Laughter in the Dark

by Vladimir Nabokov

  Her husband's evenings out, which, he explained, were spent with some artists interested in that cinema idea of his, never afforded her the least suspicion. His irritability and jumpiness she put down to the weather, which was quite unusual for May: at one moment it was hot, at the next there would be icy torrents of rain, mixed with hailstones that bounced on the window sills like tiny tennis balls.

  "Shall we go for a trip somewhere?" she suggested casually one day. "Tyrol? Rome?"

  "You go, if you want to," replied Albinus; "I have lots to do, my dear."

  "Oh, no, it was just a fancy," she said, and set off with Irma to the Zoo to see the baby elephant, which turned out to have hardly any trunk at all and a fringe of short hair standing on end all along its back.

  With Paul it was a different matter. The episode of the locked door had left him with a strange uneasiness. Albinus had not only failed to notify the police, but he was actually annoyed when Paul returned to the subject. So Paul could not help brooding over the thing. He tried to recall whether he had, perhaps, seen any suspicious character when he came into the house and walked toward the lift. He was very observant, he thought: he had, for instance, noticed a cat which sprang as he passed, and slithered between the bars of the garden railings, a schoolgirl in red for whom he had held open the door, broadcast laughter and song from the porter's lodge where the wireless was turned on as usual. Yes, the burglar must have run down while he was going up in the lift. But what gave him that nasty feeling?

  His sister's married happiness was to him a sacred thing. When, some days later, he was put through on the telephone to Albinus, while the latter was still talking, and so overheard certain words (fate's classical method: eavesdropping), he almost swallowed a piece of matchwood with which he was picking his teeth.

  "Don't ask me, just buy what you like."

  "But don't you see, Albert ..." said a vulgar, capricious feminine voice.

  With a shudder Paul hung up the receiver as though he had inadvertently caught hold of a snake.

  That evening, as he sat with his sister and brother-in-law, he could not think of anything to talk about. He just sat there, self-conscious and fidgety, rubbing his chin, crossing and re-crossing his plump legs, looking at his watch and putting the blank handless thing back into his waistcoat pocket. He was one of those sensitive beings who blush guiltily when someone else makes a blunder.

  Could this man whom he loved and revered be deceiving Elisabeth? "No, no, it's a mistake, some silly misunderstanding," he kept telling himself, as he glanced at Albinus who was reading a book with unruffled countenance, clearing his throat now and then, and very carefully cutting the pages with an ivory paper knife ... "Impossible! That locked bedroom door put it into my mind. The words I heard doubtless admit of some innocent explanation. How could anyone deceive Elisabeth?"

  She was cuddled in a corner of the sofa, relating slowly and minutely the plot of a play which she had seen. Her pale eyes with the faint freckles under them were as candid as her mother's had been, and her unpowdered nose shone pathetically. Paul nodded his head and smiled. She might have been speaking Russian for all he knew. Then suddenly, and for one second only, he caught sight of Albinus' eyes looking at him over the book he was holding.

  8

  MEANWHILE Margot had rented the flat and proceeded to buy a number of household articles, beginning with a refrigerator. Although Albinus paid up handsomely, and even with a certain pleasurable emotion, he was giving the money on trust, for not only had he not seen the flat--he did not even know its address. She had told him that it would be such fun if he did not see her home until it was complete.

  A week passed. He fancied that she would ring him up on Saturday. The whole day he mounted guard over the telephone. But it gleamed and was mute. On Monday he decided that she had tricked him--had vanished forever. In the evening Paul came. These visits were hell for both of them by now. Still worse--Elisabeth was not at home. Paul sat in the study opposite Albinus, and smoked, and looked at the tip of his cigar. He had even become thinner of late. "He knows everything," thought Albinus dismally. "Well, and what if he does? He's a man; he ought to understand."

  Irma trotted in and Paul's countenance brightened. He took her on his lap and produced a funny little grunt as she prodded him with her small fist in the stomach while making herself comfortable.

  Then Elisabeth returned from a bridge-tea. The thought of supper and of the long evening afterward suddenly seemed to Albinus more than he could endure. He announced that he was not supping at home; his wife asked him good-naturedly why he had not said so before.

  He had only one wish: to find Margot immediately, no matter what the cost. Destiny, which had promised him so much, had not the right to cheat him now. He was so desperate that he resolved upon a very daring step. He knew where her old room was, and he knew that she had lived there with her aunt. Thither he went. As he walked through the back yard, he saw a servant-girl making a bed at an open window on the ground floor and questioned her.

  "Fraulein Peters?" she repeated, holding the pillow she had been thumping. "Oh, I think she has moved. But you'd better see for yourself. Fifth floor, door on the left."

  A slatternly woman with bloodshot eyes opened the door a little way without taking off the chain, and asked what he wanted.

  "I want to know Fraulein Peters' new address. She used to live here with her aunt."

  "Oh, did she?" said the woman with sudden interest; and now she unhooked the chain. She led him into a tiny parlor, all the objects in which shook and rattled at the least movement. On a piece of American cloth with brown circular stains stood a plate of mashed potatoes, salt in a torn paper bag and three empty beer bottles. With a mysterious smile she invited him to be seated.

  "If I was her aunt," she said with a wink, "I'd not be likely to know her address. No," she added with a certain vehemence, "she hasn't got no aunt."

  "Drunk," thought Albinus wearily. "Look here," he said, "can't you tell me where she has gone?"

  "She rented a room from me," said the woman pensively, as she bitterly reflected on Margot's ingratitude in hiding from her both the rich friend and her new address, though there had not been much difficulty in sniffing out the latter.

  "What can I do?" exclaimed Albinus. "Can't you suggest anything?"

  Yes, sadly ungrateful. She had helped her so; now she did not quite know whether by telling she would be doing Margot a service or the reverse (she would have preferred the second), but this big, nervous, blue-eyed gentleman looked so unhappy that with a sigh she told him what he wanted to know.

  "They used to be after me, too, in the old days," she muttered, nodding her head, while she let him out, "that they did."

  It was half past seven. Lights were being put on, and their soft orange glow looked very lovely in the pale dusk. The sky was still quite blue, with a single salmon-colored cloud in the distance, and all this unsteady balance between light and dusk made Albinus feel giddy.

  "In another moment I shall be in paradise," he thought, as he sped in a taxi over the whispering asphalt.

  Three tall poplars grew in front of the big brick house where she now lived. A brand-new brass plate with her name was affixed to her door. A huge female with arms like lumps of raw meat went to announce him. "Got a cook already," he thought lovingly. "Walk in," said the cook, coming back. He smoothed down his sparse hair and went in.

  Margot was lying in a kimono on a dreadful chintz-covered sofa, her arms crossed behind her head. On her stomach an open book was poised, cover upward.

  "You're quick," she said, languidly extending her hand.

  "Why, you don't seem surprised to see me," he murmured softly. "Guess how I found out your address."

  "I wrote you my address," she said with a sigh, raising both elbows again.

  "It was rather amusing," Albinus continued without heeding her words--just gloating over the sight of the painted lips which in another moment ... "Rather amusing--especially as y
ou've been pulling my leg with that ready-made aunt of yours."

  "Why did you go there?" inquired Margot, suddenly very cross. "I wrote you my address--in the top right-hand corner, quite clearly."

  "Top corner? Clearly?" repeated Albinus, puckering up his face perplexedly. "What on earth are you talking about?"

  She shut the book with a bang and sat up on the couch.

  "Surely you got my letter?"

  "What letter?" asked Albinus--and suddenly he put his hand to his mouth and his eyes opened very wide.

  "I sent you a letter this morning," she said, settling down again and gazing at him curiously. "I reckoned you'd get it by the evening post and come to see me straightaway."

  "You didn't!" cried Albinus.

  "Of course, I did. And I can tell you exactly what it was I wrote: 'Darling Albert, the wee nest is ready, and birdie is waiting for you. Only don't hug me too hard, or you'll turn your baby's head more than ever.' That's about all."

  "Margot," he whispered hoarsely, "Margot, what have you done? I left home before I could possibly get it. The postman ... he doesn't come until a quarter to eight. It's now--"

  "Well, that's no fault of mine," she said. "Really, you are hard to please. It was such a sweet letter."

  She shrugged her shoulders, picked up the book and turned her back to him. On the right-hand page was a photographic study of Greta Garbo.

  Albinus found himself thinking: "How strange. A disaster occurs and still a man notices a picture." Twenty minutes to eight. Margot lay there, her body curved and motionless, like a lizard.

  "You've shattered ..." he began at the top of his voice; but he did not end his sentence. He ran out, rushed downstairs, jumped into a cab and while he sat on the very edge of the seat leaning forward (winning a few inches that way), he stared at the back of the driver and that back was hopeless.

  He arrived, he jumped out, he paid as men do in films--blindly thrusting out a coin. By the garden-railing he saw the familiar figure of the gaunt, knock-kneed postman talking to the short stout hall-porter.

  "Any letters for me?" asked Albinus breathlessly.

  "I've just delivered them, sir," answered the postman with a friendly grin.

  Albinus looked up. The windows of his flat were brightly lit, all of them--an unusual thing. With a tremendous effort he entered the house and began to go upstairs. He reached the first landing--and the second. "Let me explain ... A young artist in need ... Not quite right in head, writes love letters to strangers." ... Nonsense--the game was up.

  Before reaching his door, he suddenly turned round and rushed down again. A cat crossed the garden path and slipped nimbly between the iron bars.

  Ten minutes later he was back in the room which he had entered so gaily a short while ago. Margot was still curved on the couch in the same posture--a torpid lizard. The book was still open at the same page. Albinus sat down at a little distance from her and began to crack his finger joints.

  "Don't do that," said Margot without raising her head.

  He stopped, but soon began again.

  "Well, has the letter come?"

  "Oh, Margot," he said, and cleared his throat several times. "Too late, too late," he cried in a new shrill voice.

  He rose, walked up and down the room, blew his nose and sat down on the chair again.

  "She reads all my letters," he said, gazing through a moist haze at the toe of his shoe and trying to fit it into the trembling pattern of the carpet.

  "Well, you ought to have forbidden her to do that."

  "Margot, you don't understand ... It was always like that--a habit, a pleasure. Mislaid them sometimes before I had read them. There were all sorts of amusing letters. How could you do it? I can't imagine what she'll do now. If, by a miracle, just this once ... perhaps she was busy with something ... perhaps ... No!"

  "Well, mind you don't show yourself when she comes along here. I'll see her alone, in the hall."

  "Who? When?" he asked, dully remembering the drunken hag he had seen--ages ago.

  "When? Any moment, I suppose. She's got my address now, hasn't she?"

  Albinus still failed to understand.

  "Oh, that's what you mean," he muttered at last. "How silly you are, Margot! Believe me, that, at any rate, is utterly impossible. Anything else ... but not that."

  "So much the better," thought Margot, and suddenly she felt extremely elated. When she had sent off the letter she had anticipated a far more trivial consequence: he refuses to show it, wife gets wild, stamps, has a fit. So the first suspicions are roused and that eases the way. But now chance had helped her and the way was made clear at one stroke. She let the book slip to the floor and smiled as she looked at his downcast twitching face. It was time to act, she supposed.

  Margot stretched herself out, was aware of a pleasant tingling in her slim body and said, gazing up at the ceiling, "Come here."

  He came, sat down on the edge of the couch and shook his head despondently.

  "Kiss me," she said, closing her eyes. "I'll comfort you."

  9

  BERLIN-WEST, a morning in May. Men in white caps cleaning the street. Who are they who leave old patent leather boots in the gutter? Sparrows bustling about in the ivy. An electric milk van on fat tires rolling creamily. The sun dazzling in an attic window on the slope of a green-tiled roof. The young fresh air itself was not yet used to the hooting of the distant traffic; it gently took up the sounds and bore them along like something fragile and precious. In the front gardens the Persian lilac was in bloom. Despite the early coolness white butterflies were already fluttering about as though in a rustic garden. All these things surrounded Albinus as he walked out of the house in which he had spent the night.

  He was conscious of a dull discomfort. He was hungry; he had neither shaved nor bathed; the touch of yesterday's shirt against his skin was exasperating. He felt utterly spent--and no wonder. This had been the night of which he had dreamed for years. The very way in which she had drawn her shoulder blades together and purred when he first kissed her downy back had told him that he would get exactly what he wanted, and what he wanted was not the chill of innocence. As in his most reckless visions, everything was permissible; a puritan's love, priggish reserve, was less known in this new free world than white bears in Honolulu.

  Her nudity was as natural as though she had long been wont to run along the shore of his dreams. There was something delightfully acrobatic about her bed manners. And afterward she would skip out and prance up and down the room, swinging her girlish hips and gnawing at a dry roll left over from supper.

  She fell asleep quite suddenly, as though she had stopped speaking in the middle of a sentence, when the electric light was already turning a death-cell yellow and the window a ghostly blue. He made his way into the bathroom, but only a few drops of rust-colored water could be coaxed from the tap. He sighed, picked a dejected loofah out of the bath with two fingers, dropped it gingerly, examined the slippery pink soap and reflected that he must instruct Margot in the rules of cleanliness. His teeth chattering, he dressed; spread the eiderdown over Margot, who was sweetly sleeping, kissed her warm, tousled dark hair, left a penciled note on the table and stepped softly out.

  Now, as he strolled along in the mild sunshine, he realized that the reckoning was about to begin. When he saw again the house in which he had lived for so long with Elisabeth; when he went up in the lift in which the nurse with his baby in her arms, and his wife, looking very pale and happy, had gone up eight years before; when he stood before the door upon which his scholarly name gleamed sedately, Albinus was almost prepared to renounce any repetition of the previous night, if only a miracle had happened. He was sure that if Elisabeth had not read the letter, he would be able to explain his absence somehow--he might say he had tried, in jest, smoking opium at the rooms of that Japanese artist who had once come to dinner--that would be quite plausible.

  But now he had to open this door, walk in and see ... What would he see? ... Would it
not be best perhaps, not to enter at all--just to leave everything as it was, to desert, to vanish?

  Suddenly he remembered how, during the War, he had forced himself not to stoop too much when leaving cover.

  In the hall he stood motionless, listening. Not a sound. Usually at this hour of the morning the flat was full of noises: somewhere water would be running, the nurse would be talking loudly to Irma, the maid rattling crockery in the dining room.... Not a sound! In the corner stood Elisabeth's umbrella. He tried to find some comfort in that. All at once, as he stood there, Frieda, apronless, appeared from the passage, stared at him, and then said wretchedly:

  "Oh, sir, they all went away last night."

  "Where?" asked Albinus, not looking at her.

  She told him everything. She spoke fast and unusually loudly. Then she burst into tears as she took his hat and stick.

  "Will you have some coffee?" she wailed.

  The disorder in the bedroom told its tale. His wife's evening gowns lay on the bed. One drawer of the chest was pulled out. The little portrait of his late father-in-law had vanished from the table. The corner of the rug was turned up.

  Albinus turned it back and walked quietly to the study. Some opened letters lay on the desk. Ah, there it was--what childish handwriting! Bad spelling, bad spelling. An invitation for lunch from the Dreyers. How nice. A short letter from Rex. The dentist's bill. Splendid.

  Two hours later Paul appeared. I see he has shaved himself clumsily. Crisscross on his plump cheek was some black sticking plaster.

  "I've come for the things," he said as he went by.

  Albinus followed him, jingling coins in his trousers pocket and looked on in silence while he and Frieda hastily packed the trunk as though they were in a hurry to catch a train.

  "Don't forget the umbrella," said Albinus vaguely.

  Then he followed them again and the packing was repeated in the nursery. In the Fraulein's room a portmanteau stood ready. They took that too.

  "Paul, just a word," murmured Albinus and he cleared his throat and went into the study. Paul came in and stood by the window.

  "This is a tragedy," said Albinus.

  "Let me tell you one thing," exclaimed Paul at length, staring out of the window. "It will be exceedingly lucky if Elisabeth survives the shock. She--"