A Little Tea, a Little Chat

by Christina Stead

  “Listen—but with all this, you must have a frank, open, gay nature, laugh. No dirty jokes, nothing unnecessary. That’s for barroom types. Gangsters don’t trust any new man talks dirty. Sign of bad business. Natural gaiety, that’s the word. Anyone, if he thinks about it, can show natural gaiety. Then, it’s a good concealer. People expect you to be worried. You don’t want to bring out in people the public prosecutor, the detective, and the tax collector: three parts of human nature. Have a human streak and people trust you. Don’t talk dirty, people think you are simple. Another thing—have some weakness, like sinus, or you can’t speak straight, or you got a headache every night, must take headache-cure, everyone wants to give you a remedy, takes an interest in you. Nothing like—nothing wrong—no gonorrhea—no paralysis in the uzzazuzz, so they can laugh at you—something simple—toothache, bursitis—nothing like ulcers, you got to take an operation, something they can all help you—what harm, it brings out the good. Then another thing, if you see people want something, promise it to them: they’ll never get it anyway, very likely, and so what harm do you do? People pray to God, did it since the Year One, and does God send parcels-post? There are cinders in Europe that once were one million innocents, and does that stop people from believing in God? Why should you worry? You’re not like God. They don’t expect it; also, you don’t burn up anyone in an incinerator. God’s credit is good, too, eh? Better than yours or mine.

  “Have a human streak and people will be your friends; I got lots of friends and it costs me nothing; and a man must have friends to get things done. No lone wolf. Then about this weakness, you must have. You must have a vice too, some sort of vice, even like taking snuff, it makes people laugh. They are sorry for you; they think you will come to a bad end and they let you pick their pocket—I don’t mean that, but I mean they go into partnership with you. People like it. Then you must go in it in a big, naïve way, so people like it and no one can catch you by your vice, though they come up to you with that idea—that idea and a proposition. They can’t catch you by your vice, if it’s a big one. A man with a cellar full of whisky, you can’t buy his partnership with an old-fashioned! Not with a bottle of whisky. Not with a case of whisky. You got to make him partner in a distillery. Do you think anyone could catch me with a woman—or a woman could catch me? Pardon me—my boy—I respect your mother, but I don’t want you to see things through a glass darkly like she does—all right for a woman, but not for you. You think I am wasting money? It is common sense. Waste money where it is least needed, not where it is needed, never where it is needed. Never give to the poor, nor to begging friends. This is a bottomless pit. Any need is a bottomless pit. Also they hate you. They hate you anyway, because you have it. They hate you at the end, because the need is always there. For argument’s sake, a man has cancer, you pay the first operation. Then his family must be supported, also a nurse. Then there’s another operation. More nurse, nursing home, so on to the end. Then there’s the funeral. Then the widow and orphans, don’t touch it in the first place—a bottomless pit. He can bankrupt you, that pauper; and at the end, you’ll be a bastard. I don’t care if it’s your father, your mother, your father-in-law, your brother, or your best friend. Remember, a poor man is a bottomless pit. Don’t give him a letter of recommendation, don’t bring him into the country, you might find out he is mad and you have to pay for him in a sanitarium; don’t witness papers, don’t say you know him, don’t sign, don’t sign—there was something wrong, I knew, when I heard Hugo March built a house for his friends. Something wrong, I’d like to smell it out. Don’t buy him a cup of coffee unless he gives you advice worth a hundred times the price of a coffee.

  “To give money away, or financial support, is no good; you can give free advice, no one takes it. Then, you must work, but work for years as if you were a stevedore, for at last the vice of being able to buy things will be catching up with you; but—ha-ha—that’s not for you! You must work like a man on a chain gang. Why do they have chain gangs? Not for fun. Not for punishment. For contractor’s profit. You too must be on a chain gang, for your own profit. You can loaf on time, not on money. Money is not to be loafed on. It takes a holiday too. Money is going down. Money is going out. In fifty years money will not be the fashion: and it is a good thing—for the world. Also, I won’t be here. But you might be. Because we are not in that paradise of coupons and ration stamps yet.

  “Money is an art. People are going to lose that art as they lost the art of stained-glass windows. It’s not going to be any use at all. So you won’t get anyone else to tell you what to do. It’ll be too late. Now, get this note—don’t take any advice about money from people who didn’t make any money themselves. Give them a cup of coffee, listen to them, promise them, show them the etchings, but all the time listen for the music of the Scotch piano, that’s the cash register; and if it seems to ring up No Sale, watch him, he took out of the till, he’s all right. There’s a dollar bill in every man: he’s born with it but he doesn’t know where it is. You must find out. You can’t say, ‘What’s in it for me?’ though: that’s vulgar, that’s cheap. You must say: ‘What’s in it for money?’ Money is a jealous mistress. If you want money you must want only money. Now, I’m not a moneyman, I’m only doing my best to put you on the right track. But I must tell you the one secret of life, there is only one: everything is a jealous mistress, everything is terribly possessive, and, by God, we want to be terribly possessed if we want to get somewhere—and we want to be terribly possessed—anyhow; or what is life?”

  He was serene. He plunged his hands in his pockets and continued presently: “I know so much I don’t know how to get it out. It’s there, but not in words. The real things you know—you can’t put them into words. But I want to, for once. No for-r-mulas; no slugs. I made plenty of mistakes. I’m your construction engineer, you’re my conservation engineer. I’ll see you up there in the observation tower, everything spick-and-span, and I’ll pull myself up short and I’ll say, ‘He’s an example to you, not a big moneymaker, but an example. He respects my property, what I did.’ What happens when money, property, falls into the hands of widows, children, favorites, sisters, divorced wives? You do the best you can for them, but you can’t leave them brains in your will. Your brains die too. Too bad. It is no longer personal property. If it doesn’t belong to your son, it belongs to no one. It belongs to the insurance company and the stock exchange when the trustee puts the money in stocks, and the Government for taxes, and to fancy schools and colleges, and to dressmakers, not to you or yours. Not for me. No widows and orphans. It is not wealth, it does not represent anything, it does not produce wealth. It is a fiction, floating money, the first five thousand dollars you find floating downstream on a grindstone. Nothing at all. And I worked my life out for nothing at all, on a grindstone, in a river? I don’t believe in money that has no owner. Comes a crash—it disappears up the chimney and the next thing you know, Government has it, Du Pont has it, no one has it. Swallowed up by the corporations. You can’t track that bit of money that once was produced with hand and brain and, by God, nights without sleep, headaches, through all the holding companies and corporations—suddenly, it’s nowhere, in the middle of the desert, you must take a train two days to the office of the company—on Prince Edward Island, in Madagascar. Taxes, lawyers—a farm can’t thrive divided up even between two, or given to a bank or a lawyer to operate, or a woman sleeping all the time. She’d sell it to buy an embroidered bedspread, a doctor to hold her hand, a dream-doctor. Banks don’t run farms. Banks can’t run your property. Banks don’t understand property. Property is personal and can only be run by one person, and I swear to you, no matter how dumb you may be at the beginning, if you have property and stick to it—you learn a lot. No bank, no lawyer, no official can beat you. You go into that room, thinking, I’m coming here to hold on to my property—and no one can cheat you, no one can make a better deal. Property teaches you all you need to know. So I have no fear for you, once you know you�
��re the one. You will know—but not yet—

  “Now about the stock exchange. It’s a casino. I go into it. I play around with two or three thousand dollars—it’s a vice. It keeps me out of mischief. I don’t try to pay the gas bill out of it. On the stock exchange there is only one rule: if you’re a natural bear you’ll make money in a bear market; if you’re a natural bull, you’ll make money in any bull market. Now I’m a natural bull, because I’m constructive, but I don’t know what you are; and it’s likely you should keep out of it altogether and you’re better off. It’s a casino. Don’t fool yourself like those guys on padded seats in brokers’ offices. ‘I run the country with my money,’ those chimpanzees think; ‘why don’t the workers stop striking and get to work and support me on this fat cushion?’ No, sir, workers don’t need me at all and they don’t need you, either. I sit on my pants and I run the country—no, sir. Don’t get that idea and you’ll keep your money. You’ll find out the workers don’t even need any money at all. Forget it. If I can make a pair of shoes, do I need a fella sitting on a cushion seat in a brokers’ office? No, sir. Forget it.

  “Then, don’t work hard to make money. You’re not a money type. I know that’s contrary to others’ advice, but it’s my advice; it’s immoral to work to make money. There’s something unlucky in it. You got to work for the work. You got to work on a farm, for the farm—then it makes money. You work and expect hens to lay eggs for the money—I don’t know why, but the day-old chicks die on the way over. It’s a sort of superstition. You got to be superstitious. You lose a woman if you think about her all the time and never look at another woman. You lose money if you look at it all the time; got to love someone else too.

  “Then, this is easy for you, you have to be fine, delicate, not a vulgarian, I’m very delicate. Not come out with it. Unnecessary. Now that’s Livy’s fault, it’s indelicate to put all your cards on the table, foolish too. No one wants it, your opponent wants to think too.

  “John Stuart Mills and Albert Spencer said, if you gave a penny to a blind beggar, you destroyed the foundations of society, or to a man who plays Il Trovatore on the hurdy-gurdy, you destroy the foundations of art and artists; that’s a serious thought. I’m a laissez-faire. You can’t patch up all the holes in the social fabric. Got to wait for socialism, best thing is to fight for socialism, not aggressive; constructive, scientific socialism, no bones broken, respect for constructive people, laissez-faire, individual effort.

  “Now these ’oomen, I was always looking for a woman, not my fault, question of temperament, your mo—h’m—I swear I should have preferred a great romance, always looked for it, oasis in the desert, thrown money out the window, something you can’t pay for, believe me, love can’t be bought. But you look, now you find the right woman, there is actual physical sharing, you want to give her everything, not even share, undress yourself as a man of property too—very natural, no good, very human—now it is wrong to taste another human, but if you love, you go completely crazy, not healthy, you don’t taste, you want to marry, throw away your whole life, not healthy, give away all your money—now you have to watch out for that, you might meet the right woman, very dangerous, a man would give thirty thousand dollars, say, for that, boat rides into the right harbor, eh? Got to watch out, conquer your weakness for a ’ooman. Now, I meet a few women for tea and a little chat, nothing wrong, I swear by all that’s holy, your mo—h’m—but they protect him, worth the money—he might be running around, romantic, looking for an oasis. He said, ‘I’ll give up everything for you, take my money, I’ll marry you.’ Now this ’ooman might be, say, a Communist, she’d say, give it to the Party or give it to the Negroes, say, she had gone native, now you wouldn’t know that; it’s a romance, you love her, you do everything she says. Now that’s very dangerous. A man would give forty thousand dollars for that, so why not ten dollars to the Party? Natural, human. I see the human side. Now, if you taste women, I don’t say it’s right, but you got to watch out for your romantic nature; she isn’t romantic—in a love-affair always someone loves better than the other—it’s the man because he can throw away the money; then it’s better to taste women, because you don’t upset anything, you watch your step. You think, She can’t be worth all that. I’m not in favor of sophistication, mind. Now unless you know what to do and keep your money free, why it’s better not to meddle in something you have no talent for and my experience is, a lot of women have a talent for money—you are romantic and you give them five thousand dollars. Now, you’re romantic at present, and I don’t go near where the flesh is raw.

  “Now, let us talk about the present organization of society, for that is something your friends talk about, especially all the women at present. This dividing people into poverty and wealth is insane and will pass, no good counting on it. I am angry whenever I see some parasite like Delafield or Goodwin get inflated and say otherwise. I say to them, ‘You’re inflated because every moron nowadays is making money, and like you; must have a nation full of warblers singing O Sole Mio with throaty baritones before you can get a Caruso, so you must have a nation full of financial geniuses to get one real one; why, you’re just the male chorus, but you don’t know it, you all think you’re the one who fills in the holes in Caruso’s singing.’ Now there’s a boom, that is Caruso, and so they are all great singers.

  “Every idiot who last year was trying to get a job tipping over garbage cans and couldn’t make it, this year, he has a safe-deposit box, and he carries it there in valises; and next year or two, he’ll be getting strained eyes looking for a dropped nickel or a cigarette butt on the sidewalk, but he doesn’t know it—but today, like Goodwin, he’s a Napoleon of finance, a Mussolini. Now don’t listen to those boomtime men. They are carried on the wave and they say, ‘Look how I roll and shake the beach!’ But listen to me: what you see now will not be here in fifty years. Now, it’s a question, can you ride every wave and not think you are the big organ saying boom-boom, or are you a man to go and sit in his orchard and say, ‘I’ll just grow cabbages whatever happens’? Now, they won’t expropriate your cabbages, but you have to think if you want to spend fifty years waiting for the time when you’ll congratulate yourself because you have a home-grown cabbage soup.

  “I know my answer—if I were twenty or twenty-five, I’d go to the Soviet Union and say, ‘Make me a Commissar’; I’d make a good general, and I’d make a good Commissar for Textiles, and I can grow red, blue, yellow cotton. But it’s too late. So I recommend you to be a socialist, no fascist, because they have long memories and them fascists have no sense, burn up everything, produce nothing. You at least can produce cabbages. Produce cabbages if you can’t do anything else. Be constructive. That’s my idea. You will know how to farm. Never mind educational films. Cabbages never change. People always can eat cole-slaw, cabbage and corn-beef. Never invest in anything where the technical changes can rot your dollars: that’s God-given for monopolies. Don’t be a pioneer; monopolies grow rich off pioneers. This money world maybe goes on for your lifetime. Maybe I made a mistake. Then I have provided for Communism too, and given you an occupation suitable for it. Andrew is an artist; an artist looks like a nut but survives somehow, can live in an attic and live off cabbage soup, and next year, he buries them all, he’s a best-seller; no trouble: doesn’t need money. He doesn’t need property, he pulls it out of the air and beats the exchanges, no blocked currency up there. Not you.

  “Property is a woman, remember. Think of property every morning when you get up, otherwise she’ll run around in the daytime, and talk to the butcher boy. There is no law against it. They kidnap property every day, no law against it, it’s legal. Property is a woman. You do not leave a woman you want with your neighbor or your best friend or your cousin, for she becomes the woman of your cousin or best friend. If he doesn’t try to steal her, no credit to her. She’s there to be stolen. The whole thing in a nutshell. Now I don’t say woman to mean woman. A woman with property acts like a man. In property there are no s
exes. You can meet a rich woman but she is tougher than a man because she is angry: you see property in her; she wants to be liked for herself. Like me, too. Don’t blame her. Human nature always writes a brief and makes a plea, but it don’t win very often, property wins; and human nature doesn’t like that.

  “Like being married, property gives you a special viewpoint. You understand the law and society. One must manage property, though, and have a title to it, and have to fight for it, and have invested in it. You go with a woman and it is—one dollar, ten dollars, and good-bye: you don’t understand women. You marry a woman, buy her a house, install her—you live with her maybe five years—then you understand women. Now never mind that. You don’t like my friends. I want to expose my views to you. Don’t discourage crooks and yes-men and people trying to get your money. Take a woman, does she get mad with men who are trying to make her? It’s her business, it’s human nature, and it’s a compliment. Lead them on. There’s nothing to pay. They don’t expect a dividend: they only hope. Maybe sometime they’ll do you some favor, and you can do them some favor. If not, what do you lose?

  “Never go into the thing unless you want to: if you want to, go into it even if it looks bad. Don’t go into it, if it looks reasonable and yet you hate it. Don’t go into it with friends, only with people who don’t like you. Friends are a different sort, or they wouldn’t like you; the others are in the same game, your competitors, so they smelled it out, and are right. Only your competitors can show you your game.