Laughter in the Dark

by Vladimir Nabokov

  "In the first place, Albert, you know very well that he doesn't care for women."

  "Shut up!" screamed Albinus. "That was a base lie, a rascally trick from the beginning."

  ("If he yells--the danger is over," thought Margot.)

  "No. He really doesn't care for women," she went on, "but once--for a joke--I suggested to him: 'Look here, let's see whether I can't make you forget your boys.' Oh, we both knew it was only a joke. That was all, that was all, darling."

  "A dirty lie. I don't believe it. Conrad saw you. That French colonel saw you. Only I was blind."

  "Oh, but I often teased him that way," said Margot coolly. "It was all very funny. But I won't any more, if it upsets you."

  "So you deceived me only for a joke? How filthy!"

  "Of course, I didn't deceive you! How dare you say such a thing. He wouldn't have been capable of helping me to deceive you. We didn't even kiss: even that would have been repulsive to both of us."

  "And if I questioned him--not in your presence, of course, not in your presence?"

  "Do, by all means. He'll tell you exactly the same. Only you'll make yourself rather ridiculous."

  They went on talking in this way for an hour. Margot was gradually getting the upper hand. But at length she could stand it no longer and had a fit of hysterics. She threw herself onto the bed in her white tennis frock, with one foot bare, and, as she gradually calmed down, she wept into the pillows.

  Albinus sat in a chair by the window; outside the sun was shining and gay English voices floated across from the tennis-ground. Mentally he reviewed every least episode from the beginning of their acquaintanceship with Rex, and among them some were touched by that livid light which had now spread over his whole existence. Something was destroyed forever; no matter how convincingly Margot tried to prove that she had been faithful to him, everything would henceforward be tainted with a poisonous flavor of doubt.

  At length he rose to his feet, walked across to the bed, gazed at her pink wrinkled heel with the bit of black plaster on it--when had she managed to stick it on?--gazed at the golden brown skin of her slim but firm calf, and reflected that he could kill her, but that he could not part from her.

  "Very well, Margot," he said gloomily. "I believe you. But you must get up immediately and change your clothes. We're going to pack our things at once and leave this place. I'm not physically equal to meeting him now--I can't answer for myself. Not because I believe that you have deceived me with him, no, not on that account, but I simply can't do it; I've pictured it all to myself too vividly, and ... well, no matter ... Come, get up ..."

  "Kiss me," said Margot softly.

  "No; not now. I want to get away from here as soon as possible ... I almost shot you in this room, and I shall certainly shoot you if we don't pack our things at once--at once."

  "As you like," said Margot. "But please remember that you've insulted me and my love for you in the worst manner possible. I suppose you'll understand that later."

  Swiftly and silently, without looking at each other, they packed. Then the porter came for the luggage.

  Rex was playing poker with a couple of Americans and a Russian on the terrace, in the shade of a giant eucalyptus. Luck was against him that morning. He was just contemplating doing a little palming at his next shuffle, or perhaps using in a certain private manner the mirror inside his cigarette-case lid (little tricks that he disliked and used only when playing with tyros), when suddenly beyond the magnolias, in the road near the garage, he saw Albinus' car. The car swerved awkwardly and disappeared.

  "What's up?" murmured Rex. "Who's driving that car?"

  He paid his debts and went to look for Margot. She was not on the tennis-ground, she was not in the garden. He went upstairs. Albinus' door was ajar. The room was dead, the open wardrobe empty; empty, too, the glass shelf above the wash-stand. A torn and crumpled newspaper lay on the floor.

  Rex pulled at his underlip and passed into his own room. He thought--rather vaguely--that he might find a note there with some explanation. There was nothing, of course. He clicked his tongue and went down into the hall--to find out whether, at least, they had paid for his room.

  31

  THERE are a great many people who, without possessing any expert knowledge, are yet able to readjust an electrical connection after the mysterious occurrence known as a "short circuit"; or, with the aid of a penknife, to set a watch going again; or even, if necessary, to fry a cutlet. Albinus was not one of them. He could not tie a dress-tie nor pare his right-hand nails, nor make up a parcel; he could not uncork a bottle without picking to bits one half of the cork, and drowning the other. As a child he never built things like other boys. As a youth he had never taken his bicycle to pieces, nor, indeed, could do anything with it save ride it; and when he punctured a tire, he pushed the disabled machine--squelching like an old galosh--to the nearest repair shop. Later, when he studied the restoration of pictures, he was always afraid to touch the canvas himself. During the War he had distinguished himself by an amazing incapacity to do anything whatever with his hands. In view of all this it is less surprising that he was a very bad driver than that he could drive at all.

  Slowly and with difficulty (and a complicated argument, the gist of which he failed to catch, with the policeman at the crossroads) he got his car out of Rouginard and then accelerated a little.

  "Do you mind telling me where we are going, if you don't mind?" asked Margot tartly.

  He shrugged his shoulders and stared straight ahead along the shiny blue-black road. Now that they were out of Rouginard, where the narrow streets had been full of people and traffic and where he had had to sound his horn, pull up with a jerk and turn clumsily--now that they were bowling smoothly along the highway, various thoughts drifted darkly and confusedly through his brain: that the road climbed up and up into the mountains and that it would soon begin to wind dangerously, that Rex's button had once got entangled in Margot's lace and that his heart had never been so heavy and distraught as now.

  "It's all one to me where we go," said Margot, "but I'd just like to know. And please do keep to the right. If you can't drive, we had better take a train or hire a chauffeur at the nearest garage."

  He put on the brake violently because a motor coach had appeared in the distance.

  "What are you doing, Albert? Keep to the right, that's all you've got to do."

  The motor coach, filled with tourists, thundered past. Albinus started off again. The road began to curve round the mountain.

  "Does it matter where we go?" He thought, "Wherever we go, I shall not escape this pain. 'The cheapest, loudest, nastiest--' I shall go mad."

  "I won't ask you again," said Margot, "but for God's sake don't wobble before the bends. It is ridiculous. What are you trying to do? If you knew how my head aches. I shall be thankful when we get somewhere."

  "You swear to me there was nothing in it?" asked Albinus in a faint voice, and he felt hot tears dimming his vision. He blinked, and the road reappeared.

  "I swear," said Margot. "I'm tired of swearing to you. Kill me, but don't torture me any longer. By the way, I'm too hot. I think I'll take off my coat."

  He put on the brake.

  Margot laughed. "What need is there to stop for that? Oh, dear, oh, dear."

  He helped her out of her dustcoat and, as he did so, he recalled with extraordinary vividness how--long, long ago--he had noticed for the first time, in a wretched little cafe, the way she moved her shoulders and bent her lovely neck while she wriggled out of the sleeves.

  Now the tears streamed down his cheeks uncontrollably. Margot put her arms round him and pressed her temple to his bent head.

  Their car was standing close to the parapet, a stout stone wall a foot high, behind which a ravine, overgrown with brambles, sloped steeply down. Far below could be heard the swish and rumble of a rapid stream. On the left-hand side rose a reddish rocky slope with pine trees on its summit. The sun was scorching. A little way ahead a man wit
h black spectacles was sitting on the edge of the road breaking stones.

  "I love you so much," groaned Albinus, "so much."

  He fondled her hands and stroked her convulsively. She laughed softly--a satisfied laugh.

  "Let me drive now," begged Margot. "You know I can do it better than you."

  "No, I'm improving," he said, smiling, gulping, blowing his nose. "It's curious, but I really don't know where we are going. I think I've sent the luggage on to San Remo, but I'm not quite sure."

  He started the engine and they drove on. It seemed to him that the car now traveled more easily and obediently and he no longer clutched the steering wheel so nervously. The bends became more and more frequent. On one side soared the steep cliff; on the other was the ravine. The sun stabbed his eyes. The pointer of the speedometer trembled and rose.

  A sharp bend was approaching and Albinus proposed to take it with special dexterity. High above the road an old woman who was gathering herbs saw to the right of the cliff this little blue car speed toward the bend, behind the corner of which, dashing from the opposite side, toward an unknown meeting, two cyclists crouched over their handlebars.

  32

  THE old woman gathering herbs on the hillside saw the car and the two cyclists approaching the sharp bend from opposite directions. From a mail plane flying coastward through the sparkling blue dust of the sky, the pilot could see the loops of the road, the shadow of his wings gliding across the sunlit slopes and two villages twelve miles distant from one another. Perhaps by rising still higher it would be possible to see simultaneously the mountains of Provence, and a distant town in another country--let us say, Berlin--where the weather was hot too; for on this particular day the cheek of the earth from Gibraltar to Stockholm was painted with mellow sunshine.

  In Berlin, on this particular day, a great many ices were sold. Irma had once used to look on with the gravity of greed when the ice-cream man smeared a thin wafer with the thick yellowish substance which, when tasted, made one's tongue dance and one's front teeth ache deliciously. So that, when Elisabeth stepped onto the balcony and noticed one of these ice-cream vendors, it seemed strange to her that he should be dressed all in white and she all in black.

  She had awakened feeling very restless, and now she realized with a strange dismay that, for the first time, she had emerged from that state of dull torpor to which she had grown accustomed of late, and she could not understand why she felt so strangely uncomfortable. She lingered on the balcony and thought of the day before, on which nothing special had happened: the usual drive to the churchyard, bees settling on her flowers, the damp glitter of the box hedge round the grave; the stillness and the soft earth.

  "What can it be?" she wondered. "Why am I all a-tingle?"

  From the balcony she could see the ice-cream vendor with his white cap. The balcony seemed to soar higher, higher. The sun threw a dazzling light on the tiles--in Berlin, in Brussels, in Paris and farther toward the South. The mail plane was flying to St. Cassien. The old woman was gathering herbs on the rocky slope. For a whole year at least she would be telling people how she had seen ... what she had seen....

  33

  ALBINUS was not clear when and how he came to know these things: the time from his blithely taking that bend until now (a couple of weeks), the place where he was (a clinic at Grasse), the operation which he had undergone (trepanning), and the reason of his long period of unconsciousness (effusion of blood into the brain). A moment had arrived, however, when all these bits of information had been gathered into one--he was alive, was fully conscious and knew that Margot and a hospital nurse were close at hand. He felt that he had been dozing pleasantly and that he had just awakened. But what the time was, he did not know. Probably it was still early in the morning.

  His forehead and his eyes were covered with a soft, thick bandage. But his skull was already uncovered and it was strange to feel with his fingers the bristles of the new hair on his head. In his memory he retained a picture that was, in its gaudy intensity, like a colored photograph on glass: the curve of the glossy blue road, the green and red cliff to the left, the white parapet to the right and in front of him the approaching cyclists--two dusty apes in orange-colored jerseys. A sharp jerk of the steering wheel to avoid them--and up the car dashed, mounting a pile of stones on the right, and in the next fraction of that second, a telegraph post loomed in front of the windscreen. Margot's outstretched arm had flown across the picture--and the next moment the magic lantern went out.

  This recollection had been completed by Margot. Yesterday, or the day before yesterday, or even earlier--she had told him, or rather her voice--why only her voice? Why was it so long since he had really seen her? This bandage. Probably they would soon take it off ... What had Margot's voice told him?

  "... If it had not been for the telegraph post, we should have plunged over the parapet and into the precipice. It was appalling. I've still a huge bruise on my hip. The car turned a somersault and smashed like an egg. It cost ... le car ... mille ... beaucoup mille marks" (this was meant, apparently, for the nurse). "Albert, what's the French for twenty thousand?"

  "Oh, what does it matter ... You are alive!"

  "The cyclists were very nice. They helped to gather up all the things. But they couldn't find the tennis rackets."

  Tennis rackets? Sun on a tennis racket. Why was that so unpleasant? Oh, yes, that nightmare business at Rouginard. He with his gun in his hand. She coming in on rubber soles ... Nonsense--all that had been cleared up, everything was all right.... What time was it? When would the bandage be taken off? When could he get up? Had it got into the papers--the German papers?

  He turned his head this way and that; the bandage worried him. Also--the discrepancy between his senses. His ears had been absorbing so many impressions all this time, and his eyes none at all. He did not know what the room, or the nurse, or the doctor looked like. And the time? Was it morning? He had had a long, sweet sleep. Probably the window was open, for he heard the clatter of horse hoofs outside; there was also the sound of running water and the clanging note of a pail. Perhaps there was a courtyard with a well and the cool morning shade of plane trees.

  He lay for some time motionless, endeavoring to transform the incoherent sound into corresponding shapes and colors. It was the opposite of trying to imagine the kind of voices which Botticelli's angels had. Presently he heard Margot's laugh and then that of the hospital nurse. Apparently they were sitting in the next room. She was teaching Margot to pronounce correctly in French: "Soucoupe, soucoupe"--Margot repeated several times and they both laughed softly.

  Feeling that he was doing something absolutely forbidden, Albinus cautiously drew up the bandage and peeped out. But the room still remained quite dark. He could not even see the bluish glimmer of a window or those faint patches of light which come to stay with the walls at night. So it was night after all, not morning, not even early morning. A black moonless night. How deceptive sounds could be. Or were the blinds especially thick?

  From the next room came a pleasant rattle of crockery: "Cafe aime toujours, the nicht toujours"

  Albinus fumbled over the bedside table until he felt the little electric lamp. He pressed the switch once, a second time, but the darkness remained there, as if it were too heavy to move. Probably the plug had been taken out. He felt with his fingers for matches and actually found a box. There was only one match inside; he struck it, heard it sizzle slightly as though it had lit, but he could not see any flame. He threw it away and suddenly smelled a faint odor of sulphur. Strange.

  "Margot," he shouted suddenly, "Margot!"

  A sound of rapid footsteps and of a door opening. But nothing changed. How could it be dark behind the door, if they were having coffee there?

  "Turn on the light," he said angrily. "Please, turn on the light."

  "You are a bad boy," said Margot's voice. He heard her approaching swiftly and surely through absolute night. "You ought not to touch that bandage."

&n
bsp; "What do you mean? You seem to see me," he stammered. "How can you see me? Turn on the light, do you hear? At once!"

  "Calmez-vous. Don't excite yourself," said the voice of the nurse.

  These sounds, these footsteps and voices seemed to be moving on a different plane. He was here and they were somewhere else, but still, in some unaccountable way, close at hand. Between them and the night which enveloped him was an impenetrable wall. He rubbed his eyelids, turned his head this way and that, jerked himself about, but it was impossible to force a way through this solid darkness which was like a part of himself.

  "It can't be!" said Albinus with the emphasis of despair. "I'm going mad! Open the window, do something!"

  "The window is open," she answered softly.

  "Perhaps there is no sun ... Margot, perhaps I might see something in very sunny weather. The merest glimmer. Perhaps, with glasses."

  "Lie still, my dear. The sun is shining, it is a glorious morning. Albert, you hurt me."

  "I ... I ..." Albinus drew a deep breath which seemed to make his chest swell into some vast monstrous globe full of a whirling roar which presently he let out, lustily, steadily ... And when it had all gone, he started filling up again.

  34

  HIS cuts and bruises healed, his hair grew again, but the terrible sense of this solid black wall remained unchanged. After those paroxysms of deadly horror, when he had howled, flung himself about and tried frantically to tear something away from his eyes, he lapsed into a state of semi-consciousness. Then presently there would loom up once more that unbearable mountain of oppression, which was only comparable with the panic of one who wakes to find himself in his grave.

  Gradually, however, these fits became less frequent. For hours on end he lay on his back, silent and motionless, listening to daytime sounds, which seemed to have turned their backs upon him in merry converse with others. Suddenly he would recall that morning at Rouginard--which had really been the beginning of it all--and then he groaned anew. He visualized the sky, blue distances, light and shade, pink houses dotting a bright green slope, lovely dream-landscapes at which he had gazed so little, so little ...