I'm Dying Laughing: The Humourist

by Christina Stead

  She opened the book, determined to learn something from it.

  Stephen later shrieked at her from above, ‘Come and look at the mail with me. What am I going to do about this—about that? Do you know what laundry cost us last month? What is all this dress-making? Do you know what Christy’s tutors are costing, I mean what I don’t dare charge the estate? And all to play up to Uncle Maurice, who never glances our way. Why did you draw on the account like that?’

  In spite of Stephen’s getting up, running about upstairs and shouting and banging on the wall, she read on. This is what I should be doing, she thought. Dreiser is stupid, dull, his language is Teutonic, but Dreiser is powerful, dramatic, overwhelming; it’s because he’s honest. He’s overcome by humble human tragedy and he doesn’t care who knows he is. He’s awestruck by riches, that’s true—not me; but he’s awestruck by human nature, too; and so am I; but he’s cold, penetrating and suffering, humane, an adult. All I can do is to try to squeeze out belly-laughs and horse-laughs. Oh, my! As he says, ‘I am a mental and moral coward.’ Me, Clyde Griffith.

  Stephen banged on the top steps, ‘Where is the rest of the mail? Marie-Jo says a cable came from New York. Is it the play? Is it our book? Come here! Answer me!’

  Emily called out, ‘My God! What is the matter? Let me work!’

  ‘Will they, or won’t they produce the damn thing?’

  ‘Go away! Let me work. How can I work? We live on my work.’

  ‘Good God! Are we bankrupt or not? Do you know what cash we have in the bank? Where’s the statement? I’ve a desk full of bills. Didn’t you pay anything? Are the servants paid? Here are three blue papers from bailiffs all come this week,’ Stephen said in a lamentable scream.

  ‘Oh, heavens, who could work in this?’ said Emily opening the door. There he was in his pyjamas, yellow-faced and drawn, one sock on, papers in his hand, his blue eyes sunken.

  ‘Where’s the mail? Did the agent write? What’s happening?’

  Emily came out and said, sobbing, hanging on to her husband, ‘Dreiser is surely one of the few novelists in the world, except you, my darling—you could do a thing like this—’

  ‘Stop boohooing, stop your damn bunk—where’s the rest of the mail? Where are the bank statements?’

  ‘Oh, Stephen, to choose such a doomed soul! Listen, Stephen! Like us, perhaps! He makes you feel it is like us. Absolutely without a single redeeming trait, betraying all and each, and himself, leading himself to doom, a worm, a victim, a sponge, a cringer, an unspeakable bit of human dust, dust before he’s dust, mud before he’s mud and for this wretched bit of human being, like us, like me at least—to show this severe terrible compassion—such compassion, oh, is terror, terror.’ She shuddered, ‘Oh, I feel so cold, such terror—suppose we were all to be shown up like that; and yet,’ she said, straightening and looking at him with red face and brimming eyes, ‘that is art, never would I ask for another sort of sentence from the most compassionate judge! Never for the dreamstuff. He says, Here is the remorseless, logical, inescapable doom he brought on himself and the twentieth century brought on him and America brought on all. He is not, I am not, sorry for myself, or Dreiser or Clyde or us—yes, I am. Behold his unspeakable suffering, so puny, so unworthy, his, the tragedy of the century, the century of the common man, so common, so wretched.

  ‘Eh? Splendid! Terrible! Oh, Stephen, I have made a mistake. This is what I should have done. All this is no good! It is not good, this house, these servants, Christy and Anna and Olivia and Fairfield and Maurice—all wrong. I have made a terrible, irreparable mistake. For I, like Clyde, will end with worn, wretched, horrid little dreams! All for nothing! Our play is rejected! My book is not taken! Nothing is taken! It is all for nothing. I have sold out for nothing.’

  Stephen looked at her earnestly, took her back to her chair, ‘I have a poor raving lunatic for a wife! Do you mean we’re ruined? What has Dreiser to do with it? If you’d written like Dreiser, who never had a baked bean to his name and not a principle either, we’d be even worse off. Pull yourself together. What have you been taking? Let me see those letters.’

  He read the letters and began to get excited himself, ‘What! A fine agent!’ He walked up and down fuming. ‘I’m going to cable him. We’re ruined. How are we going to eat?’

  ‘My God, this morning, you spoke of going to Italy and said we had money enough to last.’

  Stephen shouted, walking up and down and looking at her blackly, ‘I was counting in the play and the book. This upsets all my calculations. We can’t live another three months with all our crazy expenses and now Christy’s moving to Suzanne’s and paying all his own expenses, we lose even that advantage; and the miserable hypocrite, flannel-mouthed humbug is getting stiff-lipped with me; Florence wrote him such and such. My God, in a family like ours, if the poor can’t live off the rich, where are we? What’s the point of family loyalty?’

  Emily said, ‘Let’s move to an apartment. I’m giving up everything for apples of Sodom.’

  ‘Our only excuse for having Christy is that we supervise him. I didn’t even want him to move to Suzanne’s. Those two, Jean-Claude and Suzanne can now do whatever they like with him. And now there is this third tutor, Monsieur Laroche. You know what Christy is, a miserable little constricted mind, narrow as a sardine, self-righteous while pretending to be humble: don’t I know it? Like me. We finally got the family into the habit of seeing Christy with us, one of us. Now it’s ruin. Listen Emily—this journal you write. Publish it, if it’s readable. You read books and waste time as if we were millionaires. You can make money—you’ve got to. The little bit I make on this damn currency-running, I hate it, I do it to hold my end up—it isn’t what you can make with one damn movie script. You’ve got to make money while we’re in this terrible situation. I’m away from my country, I have no contacts here but rogues and ambiguous people, I’m helpless. It wasn’t I who wanted to fly from my country and live abroad, cousin to a traitor, but a thin-blooded cousin—I am a traitor, not to take my country and all that goes with that pill.’

  They screamed and quarrelled. Emily said, ‘I’ll get dressed. Let’s go to the movies. We can’t go on like this. You know, Stephen, we love each other. Let’s break up this terrible scene. We’ve got into a situation comedy or what they call comedy in the USA, husband and wife throttling each other.’

  But before they were ready to go the telephone rang and their old friend Axel Oates spoke. He had come from the Far East, was on his way to Eastern Germany, and had passed through Paris only to see them. Ruth was with him. She was not going with him to Germany but to Fiesole, where a friend of hers had a rented villa. She would stay there till Axel returned to France, on his way home to America. Axel congratulated Stephen on being back in Paris and asked them if they would like to go out that evening. They had cooking arrangements in the little attic apartment a friend had lent them, but they would eat out.

  ‘I like it and I know you hate the idea of anyone being up from dawn in the kitchen—’

  ‘Ugh—yes,’ said Emily, flushing and trying to think when she had said this to them.

  ‘Old friends, going out on a Saturday evening, to a riverside rump-steak and french fried joint; but it won’t be like that.’

  ‘Well, sure, we’re glad. I haven’t been out of the house for weeks; the prisoner wife.’

  They were to meet at La Regence in the rue du Theatre Francois. Emily and Stephen were cheered, Emily because La Regence had a famous restaurant and Stephen because he longed for a good talk with a man who knew the world situation, a first-rate political journalist. ‘God, it’s been years,’ said Stephen.

  ‘What about Vittorio and Suzanne? You have them.’

  ‘Oh, that’s like having a pipeline to the universe. I want someone who knows who’s running for governor in Nebraska. To think that only two years ago I knew the name of every political punkin in every county of the USA. Now my head’s useless lumber. I don’t need it for what I’ve come
to.’

  ‘Fancy the Regence! They must have sold a book! Or a series of articles, I suppose. But to whom? They’re dead ducks in the States.’

  ‘A decent meal and plenty of good talk, that’s what it means to me. They’ll survive: they know how to.’

  ‘Oh, we’re so miserable, my poor darling. I am going to drink and drink; don’t stop me. After all, it is not at our expense and we’ve given them enough dinner parties and Christmases and we had them there for a month.’

  As she was dressing in the black and white hound’s-tooth suit, the only thing she could now wear, though she had reduced her weight a little, she began to laugh.

  ‘I hope it won’t be like the Wauters.’

  ‘How could it be?’

  ‘Oh, all married people are frightful when you go in a foursome. But I feel they love us and we love them. They still believe in us. That makes them totally original.’

  ‘All married people of any kind are frightful; only old maids, hermits and eunuchs are interesting,’ said Stephen.

  ‘Suzanne is interesting alone.’

  ‘Not to me. In you there is still a lot of the night-court reporter. That’s where she belongs. Suzanne would have been better as an old maid who made a mistake and is covering up. As it is she’s like an old maid but a spoiled one. I hate her. I hate teachers and heroes and do-gooders. And there’s something particularly dull about Suzanne. She has no sex appeal.’

  ‘How mean you are,’ said Emily laughing. They kissed. Presently they went out, leaving Olivia and Giles with Marie-Jo, Fernande and the porter. Emily said they should have had Suzanne over. Dear Anna would not approve of the child’s being left avec la valetaille.

  ‘With the what?’

  ‘The menials.’

  ‘Oh, I’ll send her home if she’s going to be an albatross round our necks.’

  ‘And now the Oateses are going to see us as we now are. Not the good little reds we were in America. Perhaps they’ll think us boring too?’ Emily said.

  ‘You are a public danger, a monster, a terror, but never a bore, if a bore, well, the sort that has never been seen before; and so a phenomenon. If they don’t like my phenomenon, they can sit on a tack.’

  In the taxi Emily kissed him. ‘Oh, what a blessing to leave the worm-eaten chateau and all its worms. Yes, Suzanne begins to pall on me too; whatever pall means. It sounds like a funeral wrap.’

  The taxi put them down in a few minutes on the pavement next to La Regence. The Oateses were not there. It was very cool and, after waiting a few minutes, they had a whisky and a sherry. Emily said, ‘Oh, you pay Stephen. I want another and I can’t wait.’

  The restaurant was brightly lighted, cosy, expensive and already had rich young Americans eating there. Some people were playing chess at the back; others were eating the snacks for which the place was famous.

  ‘My God—the snacks! That is why they brought us here,’ said Emily in a fright.

  But the Oateses came up at this moment with Daniels, a famous American journalist, whom they had known in Connecticut and an assistant who worked on his paper with him, Evelyn. Evelyn, about thirty-eight, short, plump and eager, was a hard-working journalist, the born link between parties, people and even nations. She was a fresh, country-bred woman, looking quite girlish. She was plainly dressed in suit and soft blouse, with her hair loose. She had handsome, oval blue eyes and a soft, burring voice. Daniels (called Dan), a lively, sociable man, but at first quiet in any company, had been very ill, and was now convalescing. Evelyn and some other devoted women had done all his work for him during his absence, going to Paris, Mexico City, Rome and other places to make his contacts and get articles. Dan was a widower.

  The Howards showed rejoicing on meeting old acquaintances; but they were embarrassed. Some letters had told them that Dan had denigrated them, denounced them, ‘stabbed them in the back’. But who knew? New York and other cities where there were many radicals, liberals and men of good will, were then fermenting, hotbeds of suspicion, fear, doubt and error. The three men were having a tremendous talk; Evelyn paid polite attention to Emily but chimed in with all that Dan said; she was of course his lieutenant. Ruth and Emily exchanged friendly chat and Ruth was always calm and agreeable, but for the first time Emily felt out of it, like a suburban housewife sitting with ‘the women’ while the men discussed politics.

  ‘I don’t know a damn thing about upstate elections,’ she said laughing.

  ‘Oh, let them talk. They’re cute,’ said Ruth.

  Axel was a teetotaller and Dan was off liquor on account of his ulcers, and Stephen, suffering severely, was drinking Vichy water. Evelyn preferred tomato juice. Emily and Ruth, sitting alone like two old soaks, said Emily, drank their double whiskies and waited. Axel had with some difficulty made a short trip to China and wanted to return when he could.

  ‘I’d like to go myself, but then of course, you’re kosher, friend of the left, they wouldn’t let me in under the rope,’ said Stephen bitterly.

  ‘We’d like to go but we’ve got our plans for several years ahead,’ said Evelyn, and was going on when she looked at Dan and stopped. ‘You are sitting in a draught, dear,’ she said, and turned to the women; ‘He will wear his light overcoat although it is getting colder. Dan, you must begin to wear your winter things. Wear your coat now.’

  ‘But then when I go out I’ll catch cold,’ said Dan, a little warily. He liked women’s attentions but always presented himself as a healthy, outdoor man.

  ‘It’s dreadful, really dreadful to make us all worry. You should have worn your winter coat,’ said the assistant sweetly and drew back in her chair, trying to control herself, anxious to show their intimacy, anxious not to irritate Dan. She said softly, ‘He’s afraid he’ll look ridiculous. Why everyone here knows that there are plenty of sick people, and people who were deported and just returned. Who looks?’ She laughed like an awkward niece, from embarrassment. ‘Such vanity!’ She looked at him with patient fondness, out-of-place clinging.

  Emily looked at him with bright, unamiable eyes, about to burst into laughter.

  Dan coughed. Evelyn shook herself nervously.

  ‘You coughed! You see! Try not to cough! It’s a habit.’

  ‘But it tickles me,’ said Dan.

  Urged by Evelyn, he found some pills in his pocket and took one. Axel said that now they might go. He had picked out a nice little restaurant not far away.

  Evelyn said, ‘Oh, it’s raining, what shall we do?’

  Take a taxi.’

  ‘Oh, we’ll walk,’ said Ruth, ‘it’s only a sprinkle.’

  Axel said, ‘You’ll like this restaurant, it’s in this quarter, in a side street, a real people’s restaurant where Paris itself eats, and at the same time, good cooking. The man’s a born cook. I thought you’d like it.’

  ‘Oh, I know it,’ said Evelyn. ‘It’s unique, isn’t it, Dan? Friends from L’Humanite and Ce Soir often go there and the man has not raised his prices. He gives a set meal for one hundred francs and the daily special is as low as seventy-five francs and at the same time you can get pate de foie gras truffe, roast chicken, cooked before an open fire, right in the room where you sit—there is only one room and the kitchen—and as for snails, Dan is very fond of them—Burgundy snails—this man is a gem, a genius with snails, his sauce is one of the best in Paris, Dan says. I don’t know. I’m not a gourmet, but Dan is. Well, in short, anything from the plainest to the tastiest, he has all—of course in a modest setting, so that you don’t feel you’re paying for the décor—well, you’ll like it. It’s just what you’d like, Emily. It’s true Paris and you must feel very much at home here now.’

  Emily was encouraged by the truffled foie gras and the roast chicken. ‘Ah, well anything like that. We’ve never been to a place like that though we’ve been in Paris for so long. Well, I guess it would be interesting. La vie, eh?’

  Evelyn said, ‘But it’s raining, isn’t it? Wouldn’t it be better to stay here this eveni
ng?’

  ‘Oh, no the rain’s stopped and it’s just a few blocks.’

  They set off. Stephen walked with Dan, Axel with Evelyn and Emily and Ruth together. Ruth, a husky, good-natured New Yorker who had been everywhere with Axel and before meeting Axel had travelled much on her own, said ‘I don’t care where or what we eat. Do you? As long as it’s fun and the men are along. Food without men is no food; there’s no taste.’

  Emily laughed, ‘Hooray! Put out the flags! Yes, I hate to eat with women. Look in a restaurant that has no men and it’s a bad restaurant. I guess sex and taste go together.’

  They were now all in considerable good-humour. At a street-crossing Evelyn had changed places in order to steer Dan out of drips from gutterings, awnings, cornices and lampposts. They presently turned into a long narrow lane which Stephen said he knew; ‘It leads to the marché St-Honore.’

  They found he didn’t know. Then with Axel sure of himself and Ruth stopping every few doors and saying, ‘It’s here,’ they at last arrived at the place in the rue de la Sourdiere. It was a very small, ill-lighted place with two dirty plate-glass windows across which muslin curtains were drawn, the menu on the door in violet ink. Evelyn piloted Dan to the back of the room saying, ‘He will be warmer here.’

  ‘What’s the name of the restaurant?’ said Emily.