I'm Dying Laughing (42 page)

He became silent. His wife said hastily, ‘We’re celebrating, darling. Don’t start to fret.’

But his face had clouded over. He said, ‘They were my friends. I know them. They’re really all right. I hate them to call me what they do call me, a goddamn bastard, an apostate, a Benedict Arnold—I left my country and my Party. They are right.’

‘Oh, don’t groan like a Jew in the subway.’

This was a family joke with them. Stephen said, ‘And yet he had a right to groan. It’s the ones who don’t groan who are wrong. Six millions, many more, put to fire and sword and bullet and torn by dogs and buried alive—he is right to groan and so are we.’

The next day they ate out as well. They went to the Museum of Modern Art, one of the finest buildings of modern times, in pure, perpendicular marble, unspotted and airy, an angelic gate where they saw old paintings, new copper, ceramics, a 1910 revival and the strangely beautiful tapestries of Lurçat, living as blood in a sunlit flask, with the thought of a tree, glowing in its pattern of life into the austere and innocent web. There was a lot of walking to do, and many steps and few exhibits. France of the artists was just lifting its splendid head from the Nazi night. On this day, the sun shone, the Seine flowed as brightly as any young river, the sky was blue and the trees along the rue de New-York were in small leaf. Emily skipped along with the daintiness of the fat, on her small high-heels.

‘We have spring in New York but it isn’t like this, wine and food and spirit. There they suddenly push down a funnel over the city and that’s it, spring, wilting and burning.’

Stephen was opposed to the list of guests she and Suzanne had drawn up for Vittorio.

‘I don’t feel at home with social workers, French teachers, sombre or slap-happy Resistance types and all that crew. Can’t we have a little fun? He’s a very entertaining man. He’s polished, thank God.’

‘But they would have something to talk about!’

‘Bunkum,’ said Stephen.

But in the end he had to yield. He himself wanted to have some good Party talk with Party leaders and now he was to have his own servant, a dull but good woman, a pedestrian heroine, Suzanne, at his side.

‘But you like Mernie Wauters!’

Stephen cheered up. Emily explained, ‘We’ll have to have a right circle and a left circle. We need both.’

‘Yes, I need people. I don’t believe the brain flourishes in isolation. I’m no hermit nor masturbating thinker. Thinking is social.’

‘What about Darwin?’

‘Oh, he’s English. They are never the same. And that’s horse-and-buggy. The Soviet thinkers and scientists are proud and glad to think socially in a laboratory and for the State. These old countries need socialism to wipe off all that smear of solitary thinking, which is just the ornament of a class state. But in the USA, as in Russia, we think socially. We have a lot in common.’

Emily said, ‘That’s very true. I wish we could work in Russia or Yugo or somewhere over the border. It’s hard to keep on fighting for what you know are the merest ABCs. I do hate to yes-ma’am a lot of snobberines here. Why don’t we come out with it? They do. I guess we’re in a mixed world. That’s why we must have a right circle and a left circle. I don’t want to cut myself off any more as we did in the USA. I want to live in the whole world.’

The people they invited were delighted to come, ‘to spend an evening with Vittorio, with Vittorio more than with us, nobodies, American theoretical ignoramuses.’

‘What do we care? We’ve got hold of a real person,’ said Emily.

‘But it’s our soup they’re eating.’

‘Those are the risks of entertaining,’ said Emily.

‘When in Rome burn the candle at both ends,’ said Stephen.

The preparations took up a lot of time: the expense would be no less than for previous parties. Stephen groaned, ‘Who got me into this? How do you know he doesn’t like a cup of coffee? If he’s a real communist who spent years in the Resistance and in concentration camps, he’ll be glad of a baked bean or a lamb chop grilled over a campfire.’

‘Stephen, don’t be so miserly.’

‘Well, we represent the American relief for wilting Europe.’

Emily said, ‘Besides, I know from Suzanne that Vittorio is a very good cook; and even when he is living in one room with kitchenette in a closet, he gets up elaborate dishes and invites gourmet company.’

‘Well, your admirer will get enough to eat here, with that menu.’

‘My admirer? He’s never heard of me.’

‘Yes, he has. He’s heard of you. He’s a one-man encyclopaedia. He’ll probably come here armed with more facts about you and your books than I ever knew. He told me he particularly admired
The Wilkes-Barre Chronicle,
he’s convinced you’ll be a great serious writer and he thinks you’re a great humorist too.’

Emily had a sunny smile, ‘Did he? Oh, I wish I’d done that hunger-march better! It should have been better. It’s just cheap journalism.’

‘You did it nine times before it went to the printer. You’re a great writer.’

‘No, I’m not. Not in the hunger-march. And here’s a man who knows much more than hunger-marches. Well, well. Stephen, I sent off three chapters of my funny books this afternoon and I ought to get five hundred dollars apiece; and maybe a movie bite. I think they’re medium-funny.’

‘They’re uproarious. You ought to hold out for a better price. Listen, why don’t you write travel articles, show all the society we meet, make it funny as we see it next day at breakfast. We could travel more, see more, it would keep paying for itself. We’ll make a go of it. I don’t really worry about you. I scold and worry and beat the breast and insult you—it’s only superstition! I don’t think it’s right to tempt fate.’

‘Why can’t we live like dear Maurice? When I think of the lovely dreamy mornings we spent last week with him here, just talking at the breakfast table, blissful—’

‘None of us working,’ put in Stephen.

‘Ah, my dearest, to think that compared with the meanest continental or English schoolboy, I’m an old woman of the wilds, a hairy ape, an ignorant buzzard who can scarcely write her own name. Oh, I must study to keep up even with my own right-wing guests whom I so deeply despise. America, my own: what have you done to me?’

She went on merrily, unable to stop, cheered beyond limit by the news that her books were admired by Vittorio, once the darling of the best-cushioned, best-dowried, best-titled, Catholic society, a man of dangerous charm, guile and success in any world he chose. She ended sighing, ‘Ah, my dearest, these weeks are the nicest things that have happened to us in years and years. Goddamn it, in Europe communists and relatives don’t have to be all tattletale grey, spots of gloom, festering mildew and unbarbered sextons intoning anathema and looking out for the bottle of scotch. Europe and I agree about everything. Here they calmly survey their own downgoing, the advent of the Red Terror with reasonable fortitude, resignation or reasonable fight. Whereas God knows we come from a country of writhing, groaning, torment. Reeling and writhing, what the tortoise taught us.’

The next day they took their usual three-hour French lesson after lunch with Suzanne. She lunched with them and during lunch they spoke English; but after that they worked very hard, like college students.

Suzanne had been teaching them for some weeks and after being surprised by their whirling life, their expenses and their domestic brawling, she had come to understand them. She said to them now, in French, ‘You know when Mademoiselle de la Roche asked me to give you lessons, I hesitated. You seemed so strange to me and I could not make out whether you were real radicals or the shallowest of parlour pinks. But now I understand better; and if I have taught you, you have taught me.’

She laughed harshly and went on, ‘We are so many. You can imagine, I got to know a good many people during the occupation. I had many surprises. The people who betrayed were not the ones you would have guessed; the people who took in Jewish babies and Jewish refugees, political refugees, who ran the real risks, were not the ones you would have predicted. Your own reactions were not what you would have thought. And there were so many factors of nationality, training, personality, family situation, love and fright that you can hardly trust yourself, let alone anyone else. And you must take chances with strangers. But you come through and others come though. I do not know if the same people would come through again; or if I would come through again. And so I have no prejudices, or very few. I’m very anxious only to know more people. I could never have guessed at the existence of people like you.’

Emily who had worked hard at her tenses, understood and was very pleased with this speech,

‘What do you think of us now, dear Suzanne?’

Madame Gagneux laughed, ‘You know, I am not really French. I am Belgian. We’re a mixed and weighty people. Weighty in bad and good senses. You’ve heard from me of
l’espritbelge,
the Belgian approach, that means heavy, taking things wrongly, misunderstanding French, it means a crass approach. I can’t help being Belgian; I don’t mind it. I think we’re different, we’re more medieval, we’re lustier, we joke more in a genial, kermis way, the primitive market-day peasant and farmer way, we see things as ludicrous and coarse rather than otherwise. And we’re not good psychologists for nowadays, so I leave that aside. You are very Belgian, Madame Howard; and your husband, Mr Howard, does not like me much I know.’

She said this without flattery and without resentment.

Emily fluttered, ‘I think the only reason for that is that you’re our teacher and so his role with you is a humble one, that of learner, of a tot. Oh, we’re not linguists. I work, I’m full of French, I have my lesson, I do my writing and by six in the evening I can’t think of the French for tomato juice. Alas! You may be Belgian but you’re a linguist.’

Madame after a moment said gently, ‘Well, now, reciprocate. Tell me what you think of me, and why you ask me questions about myself.’

Emily struggled, ‘
Eh
,
bien
Madame Suzanne, vooz ate not amie, you have become our friend and because I heard some hints—what’s that, good God in French?—I felt all the time this great vacuum, not knowing exactly what nameless and terrible things,
shows terrible,
had passed in your life—well, I can’t say it in Frenc—what painful and awful times your life has encompassed; yet, because I know you and you are part of us, we have dinner with you, you know our children, you are ours as contrasted with the
purple anonyme general,
the anonymous vague general people; and in spite of the pain of remembering, in spite of the
honter freeson,
I mean the shameful shuddering away from (God knows what I’m saying Madame Suzanne, vows
comprenez?
)the sufferings and heroism of those people I don’t know are less pressing—you might say honestly I don’t care any more for the sufferings of people one never saw or cared for, they’re not real sufferings, they are
fetts diverses,
but because of knowing you, and knowing you have been through all that, I feel—somehow strange, terrible, very ill, even guilty.
Vous me comprenez, n’est-ce pas?’

‘
Je vous comprends parfaitement
,’ said Suzanne.

Emily paused and said, ‘I shrink, Suzanne, terribly from this knowledge. I don’t know what will be the consequences of knowing.’

‘I must say, if your French is very inadequate, I understand your feelings,’ said Suzanne.

‘I feel a positive horror, a fear to know these things and to know that these things happened to someone I see with my own eyes and my own children see with their eyes; and my husband sees with his eyes. It happened to someone whose voice I know, whose eyes are watching me. My God! My God!’

Madame Suzanne said, looking at her with wide-open eyes, ‘It’s bizarre. You, too, give me a sense of horror and yet I felt none then, except at any given moment. Is it because you are a writer?’

Emily continued, ‘This afternoon, just before I am to meet Vittorio, this famous man and hero—’

She paused a moment, looking questioningly at Suzanne, who was non-committal. Emily continued, ‘I feel this reluctance, this shuddering and, at the same time, a sense of duty, is it? Of being forced? So I must know, it seems to me, what you suffered. Will you tell me please? Tell me in French, as part of the lesson.’

‘Well, I know you have heard many accounts. You were a journalist, you went and interviewed widows of miners and of men dead in accidents, orphans, all kinds of people, so I am not going to tell you sad stories. Besides, it’s not my way and it’s not of importance. These are realities. No need for window-dressing.’

Stephen was called away at this moment for a telephone conversation and he did not return. His French was better than Emily’s but he would not study and he resented Madame Gagneux.

Emily said, ‘Yes, Suzanne, I understand. Oh, go on, hurry, I can’t wait to know. Tell me before Stephen returns. Do you see, tonight I am going to meet people who know about you; or if not you, the life you led and I am outside.
Je suis dehors
.’

Emily looked at Suzanne, thinking about her. She wished that Stephen would return. Madame Suzanne was perhaps ten years older than Emily, poorly dressed, as always, (and perhaps for that he doesn’t like her, thought Emily), an intellectual, surely, with fine half-grey hair in waves, her face solid, dark-eyed, if not handsome. They were what Stephen called scornfully, ‘no-doubt-soulful-eyes.’ They were large, dark eyes quite startling in what Stephen called her ‘pasty, meaty face’.

Emily declared she was beautiful: Stephen found something detestable in her. Suzanne was saying, ‘And tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, you must prepare a speech for me, all about your life in Hollywood. Have you your notebook, Madame Howard?’

Emily said, ‘I feel ashamed to write notes about the words in a story of this sort.’

Suzanne smiled, ‘Oh, this is quite unimportant. As I no doubt mentioned, I was a member of two underground groups, one for the hiding of Jewish children from the Nazis, the other the demolition squad for the
actifs,
Resistants on active service. Good.’