Don't Laugh Unless It's Funny

What we are as a family is a lot of enemies who make fun of one another, imitate one another, belittle one another and laugh our heads off about the absurdities, pomposities, follies and general all-around ridiculousness of one another.

This may be the supreme friendship of which members of the same family are capable, or it may be that all of us are mad—from sheer good health, most likely. At any rate, we are still laughing at our heroes, now dead, whom we remember as old men, although these dead are younger men than we who remember them have become. We are the old men now, but we go on remembering one another as if we were still kids.

One of our heroes, Sark Bashmanian, called the Englishman, for instance, wasn't even 15 when he was given that nickname because of his ability to speak like English butlers he had seen in movies. He actually looked more like an Arab, but how do you imitate the speech mannerisms of the Arabs, considering they never invaded any of the first talking pictures, if, in fact, they ever invaded any of the later ones? Like most of us, he was a few inches under six feet, but because he was roly-poly he seemed shorter. He had a hawk nose that was decent enough, certainly true and valid at any rate, and just right for the dark round face it was set in, the earnest full mouth over which it stood and the smallish intense but rather dreamy and even forgetful eyes it was under. Sark, or the Englishman, began to lose his hair before he was 20, and that is most unusual among us. We generally don't ever lose our hair, although it tends to become gray at the temples when we have had 30 years.

We are all of us actors of one sort or another, although the idea of going on the stage, as such, never entered our heads. We acted in the world, and some of our acting was rather good, too. It could have been worth a great deal of money, and made a lot of fame, but it just didn't seem to occur to any of us that acting was something to sell or to get famous by—we were famous enough to one another, in any case. The fact is we enjoyed two orders of fame—the courteous order, which was not necessarily untrue but certainly wasn't true enough, and the discourteous order, which was probably just a little truer than the other. The courteous order of fame enjoyed by the Englishman, for instance, was that he was an awfully funny storyteller, and the fact is he was. In addition to the movie butlers he knew how to be, he was very good at being a highly excitable Italian, or a patient and friendly but unloved and unwanted Jew, a deep-voiced simple-minded Negro, and many others, such as fairies, Okies, Mexicans, Indians and Japanese.

When the Englishman did Armenians, we were scarcely aware that he was doing them, because that's who we were, although he did them specifically by name: his father, his father's four brothers, his father's three sisters, his mother, and a whole variety of others we knew, each of whom had his own peculiar style of speaking, swearing, shouting and laughing.

He had this skill of mimicry, as of course all of us did, in one degree or another. All of our kids began early in life talking in scornful imitation of mama and papa, uncle and aunt, grandma and grandpa.

One day when the Englishman was 22, married and the father of a small son, he ran into his cousin Vigan Bashmanian, called Vigo, who was then 17, and is now 50, and he said, "Vigo, come on in here and sit down." At that time the Englishman worked in his father's furniture store on Mariposa Street, where he affected a lordly order of English when he felt a prospective customer would be impressed by it, and where he acted as all-around contact man with the business world, with the furniture wholesalers who came to the store, and with customers who wanted to open charge accounts. Consequently, he had a little office at the back of the store, and it was to this office that he took Vigo that day. The furniture in the office was all quite good, and Vigo was invited to sit down in a very comfortable red-leather chair.

"I want to tell a number of new stories I've been working on," he said, and Vigo thought, "Oh, boy, this nut is going to bore me for at least an hour now, what shall I do?" He was fond of the Englishman. We all were, but Vigo, like all the rest of us, was afraid, whenever he ran into him, that the Englishman would want to try out some of his latest stories on him. These stories were actually jokes the San Francisco wholesalers had told him, which he in turn had thought about and had enlarged and ornamented. He had a good feeling for detail and he liked to build his stories slowly, so that a joke that a wholesaler would tell in one minute flat the Englishman would tell in five. And they weren't really barren minutes. On the contrary, they were frequently pleasant. If I wasn't in a hurry, for instance, or thinking about something I wanted to go on thinking about, I enjoyed the Englishman's long drawn-out versions of American jokes. Vigo, himself a mimic of great skill and speed, had very innocently been on his way to the furniture store when he had come face to face with the Englishman. Vigo had wanted to see if he could borrow a dime from the Englishman, or from his father, Paulus, or perhaps even have Paulus ask him to go on an errand for maybe as much as a quarter, but there had been no customer in the store on this very hot afternoon in August 1927, and Paulus was fast asleep in an overstuffed chair at the front of the store, waiting for a customer to come in.

And now, at the back of the store here was the Englishman at work, practicing the recitation of a new story. Vigo wanted to get up and hurry away, when his cousin said in his own voice and speech, which had a kind of lazy, mushy slur to it, "Vigo, you're just the man I've been hoping to run into for many days now."

Vigo's spirits lifted a little because he thought this might mean that the Englishman had a chore of some kind for him to do, for a dime or a quarter, or if it was for the rest of the afternoon, for 35 cents, maybe.

"Yeah, Sark? Me?"

"You and no other, Vigo."

"What's on your mind?"

And then it happened.

The English butler arrived into Sark's voice and he said, "What's on my mind, lad? We'll soon know what's on my mind."

Vigo wanted to talk to Sark, not to the Englishman, but once the Englishman had arrived on the scene, it was impossible to get through to Sauk. With a dime Vigo would have been able to pay his way into the Bijou Theater, where two features, a comedy, a travelog, a newsreel and a Tarzan were showing, but now this whole happy possibility of the afternoon appeared to be shot to hell. Vigo liked going to the Bijou, because he enjoyed noticing how ridiculous the movies were, including the newsreels, and it made him feel good to talk back to the stupid stuff, sometimes out loud, sometimes softly, sometimes only in his mind. Vigo's whole life so far had been one unfortunate, comic event after another, but at the movies he saw people involved in even more unfortunate, more ridiculous, more comic and stupid events than he had ever known, and this was a kind of comfort to him. At any rate, after a three-or-.four-hour visit to the Bijou, Vigo always felt better, sometimes good, now and then great, and he didn't mind at all going home quickly to a big dinner. In fact, invariably after three or four hours at the Bijou, he walked home quickly and eagerly, talking and laughing about everything on the way, eager to sit down and eat and go on being Vigo Bashmanian.

Now, though, Vigo was in the red-leather chair, and he really didn't like the feeling of being captured. He didn't mind being an audience, as such; he simply preferred to pick his time and place. For instance, if a customer had come into the store and Sark had gone to work trying to make the customer buy a heavy dining-room set when all the poor Mexican wanted was a kitchen table, Vigo would enjoy watching the performance, because it would be funny. The bewildered Mexican would make it funny. Now, though, Vigo was in the unhappy position of the Mexican, and it scared him.

Now, in his own voice, Sark said, "Here's the first story, but don't laugh unless it's funny."

But this remark itself was so funny to Vigo that he jumped to his feet, laughing, and Sark's face fell, as if he had been insulted. Vigo didn't want to be rude, so he quickly stopped laughing as Sark said, "No, this is serious, Vigo. I've put in a lot of work on these stories and I want to try them out on somebody I can trust. Just sit down and relax, and let me tell you the first one and let's see if it makes you laugh."

Vigo said, "I wish you hadn't said that, Sark. It makes me feel self-conscious. I won't really know what to laugh at now."

"I think you will, Vigo."

And the Englishman began to tell the first story. About this London Lady who was in bed with the gardener while her husband, the Lord, was in the bathtub having his back scrubbed by the upstairs maid, who had refused to work without having her eyes blindfolded. The Lady said something, the gardener said something and, since they were in bed, it was about petunias and fuchsias, which Sark mispronounced, but not on purpose. Then, the Lord said something, and the upstairs maid said something, and pretty soon it began to go on and on, and Vigo's mind began to wander because he believed he had plenty of time to bring his mind back in time for the point. And then all of a sudden he noticed that Sark wasn't talking anymore.

"Was that the story?"

"For God's sake, Vigo, what happened?"

"I guess it wasn't funny, Sark."

"That's impossible. It's one of the funniest stories I've ever told. All right, all right, let's say you didn't like it. Let's go on to the second story."

The first story had taken about five minutes. The second was taking even longer, and to Vigo it seemed as if it was never going to end. He kept forcing himself to listen, to try to believe that what he was hearing was funny, but it was hard work, and again his mind wandered, and when the story ended, again he didn't laugh, he just sat there.

"Are you trying to tell me that this story isn't funny, too?" Sark said.

"Not necessarily," Vigo said. "It isn't that it isn't funny, it's just that you got me confused by telling me how to listen, and I think that that's making me miss all the thing I wouldn't have missed if I hadn't been told. I guess I took you too seriously about not laughing unless I couldn't help it. I guess I wanted to find out if your stories would make me laugh, the way you believed they would."

"I'm awfully surprised they didn't."

"I'm sure it's my fault."

"The stories weren't funny?"

"Well, they didn't make me laugh."

"All right, all right," Sark said. "Let bygones be bygones, the best is yet to come," and inwardly Vigo groaned and wished he had never been born into the lousy family. The fact is, the stories had been funny, and Sark's way of telling them had been funny. If Vigo hadn't been captive, if Sark had been telling the stories to a couple of wholesalers from San Francisco and Vigo had been over to one side, out of range, and not captive, as the wholesalers would have been, Vigo was sure he would have had a great time, because the stories really didn't need to be funny at all, the thing that made for the real comedy was Sark himself.

"Now, the third story," Sark said, "and I defy you not to laugh at this one."

"Hold it," Vigo said. "You've killed the story for me already. I've been defied, and so it's going to be impossible for me to laugh. Skip the third one. tell the fourth one, and don't expect anything. I don't want to tell you how to tell your stories, Sark, but I don't think you're giving yourself a fair shake by telling me what is going to happen to me when you tell them, because you ought to know by now that that's not the way I'm made, that's not the way any of us are made. We get everything we get on the bounce, or we don't get it at all. Why do you drink none of us is a big success?"

"None of us?" Sark said. "I consider myself a very big success."

"As what?"

"Well, first," Sark said, "where it doesn't really count, because it's only a living, as a furniture salesman, not to mention buyer. Ask any of the wholesalers who come in here if they have ever been able to pull a fast one on me. They haven't. I buy my furniture for less than the smartest furniture dealers in San Francisco, and on top of that I get ninety days, not sixty. But that's business, and the hell with it. Where I'm really a success is in storytelling. I'd just like you to be in here someday when I've got a couple of wholesalers to tell my stories to."

"I have been in here on a day like that, Sark. Have you forgotten?"

"Well, what happened?"

(continued on page 151)

Don't Laugh(continued from page 94)

"The wholesalers killed themselves laughing."

"How about you?"

"I laughed, too. Not the way they did, maybe, but I laughed."

"That's where I'm really a success," Sark said. "Telling stories that make people laugh. So here I go again."

Sark told another story, but again Vigo didn't laugh, and it wasn't that he wasn't willing. The fact is that when Sark began to tell the story Vigo made up his mind to enjoy it and to laugh at the end of it, but he didn't enjoy it and he didn't laugh at the end of it.

"Sark," he said, "I've got to go."

"No, no, sit down. Take it easy. We've got all afternoon."

And without stopping to catch his breath, Sark began to tell a new story, and this one was so bitterly empty and desperate, although probably actually funny, or potentially funny, that Vigo began to feel annoyed with his cousin. When the story ended he got to his feet and looked at Sark with contempt, and he said, "You and your stories are a pain in the ass, Sark. Get out of my way or I'm going to hit you in the mouth."

"You're doing this on purpose," Sark shouted. "I know you Vartan Bashmanians. That branch of our family has always been full of troublemakers. Who are you to come in here and tell me my stories aren't funny? Now, get out of here."

Vigo hit him in the mouth, so Sark hit Vigo in the stomach, but Vigo always had a stomach that was as hard as a rock, and instead of hurting him, the wallop made him feel good. He began to roar with laughter, saying, "Don't fight me, Sark, I'll murder you." But Sark kept fighting, swinging and missing, slipping and falling, and Vigo kept laughing and urging him to stop. Sark's father came running from the front of the store, and he began to shout in Armenian: "What is it? Why are you killing each other?"

The fight stopped and Vigo said, "Uncle Paulus, I'm sorry," but he couldn't stop laughing.

"If you're sorry, why are you laughing, Vigo?"

"I don't know, Uncle Paulus. I think I've got a fever."

"And you, Sark," the old man said. "What's the matter with you?"

"He didn't laugh at my stories. He did it on purpose. He came here to start a fight."

"I came here," Vigo said, "to see if you had some work I might do for a dime or a quarter. I haven't earned a dime in two weeks. Uncle Paulus, is there some work I can do for a dime?"

"Yes, of course," the old man said. "Come with me."

Now, Sark was in a rage.

"If you give him a job, and a dime," he shouted, "I'm not going to work here anymore. I'm going to take the wife and the little boy to San Francisco. I know a lot of wholesalers up there and I can have a job any time I want one."

"Vigo, you better go home," the old man said.

"Yes, Uncle Paulus." And then Vigo turned to Sark: "I'm sorry. I really don't know what happened. If you want to know the truth, the stories were funny."

"Then why didn't you laugh?"

"I didn't mean not to."

"Which of the stories was funniest?"

"You may not believe this, Sark, but it was the last one, just before the fight started."

"Yes, I thought that that was the funniest one, too, but if you think that story was funny, wait'll you hear this one."

"You don't want to tell me another story, do you?"

"This one'll kill you."

"Sark, don't tell it, please."

"Why not? You've got nowhere to go."

"No, we all know I haven't got a job, and can't get one. We all know I'm lazy, the same as all of the Vartan Bashmanians, but Sark, don't ask me to listen to another story. I feel kind of stupid, and I think I want to walk home and eat. All I do is eat. Everybody says so."

"I'll tell you what I'll do," Sark said. "I'll tell the story to my father, and you just hang around here somewhere, and after the story, go ahead, do the work my father wants you to do, and he'll give you a dime. All right?"

"Well, let's get out of this little office, at least."

They went out into the store and Sark began to tell his father the new story while Vigo wandered around among the chairs, tables, sofas and floor lamps. Every now and then Vigo glanced back at Sark and listened to him as he spoke with the accent and style of an English butler, and he glanced at Sark's father, Paulus, standing there like some kind of frog-like creature, hypnotized, and it made Vigo feel pretty good. At the end of the story he almost went to pieces, laughing. He sat in a chair, bounced out of it against a table, turned, knocked over a floor lamp, picked it up, ran half the length of the store and, still laughing, came back. Sark was standing, dumbfounded, staring at his father, because his father hadn't laughed, and wasn't even smiling.

"Well, what's the matter with you, Papa?"

"I don't like dirty stories," the old man said in his gentle, high-pitched voice.

"Jesus H. Christ," Sark bellowed, "what's a man going to do with a bunch of converted old-country Presbyterians? Papa, wake up, this is America."

"You go to hell," Paulus said to his son. "Come on, Vigo, we go down to the basement and open new crates. I don't want to argue with somebody who thinks being in America means he can tell dirty stories."

"No, wait, Papa," Sark said. "I've got a clean story, a very beautiful story."

"If it's clean, all right," the old man said, so Sark told another story, and again it murdered Vigo but didn't do anything at all to Sark's father. Sark insisted on telling a third story, but again his father didn't laugh, whereupon Sark swore bitterly and left the store.

Paulus said to Vigo, "I don't know what's the matter with my son. What's the matter with him, Vigo?"

"He's rich, he's spoiled, and he's a big success," Vigo said.

"Yes," Paulus said, "God forgive me."

He brought some coins out of his pocket and handed Vigo a dime.

"Open the crates downstairs and put the furniture on the floor."

This work took only an hour. When Vigo came upstairs, Sark was back in his office, standing in front of a mirror, making funny faces, and Paulus was up front near the door in an overstuffed chair, fast asleep. Vigo hurried out to the street, on his way to the Bijou, and a little happiness, for a change.