I'm Dying Laughing (27 page)

Cousin Charlotte said, ‘Are you really? Oh, how wonderful, oh, how good for all of you! Oh, I shall come and visit you. The five years of war have been nothing but a waiting period. We have all missed Paris so much. And there is London. Dear battered London. And even Brussels. Do you know I once played in Brussels, Emily? Oh, shall we all meet there next spring?’

The talk continued. Charlotte wailed fashionably, ‘Yes, but what am I to do? I’m so poor. I won’t ask Mother to keep me. I must get a job. I really must, Dr Coriolis. But it must be something in the theatre. That was my job with the troupe. I organized theatre.’

A discussion started, some saying, How could anyone go back to Europe with the danger, uncertainty and shortages and revolution around the corner? Dr Coriolis said that there were dilemmas. For instance, though he himself had had to run away, if he went back, he would find enemies who would blame him; and then the gulf of experiences and years between him and those who had stayed would be too great. Some friends had been Nazis, come collaborators, some in the Resistance, some passive and glad to survive ‘like the Abbe Sieyes’; and some, like the English, out of it, except for the bombings, the mute dread and death.

But Stephen said Silvermine, their Washington friend, had proved that fewer had died in England from bombings than from motor accidents on the bad English roads with the feebly powered English cars, ‘they boil over on a 1 in 8 gradient.’

Emily laughed and said enthusiastically, ‘And think of the young people who died in the army and the bombings, who will never die in childbirth, from bad English medicine, from lack of sulphur drugs, from corrr’nry thrombosis, canc’rrr, advanced arrthritis and the diseases of old age. Dr Park was telling me about old age. It’s the worst disease of all, so think of the statistics saved on that alone. After all they had to die sometime, it just bunched the statistics.’

Dr Coriolis laughed, while cousin Charlotte looked frightened.

Emily cried, ‘Heirs and murderers waiting for fortunes would agree with me—and why, it reduces the murder rate. Think of the murderers who died and of their victims who won’t be murdered.’

‘Because they were,’ said Stephen.

‘But think of the injury to health and the genocide,’ said Dr Park, feeling ashamed because he had laughed, too.

‘What’s that—genocide?’ said Emily.

‘Killing off a race, as the Nazis did: and preventing people from having children. And other things—American soldiers in hospital suffering from social diseases either ruin the maternal chances of clean women, or themselves may never become fathers. Syphilis and other diseases, like tuberculosis were almost ceasing to be plagues; now they are raging. All this has genocidal tendencies. The USA won’t feel it, we have suffered so little.’

Emily said roughly, ‘So what do we care? We will survive and work out our destiny. We don’t want Europe on our backs. Let them die and genocide. Russia can take care of herself. It won’t make any difference to Asia. And the American soldiers who were infected, let them stay over there and infect foreign women. We don’t want them either. What do these plagues and epidemics and the wars mean? It’s nature protecting us. It’s the balance of nature. We breed too fast anyway. There isn’t enough to eat in the world anyway. If anyone gets a disease or a woman can’t have children, it’s because they’re unfit anyway. Let them all stay over there till no one is alive but the fit and clean. Look at the Black Death! A lot died, but a lot survived. The ones who survived were our ancestors. The others were born to die; they were weaklings. Of course, I realize,’ Emily hesitated, ‘h’m, well I know that under socialist methods of production we’d have more to eat and not have to throw coffee into the Gulf of Mexico and burn up elevators full of grain as we had to do until we had war to pay for everything. But supposing under socialism every woman could have as many children as she wanted and they were taken care of, no infant deaths and all healthy, no childhood deaths and growing up—there’s going to be a terrible problem. We won’t get enough to eat. I don’t see that it’s such a bad lookout for us that Europe has been decimated, as you say, Doctor. There were too many people, hungry, dirty, weak, ignorant, anyway. And they’ll spring up again. That’s one of the awful powers of the human race, that they’re like birds, or roaches or weeds. Gee—it’s a terrible problem. It frightens you for us. There are too many of us. I don’t see why they don’t permit abortion. Any foetus that aborts is abnormal, weak or something anyway.’

‘But this is not scientific fact,’ said Alfred, laughing somewhat.

Emily said jovially, ‘I don’t care about scientific fact, I care about survival. I can’t weep for victims or abortions; it’s bad for me. It’s not my nature. It weakens me. I don’t like misfits and sick people.’

Coriolis said seriously, ‘This is a different matter. This, I understand.’

Emily took him by the arm, saying, ‘Phew, phew, the heat. Come and walk around the garden, Doc. There is still some of Stephen’s garden left.’

Coriolis hesitated, glancing at Cousin Charlotte’s fine silk revers and the lace frill of her blouse, at the earrings she was wearing.

‘Come on, Doc, I want to talk to you!’ Emily marched him out of sight into the small orchard.

Anna was talking with Axel and Ruth Oates about ragweed, sheep, rose-pollen, blankets, cats. They all had allergies and did not like to go into the garden, even in September. Paolo could bring their food inside to them, from the barbecue. Anna and Cousin Charlotte thought they would try the garden. They both had allergies, and went out discussing the merits of sea-trips and mountain resorts.

‘You’re going to stay in the States?’ said Emily to Dr Coriolis.

‘Yes. I like it here. If I go back I shall be a has-been. I am bringing over my daughter too. She is now in Holland. She was married to a Jew; he escaped and they let her alone. Now we will be reunited.’

‘Three cheers, put out the flags,’ said Emily drily.

They could see the barbecue party. The evening was cooling. The sun sank below the treetops, the mosquitoes were thick, everyone was jigging and slapping to get rid of them.

‘Well, then we won’t see you any more, Doc,’ said Emily calmly.

‘I am sorry. You are a thrilling woman,’ said Alfred.

‘Ah, you can’t warm me up again. You let me get cold,’ said Emily.

‘I was sick, Emily. I was in the valley of the shadow.’

She said, ‘Yes, Anna told me the old ticker was on the bum, Doc. Too bad.’

‘I think I will go inside now and lie down if you permit.’

‘Sure. Go right ahead. Call the ambulance. Call the district hospital. I’ll tell Paolo to go and look after you.’

‘You are angry with me.’

‘I don’t give a damn for the whole thing, Doc. Include me out.’

Alfred Coriolis, deeply offended, left her and went into the house. Emily watched him go in; and then herself went upstairs to get one of her pills. She came down in a reckless mood; but she did not feel angry, defeated or sad. She felt that this affair, which had at first seemed to her real love, was just a springboard: she knew more about life now. She was full of an unknown, a fresh energy; and was able to look abroad for some new affair.

‘But it has taught me one thing. I am not going to be the little girl I was before. Through Coriolis I grew up.’

She went over to the people near the barbecue. It was getting cool and darker. She took a drink from Paolo and said to him, ‘There’s a man inside lying down. Don’t bother about him. Let him rest.’

She went up to Maurice, hooked her arm through his arm, and walked about feverishly.

‘I’ve got an idea. I’m going to write a horror book, about that most-dreaded figure in American society, a failure. There she is, my Aunt Rose, with quietude, lassitude, hopelessness, accepting her fate—she is despised by the family. And then there’ll be a girl who makes the world her oyster like my Cousin Laura and my Grandmother Jane Morgan; and the different ways they do it. And there are those who are cunning in a way and sneak up on American life, like my sister Beth, who’s always looking round corners, for a man; and one who accepts the world and lives for it like my Cousin Fivie, an ideal wife and mother, and the brown working-mouse like me—yes, I am that, Maurice, though the others are rolled up in me, and God I envy them and try to imitate them.

‘Sisters? Eh? And the terrible aching poignancy of knowing, in a way, for they know, it’s all a mistake, and these hectic, drab lives are living for nothing because the Country’s mindless, and life here is without a system; and it could be better. What waste! Oh, what a splendid book though. Eh-hay, maybe, I’d hit the publisher’s jackpot—maybe not, too bitter, too true, eh? We’re all so pressed down on every side, like a fish at the bottom of the ocean, as Mike Gold says, with dollars, dollars—I guess a flounder doesn’t know why he is flat and has two eyes on one side. He thinks that’s fishrightness. Of course, life is not a dream, it’s a nightmare.’

Maurice asked her about it and said he liked the sound of it. She knew he admired her and she fired up, especially as she saw in the distance Cousin Charlotte being genteel with Stephen. She said, ‘It is pathetic, touching, eh, the way they have been hawking Cousin Charlotte for twenty years. Why don’t they get her married?’

‘The young men used to wait for her father to die, to get more money. He’s always been ill; but he’s still running the business.’

‘What business is it exactly?’

‘Nitrates.’

‘Millions?’

‘A few.’

She said, ‘Oh, Maurice, life, life! What it is. I have a lovely husband, children, home and good servants. I’m a good cook, I’m a success. I’ve just come through a wild, impossible love-affair—oh, Stephen’s not blind, though he didn’t know what I felt—who would? Anyone to look at me—’ She changed this unprofitable line of talk. ‘Yes, every one of my clan is fascinating and gives me the horrors, fills me with love and pathos. And a great curiosity. The dilemma is great, Maurice. If you stick to the rules, a woman, I mean, you know nothing and you’re in actual danger of being a bore, a moral tyrant. And if you don’t stick to the rules, you learn something, but you’re in danger of sinking very low and having nothing to judge by, no standards. Oh, my family are all magnificent. They have standards and they escape by being mad. Every one of them is mad, even if it is a madness of sameness. They are not, thank God, though, of basic floury goodness with tasteless insides, like commercial pies. They are humans and strange. Oh, I hate the ads, Maurice, showing the lady wondering whether her wash is telltale grey, or her toilet paper crude, the man going home to mother because wifey let the sink get stopped up and the young couple who drift apart because he had dandruff or she—excuse me! And then the mother who reunites them by mentioning trade-names and baking an old-fashioned, fluffy, dee-licious bunch of goo with banana whip and ice-cool guzzle. That’s the only life my family
admits.
But they have another. And why not? Can’t Americans, too, have passion in middle age and die for love at seventy? Oh, Maurice, Maurice—the lovelessness of our lives.’

She said this earnestly, gave one sob, said, ‘Never mind! Tell Paolo to bring me a drink, darling. Pretend it’s for you, or Stephen will yell.’

She walked about feverishly while waiting for Maurice. When he returned she said, ‘For example, Grandma’s sly boasting, her slanders, lies, the dramas she concocted quite without foresight, so that she got into messes, the way she kept her friends apart, so that there was no comparing of notes: the manoeuvres, the chances she took. It was magnificent. She was trying to live. In my “Mama” I have to make them so mediocre to make them credible to my public. Americans are not mediocre but they love the ordinary. It’s socially safe. Do you want to know a good formula? An ordinary girl meets a man, maybe unusual, but he’s a failure, he tells her so. She’s an ordinary, pretty girl, that goes without saying, she likes ordinary things, soda-shops, dates, little jackets, a little hat and high heels, and she’s got a little nose, not much of a hairdo, some—there’s a fascinating story opening; every editor and movie director would fall for it. Let’s see? H’m-h’m! She goes for an ordinary job on an ordinary bus and there she meets an ordinary jerk, in fact a regular fella this time. He sells iceboxes, not too successful, of course. She gets into ordinary unemployment and has a damn ordinary time … Isn’t that melancholy, Maurice? Take another start. A damn bright precocious girl, graduates high school three years ahead of the others and is as well valedictorian. She’s not erudite, never read Ben Jonson and Shakespeare, I mean she doesn’t wear horn-rim glasses. She gets a magazine scholarship, goes to town, gets the year’s prize for journalism, goes to New York, wows them, goes to Hollywood, licks the cream off it, marries the handsomest man she ever saw, and they inherit more or less ten million dollars! That’s a true story but it don’t suit. It won’t wow them. It’s not ordinary. Even though the town itself is full of small-town successes, with swimming pools, Japanese servants and governesses. But I’ve got to write about ordinary punks. Pah! What a dull life! Maurice, I long for another life. Will someone explain why our country, which is crazy for success, is also crazy about the ordinary punk and failure? Why is it? Oh, Maurice, I’m so unhappy, so miserable. I said I had a wild love-affair. It isn’t true. It was just a flirtation, nothing but a tease. I couldn’t credit it. A European, a man of experience, a courteous, refined, cultured man, with sweet manners, behaving like a high-school tease. Maurice, why, why am I so dumb? The freckled valedictorian always hungry, for some reason, met her fate, and had the wildest good luck and can’t be satisfied; but now must dream of exotic and mysterious romance, of someone who lives in your heart.’

She turned to Maurice, put her head on his chest and sobbed. He looked down at her for a long moment and then put his arms round her, ‘Don’t cry, dear.’

She lifted her red face streaked by wet hair, ‘Maurice, I’ve a hunch. At the end of my road, there’s a smash-up! I’ll run into a rock and never know what hit me.’