I'm Dying Laughing (55 page)

They were very merry at lunch. Christy declared he had a friend in the States called Nass T. Fall; and so forth. They exhausted themselves with laughter and after lunch Stephen turned gloomy, felt ill and retired to his study. He asked Christy to come to his study with him and, before this, said dismally to Emily, ‘I’m afraid I’ll have to revise my calculations.’

To Christy he said, when the door was closed, ‘What’s the idea of writing tales about us to your grandmother?’

A
FTER TWO HOURS’ WORK,
Emily felt the humour dying out of her. She turned and looked out the window. A fine Paris evening hung over the roofs. The streets were dark except for the lights at their corner. People went home early in those days. Emily thought about the households all over Paris beginning to pull themselves together from war privations; people were still coming back from the concentration camps, from abroad. The first foreigners like themselves were settling in. Real money was beginning to flow more freely, the cabaret and restaurant life was as high as ever and even more shameless. But you still saw queues, and every restaurant, classified by category, was obliged to put up and serve a minimum menu for the poorest clients. You could get cakes at most shops on certain days only. People would still say, ‘Do you know there are spiced cakes at the little shop on the way to St-Lazarre?’ And yet the terror, the frenzy, the heartache, misery and nervous tension, the dread of the future which they had felt at home in America was gone. They had come to a starved and beaten continent, bravely expecting the worst. They were living, except for the shortages of milk and coal, better than they had at home.

At that time they expected revolution in Paris. The spirit of the resistance was still strong, so, of course, was the spirit of collaboration, active or passive. It was still uncertain which would win. Vittorio, full of hope, had felt strongly, until April 18, that the people would win in his country. The Belgians were as ever, torn by their national conflicts, but England where the class feeling had taken a big blow, they said, from the years of suffering in common, might be headed for a new life; and France—she was almost certainly ready for the final struggle. In America they had simply given up the struggle. Emily muttered to herself, ‘Not-in-our-time revolutionists, like us.’

She looked down at what she had been writing, took it out of the typewriter.

‘Worthless.’ Like the people she was writing about, ‘Not-in-our-time revolutionists, on-and-off revolutionists, keep the deep-freeze safe revolutionists.’

‘But we’re still marred by the Civil War. We can’t go through that again. We must escape! We’ve had more than a colour photograph, a demonstration by others of what it’s like.’

If only it were all done, gone by. But the Europeans who had been through it all were much more cheerful and hopeful. They were making plans again.

She muttered, ‘Because it’s over I suppose. Maybe we’re like women before they have the baby. Perhaps in two or three years here, we too will achieve the calm, the long view, the tranquillity, even the culture. What’s wrong with the American mind is a raging barbarous fear behind the super-finish. Here the middle class is ruined forever—and it’s a question of let’s face it.’

At these words, she felt very tired, afraid and helpless. But where else was there to go? Italy? Where the sanguinary class-battle, Vittorio thought, might come up again, even after the setback of April 18, bought, they said, by American money. But why go where Americans were hated? Switzerland? A sanitarium no living and healthy soul could endure. England—starving to death and no prospect of betterment; England going down, never again to appear as a great nation. Belgium? Belgium was a consideration. Everyone said the food there was much better and the black market was better than France. But who went to Belgium? Spain? No, no. They could have gone to the Cote d’Azure, some pleasant, wealthy or not so wealthy resort village on the sea; but Stephen, like all big-city men, was terrified that he’d lose his mental activity there, he’d be out of the mainstream. The mainstream carried him along like a chip of wood, but he loved the movement.

If it had been Vittorio? Why do I let myself be dominated by this clinging man? Fate of the big, tough woman? I’m just bashful. I’m still a little girl. I still think no other man would look at me. She sighed.

Downstairs, Stephen was fuming, fidgeting, waiting for her with his accounts and his plans for Anna’s return. She got up and took one of her benzedrine pills. She took more and more of them; not to faint, weep, collapse from overwork and excitement. They did her no harm. She was strong enough to take anything. She went to the window, hearing footsteps and there she saw Madame Suzanne crossing the courtyard. She hailed her, ‘I’ll join you. Hang on!’

Putting on a thin jacket, she ran downstairs, all merriment, smiles. She sailed past Stephen, rushed out into the courtyard and took Suzanne’s arm.

‘I’m walking home with you. Let’s go to a café for half an hour.’

‘Emily!’ Stephen called.

She said laughing, ‘I’m taking a walk’; and to Suzanne, ‘Like a rat in a trap, I am.’

‘Emily!’

‘He’s scared! He thinks I got away from him. I never take a walk. I explain my every move. I’m a prisoner of sentiment.’

Suzanne took her arm, ‘Come, walk a bit of the way. But you’ll be tired.’

She laughed, ‘I’ll find a taxi somewhere. I don’t care when I get home. Isn’t there somewhere we can go?’

Suzanne had to visit her invalid sister, then get home to the apartment she was getting ready for Christy. Emily was irritated. Here was a woman she paid a big sum to monthly. Christy was going to pay her full board, lodging and part of her furniture. Christy alone was paying Suzanne more than the average worker’s salary, in American money. She laughed lightly however, saying, ‘There he sits, a man with light employment as a husband. Oh, well, I guess it’s not so light being my husband. Like a querulous wife with his hand-out, and a poisonous tongue accusing me of waste, when who makes the money?’

‘Let’s talk of something else. Here you are taking a walk,’ said Suzanne.

‘Thank God. That stone pile weighs me down. How is it, every time I move I drag mountains with me to suffocate me? Stones, debts. Why can’t we live simply? Oh, well—once a sucker always a sucker. I’ll never get what I wanted. Do you know what I thought as a girl when I wanted to be a great writer? I thought, then, at long last, all the men would run after me, as a bonus you understand, crowd round my door, stand in the courtyard, all the morning with bouquets and in tophats. Of course, Stephen did. Poor lamb.’

‘Let’s talk of something else.’

‘Yes, yes. Let’s talk of Vittorio. I wrote him a letter. I don’t know his address. I don’t know his private life. I haven’t heard from him. Where is he?’

‘I think he’s in Rome. I saw it in the paper.’

‘He’s in Rome. And I want him here!’

‘Why?’ asked Suzanne drily, looking at the bounding, rosy woman.

‘Why did you bring such strange people round me? Aren’t there others?’

‘Why are they strange?’

‘They never have time to see you. They’re such bores. Philistines in a way. No one must laugh because they were in the Resistance. Too damn serious. Heroes. Faugh! But Vittorio’s magnificent. He knows the world has two sides. Oh, I understand him and he understands me.’

‘He’s going to Switzerland. He’ll be there for a week about the end of June. There’s a cultural congress on. Only I don’t know if he’ll be allowed to stay the week. Petty little police everywhere. He gets in and out invisibly.’

‘Oh, if I could go to Switzerland. But we have to wait on Anna.’ After a moment she said, ‘Is he married?’

‘He was married; but his wife died in concentration camp. Just a bore.’

‘Oh, lord, I’m sorry,’ said Emily with tears in her eyes. Then she said, ‘He showed me her photograph the first day he came but I didn’t know enough French then. Poor Vittorio. So he’s a widower.’

Suzanne did not answer at once. Then she began to talk about Vittorio’s loyalty to his wife, his long passion for another woman, a lifelong connection with an infamous Roman society woman. And now a young girl—

Emily said nervously, ‘Oh, heck? I suppose so. But he’s so ugly.’

Suzanne laughed at this, ‘I know a beautiful society woman who wanted to marry him ever since the liberation; and he wanted to marry her, but he gave her up.’

‘Why?’ asked Emily sullenly.

‘She belongs to the most corrupt society of Rome and Paris. How could she reform? He had to give her up. He sacrificed his passion to his work.’

‘But he’s so gay, so exuberant!’

‘Well, everyone weeps in private. Like you. And works hard to forget it. Like you.’

‘Yes, like me. Oh, I’m glad to be here. To understand myself,’ Emily thoughtfully said.

‘They scratched and blew up and smashed his face. The charm they could not take away.’

‘Oh, this is frightful,’ said Emily.

Suzanne laughed, ‘You know you wouldn’t marry Vittorio. Leave your country, and Stephen, your husband’s family, the children! Would you?’ she enquired lightly.

‘Suzanne, you despise me. You’re right. I’m not good enough for Vittorio. But then he loved that degenerate woman. She was good-looking, I suppose?’

‘Extraordinarily beautiful. She’s a friend of mine. The strangest thing of all is, she’s been married in the meantime; and she still wants to marry Vittorio as he is.’

Emily began to sob, ‘Here I am out in the cold. No one loves me. Suppose I lose my grip, my market? Did this Devil Dame, who was so cold and bestial, have any money?’

‘Her family was ruined. She lived off men.’

‘Good God. How could he? He so pure!’

‘Vittorio must have seen something else in her.’

‘This love of Vittorio for this cold devil is terrible. It kills me.’

Suzanne sighed. Emily besieged her with a hundred more questions. She wanted to walk and walk, to frighten Stephen. But when she left Suzanne, though she hesitated in her thoughts, her steps hastened homewards. She was soon as the gate. He was pale and serious.

‘Did you have something to say to Suzanne?’

‘I need more exercise! Look at my figure. I’m like a pig.’

‘You ought to take up gymnastics.’

She burst out laughing, ‘Think of me in a tunic! Tomorrow I start serious dieting. Dear Anna will be back in a few days and that means more stuffing. I shall be like a pig when we get to Switzerland and won’t be able to puff up the mountainsides. A typical American Middle-Western Mamma, with a beer-barrel waist, overstuffed dewlaps, panting about looking for an ice-cream soda. I’m going to become sylphlike. Sylphlike and vicious, then men will run after me.’

‘What have I been doing the last ten years?’ enquired Stephen plaintively.

‘Let’s eat! This is my last meal before martyrdom,’

Stephen said he wouldn’t bother her with the accounts. She had to get to bed. They had to get to work early tomorrow. They had to get the serial in, revised. Anna was coming within a few days, another set of ten lost days. ‘Not to mention the days you always waste beforehand getting ready; all quite unnecessary and lost on her. She doesn’t know a house is even in disorder; so she doesn’t know what it takes to get it ready.’

‘Oh, well, everyone likes attention.’

‘Mamma would like a bank balance better. She’s a typical small-minded rich woman.’

‘Well, let her help us out.’

‘Why should she?’

They quarrelled bitterly. She asked why should she entertain a millionairess. She’d borrow or steal and go off to Italy or Switzerland by herself. ‘Or if you want me, borrow from Anna. Don’t sing me your sad, sweet song about pride. Tell her I’ll pay her back. I’ll give her an IOU and I’ll honour it. When I can. Why not? When Anna or some Tanner or Fairfield or any other Jiminy Crickets come here I have to entertain them like princes. We have to go out with them to restaurants where you can’t eat under four thousand francs a head, to put it at a small figure. Four or five of us, as much as a worker gets in a month.’

‘What have workers to do with it? Anna is not trying to live like workers, neither are we. All right, hate Anna and hate me, but don’t give me that about workers’ salaries. Because we don’t give a damn about them or we wouldn’t be living like this.’

‘No. I know. We’re rotten to the core. We’re not fit to mix with people like Suzanne and Vittorio.’

‘Oh, my stars! Again!’

They had a cruel quarrel. While Stephen sat in an armchair draping his legs and arms in various ways, like a human spider, Emily walked about, went in and out, put a big platter of food in front of Stephen. He ignored it and she cleaned up the platter herself. After that, she drank several glasses of beer, ate half a box of the best French chocolates. She told him she was sick of him, his mother, his phony sister.

Emily said, ‘She’d go to jail, face sentence of death just to get in the news as the red queen of the revolution. Don’t I know? People risk death, climb to the top of the Empire State, just to annoy or get in the news. Well, I’ll have a fine funeral, they say.’

Emily walking about, eating and drinking, laughed. Stephen said he wished he had the guts to do it. She said, ‘Well, that’s not such a bad idea. If you’re such a pill. Well, OK, go ahead, take poison or the big jump, what do I care? I used to make my living out of types like that. There are all kinds of ways of committing suicide, did you know? I used to know them all, some are quite ingenious. I believe some of them think up ingenious ways, so they’ll be sure to get in the papers. You can take it that all suiciders are neurotics with a publicity hunger. I know a man went to Spain to fight in the civil war and it was suicide.’

‘Fred,’ muttered Stephen. ‘He ran right into the shooting.’

She burst out crying. ‘I’m sorry,’ said Stephen.

She wiped her tears aside with both hands, ‘Oh, baloney. I’m a bunk artist. Putting on a scene. When they come back they’re misfits; so it’s suicide either way. Not for all. Look at Vittorio! He has everything against him but he’s all over the lot fighting. He’s lecturing in Rome, lecturing in Switzerland—’