The Laughing Matter Read online

  “I don’t want to stand alone,” Eva said. “Go get Flora, my best friend, so I won’t be alone.”

  Eva stood by the water pump. Red went off to find somebody else. They might be anywhere. They might be on one side of the house or on the other, or out front where the fathers and mothers were, or they might be in the vineyard, or behind the garage, or behind the barn.

  He went swiftly, first around the garage, then around the barn. When he came around the barn Fanny was with him, the two of them racing for the fig tree. It looked as if Fanny was going to get there first, but she tripped and fell. Red stopped to help her up. The instant she was on her feet, though, she ran to the tree, and got there first, laughing at Red for helping her.

  “Well,” Red said, “I thought you were hurt. Weren’t you?”

  “I never get hurt,” Fanny said.

  “Your lip’s bleeding,” Eva said.

  Fanny sucked the cut, then spit blood like a man spitting tobacco juice.

  “Let it bleed,” she said. “What do I care?”

  Red went off to get one more of the sisters.

  “If you cracked your head open,” Eva said, “would you laugh?”

  “Yes,” Fanny said. “I cracked it open last year.”

  “Where?” Eva said. “Let me see.”

  The older girl bent down to show the place on the top of her head.

  “Here,” she said. “See where the doctor sewed it up?”

  “Yes,” Eva said. “Did you laugh?”

  “Sure,” Fanny said. “Nothing hurts me.”

  “Hurts me,” Eva said.

  “That’s because you’re little.”

  “I’m getting bigger, though,” Eva said. “From eating. Figs, you know. I ate six after my nap. Red went up the tree and got them for me. Eating figs makes you big.”

  “Not figs,” Fanny said. “Potatoes and meat and things like that make you big.”

  “Don’t you eat figs?” Eva said.

  “I hate figs,” Fanny said. She sucked the cut and spit again.

  “I wish I could do that.”

  “Can’t you even spit?”

  “No,” Eva said. “I can’t smoke, either.”

  “Smoke?” Fanny said.

  “Cigarettes,” Eva said. “I tried once. Papa let me, because I wanted to. I can’t smoke cigarettes.”

  “Oh,” Fanny said. “Can you drink?”

  “Not whiskey,” Eva said. “I tried that, too. Papa let me. I can drink wine with water in it, but I don’t like wine with water in it.”

  “No,” Fanny said, “it’s nicer without water, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know,” Eva said. “I don’t like it without water, either.”

  They saw Red coming from the vineyard, far ahead of Fay, who was running, but not trying very hard to get to the tree first.

  “O.K.,” Red said. “That’s three of you. One more.”

  “You didn’t beat me to the tree, though,” Fanny said.

  “I would have if I didn’t stop to pick you up,” Red said.

  “No, you wouldn’t,” Fanny said. “I would have beat you a mile.”

  “Ah,” Red said.

  But Fanny was funny. He stopped to think where to go to find Flora. Where would Flora go to hide? He was glad that she was the last one to find. By now she might be far away, to make him hunt all the harder. He decided to cut across to the other side of the vineyard.

  He ran swiftly, looking as he went. Two quail splattered their wings and flew off, slowing him down to watch a moment. Then he saw a big jack rabbit lope off slowly, stopping to turn and look, loping a little farther.

  He was stopped anyway, watching the rabbit, so he picked a bunch of the black grapes he saw on the vine, and began to eat them, the rabbit watching. There were big seeds in the grapes, which he rounded up in his mouth, and spit out.

  He remembered one of his father’s friends, a dark man, visiting the house in Palo Alto. Dade had sent them a box of these same black grapes. His mother brought a plate of them to the man, who began to eat them, only he didn’t spit out the seeds. He chewed them. Red heard him chewing them. The man had known his father’s father in the old country. He didn’t speak very good English. He talked with Evan in another language, a language Red wished he knew. Red asked the man why he didn’t spit out the seeds. The man said, “They are too small, my boy. I have no time.” Red liked the man, the way he talked, the noise he made when he ate the grapes, grinding the seeds and swallowing them. The man ate the whole bunch, as if it was something he had to do. Then he put the naked stalk on the plate, handed it to Red’s mother, and said, “Thank you, Swan Nazarenus.”

  Red ate nine or ten grapes, the rabbit went off, and he remembered he had Flora still to find. He cut through the vines to the right, seeing far off the banks of an irrigation ditch. He might as well go there, for if she wasn’t anywhere around, he’d be alone a moment. He’d have a look at the grass and weeds in the ditch. When he reached the ditch, he saw Flora sitting on the bank with her shoes and stockings off, cooling her feet in the water.

  “You’re not hiding,” Red said.

  “Yes, I am,” Flora said.

  “Well, you went too far from the tree in the first place. In the second, when I find you, you’re supposed to race me back to the tree.”

  “I know.”

  “Don’t you want to play?”

  “Yes, but not every minute. I didn’t hide here first. I went to a lot of other places. I got tired of hiding, so when I found this nice place, I sat down to rest and cool my feet.”

  “Oh,” Red said. He couldn’t think of something else to say because what she’d said had been so reasonable.

  “Don’t we have to go back now?” he said at last. “Don’t we have to go on with the game?”

  “Well,” Flora said. “We do have to go back, but I wish we didn’t, because I like it here so much better.”

  “Do you like to sit alone like this?”

  “Yes, don’t you?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “I don’t like to be alone all the time,” Flora said, “but sometimes I’ve just got to.”

  “When?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. When do you like to be alone?”

  “When I’m mad.”

  “Are you mad at somebody?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Who?”

  “My father.”

  “Your father? What are you mad at him for?”

  “He hit my mother.”

  “Hit her?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “My father gets angry,” Red said. He thought a moment. “He gets very angry.”

  “Does she make him angry?” Flora said.

  “I don’t know,” Red said, “but when he, gets angry, he tries not to hit her. I know when he’s trying. Sometimes he tries a long time, then all of a sudden he hits her. She cries, and he hits her some more. Then, I hit him for hitting her. That’s when I want to be alone. When do you?”

  “Well,” Flora said. “My father never hits my mother, but sometimes my mother slaps him.”

  “Your mother slaps your father?”

  “Yes. She slapped him this afternoon.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He walked out of the house. He went to the olive tree in the yard and did some work there. He’s trimming it. Taking off the dead branches. Then he walked in the vineyard. He didn’t talk to her for a long time.”

  “Why did she slap him? Why do they do things like that?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve thought about it, but I just don’t know. Do you know?”

  “Well,” Red said, “I know my father gets angry. I guess my mother makes him angry. Sometimes she makes me angry, too. Sometimes she makes me very angry.”

  “Do you hit her, too?”

  “Oh, no,” Red said. He stopped to think again, then said, “But I wish I could believe the things she tells me. I never know what to believe.�
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  The girl listened and thought a moment, then turned to look at him. He saw that she liked him, which he hadn’t been thinking about at all. But he felt glad about it, and knew he liked her, and that she was his favorite.

  “We’d better go back,” he said suddenly.

  “All right,” Flora said. She took her feet out of the water, put on her socks, then her shoes. She reached out to Red and said, “Will you help me up, please?”

  Red took her hand and helped her up, feeling more elated than he’d ever before felt. Her hand was so good to hold. She got to her feet, saying almost in a whisper, “I almost hate to go back.”

  They began to walk through the vineyard.

  “Why?” Red said.

  “Oh,” Flora said. “If you only knew how awful I feel when I see my mother and father unhappy with each other.”

  “Are they unhappy with each other?”

  “Very. Aren’t yours?”

  “I don’t know,” Red said. “I guess so. But they’re happy, too. Most of the time they’re happy. Aren’t yours?”

  “Never,” Flora said. “They only pretend. I think they hate each other. They think we don’t know. They think we don’t understand, but every one of us understands, especially Fanny. She understands the most. Fay understands, too, but she hates to understand. Fanny tells me everything she understands. ‘They hate each other,’ Fanny says. ‘They just loathe each other. I don’t think they even know it, they’re so used to each other.’ Fanny knows the most. They do hate each other!”

  “No, they don’t,” Red said.

  “Oh, yes, they do,” Flora said. “And we always pretend we don’t know, especially Fanny. She’s the one who takes Mama’s side. We take Papa’s, Fay and me, but Fanny takes Mama’s. Whose side do you take?”

  “I don’t take anybody’s side,” Red said. “They don’t hate each other, do they?”

  He had never talked this way with anyone before in his life. He felt a profound anguish that this beautiful girl’s mother and father didn’t love one another, that perhaps, as she said, they even hated one another.

  “Fanny just told you that as a joke, didn’t she?” he said.

  “No, it’s not a joke,” Flora said. “It’s the truth. Well, we’re almost there. I think we’d better start racing for the tree.”

  “All right,” Red said.

  He let her run ahead a little, then turned himself loose and soon passed her. He saw the others in the yard, standing by the pump, talking, and ran to the tree. After he got there he didn’t stop and go to the others, though, or wait for the arrival of Flora. He went right on running. He heard Fanny shout after him, “Hey, Red, where you going?” He ran through the vineyard until he was too tired to run any more, then began to walk. When he was far away, when he’d reached the row of pomegranate and olive trees, he stopped, to be alone.

  He tore a small red pomegranate from a branch and threw it with all his might against the trunk of the tree, where it smashed.

  “God damn you, Papa!” he said. “God damn you, Mama! God damn both of you!”

  Chapter 16

  They were four together, two men and two women, sitting and standing on the front porch, getting straight what each of them would have to drink, getting used to the nearness of one another, to the strangeness of their being together to talk and drink and pass the time, but after five or ten minutes the men were standing together on the lawn and the women were sitting together on the porch. They were still in sight of one another but they could no longer hear one another. At the very beginning, while the children had still been around, there had been smiles, glances of understanding and kindness, and a moment later laughter, even.

  The first to laugh was Evan Nazarenus.

  The middle Walz girl had said quite loudly to the fathers and mothers, “You children play in the front yard, us children will play in the back.”

  Evan had laughed and, speaking to May Walz, had said, “Which one’s she?”

  May Walz had waved affectionately at the thought of the one Fanny was and she’d said with warmth—not for Fanny, but for Evan and Swan, “God knows, though her name’s Fanny.” These words, meaning so little in themselves, were enormously meaningful to Swan, who, only a moment before, had felt that she would not be able to look at Warren and May, not be able to talk, not be able to move, even.

  “She’s a lovely child,” Swan had said. She’d turned to Warren Walz, not actually looking at him, though. “You must be very proud of your daughters.”

  Warren Walz, not looking at his wife, had said, almost laughing, “They are daughters, though. Still, I suppose we’ll have a son someday.”

  “Martini, Scotch, bourbon?” Evan had said. “I’m having Scotch.”

  After that it had been as if nothing was wrong in the world, nothing had ever been wrong, nothing ever would be.

  Evan and Swan had had showers and had put on fresh clothing, and so had Warren and May. They had soaped their bodies. The warm water had washed away the soap, the perspiration, the dirt, and for a moment the doubt, the anger, the rage, the shame, the despair.

  It was late afternoon of a hot day. It would soon be evening, the best time of all. Everything would cool down, quiet down and darken, and there would be an hour or more of twilight, the sky red where the sun had been.

  They would meet with these people—these strangers—each husband and wife would meet with these strangers and they would be kind to one another. They would be glad to see one another. Their voices would become alive for one another. They would remember, each of them alone, good things, and, remembering, be glad for having known them. They would be amusing, sympathetic, thoughtful, witty. They would drink, and then drink again. They might even laugh. One of them might hit upon something to say to make all the others laugh. They might laugh so hard as to become a little embarrassed. The twilight itself might be the thing to start them laughing. The red of the sky, the quietude of the vineyard, the sudden memory of their children playing in the back yard, the memory of the enormous charity and kindness and concern of their children for them, even the memory of the flarings into meanness and ugliness of their children, as if they’d already left childhood behind.

  Each of the four would know the worst about himself, but it would be put aside, it would be hidden the whole time they were together, and almost forgotten. Almost, but not quite. A hint of it would come into the eyes of each of them from time to time.

  Still, for a moment they would know well-being. They would know well-being is a lie. They would know it is desperate and sorrowful, but they would not bother about this. They would hold glasses and drink, speaking swiftly and easily and meaninglessly.

  “I wonder if you’d tell me about Dade,” Evan said.

  “He’s your brother,” Walz said.

  “I mean, as a farmer.”

  “Well, I thought I was the world’s worst,” Walz said, “but I suppose Dade’s champ now. Still, we’ve got no kick coming. Dade’s doing all right, and so am I. We’ve had three rotten years in a row, but if we haven’t gotten rich, we haven’t gotten poor or gone broke, either. If your place is paid for—and Dade’s is, and so is mine—well, no matter how rotten things get, you can’t lose. Getting a place paid for is the tough thing. Once that’s done, though, it’s a pretty good life. We get bored, but who doesn’t?”

  “What’s Dade do?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Does he get out in the vineyard and work?”

  “He helps prune the vines,” Walz said. “There’s about six weeks of pruning for four men on sixty acres of vineyard. Dade hires three men, and works with them. I mean, he doesn’t stop in the middle of the day to take a nap or anything like that just because he owns the place. He starts when they start, stops for lunch when they do, eats with them, and stops when they stop. I know he likes to prune the vines. Pruning time can be anywhere from early December to late February. He starts on January first every year. He works alone that day. The
next day the three workers join him.”

  “He does work on the vineyard, then?” Evan said.

  “Oh, yes,” Walz said. “When I said he was the world’s worst, I meant he doesn’t do any of the things the boys just out of agricultural college do. I once asked him why he didn’t get the weeds out of his irrigation ditches and he said he liked them. Did you have the idea Dade never worked?”

  “He never cared much for work,” Evan said. “He had a few jobs as a kid, but that’s all.”

  “On a vineyard it’s different,” Walz said. “He’s his own boss. Isn’t that about as good as it can get for any of us?”

  “Yes, I suppose so,” Evan said. “What about wine?”

  “That market’s shot,” Walz said. “It’s been shot for years. We don’t have wine makers. We have chemists. They make wine the way shampoo’s made.”

  “No, I meant does Dade make wine? Do you?”

  “I make a few gallons every year, just for the fun of it,” Walz said. “I don’t know whether Dade does or not.” After a moment he said, “What do you think? Is it a good life?”

  “I don’t know,” Evan said quickly. “I suppose it could be. I suppose it could somehow be. I don’t know. It always depends on something or other, and the pity of it is that either you don’t know what this thing is, or if you do know, you know it involves someone else, who must help but won’t, or can’t.”

  “Has Dade read any of your books?” Walz said. “The reason I ask is that I started to speak to him about them a couple of times, but I didn’t get anywhere. Is it because he hasn’t read them?”

  “There are only three,” Evan said. “I don’t think it’s because he hasn’t read them. I think it’s because he has.”

  “I thought they were very good,” Walz said, “especially the first one. Not that I don’t like the other two.”

  “They’re bad,” Evan said, “but they’re the best I knew how to do at the time. The great books are never written. The people who could write them don’t know how to write, which is a trick. Any fool who gets the knack of writing can make himself a reputation if he’s willing to work. Dade’s forgotten more than I’ll ever know. He’s a loner. Nobody will ever know what Dade knows. What he knows about everything. About each of us. About our lies, our good ones and our bad ones. I know how to write, but so what? I gave up writing because it is a trick.”