother of my children, a stranger, whoever you prefer to be. Know this and allow me not to destroy ourselves, whoever we are. Know there is charity and nothing else in my soul for each of us, whoever we are. Know I did not know we were so estranged, so deeply unknown to one another.”

  He came from the hall, and for the first time that day looked at her.

  “What do you want to do, Swan?”

  “I don’t know, Evan.”

  “This afternoon,” he said, “hearing those words, I fell upon you, but no more, for I do not know you. If I cannot love someone I do not know, neither can I hate. If there is anything to say, say it as a stranger saying it to a stranger.”

  “I don’t know, Evan,” she said. “Sometimes I think I must have a doctor to help me, however brutal it may be. But sometimes I also think I must not. I don’t know.”

  “I want to help you.”

  “I can’t think,” she said. “I don’t know. It’s not ours. It’s not yours and mine. But is that so? Is it so surely so, so surely not ours?”

  “Nothing is ours now, Swan.”

  “I live simply,” she said. “I live stupidly, even. I live with my body. I can’t think. I don’t know, Evan. When you went off with Red, and Eva wanted to go, I believed you would take her, too, and not come back. I believed that that was what you meant to do, and I was relieved. I believed I would go off alone, have nothing and no one, except myself, and I was relieved, Evan, I was glad. But you refused Eva, who wept as I’ve never heard her weep before, and I was frightened. I’m afraid of love. I’m more afraid of love than I am of hate. I’m more afraid of charity than I am of contempt.”

  “What do you want to do, Swan?”

  “I’m a woman. I don’t know. I am to be deceived into escape from fear by a lover, or I am to be ravaged by a hater. I don’t know what I want to do, Evan. What do you want to do?”

  “Sleep,” he said.

  He went to his room and sat on his bed, the woman following him.

  “I am to be loved or hated,” she said.

  He turned, astonished.

  “You must be mad,” he said.

  “Are you tired?” she said.

  “Swan,” he said. “I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to shout. You’re in trouble. We’re all in trouble.”

  “Are you that tired?”

  “You cannot be brutal to Red and Eva,” he said. “You cannot force me to be brutal to them. They are not to be dragged into this, do you hear?”

  She clutched him suddenly, sobbing and moaning.

  “Help me,” she whispered.

  “I am helping you.”

  He lifted her, then put her down on the bed. She seized his hand.

  “Stop it,” he said.

  He turned, to go back into the parlor, to be away from her.

  “Don’t leave me,” she said. “Please don’t leave me. At least don’t leave me, Evan.”

  “I won’t leave you.”

  “Don’t ever leave me. Don’t ever leave me alone, not even for a moment. Don’t ever leave me alone again, Evan.”

  “Go to sleep, will you?”

  “You won’t leave me?”

  “No.”

  He stood in the parlor, trying to think.

  Chapter 22

  The singing birds woke up the little girl. Eva Nazarenus, they sang. Her father said so. Her father didn’t take her but took Red, and she cried. She was angry at her father. If he could take Red, why couldn’t he take Eva? She wanted to go, she was sure he would take her, and then he didn’t. He just didn’t. He drove off with Red, but not with her. He left her standing there. She was very angry at him. It wasn’t nice, what he did. She had always been able to count on him to be nice. He was the only one she had always been able to count on. Her mother could be nice, but only when she wanted to, not when Eva wanted her to. Sometimes when her mother wanted to be nice, it wasn’t nice for Eva, but after a while it was nice. It took a little while for her to get used to her mother being nice when her mother wanted to, not caring what Eva wanted. Her mother was awful nice. She could be mean, too, though. Sometimes her voice got so hard it scared Eva. Sometimes her eyes got so angry Eva didn’t want to look at them. The next minute, though, her mother was nice again. She was the best mother to have, better than Flora’s, and it was wonderful that out of all the mothers in the world to have Eva Nazarenus had got the best, and so nice that on top of being the best, her mother was her own mother, Eva’s own mother. She felt sorry for all the ones who didn’t have their own mothers. It must be so lonesome for them to have mothers who weren’t their own. Eva had her own father, too. Some girls who had their own mothers didn’t have their own fathers. She had both. She had her own brother, too. And now, here in Dade’s house, in a whole bedroom to herself, she had her own birds. They said her name every morning, as they were saying it now.

  She listened to the birds, got out of bed and went to the window to see if she could see the one that was saying it clearest. She saw not one but five birds in the lilac tree outside the window. They were having fun in the morning, hopping from one branch to another, chasing each other, singing, flying away, coming back, and making an awful commotion.

  They bored her soon, though, and she felt profoundly sad. Why hadn’t her father taken her? Why hadn’t he been nice when she had been most sure that he would be nice, when she had been most eager for him to be nice? Why had he rejected her, abandoned her, left her all alone, ashamed and crying?

  She wondered if Red was awake. It was awful early. She could tell. She always woke up first. Why did she? Still, Red might be awake.

  She went to Red’s room and found his eyes open.

  “You go back to bed,” he said.

  “Let’s get dressed and go out and eat figs.”

  “It’s too early. Go back to bed.”

  “It’s light,” Eva said. “Let’s go stand by the water pump and talk.”

  “No,” Red said. “Let Mama sleep. Let Papa sleep. We’ll make noise and wake them up.”

  “How?”

  “Dressing and talking and walking. Go back to bed.”

  “Let’s go out on the front lawn and stand on our heads.”

  “No. It’s too early. Let them sleep. You go back to bed and go to sleep. When you wake up again come back and we’ll get dressed.”

  “Will we go out to eat figs or to stand on our heads?”

  “To eat figs. It’s too early to stand on our heads.”

  “Yes,” Eva said. “It’s too early.”

  “Well, aren’t you going back?”

  “Why did Papa take you but didn’t take me?”

  “You’re a girl,” Red said.

  “I’m a boy,” Eva said.

  “You’re a girl,” Red said.

  “I’m a girl,” Eva said, “but I’m a boy, too. I’m better than a boy. I’m better than anybody.”

  “You’re not better than me,” Red said.

  “I am,” Eva said.

  “Don’t you say that,” Red said.

  “I am,” Eva said.

  “Well, go back to bed and sleep some more,” Red said. “When you wake up come back and we’ll get dressed, but don’t make any noise. Let them sleep.”

  She went. Red remembered the remark he had learned in the language: It is right. He felt glad about remembering it, about being able to say it, about the whole language his father was going to teach him. It would take a long time to know a whole language like that, to be able to speak it the way Dade and his father spoke it. He remembered the sounds of it, as they had made the sounds, speaking to one another. He liked the sounds and wished he knew what they meant. He wished his father was all right now. He wished his mother was all right now.

  His sister peeked at him from around the open doorway.

  “Eva,” he said. “Go back to sleep.”

  “I did,” Eva said. “I went back and got in bed and slept. It’s not early any more. It’s late.”

  “You di
dn’t sleep.”

  “I did.”

  “You know you didn’t.”

  “I did.”

  “Why do you tell lies?”

  “I don’t tell lies. I tell the truth. I did sleep.”

  “That’s a lie, Eva.”

  “It’s not. I did sleep. Let’s get dressed.”

  “No,” Red said. “Let them sleep. Go back and wait a little while, then we’ll get dressed.”

  “I can’t go back.”

  “Why not?”

  “There’s a man in there.”

  “There isn’t.”

  “Yes, there is.”

  “There isn’t, Eva. You’re telling another lie.”

  “He’s dead,” Eva said.

  “Who is it?” Red said, for it was hard to tell when she was lying. Everything she said sounded like the truth.

  “I don’t know, but he’s dead.”

  “You’re lying, aren’t you, Eva?”

  “No, it’s the truth.”

  Red looked at her, trying to find out if she were actually telling the truth.

  “I’m scared,” she said.

  Red was scared, too. He got out of bed. He went down the hall to Eva’s room, his sister following, each of them moving slowly, reluctantly, as if into the greatest danger of all. Red was very frightened. By now Eva wasn’t sure there wasn’t a dead man in her room. Red came to the doorway, then charged in, more than half blind with terror. When full vision returned to his eyes he saw that there was no one in the room.

  “He’s gone,” Eva said.

  “Where was he?”

  “He was right here,” Eva said. She put her finger at the center of an empty fruit bowl.

  “You’re always telling lies,” Red said. “Get dressed, then.”

  “You’ve got to help me with the shoes.”

  “All right.”

  He went back to his room and was dressed in less than two minutes. He found Eva almost dressed. He helped her with her shoes. They went out into the parlor, very quietly out of the house by the front door. They walked around the house to the back yard, to the fig tree. Red found a ripe fig on a low branch and gave it to Eva, who half peeled it and ate it. Then he climbed into the tree and found a lot of them, eating one and dropping one to Eva.