Laughter in the Dark

by Vladimir Nabokov

  The contract was signed and rehearsals began. For the first two days Margot came home extremely cross and resentful. She complained that she was forced to repeat the same movement hundreds of times in succession; that the director shouted at her; that she was blinded by the lamps. She had only one consolation: the (fairly well-known) actress who was the leading lady, Dorianna Karenina, was charming to her, praised her acting and prophesied that she would do wonders. ("A bad sign!" thought Albinus.)

  She insisted that he should not be present during work: it made her self-conscious, she said. Besides, if he had seen it all beforehand, the film would not be a surprise for him--and Margot liked people to have surprises. However, he derived a great deal of pleasure from catching glimpses of her assuming dramatic poses in front of the cheval glass; a creaking board gave him away, she hurled a red cushion at him and he had to swear he had seen nothing.

  He used to take her to the studio in a car and then fetch her home. One day, he was told that the rehearsal would last some two hours, so he went for a walk and blundered into the neighborhood where Paul lived. All at once he felt a keen desire to meet his pale, plain little daughter: it was about the time she usually came back from school. As he turned the corner, he half fancied that he saw her in the distance with her nurse, but suddenly he felt frightened and walked quickly away.

  On this particular day Margot came out to him flushed and laughing: she had acted beautifully, beautifully--and soon the filming would be over.

  "I'l tell you what," said Albinus. "I'll invite Dorianna to supper. We'll have a big supper and some interesting guests. Yesterday an artist rang me up, a cartoonist, to be correct, a man who makes funny drawings and things, you know. He's just back from New York, and is quite a genius in his way. I'll get him along too."

  "Only I want to sit by you," said Margot.

  "All right, but remember, my pet, I don't want them all to know that you live with me."

  "Oh, they all know that, you fool," said Margot, her face suddenly darkening.

  "But that places you, and not me, in a false position," Albinus pointed out. "You must realize that. It doesn't matter to me, of course, but for your sake, please, do as you did last time."

  "But it's so stupid.... And besides, there's a way we could avoid these unpleasantnesses."

  "How--avoid them?"

  "If you don't understand," she pouted. ("When will he begin to talk of the divorce?" she thought.)

  "Do be reasonable," said Albinus coaxingly. "I do everything you ask. You know quite well, pussy--"

  He had gradually got together quite a little menagerie of pet names.

  16

  EVERYTHING was as it should be. On the lacquer tray in the hall cards had been shrewdly prepared with the names of the expected guests coupled, so that people might know at once with whom they would go in to supper: Dr. Lampert and Sonia Hirsch; Axel Rex and Margot Peters; Boris von Ivanoff and Olga Waldheim--and so on. An impressive footman (recently engaged) with the face of an English lord (or, at any rate, so Margot thought, and her eyes used to linger on him not unkindly) showed in the guests with dignity. Every few minutes the bell rang. In the drawing room there were already five besides Margot. In came Ivanoff--von Ivanoff, as he deemed fit to have himself called--lean, ferrety, with bad teeth and an eyeglass. Then--Baum, the author, a stout, red-faced, fussy-individual with strong communistic leanings and a comfortable income, accompanied by his wife, an elderly woman, her figure still glorious, who. in her troubled youth, had swum about in a glass tank among performing seals.

  Conversation was already quite lively. Olga Waldheim, a white-armed, full-bosomed singer, with waved hair the color of orange marmalade and with a gem of melody in every inflection of her voice, was telling, as she usually did, cute stories about her six Persian cats. Albinus. as he stood and laughed, gazed across old Lampert's white brush of hair (a fine throat-specialist and an indifferent violinist) at Margot, and thought how well her black tulle gown with the velvet dahlia at her breast suited her, the darling. There was a faintly defensive smile on her bright lips, as if she were not quite sure whether her leg was being pulled, and her eyes had that special fawn-like expression which meant, he knew, that she was listening to things she did not understand: in this case, Lampert's ideas about Hindemith's music.

  Suddenly he noticed that she had blushed violently and risen to her feet. "How foolish--why does she get up?" he thought, as several new guests entered--Dorianna Karenina, Axel Rex and two minor poets.

  Dorianna embraced and kissed Margot, whose eyes were shining as brilliantly as if she had just been crying. "How foolish," thought Albinus again, "to grovel before that second-rate actress." Dorianna was famous for her exquisite shoulders, her Mona Lisa smile and her husky grenadier voice.

  Albinus walked up to Rex, who did not quite know which was his host and was rubbing his hands as though he were soaping them.

  "Delighted to see you at last," said Albinus. "Do you know, I had formed quite a different picture of you in my mind--short, fat, with hornrimmed glasses, though on the other hand your name always reminds me of an axe. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the man who makes two continents laugh. Let us hope he is back in Germany for good."

  Rex, his eyes twinkling, made little bows, rubbing his hands all the time. He sported a striking lounge suit in a world of badly cut German dinner jackets.

  "Please, be seated," said Albinus.

  "Haven't I met your sister once?" queried Dorianna in her lovely bass voice.

  "My sister is in Heaven," answered Rex gravely.

  "Oh, I'm sorry," said Dorianna.

  "Never was born," he added--and sat down on a chair next to Margot.

  Laughing pleasantly, Albinus let his eyes stray back to her. She was bending toward her neighbor, Sonia Hirsch, the plain-faced, motherly cubist, in a queer childlike attitude, her shoulders a little hunched and talking unusually fast, with moist eyes and fluttering eyelids. He looked down at her small, flushed ear, the vein on her neck, the delicate shadow between her breasts. Hurriedly, feverishly, she was pouring out a stream of complete nonsense, with her hand pressed to her flaming cheek.

  "Menservants steal far less," she jabbered, "though, of course, no one would lift a really big picture, and at one time I adored big ones with men on horseback, but when one sees such a lot of pictures--"

  "Fraulein Peters," said Albinus in a soothing tone, "this is the man who makes two continents--"

  Margot started and swerved round.

  "Oh, really, how do you do?"

  Rex bowed and, turning to Albinus, remarked quietly:

  "I happened to read on the boat your excellent biography of Sebastiano del Piombo. Pity, though, you didn't quote his sonnets."

  "Oh, but they are very poor," answered Albinus.

  "Exactly," said Rex. "That's what is so charming."

  Margot jumped up and with swift, almost bounding steps dashed toward the last guest--a long-limbed, withered female, who looked like a plucked eagle. Margot had taken elocution lessons with her.

  Sonia Hirsch shifted to Margot's place and turned to Rex:

  "What d'you think of Cumming's work?" she asked. "I mean, his last series--the Gallows and Factories, you know?"

  "Rotten," said Rex.

  The door of the dining room opened. The gentlemen looked round for their ladies. Rex stood aloof. His host, who already had Dorianna on his arm, gazed about in search of Margot. He saw her right in front squeezing among the couples who were streaming into the dining room.

  "She is not at her best tonight," he thought anxiously, and handed over his lady to Rex.

  By the time the lobsters were being tackled, the talk at the head of the table where (the following string of names would be best arranged in a curve) Dorianna, Rex, Margot, Albinus, Sonia Hirsch and Baum were seated, was in full swing although rather incoherent. Margot had emptied her third wineglass at one gulp and was now sitting very erect with bright eyes, staring straight in front of her.
Rex paid no attention either to her or to Dorianna, whose name annoyed him, but was arguing across the table with Baum, the author, concerning the means of artistic expression.

  "A writer for instance," he remarked, "talks about India which I have never seen, and gushes about dancing girls, tiger hunts, fakirs, betel nuts, serpents: the Glamour of the mysterious East. But what does it amount to? Nothing. Instead of visualizing India I merely get a bad toothache from all these Eastern delights. Now, there's the other way as, for instance, the fellow who writes: 'Before turning in I put out my wet boots to dry and in the morning I found that a thick blue forest had grown on them' ("Fungi, Madam," he explained to Dorianna who had raised one eyebrow) and at once India becomes alive for me. The rest is shop."

  "Those yogis do marvelous things," said Dorianna. "Apparently they can breathe in such a way that--"

  "But excuse me, my good sir," cried Baum excitedly--for he had just written a five-hundred-page novel, the scene of which was laid in Ceylon, where he had spent a sun-helmeted fortnight. "You must illuminate the picture thoroughly, so that every reader can understand. What matters is not the book one writes, but the problem it sets--and solves. If I describe the tropics I'm bound to approach my subject from its most important side, and that is--the exploitation, the cruelty of the white colonist. When you think of the millions and millions--"

  "I don't," said Rex.

  Margot, who was staring in front of her, giggled suddenly--and this, somehow, had nothing to do with the conversation. Albinus, in the middle of discussing the latest art exhibition with the motherly cubist, glanced sideways at his young mistress. Yes, she was drinking too much. Even as he looked, she took a sip out of his own glass. "What a child!" he thought, touching her knee under the table. Margot giggled again and flung a carnation across the table at old Lampert.

  "I don't know, gentlemen, what you think of Udo Conrad," said Albinus, joining in the fray. "It would seem to me that he is that type of author with exquisite vision and a divine style which might please you, Herr Rex, and that if he isn't a great writer it is because--and here, Herr Baum, I am with you--he has a contempt for social problems which, in this age of social upheavals, is disgraceful and, let me add, sinful. I knew him well in my student days, as we were together at Heidelberg, and afterward we used to meet now and then. I consider his best book to be The Vanishing Trick, the first chapter of which, as a matter of fact, he read here, at this table--I mean--well--at a similar table, and ..."

  After supper they lolled and smoked and drank liqueurs. Margot flitted from place to place and one of the minor poets followed her like a shaggy dog. She suggested burning a hole in his palm with her cigarette and started doing so and, though perspiring freely, he kept smiling like the little hero he was. Rex, who had at length been impossibly offensive to Baum in a corner of the library, now joined Albinus and began to describe to him certain aspects of Berlin as if it were a distant picturesque city; he did it so well that Albinus promised to look up, in his company, that lane, that bridge, that queer-colored wall ...

  "I'm dreadfully sorry," he said, "that we can't get to work together on my film idea. I'm sure you'd have achieved wonders, but to be quite frank I cannot afford it--not just now, at any rate."

  At length the guests were caught in that wave which, beginning as a low murmur, swells until, in a whirl of foamy farewells, it has swept them out of the house.

  Albinus was left alone. The air was blue and heavy with cigar smoke. Somebody had spilled something on the Turkish table--it was all sticky. The solemn, though slightly unsteady, footman ("If he gets drunk again, I'll dismiss him") opened the window, and the black clear frosty night streamed in.

  "Not a very successful party, somehow," thought Albinus as he yawned himself out of his dinner jacket.

  17

  "A CERTAIN man," said Rex, as he turned round the corner with Margot, "once lost a diamond cuff-link in the wide blue sea, and twenty years later, on the exact day, a Friday apparently, he was eating a large fish--but there was no diamond inside. That's what I like about coincidence."

  Margot trotted along by his side with her sealskin coat wrapped tightly around her. Rex seized her by the elbow and forced her to come to a halt.

  "I never expected to run across you again. How did you get there? I couldn't believe my eyes, as the blind man said. Look at me. I'm not sure that you've grown prettier, but I like you all the same."

  Margot suddenly gave a sob and turned away. He pulled her by the sleeve, but she turned away still farther. They revolved on one spot.

  "For heaven's sake, say something. Where would you rather go--to my place or yours? What's the matter with you?"

  She shook him off and walked quickly back to the corner. Rex followed her.

  "What on earth is the matter with you?" he repeated in perplexity.

  Margot hastened her steps. He caught her up again.

  "Come along with me, you goose," said Rex. "Look, I've got something here ..." He drew out his wallet.

  Margot promptly struck him a backhand blow in the face.

  "That ring on your forefinger is very sharp," he said calmly. And he continued to follow her, hurriedly fumbling in his wallet.

  Margot ran to the entrance of the house and unlocked the door. Rex tried to thrust something into her hand, but suddenly he raised his eyes.

  "Oh, that's the little game, is it?" he said, as he recognized the doorway from which they had just emerged.

  Margot pushed open the door without looking round.

  "Here, take it," he said roughly, and as she did not, he pushed it down inside her fur-collar. The door would have banged, had it not been of the reluctant, compressed-air kind. He stood there, pulled at his lower lip, and presently moved away.

  Margot groped through the darkness up to the first landing, and was about to go on when suddenly she felt faint. She seated herself on a step and sobbed as she had never sobbed before--not even that time when he had left her. She felt something crinkly against her neck and grasped it. It was a piece of rough paper. She pressed the light-switch and saw that she was holding in her hand, not money, but a pencil drawing: the back view of a girl, bare-shouldered, bare-legged, on a bed, with her face to the wall. Under it a date was written, first in pencil, then overwritten in ink--the day, month and year when he had left her. That was why he had told her not to look round--because he was sketching her! Was it really only two years since that day?

  The light went out with a thud, and Margot leaned against the grating of the lift crying afresh. She was crying because he had left her that time; because he had concealed his name and his reputation from her; because she might all this time have been happy with him if he had stayed; and because she would then have escaped the two Japanese, the old man and Albinus. And then she cried, too, because at supper Rex had touched her right knee and Albinus her left--as though Paradise had been on her right hand and Hell on her left.

  She wiped her nose on her sleeve, groped in the darkness and pressed the switch again. The light calmed her a little. She examined the sketch once more; reflected that, however much it meant to her, it would be dangerous to keep it; tore it into fragments and flung these through the grating into the well of the lift. This reminded her of her early childhood. Then she pulled out her pocket mirror, powdered her face with a swift circular motion, straining her upper lip as she did so, closed her bag with a resolute click and ran up the steps.

  "Why so late?" asked Albinus.

  He was already in his pyjamas.

  She explained breathlessly that she had found it difficult to get rid of von Ivanoff, who had kept insisting that she must let him drive her home.

  "How my beauty's eyes are sparkling," he murmured, "and how tired and hot she is. My beauty has been drinking."

  "No, leave me alone tonight," replied Margot softly.

  "Bunny, please," implored Albinus, "I've been waiting so."

  "Wait a bit longer. First I want to know something: have you done any
thing about the divorce yet?"

  "The divorce?" he repeated, taken aback.

  "Sometimes I can't understand you, Albert. After all, we must put things on a proper footing, mustn't we? Or perhaps you mean to leave me after a while and go back to Lizzy?"

  "Leave you?"

  "Stop repeating my words, you idiot. No, you shan't come near me till you give me a sensible answer."

  "Very well," he said. "On Monday I'll speak to my lawyer."

  "Positively? You promise?"

  18

  AXEL REX was glad to be back in his beautiful native land. He had been having troubles lately. Somehow, the hinges of luck had got stuck--and he had abandoned it in the mud like a broken car. There had been, for instance, that row with his editor who had failed to appreciate his last joke--not that it was ever intended for reproduction. There had been a row generally. A rich spinster had been mixed up in it and a fishy ("though very amusing," thought Rex sadly) money-transaction, and a rather one-sided conversation with certain authorities on the subject of undesirable aliens. People had been unkind to him, he reflected, but he forgave them readily. Funny the way people admired his work and the very next moment attempted (once or twice fairly successfully) to punch his face.

  Worst of all, however, was the question of his financial position. Fame--not quite on the world scale which that mild fool had yesterday suggested it to be--but still, fame--had brought in a good deal of money at one period. Now, when he was rather at a loose end and hazy about his cartoonist's career in Berlin, where people were, as they always had been, at the mother-in-law stage of humor, he would have had that money still--at least some of it--had he not been a gambler.

  Having cultivated a penchant for bluff since his tenderest age, no wonder his favorite card-game was poker! He played it whenever he could get partners; and he played it in his dreams: with historical characters or some distant cousin of his, long dead, whom in real life he never remembered, or with people who--in real life again--would have flatly refused to be in the same room with him. In that dream he took up, stacked together, and lifted close to his eyes the five dealt to him, saw with pleasure the joker in cap and bells, and, as he pressed out with a cautious thumb one top corner and then another, he found by degrees that he had five jokers. "Excellent," he thought to himself, without any surprise at their plurality, and quietly made his first bet, which Henry the Eighth (by Holbein) who had only four queens, doubled. Then he woke up, still with his poker face.