Laughter in the Dark

by Vladimir Nabokov

  He, for his part, developed such a taste for Margot that often, when he was on the point of going, he would suddenly shove his hat into a corner (incidentally, she had discovered from its inside that he had been to New York) and decided to stay. All this lasted for exactly one month. Then one morning he got up earlier than he usually did and said that he had to leave. She asked him for how long. He stared at her and then walked up and down the room in his purple pyjamas, rubbing his hands as though he were washing them.

  "Forever, I guess," he said suddenly, and he began to dress without looking at her. She thought that he might be joking, kicked off the bedclothes, as the room was very hot, and turned her face to the wall.

  "Pity I haven't a photo of you," he said as he stamped into his shoes.

  Then she heard him pack and lock the small suitcase he used for the odds and ends he brought to the flat. After a few minutes he said:

  "Don't move and don't look round."

  She did not stir. What was he doing? She twitched her bare shoulder.

  "Don't move," he repeated.

  For a couple of minutes there was silence except for a faint grating sound which somehow seemed familiar.

  "Now you may turn," he said.

  But Margot still lay motionless. He walked up to her, kissed her ear and went out quickly. The kiss sang in her ear for quite a while.

  She lay in bed the whole day. He never came back.

  Next morning she received a wire from Bremen: "Rooms paid till July adieu sweet devil."

  "Good Heavens, how shall I do without him?" said Margot aloud. She leaped to the window, flung it open and was about to throw herself out. But at that moment a red-and-gold fire engine drove up, snorting loudly, and stopped in front of the house opposite. A crowd had collected, clouds of smoke billowed from the top window, and black scraps of charred paper floated in the wind. She was so interested in the fire that she forgot her intention.

  She had very little money left. In her distress she went to a dance hall as abandoned damsels do in films. Two Japanese gentlemen accosted her and, as she had taken more cocktails than were good for her, she agreed to spend the night with them. Next morning she demanded two hundred marks. The Japanese gentlemen gave her three fifty in small change and bustled her out. She resolved to be more wary in the future.

  At a bar one night a fat old man with a nose like an overripe pear put his wrinkled hand on her silken knee and said wistfully:

  "Glad to meet you again, Dora. Do you still remember what fun we had last summer?"

  She laughed and replied that he had made a mistake. The old man asked her with a sigh what she would drink. Then he drove her home and became so beastly in the darkness of the car that she jumped out. He followed her and almost in tears begged her to meet him again. She gave him her telephone number. When he had paid for her room till November and had also given her enough money to buy a fur coat, she allowed him to stay for the night. He was a comfortable bedfellow, dropping fast asleep the moment he had stopped wheezing. Then he failed to keep an appointment, and when at last she rang up his office she was told that he was dead.

  She sold her fur coat and the money kept her until the spring. Two days before this transaction she felt an ardent longing to display herself to her parents in her splendor, so she drove past the house in a taxicab. It was a Saturday and her mother was polishing the handle of the front door. When she saw her daughter, she stopped dead. "Well, I never!" she exclaimed with much feeling. Margot smiled silently, got back into the cab and through the back window saw her brother come running out of the house. He bawled something after her and shook his fist.

  She took a cheaper room. Half undressed, her little feet shoeless, she would sit on the edge of her bed in the gathering darkness and smoke endless cigarettes. Her landlady, a sympathetic body, dropped in now and then for a soulful chat and one day told Margot that a cousin of hers owned a little cinema which was doing quite well. The winter seemed colder than winters used to be; Margot looked about her for something to pawn: that sunset perhaps.

  "What shall I do next?" she thought.

  One raw blue morning when her courage was high she made up her face very strikingly, looked up a film company with a promising name and succeeded in making an appointment to see the manager at his office. He turned out to be an elderly man with a black bandage over his right eye and a piercing gleam in his left. Margot began assuring him that she had played before--and very successfully.

  "What picture?" asked the manager gazing benevolently at her excited face.

  Boldly she mentioned a firm, a film. The man was silent. Then he closed his left eye (it would have been a wink, had the other been visible) and said:

  "Lucky for you that you came across me. Another in my place might have been tempted by your ... er ... youth to make you heaps of fine promises and--well, you'd have gone the way of all flesh, never to become the silver ghost of romance--at least of that special brand of romance which we deal in. I am, as you may observe, no longer young, and what I haven't seen of life isn't worth seeing. My daughter, I imagine, is older than you. And for that reason I would like to tell you something, my dear child. You have never been an actress and in all likelihood you never will be. Go home, think it over, talk to your parents if you are on speaking terms with them, which I doubt ..."

  Margot slapped the edge of the desk with her glove, stood up and stalked out, her face distorted with fury.

  Another company had its office in the same building, but there she was not even admitted. Full of wrath she made her way home. Her landlady boiled her two eggs and patted her shoulders, while Margot ate greedily, angrily. Then the good woman fetched some brandy and two small glasses, filled them with a shaky hand, carefully corked the bottle and carried it away.

  "Here's to your good luck," she said, seating herself again at the rickety table. "Everything'll be all right, my dear. I'll be seeing my cousin tomorrow and we'll have a chat about you."

  The chat was quite a success, and at first Margot enjoyed her new occupation, though it was, of course, a little humiliating to start her film career in that way. Three days later she felt as though she had done nothing else all her life but show groping people to their seats. On Friday, however, there was a change of program and that cheered her up. She stood in the darkness leaning against the wall and watched Greta Garbo. But after a while she was fed up for good. Another week went by. A man coming out lingered by the exit and glanced at her with a shy helpless expression. After two or three nights he returned. He was perfectly dressed and his blue eyes stared at her hungrily.

  "Quite a decent-looking fellow, though rather on the dull side," mused Margot.

  Then, when he turned up for the fourth or fifth time--and certainly not for the sake of the picture, because it was the same--she felt a faint thrill of pleasant excitement.

  But how timid he was, that fellow! As she was leaving for home one night, she noticed him on the other side of the street. She walked slowly on without looking round, but with the corners of her eyes folded back like the ears of a rabbit: expecting that he would follow her. But he did not--he simply faded away. Then, when he came again to the "Argus" there was a wan, morbid, very interesting look about him. Her work over, Margot tripped out into the street; stopped; opened her umbrella. There he was standing again on the opposite sidewalk and calmly she crossed over to him. But when he saw her approaching, he at once began to walk away.

  He felt silly and sick. He knew that she was behind and so was afraid to walk too fast lest he should lose her; but then, too, he was afraid to slacken his pace lest she should overtake him. At the next street-crossing he was obliged to wait while car after car sped past him. Here she overtook him, all but slipped under a bicycle van and jumped back, colliding with him. He grasped her thin elbow and they crossed together.

  "Now it has started," thought Albinus, awkwardly adjusting his stride to hers--he had never walked with so small a woman.

  "You're drenched," she
said with a smile. He took the umbrella out of her hand; she pressed still closer to him. For a moment he feared that his heart might burst, but then suddenly something relaxed delightfully as though he had caught the tune of his ecstasy, this moist ecstasy drumming, drumming against the taut silk overhead. Now his words came freely and he enjoyed their newborn ease.

  The rain stopped, but they still walked under the umbrella. When they came to a halt at her front door, he closed the wet, shiny, beautiful thing and gave it back to her.

  "Don't go away yet," he pleaded (holding the while one hand in his pocket and endeavoring to push off his wedding ring with his thumb). "Don't," he repeated (it came off).

  "Getting late," she said, "my aunt will be angry."

  He seized her by the wrists and with the violence of shyness tried to kiss her, but she ducked and his lips met only her velvet cap.

  "Let me go," she murmured, her head lowered. "You know you ought not to do that."

  "But don't go," he cried. "I have no one in the world but you."

  "I can't, I can't," she answered, and turning the key in the lock she pressed against the great door with her small shoulder.

  "I shall wait for you again tomorrow," said Albinus.

  She smiled at him through the glass pane and then ran down the dim passage toward the back yard.

  He took a deep breath, groped for his handkerchief, blew his nose, carefully buttoned, then unbuttoned, his overcoat; noticed how light and bare his hand felt and hurriedly slipped on the ring, which was still quite warm.

  4

  AT HOME nothing had changed, and this seemed remarkable. Elisabeth, Irma, Paul, belonged, as it were, to another period, limpid and tranquil like the backgrounds of the early Italians. Paul, after working all day at his office, liked to pass a quiet evening at his sister's home. He cherished a profound respect for Albinus, for his learning and taste, for the beautiful things around him--for the spinach-green Gobelin in the dining room, a hunt in a forest.

  When Albinus opened the door of his flat he felt a queer sinking in the pit of his stomach as he reflected that, in a moment, he would see his wife: would she not be able to read his perfidy in his face? For that walk in the rain was betrayal; all that had gone before had been only thoughts and dreams. Perhaps, by some dreadful mischance, his actions had been observed and reported? Perhaps he smelt of the cheap sweet scent she used? As he stepped into the hall he swiftly concocted in his mind a story that might come in handy: of a young artist, her poverty and her talent, and how he was trying to help her. But nothing had changed, neither the white door behind which his daughter was sleeping at the end of the passage, nor his brother-in-law's vast overcoat which was hanging on its coat-hanger (a special hanger wound in red silk) as calmly and respectably as ever.

  He entered the sitting room. Here they were--Elisabeth in her familiar tweed dress with checks, Paul puffing at his cigar, and an old lady of their acquaintance, a baron's widow who had been impoverished by the inflation and now carried on a small business in rugs and pictures.... No matter what they were discussing: the rhythm of everyday life was so comforting that he felt a spasm of joy: he had not been found out.

  And then later as he lay by his wife's side in their bedroom, dimly lit, quietly furnished, with, as usual, part of the central heating apparatus (painted white) reflected in the mirror, Albinus marveled at his own divided nature: his affection for Elisabeth was perfectly secure and undiminished, but at the same time there burned in his mind the thought that perhaps no later than tomorrow--yes, certainly tomorrow--

  But it did not prove quite so easy. At their next meetings Margot skilfully contrived to avoid his love-making--and there was not the slightest chance of his being able to take her to a hotel. She did not tell him much about herself--only that she was an orphan, the daughter of a painter (curious coincidence, that), and lived with her aunt; that she was very hard up, but longed to give up her exhausting job.

  Albinus had introduced himself to her under the hurriedly assumed name of Schiffermiller, and Margot thought bitterly: "Another Miller--already," and then: "Oh, you're lying, of course."

  March was rainy. These nocturnal strolls under the umbrella tortured Albinus, so he soon suggested they should go into a cafe. He selected a dingy little place where he felt sure of not meeting any acquaintances.

  It was his habit when settling down at a table to lay out at once his cigarette case and lighter. On the case Margot espied his initials. She said nothing, but after a little reflection asked him to fetch her the telephone book. While he was walking toward the booth with his slow flopping gait, she took up his hat from the chair and swiftly examined its lining: there was his name (he had had it put there in order to thwart absent-minded artists at parties).

  Presently he came back with the telephone directory, holding it like a Bible, smiling tenderly, and, while he was gazing at her long drooping lashes, Margot sped through the R's and found Albinus' address and his telephone number. Then she quietly closed the well-thumbed blue volume.

  "Take off your coat," murmured Albinus.

  Without bothering to stand up she began to wriggle out of the sleeves, inclining her pretty neck and thrusting forward first the right and then the left shoulder. As Albinus helped her, he caught a hot whiff of violets and saw her shoulder blades move, and the sallow skin between them ripple and smooth out again. Then she took off her hat, peered into her pocket-mirror and, wetting her forefinger, tapped the black lovelocks on her temples.

  Albinus sat down beside her and looked and looked at that face in which everything was so charming--the burning cheeks, the lips glistening from the cherry brandy, the childish solemnity of the long hazel eyes and the small downy mole on the soft curve just beneath the left one.

  "If I knew I should hang for it," he thought, "I would still look at her."

  Even that vulgar Berlin slang of hers only enhanced the charm of her throaty voice and large white teeth. When laughing she half closed her eyes and a dimple danced on her cheek. He pawed at her little hand, but she withdrew it briskly.

  "You're driving me crazy," he said.

  Margot patted his cuff and said:

  "Now, be a good boy."

  His first thought next morning was: it can't go on like this, it just can't. I must get her a room. Curse that aunt. We shall be alone, quite alone. A textbook of love for beginners. Oh, the things I shall teach her. So young, so pure, so maddening ...

  "Are you asleep?" asked Elisabeth softly.

  He achieved the perfect yawn and opened his eyes. Elisabeth was seated in her pale blue nightgown on the edge of the double bed and was looking through the mail.

  "Anything interesting?" asked Albinus, gazing in dull wonder at her white shoulder.

  "Ach, he asks you for money again. Says his wife and his mother-in-law have been ill and that people are plotting against him. Says he can't afford to buy paints. We'll have to help him again, I suppose."

  "Yes, of course," said Albinus, and in his mind there formed an extraordinary, vivid picture of Margot's dead father: he, too, no doubt had been a seedy, bad-tempered and not very gifted artist whom life had treated harshly.

  "And here's an invitation to the Artists' Club. We shall have to go this time. And here's a letter from the States."

  "Read it aloud," he asked.

  "My dear Sir, I am afraid I have not much news to convey, but still there are a few things I should like to add to my last long letter, which, in parenthesis, you have not answered yet. As I may be coming in the Fall ..."

  At that moment the telephone rang on the bedside table. "Tut, tut," said Elisabeth, and leaned forward. Albinus followed absent-mindedly the movements of her delicate fingers as they took and clasped the white receiver, and then he heard the tiny ghost of a voice squeaking at the other end.

  "Oh, good morning," exclaimed Elisabeth, at the same time making a certain face at her husband, a sure sign that it was the Baroness talking, and talking a lot.

  He s
tretched out his hand for the American letter and glanced at the date. Funny he had not yet answered the last one. Irma came in to greet her parents as she did every morning. Silently she kissed her father and then her mother, who was listening to the telephone tale with closed eyes, grunting every now and then in misplaced assent or feigned astonishment.

  "See that you are a very good little girl today," whispered Albinus to his daughter. With a smile Irma disclosed a fistful of marbles.

  She was not at all pretty; freckles covered her pale bumpy forehead, her eyelashes were much too fair, her nose too long for her face.

  "By all means," said Elisabeth, and sighed with relief as she hung up.

  Albinus prepared to go on with the letter. Elisabeth held her daughter by the wrists and was telling her something funny, laughing, kissing her and giving her a little tug after every sentence. Irma went on smiling demurely, as she shuffled with her shoe on the floor. Again the telephone rang. This time Albinus attended to it.

  "Good morning, Albert dear," said a feminine voice.

  "Who--" began Albinus, and suddenly he had the sickening sensation of going down a very fast lift.

  "It was not particularly nice of you to give me a false name," pursued the voice, "but I forgive you. I just wanted to tell you--"

  "Wrong number," said Albinus hoarsely, and crashed back the receiver. At the same time he reflected with dismay that Elisabeth might have heard something just as he had heard the Baroness' minute voice.

  "What was it?" she asked, "Why have you turned so red?"

  "Absurd! Irma, my child, run along, don't fidget about like that. Utterly absurd. That's the tenth wrong call in two days. He writes that he'll probably be coming here at the end of the year. I'll be glad to see him."