William Saroyan - The Laughing Matter

“I didn’t mean to make you cry,” he said to the sleeping girl.

When he turned he saw Swan standing in the doorway.

“They’re going,” she said.

“I’ll be right out.”

He went out and saw Red and Flora standing together, talking.

“No,” he said to Warren Walz, to May, to Cody Bone, to Bart. “You can’t go now. It’s too early. Please don’t go.”

“The kids are tired,” Walz said. He was sober now, and his wife seemed hushed.

“We had a wonderful time,” May said. “I’m so glad you asked us. Swan and I had such a nice talk. Please come to our house one night before you go back, only I wish to God you’d never go back. Come to Clovis and live on a vineyard.”

“That’s right,” Cody Bone said. “Come and stay, so I can keep an eye on Red. It’s not the worst place in the world. Where else can you find an evening like this? Look at the stars. You don’t see a heaven like that many places.”

They were gone in five minutes. The place was quiet now, desolate and deadly.

Red sat on the steps of the front porch, his chin resting in the palm of his hand. Swan was putting stuff on a tray to take inside and put away.

“They had a nice time,” she said. She spoke to no one in particular. “She’s an awful nice girl. She’s got real intelligence and manners.”

“Who?” Red said.

“May Walz,” Swan said.

Evan Nazarenus went to the table, put a few things more on the tray, picked it up, and went into the house with it.

The woman went to work in the kitchen, holding glasses under the hot-water tap.

“When you’re through in there,” the man said, “I’d like to talk to you.”

He spoke quietly, from the end of the parlor, leaning against the piano, but he knew she would hear him.

She came out of the kitchen into the dining room.

“The water was running,” she said.

“I said when you’re through in there I’d like to talk to you.”

“I’m afraid to talk to you,” she said. “I don’t know what you’re liable to do.”

“I’m afraid to talk to you, too,” he said, “but I think we’d better just the same.”

“All right.”

She went back to the kitchen.

He sat at the piano. After a moment he touched a key and heard its high note. He touched it again and heard the note again. He rested his head on his arm, closing his eyes, falling into instant sleepless dreaming.

He awoke suddenly, knowing she stood near, waiting. He moved to the hall, out of sight, and from there said, “If there is any charity in your soul for yourself, know there is charity in mine for my own self, and for you. Know this and allow me to help my son and my daughter, allow me to help you, whoever you are, my wife, the mother of my children, a stranger, whoever you prefer to be. Know this and allow me not to destroy ourselves, whoever we are. Know there is charity and nothing else in my soul for each of us, whoever we are. Know I did not know we were so estranged, so deeply unknown to one another.”

He came from the hall, and for the first time that day looked at her.

“What do you want to do, Swan?”

“I don’t know, Evan.”

“This afternoon,” he said, “hearing those words, I fell upon you, but no more, for I do not know you. If I cannot love someone I do not know, neither can I hate. If there is anything to say, say it as a stranger saying it to a stranger.”

“I don’t know, Evan,” she said. “Sometimes I think I must have a doctor to help me, however brutal it may be. But sometimes I also think I must not. I don’t know.”

“I want to help you.”

“I can’t think,” she said. “I don’t know. It’s not ours. It’s not yours and mine. But is that so? Is it so surely so, so surely not ours?”

“Nothing is ours now, Swan.”

“I live simply,” she said. “I live stupidly, even. I live with my body. I can’t think. I don’t know, Evan. When you went off with Red, and Eva wanted to go, I believed you would take her , too, and not come back. I believed that that was what you meant to do, and I was relieved . I believed I would go off alone, have nothing and no one, except myself, and I was relieved , Evan, I was glad. But you refused Eva, who wept as I’ve never heard her weep before, and I was frightened. I’m afraid of love. I’m more afraid of love than I am of hate. I’m more afraid of charity than I am of contempt.”

“What do you want to do, Swan?”

“I’m a woman. I don’t know. I am to be deceived into escape from fear by a lover, or I am to be ravaged by a hater. I don’t know what I want to do, Evan. What do you want to do?”

“Sleep,” he said.

He went to his room and sat on his bed, the woman following him.

“I am to be loved or hated,” she said.

He turned, astonished.

“You must be mad,” he said.

“Are you tired?” she said.

“Swan,” he said. “I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to shout. You’re in trouble. We’re all in trouble.”

“Are you that tired?”

“You cannot be brutal to Red and Eva,” he said. “You cannot force me to be brutal to them. They are not to be dragged into this, do you hear?”

She clutched him suddenly, sobbing and moaning.

“Help me,” she whispered.

“I am helping you.”

He lifted her, then put her down on the bed. She seized his hand.

“Stop it,” he said.

He turned, to go back into the parlor, to be away from her.

“Don’t leave me,” she said. “Please don’t leave me. At least don’t leave me, Evan.”

“I won’t leave you.”

“Don’t ever leave me. Don’t ever leave me alone, not even for a moment. Don’t ever leave me alone again, Evan.”

“Go to sleep, will you?”

“You won’t leave me?”

“No.”

He stood in the parlor, trying to think.

The singing birds woke up the little girl. Eva Nazarenus , they sang. Her father said so. Her father didn’t take her but took Red, and she cried. She was angry at her father. If he could take Red, why couldn’t he take Eva? She wanted to go, she was sure he would take her, and then he didn’t. He just didn’t. He drove off with Red, but not with her. He left her standing there. She was very angry at him. It wasn’t nice, what he did. She had always been able to count on him to be nice. He was the only one she had always been able to count on. Her mother could be nice, but only when she wanted to, not when Eva wanted her to. Sometimes when her mother wanted to be nice, it wasn’t nice for Eva, but after a while it was nice. It took a little while for her to get used to her mother being nice when her mother wanted to, not caring what Eva wanted. Her mother was awful nice. She could be mean, too, though. Sometimes her voice got so hard it scared Eva. Sometimes her eyes got so angry Eva didn’t want to look at them. The next minute, though, her mother was nice again. She was the best mother to have, better than Flora’s, and it was wonderful that out of all the mothers in the world to have Eva Nazarenus had got the best, and so nice that on top of being the best, her mother was her own mother, Eva’s own mother. She felt sorry for all the ones who didn’t have their own mothers. It must be so lonesome for them to have mothers who weren’t their own. Eva had her own father, too. Some girls who had their own mothers didn’t have their own fathers. She had both. She had her own brother, too. And now, here in Dade’s house, in a whole bedroom to herself, she had her own birds. They said her name every morning, as they were saying it now.