The Laughing Matter (23 page)

He read the letter slowly, then got into his car and sat there almost an hour, unable even to turn the ignition key and start the motor. He did not read the letter a second time, but remembered everything in it. At last he got out of the car and went back into the house, to the telephone.

Dr. Altoun came on the line.

“Listen,” he said in their language. “I am calling from my own home. I am leaving immediately in my brother's car. It is a drive of four hours. I wish to go to the inquiry.”

“We will go in the morning,” Dr. Altoun said.

“It is almost ten now,” he said. “I will be there at two.”

“I will be waiting,” the doctor said.

“I wish to ask,” he said, “how is my son?”

“He is well.”

“May I speak to him, please?”

“He is asleep,” the man said. “Shall I wake him up?”

“No,” he said. “Let my son sleep. How is my daughter?”

“She is also well.”

“Thank you.”

“There will be little difficulty at the inquiry,” the man said. “You must not believe it was not an accident.”

“I will be there at two,” he said. “I must see the faces of my children asleep.”

“Yes,” the man said.

He left the house, got into the car, and drove off. He was driving swiftly down the summit of Pacheco Pass toward Los Banos when the front inside tire exploded. The car plunged off the highway, struck and smashed the curved plate fence, dived, fell, struck the mountainside, fell again, and then stopped.

The man's head and face were torn and smashed, and he was not quite conscious, but he moved to go, to get to the inquiry in the morning. He moved on his belly almost three inches, then came to metal. He became conscious enough to know that he was trapped under the car, broken and bleeding late at night, far from the highway. There would certainly be no one to come by and notice the small spot of wreckage a quarter of a mile down the mountainside. He tried to move again, to get out, to pick up and go, to get to Red's sleeping face, to Eva's sleeping face, but he couldn't go, and then something began to laugh. He had no way of knowing if it was himself, his life, his father's life, his wife Swan's life, his brother's life, the smashed junk of the automobile, or the smashed junk of matter itself laughing.

Whatever it was, the laughter took the form and meaning of fire. He could not see it. He could see nothing, but he could smell it, and then he heard it, first as an explosion, as if lungs needing air badly had suddenly reached air, then softly, as a hum. And finally he felt the laughter. It was an accident, though. It was one accident after another, ending in laughter.

“Swan?” he said. “Red? Eva?”

In the house on the vineyard in Clovis, five hours later,
Dr. Altoun, asleep on the sofa in the parlor, sat up suddenly, for he heard sobbing.

He got up and went in the dark to the door of the boy's room.

The boy was crying in his sleep. Dr. Altoun turned on the hall light and listened.

“Papa?” the boy said. “Mama?”

The boy sobbed again, then fell back to sleep. The man looked at his watch and wondered what had delayed the boy's father. He went back to the sofa, but instead of stretching out on it, he sat there to wait.

William Saroyan (1908–1981) was an internationally renowned Armenian American writer, playwright, and humanitarian. He achieved great popularity in the thirties, forties, and fifties through his hundreds of short stories, plays, novels, memoirs, and essays. In 1939, Saroyan was the first American writer to win both the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize for his play
The Time of Your Life
. He famously refused to accept the Pulitzer Prize on the grounds that “Commerce should not patronize art.” He died near his hometown of Fresno at the age of seventy–two.

Discover books by William Saroyan published by Bloomsbury Reader at
www.bloomsbury.com/WilliamSaroyan

Boys and Girls Together
Chance Meetings
The Laughing Matter
Rock Wagram

For copyright reasons, any images not belonging to the original author have been removed from this book.
The text has not been changed, and may still contain references to missing images.

This electronic edition published in 2014 by Bloomsbury Reader

Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP

First published in 1953 by Doubleday & Company

Copyright © 1953 William Saroyan

Used with permission of Stanford University

All rights reserved
You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

The moral right of the author is asserted.

eISBN: 9781448214761

Visit
www.bloomsburyreader.com
to find out more about our authors and their books
You will find extracts, author interviews, author events and you can
sign up for newsletters
to be the first to hear about our latest releases and special offers.