I'm Dying Laughing (13 page)

‘Sleep! When our futures and our souls, I mean that word, it’s all we have that’s worth fighting for—we’ve got to think this thing through. We can’t sleep anyway.’

‘I could if you’d let me. I’ve got you; my children are with me; I have no other wants. I don’t want to have ideas. Ideas are civil war. Let us drown our ideas, Emmie. Let’s live in a friendly fug. I’m sick of it.’

‘In the first place, what are we fighting about, Stephen? Let’s get that clear. We’re mixed up. We like New York, but you want us to stay here and make a fortune in the movies, so that Dear Anna and Florence the Fuzzy and your English Uncle Shongo—‘

‘I have no Uncle Shongo!’ he squealed.

‘Your English Uncle Mungo and Uncle Cha will see you are not a failure; you, too, can make money. I don’t mind being a failure because my people remain in the mud of time; but you do. I’m from
hoi polloi
and you’re from hoity-toity—‘

‘Stop it! Was there ever such a fool! I married a clown!’

‘Anyway, for some reason, we’ve got to believe in MGM and the mistakes of the left.’

‘Goddamn it, they are not mistakes. Who are you and I—‘

‘For myself, the writers like what I write when I like what I write; but the agents don’t and you don’t and even—but leave certain names out of this shameful story. If I write the way I like, it’ll be poverty for us; not this monogrammed sheet, but mended shoes and tattered pants and not enough vitamins; and that’s not fair to the kids.’

‘We’re not philanthropists. It’s theory and practice for everyone in the world, except the unquestioning and thankless rich—lucky dogs! You don’t want our kids to grow up like Clem Blake’s, eating out of cans with many a fly twixt the can and the lip.’

‘Golly!’ she laughed: ‘I guess they’ll grow up, too.’

‘If they don’t die of botulism.’

‘I thought that was from botflies.’

‘What are botflies?’

‘It shows I’m a farmer’s daughter. Well, they’ll grow up, too.’ She sighed. ‘Oh, well, what the hell! Maybe the oral hygiene and the handmade shirts are just hanky-panky. Maybe that’s no way to raise heroes of labour.’

‘I don’t want to live with heroes of labour,’ he said pettishly. ‘I’ve seen lots of them. Starvation and struggle are no good for the soul; nor the stomach. What are we fighting for? Not to make people like the workers are now. Good grief! I had a “love the worker” phase; but I wasn’t sincere. I walked along working-class streets and saw their stores and their baby-carriages and hated ’em. I wouldn’t raise anyone to be like them. Why are the French so revolutionary? Because of their good cooking and good arts of life. And what the devil—you can make money, so make it! If we starved, it would be a whim, the whim of the rich. Why should we starve? You’ve only got to do two days’ work and we’ll be in for $30,000. It’s a whim and a selfish one to throw that kind of money back in the studio’s face and talk about art and poverty and your soul. And if you’re a red, you ought to show you’re one just
because
you can come out on top; so they can’t say it’s grousing. You ought to be a shining—red—light. The rest is just moral filth, mental laziness and infantile behaviour. You want to be back in Tacoma, the schoolgirl who read through Shakespeare once every year, and dreamed about making a noise as a great writer. Fooey! You know I hated Princeton. Well, one of the reasons was, I spent my time trying to live up to the noble secular trees and noble secular presidents. I starved myself trying to live on what I thought a poor scholar would live on; and fancied my parents admired me for spending so little. Rich imbeciles like me think there’s something mystic, some intellectual clarity and purification of the soul in sobriety, austerity and poverty. I got over that. Now anyone can keep me, my family, you—‘ he said bitterly, ‘or Christopher or my son.’

‘Christopher is your son,’ she said.

‘My lazy vampirism feeds on my nearest and dearest: I gnaw their white breasts.’

‘Oh, Stephen,’ she wailed, ‘oh, don’t say that. I love you. Don’t say those things. If I have a vulgar streak which enables me to make more money than you, aren’t I, in those moments, like your moneymaking grandfathers that you despise? And I feel I’m tanned like a tanned rhino hide: I’m secretly afraid you’ll leave me and get some decent woman who never sold out. Despise me; but don’t despise yourself, Stephen. What else am I working and selling out for? You’re my whole life, my
rayzon d’ayter.
If we haven’t got each other, we’ve got nothing. Our life is so hideous. With each other, we can work it out, we can hope. Otherwise, what has it all been for? You gave up millions, I gave up my hopes, dreams and ideals; and our hearts are being squeezed dry.’

‘You’ve made me better than I was,’ said Stephen. ‘First out of Princeton, I used to hang around with those wistful, carping critics of the critics’ group. I was young and stupid and I think I still am. I hated those arty people, Emily—all—with the bitterest hate of envy; and then I took up Marxism because I thought it gave me a key they didn’t have; it raised me above them. I got out of the grovelling mass in the valley and felt the fresh air blowing on me; but it was all selfish—‘

‘It was NOT,’ roared Emily, ‘don’t be crazy!’

‘Yes, it was. They seemed to get women without even trying.’

‘Jee-hosaphat! Did you want to get women?’ She began to laugh, rolling about on the bed and looking at him with her red and yellow face, surrounded by loose fair hair. Her face was made for laughter—a pudgy comic face with deep lines only when she laughed, the deep lines of the comic mask. ‘Oh, Stephen! And you so beautiful! Why on earth you picked a puttynose, a pieface like me—‘

‘A what?’

‘I look as if some slapstick artist just threw a custard-pie in my puss—’

‘Don’t insult the woman I love!’

‘And those freckles remind me of the oatmeal in a haggis—‘

‘You’re the most beautiful woman I ever had in my life, that’s all. It’s the beauty of the mind—‘

‘Oh, if we could wear the mind inside out! I don’t get it. You’re fascinating, Stephen.’

‘Well, the only women who go for me are those who wriggle down to the platform after meetings and ask me to explain. You know what that fellow in the bistro in Paris said to his son that day? “Don’t fret son, study cats. The females always go for the ragged, bleary-eyed, whiskery, dirty old torn with cobwebs on his eyebrows.”’

‘But is it true?’

‘I envied them all,’ said Stephen sourly, ‘and you provide the final revenge against them. You’re so wonderfully, truly, profoundly potent and you’re nothing like them. They were so genteel; they wouldn’t be caught in an enthusiasm: the sad little band of
nil admirari.
I had my intellectual revenge when I studied a few scraps of Marxism too. I learned they stood for nothing. They, if they learned a bit, they dropped out halfway. They married a bit of money, a schoolteacher with cheques appeal, took a house in a restricted suburb; no Jews, Irish or Italians, they’re all too enthusiastic. They begin to owe money and have plenty of nothing; they get sleek and terribly bright and wise—and so terribly empty. There’s nothing to prevent them jumping off Brooklyn Bridge right now. Because only an idea and a belief can prevent you doing that.’

‘Oh, well, who the hell cares for them? You got out.’

‘Yes, but they’ve no doubts. I employed a poor scholar, a tailor’s son, to teach me Marxism: the old noble getting out an insurance policy against the revolution! You’re real. I knew right off you were a genuine person, a wise and rich woman, strong and meaningful.’

‘How did you know that?’

‘That awful dress you wore!’

‘Stephen!’ she cried, blushing; ‘and you always said you loved it.’

‘So I did and I do. I made you keep it forever. I love it. The vines and the grapes and the flowers—‘

‘Stephen! I did think it was lovely and warm,’ she added thoughtfully. ‘I loved it too. I still don’t think it’s awful. Of course, dear Florence wouldn’t have—‘

‘Don’t spoil it. And the story you told me of your growing up and the things that happened to you! The man in the house that fell down when you were in it: Jimmy—the man who rented out condemned buildings and introduced you to Donne—well, I never met such people. And then the rotten men—whom I understood, with all my failure, better than you. It all showed me the depth of life and love and passion and ability that could be. And lacking just one thing, the ability to be warped.’

Emily said nothing.

‘I felt so cut off from the rest of mankind and you bridged that for me. I felt I was still up in that hospital in the snow slopes and pines, where I was cut off for three years. But I know I’m down on earth again when I’m with you. And I live for you,’ he said obstinately, ‘and only for you. Would I live for myself? You don’t like me to say that; but I must. I want to call it out, to shout it out. I thirst for what you give me. My life drives me into sterility; I can’t give and nothing bears for me. But you did.’

Emily turned about restlessly. ‘You mustn’t say that. I told you not to. It makes me feel ill. Suppose I died? Anyone can die.’

‘Don’t say that, please.’

‘All right. But you mustn’t found your life on one person. It’s dreadful. You throw yourself on another person’s back and bear them down. They bow right down to earth with weeping and sobbing for you and them. You kill them. The feeling’s unspeakable. I’ll die.’

Stephen laughed. ‘Well, that’s me though. Too bad. You must live for something. I think I’m lucky. A lot of those men I knew had nothing to live for and now they’re slipping along a moral skid row. They’re looking sideways furtively at the milestones. I guess the only thing that stops them putting their heads in the gas oven is that all they’ve got is an infra-red grill. I know what I’m living for: for you. For anything you live for. I don’t care what it is.’

‘That’s fabulous. I won’t have it,’ said Emily angrily.

‘Perhaps I could be different in another society. I wonder. But I think a bad man, a real bastard but a strong villain, would be better for you than me. At least, he wouldn’t pretend to be an intellectual or a moral hero and take up your time and waste your affections.’

‘Oh, I don’t know what to do,’ said Emily frantically. ‘I’ll give you a beating. It’s more than I can stand. I’m going mad. You’re killing me.’ She threw herself from side to side as if avoiding bees. ‘I’m burning. Don’t, don’t, don’t!’ She threw herself at him. ‘Stop it, do you hear me! It makes me feel desperate. I’ll burst.’

She jumped out of bed, opened a small drawer in the dressing table, and he at once snapped, ‘What are you doing? Taking some of those damn pills?’

‘I’ve got to calm down. How can I work tomorrow? And I’ve got a lecture in the evening.’

‘What lecture?’

‘Adult education.’

‘That’s it, that’s it! Your whole life is filled with giving, doing, I’m nothing but a barnacle on the wheel of progress.’

She jumped back into bed and kissed him furiously, all over face, neck, hair, chest, arms. Then, she lay back and began to reason. ‘This life doesn’t suit you, Stevie. It’s a gambling, race-course crazy life for touts and bums, not for you. You’re a scholar and should live in peace. This double or nothing, boom or bust scares you and nauseates you. Your attitude towards money, so different from mine, is disturbed in this mad Hollywood carnival. You respect money. You shouldn’t. Fancy respecting the filthy reeking stuff. I don’t respect it. To me it’s not part of a highly organized respectable society, the just reward of pioneering valour; nor a medal pinned on the virtuous starched bosom. To me there’s just as much virtue in skid row, or as little. Moneymaking is gangdom, grab or someone else will. Of course, you’re right too. It’s the high established church of our great land. Lincoln said, “As a nation of freemen we must live through all time, or die by suicide.” Suicide! Oh, God! A great nation cutting its throat! Could it really happen? As long as the razor is of gold and the noose of amethyst—‘

‘A country can’t die,’ said Stephen indignantly. ‘We can, the poor lice on its hide, but thank God the country can’t die. If I thought it could, I’d die of empty horror. Do you know the story that has haunted me since I was a boy?
The Man Without a Country
.’

‘But that’s bamboozle.’

‘I think I can even understand the cranks and crooks who are put out of Russia and write lies for bread. They want to be noticed; they’re Russians too. It’s the infant screaming for its mother.’

‘Don’t waste your sympathy,’ she said drily.

‘I suppose it’s envy too,’ he conceded. ‘They’re best sellers; though it’s a nasty, mean way to make a fortune, running down your country. I know you don’t believe I am as good as that. I couldn’t write a book that would sell, in any terms. So I ought to be out earning a living and giving you the chance you want.’

‘I wish I could,’ said Emily, thoughtfully and gently. Then she began to fire up, ‘I’d like to write a book about the revolutionary movement, the way I see it and what’s wrong with it. Here we have the greatest organization for socialism in the western world. Look at the size of the labour union movement! A state within the state. When it says, “Go”, we go; when it says, “Stop”, we stop. Organized millions of conscious workers: what would the early socialists have said to that? The millennium! Though, it’s not. But isn’t it a great big poster saying, “It can be done!” Or is it already too late? Are there too many labour opportunists, too many finks and goons? I’d like to write this book. I’m dumb enough to think it would be good. But who would print it? We would all of us end up in the railroad wreck and not a single finger lifted to take the engine off our neck.’

‘You could do it,’ said Stephen without force; ‘but you’d get nowhere. I ought to build fires under your ambition. It only shows the kind of punk I am. But I’m representative. You could have me for one of the characters; a clay figure covered with the fine patina of soft living, a radical, arguing man, busy with top secrets and who’s who in Washington, soft-shoeing in the antechambers of the lobbies of Congress, a radical dandy, dispensing the amenities of another caste, paying his way into the labour movement, following a boyish dream; take the underdog along with you to the White House; heel, sir, heel: misinterpreting everything to suit the silk-lined dream and with laughable ineffectiveness exhorting a stone-deaf working class out of the blind alley of pork-chop opportunism to lead them down the blind alley of rigid righteousness. For what have we to offer them? Something we don’t believe in ourselves; socialist austerity and puritan-ism for the better building of steel mills.’