I'm Dying Laughing

by Christina Stead

  Vittorio, roseate now and not hearing what she said to him, turned to her energetically and smiling, ‘You are magnificent, you have a magnificent chance. Very few are the humorists today. It is not a humorous age, though if incongruity is the soul of humour, there should be millions. But we live in an age of fear and fear is not funny. You laugh. In a time like this, you know how to laugh. How admirable! What a gift for humanity! But you must apply it to the day and for the workers. The world is full of incongruities, things difficult to explain. The humorist can explain them; he can cheer people up, they no longer feel contempt for humanity, for the world and for life; such things as lead to moral despair, moral and biological suicide. The ranks of our enemies are being filled every day by those leaving us, who can no longer cope with the terrors of the world; so they throw themselves into the arms of their enemies! Jail me, gag me, blind me, make me deaf! They will be decapitated physically as they already are in spirit and mind. What misery! But you laugh. Laugh my dear, charming child. Show people things are living, pulsating with life; and they won’t so easily join the others out of despair and fear. Think what there is in the new democracies; something we don’t know yet, joy and belief, a positive move forward. You can’t restrain them in their youthful eagerness, they bound with joy like puppies, they want to love and be severe and reform in love and severity. Perhaps they don’t show enough joy and life for us to see, but they are young. There are solemn children too, children who have destiny in them. We need people like you, Emily, among us. I see your humour is really you. There’s no boundary to your spirit and you can express this. America is a land of humorists with stout, rich, philosophical humour: you belong to a great race. How I admire this talent!’

  Emily was excited. She said,

  ‘Oh, those who go over to the enemy, it’s like climbing up the gallows-tree to get away from a bear, it’s like pulling the gravestone over your head for shelter from the gritty wind, it’s like escaping from a fire by jumping off the nineteenth storey and finding there’s no safety net—ha-ha-ha—’

  She was roaring with laughter, rosy pink, ‘Ho-ho-ho, I said that once, I threw a scare into them. I felt them shudder and roll towards me; I said, You will eat the spittle of a class that knows no pity and it will poison you.’ As Emily spoke habitually very loud, Vittorio was able to hear all she said; and at this he applauded, crying ‘That was magnificent. I wish I had heard your speech.’

  Emily now had to go to the kitchen and when she returned a dismal conversation had begun about American politics. She began to laugh,

  ‘Oh, the greenhorns! I only just found out what a capon is. Fernande was giving me her recipe for fat chicken or capon and I said, “Why that’s the same!” “Oh, no, Madame.” Poor Fernande! I wish you had seen her expression just now. She thought Madame had changed into le tailleuror le trailing-chiffon by this. Eh, bien, alors, tant pis, des Americains, quoi! She’s wonderful, Monsieur Vittorio. Even when we run out of everything, and we do owing to the disinterested attitude of Madame who is fabricating les bestsellers at fifty dollars la page and Monsieur, who is out trying to see what he can do for the working-class—’

  ‘Emily, you fool!’ said Stephen pleasantly from his throne. He always made himself a cradle or throne in his little armchair, by drawing up both legs, crossing them over the arms and displaying his handknitted wool socks. He had as usual cast away one shoe here, one there; from his pose he smiled at them all.

  Emily smiled roguishly and went on, ‘Even then our Fernande can run up a dinner of potage, veal with mushrooms, potatoes with chives, cauliflower with cheese sauce, the little cakes, the coffee, yum-yum. Is it possible, is it vraiment possible that Madame Howard will be able from now on to attend to la littérature?’

  ‘Probably because you allow her the bottom of the basket,’ said Suzanne.

  ‘Well, it seems Fernande has the most unusual number of relatives I ever heard of and all in the provision trades or the house-manicuring trades or windows mending or—well the lower branches those are, I guess.’

  Emily laughed, ‘Oh, well if we set our relatives to work the way the French do. Instead of getting hired help we’ll get Uncle Klotz to paint the house and Uncle Potz to build the shed and Aunt to scrub the floor—the rich like Stephen always do it.’

  Stephen said, ‘Well, naturally! Otherwise, what’s the point of going through the hell of being a rich son-of-a-bitch if you don’t put the halter on them and crack the whip! Sons-of-bitches, cousins, uncles, work for me!’

  Stephen was in an excellent temper now; and the evening went on and on about American ways and French ways. They had a good dinner, julienne soup, sole cooked with a sauce of mussels, oysters, mushrooms, large shrimps, little fried gudgeons and white wine, veal birds, vichy carrots, milk-fed lamb and French beans, and the usual desserts.

  During dinner Emily eagerly explained to Mernie Wauters and to Vittorio how they felt about their political ties at home.

  Stephen ate a little, murmured politely and looked occasionally out of the window. It was true that he and Emily had eagerly discussed what could be done with Vittorio. They considered he had already foreshadowed the promise of a vindication by the French, an association with the French Party, which would make their enemies in America bow their heads in shame and defeat; but that this would be a new beginning for Stephen too. He could perhaps become a consultant on American affairs for the French Party, become a well-known foreign journalist, totally reestablished, write for the American syndicated press. Perhaps Emily was right in talking about it right away. She was bold, ready and ripe; she would have made a first-class businessman. Born in Stephen’s setting she would not, like him, have gone in for any second-rate intellectual life, she would have gone out and made another million dollars for herself.

  Emily was now arguing with them about their cultural press. They wanted her to read Les Lettres Françaises, L’Humaniti.

  Her face had clouded, ‘There’s no real news in foreign newspapers. Stephen and I for our daily fodder, our morning fisticuffs, must have the home papers. We get the New York Times by plane and the New York Herald Tribune Paris edition. Why don’t you read them? They’re more informative and much better planned than the foreign press. It’s so old-fashioned. They fill the front pages with queer things here, studies of plants, or literature or Roman culture. Fooey! I want the news.’

  ‘She’s an old newshound; she hates culture,’ said Stephen.

  Emily said testily, ‘But I look for culture elsewhere, not in the daily newspaper and certainly not on the front page. A newspaper is for news. It was because I understood that, that I was a great success as a journalist. A newspaper is not culture or humanism or philosophy; it’s the news angled to strike your eye and amuse you, if possible. I hate all this wandering palaver; I can’t get anything out of it.’

  ‘Just a savage, excuse her,’ said Stephen, smiling.

  She looked black. She shouted, ‘Stephen! Go to hell! You couldn’t write an acceptable news-story to save your life. All you write are long, watered-down, philosophical and economic canting scriptures that don’t even express your own opinion. Fooey! I’d like myself to show the editors of L’Humaniti how to edit a paper in the modern American style. It would make them more readable, get up the circulation.’

  They then had an argument about the circulation of various workers’ papers. It turned out that European papers did astonishingly better than the American and British. Emily was beaten.

  ‘Oh, well, all right, all right. I suppose it’s suitable for a lot of old style horse-and-buggy era workers with out-of-date factory systems; but it doesn’t do them any good.’

  She began to shout, ‘They oughtn’t to be left there back in the past, with all this dead stuff. Workers read the newspapers wrapped round their lunch in between shifts and they’re too dog-tired to worry about philosophy whether pink, red or black. Think of the lives they lead. No fun. Not enough to eat. Can’t pay for the wife’s confinement and the
boy’s school books. A lot of academic intellectuals are trying to get off on them the old stuff they learned in college, so it won’t be wasted, so it will pay a dividend. Pages and pages of learned junk no one can follow. Give them pictures, snappy captions, title the paragraphs, lots of fetts diverses and people won’t think communists are a lot of dead monkeys. I mean extremists, conspirators full of academic bull. I mean like this Blanqui, Vittorio. Where did he get? Or people drinking blood, or sectarians or crazy fanatics or rabble-rousers or careerists trying to get ministerial jobs through the blood and broken bones of poor men, or even cheesy Utopians and a horde of ivory towers, long hairs and squares with a sort of religion, slinging slogans like old Russia at Eastertime.’

  This denunication made the guests, though not Stephen, who was embarrassed, laugh uproariously. Madame Suzanne said,

  ‘Why don’t you write it? You would make a wonderful speaker.’

  Vittorio declared, ‘But she does write like that, only you have not seen these wonderful books. These are the books I wish you to read. I must translate them for others, too. I have little time but I will devote myself to this, for we in Europe must know that there are other writers besides Hemingway, a silly writer about blood and battle, promoted by a snob sect, and Steinbeck, who is a poor writer and an ignorant man. Madame Emily has written a wonderful book called The Wilkes-Barre Chronicle, the story of a strike; and another very fine book called Johnny Appleseed. As well as this, she is a remarkable natural humorist. Humour cannot be manufactured. It comes from the marrow. She has also written a very funny book called Uncle Henry which was a great success on Broadway called Henry, There’s An Angel. It is very, very funny. I beg you to let me translate The Wilkes-Barre Chronicle, I will show it to you. You will see if it is in good enough French. You will see that I appreciate your genius, too, I hope.’ He bowed slightly.

  Emily was in a great state, blushing and exclaiming, ‘Oh, Vittorio, oh, of course, oh, Vittorio, what an honour!’

  Emily burst into tears, got up and went round to embrace Vittorio, kissing him on the cheeks, ‘Oh, Vittorio, how good you are. How beautiful and good! What a great heart! Oh, to say these things to me! Do you know the American Party despises The Wilkes-Barre Chronicle, I must hush-hush about it. They only want me—oh, never mind, never mind. They have a deep grudge against me because of Johnny Appleseed. I wrote about them and it sold only 5,000 and so I wasted the time I could have spent writing a best seller from which I could have given a cut to the Party. Yes, that is the truth,’ she said to Wauters.

  Wauters said, ‘Yes, I am sure it is. They are businessmen. Businessmen think that a bourgeois can only give money. But this is not true of people of genius. I am only a businessman; but our Party did not look upon me only in that light. I was to them an all-round man.’

  And he told them some of his experiences. Wauters’ wife had been in Dachau, himself in Schoenhausen but only at the end. ‘I knew I was being followed. This was the experience of everyone. As for joining the Resistance, one is terrified at first, suspects everyone, every passenger in the train, but eventually you get used to it and smart at knowing who is who. And then, at the end when you are being shadowed, again you suspect everyone, every car, every truck, every person outside the house—you understand, you’re like the paranoiacs. It can’t be helped. It’s a sort of relief in the end when they knock on your door.’

  He laughed, ‘I went into the local concentration camp and then to the south of France and in this camp I found a lot of gypsies who had been arrested, I can’t imagine why, except they arrested everyone who had any personal ideas or way of life. The gypsies had the worst conditions and also were terribly suspicious of camp conditions. They would not drink the camp water, would not eat the camp food. I spoke to them, I became their spokesman, as I speak both French and Romany—’

  ‘What?’ said Emily.

  ‘Yes, he speaks a good many languages, it’s a foible,’ said Madame Suzanne.

  ‘I induced them to use the camp faucets and beds, to make some demands as a group. They did not know a Nazi from a Resistant; they were suspicious of everyone.’

  Emily said, ‘And you all knew this dreadful form of living, camps, exile, terror? I talk of terror in the USA but so far all we’ve done is to finger-print a few aliens, move a few Japs and Germans.’

  Vittorio smiled, ‘As they say in the Bible, “As ye do it to the meanest of them, ye do it unto me.” When you fingerprint aliens, shut them in camps, you fingerprint yourself.’

  Emily said restlessly, ‘Yes, I know it’s so. We are guilty, Stephen, we’re guilty and we’re in terrible danger.’ She looked around at them, invited them to go into the next room and have coffee. She said discontentedly, ‘And you, too, Vittorio; you were in concentration camp. They caught up with almost everyone, didn’t they?’

  Vittorio took his coffee, leaned back, stirring it. He said, genially, ‘Do you really want to know what it was, the concentration camp?’

  When the two Americans assented, he said, in a crisp, telling voice, ‘The Germans, you know, became a nation of thieves, highwaymen. They stole flocks and herds, the contents of granaries, barns, warehouses, shops and mansions, wool, wheat, sheets, furs, pictures, china from the Sévres factory at St-Cloud; and art and learning; though they pretended to despise it. They also stole human labour. This is the explanation of many absurd arrests. I know. I was an educated man and spoke German as well, and they put me on the books. You know how they are finding out the final disposal, the eventual address of thousands of children and other waifs and strays of this last disaster? Through the account-books—I’m not joking. It was a question of calories, kilograms and grams of human resistance, the kind of flesh and fat. The nutrition problem they calculated was how long a man of a certain type and weight, fat, bone-structure, would keep working on a diminished provision of calories and vitamins. I saw the books of accounts. I am serious. A working-man, road-builder, factory worker, automobile engineer, weighing such and such, receiving 1800 calories a day would last so many months, when he would be good for nothing and sent to the gas chambers. A new type of efficiency. How long would they receive a profit in energy-units? Use up the surplus accumulated during a part-lifetime? Their food was always insufficient. When the detainees and deportees came into camp, they would treat them in an ordinary, official style. Who is sick? Who is well? It was pathetic to see old people hold up their hands tremblingly, in a weak voice say, “I am sick.” “What is wrong?” “I have such-and-such.” These people would immediately be sent to the gas chambers. Then the well ones would be examined. Any really well would be asked, “What work do you do?” Any specialists were given that work. A man like myself, an intellectual (I was a lawyer, I did nothing useful, so they sent me to the factory to work on the line), an intellectual who knew no profitable work, nothing that could produce a genuine profit for their system, was set to work if he could do it; and if he was inefficient, his diet was gradually reduced until he had given out all his surplus and then he was packed off to die. Fortunately I had not only strength but a certain physique which resists. I eventually became a straw-boss and got a little more food; and then, because I knew five languages and accountancy, I was put in the office. That was not common. That was how I saw the accounting system. I worked on it. Each man and woman was calculated as an animal or even as a production unit, utilizing his spare fat and energy. That gone, that stolen, he was killed. You understand? Of course there was more accountancy to it than that. A certain amount would be allotted to each camp manager. Naturally there was a lot of graft. In the first place, the commandant or manager cultivated the fields round the camp, as well as he could, to feed the camp, to reduce his costs and to sell outside to the town or village for a profit. He naturally starved the camp to sell outside. These fields were arranged around the camp almost like the fields of share-croppers and serfs around the ancient manor. The unpaid workers, the concentration-camp people, worked these fields as long as they cou
ld. There were always new workers arrested to take their place when they failed. Indeed it was like the chain-gang system in the southern USA, where negroes are arrested to fill new contracts for labour.’

  He said all this cheerfully, speaking of things known, to people who knew them. ‘You must always keep in mind, not the horrors, the barbarities, the inexpressible savagery, and not the sadism and madness, but the meaning of this system—unmitigated stupid barbarous plunder. To plunder the earth and mankind while giving no return. A system without a future but bad and bitter for the enslaved, the overrun.

  ‘Perhaps my knowledge of languages, perhaps, of course, my society connections—I managed to survive long enough, two or three years, that is, to graduate as an examiner in the machine-shop, for which I got a few more calories daily, though not sufficient. Then I was sent to the office; I got a little more. There were some from my class, who had eaten as well as I, who, because of their physical constitutions, faded away like wax in the fire before this conscientious malnutrition. It was luck. I was not then a member of the Party. The notion that I was of no use to anyone and that my profession was really superfluous came home to me.’

  He laughed equably. ‘My father wanted me to be a lawyer: I became one. I’d wanted to be something else, but I did not want to upset my father. And because I hated criminal law, I stuck to society cases, harmless enough I thought. But of no value to society, harmless—’ he laughed gloriously; ‘now you see I have reformed. The intellectual always feels semi-skilled, as Madame Howard says. And people think that of him too. Unless he is active in society too. And so we have the Renaissance man.’

  Stephen had listened to this with discontent and gloom, though he nodded his head.

  ‘You’ve had doomsday. We haven’t had ours. Have we got to go through that too? Is it necessary? Capitalism they say is revolutionary.’