Laughter in the Dark

by Vladimir Nabokov

  While he was still at that hospital, Margot had read aloud to him a letter from Rex which ran as follows: "I don't know, my dear Albinus, what staggered me most--the wrong you did me by your inexplicable and very uncivil departure, or the misfortune which has befallen you. But although you have wounded me deeply, I sympathize with you wholeheartedly in your misfortune, especially when I think of your love for painting and for those beauties of color and line which make sight the prince of all our senses.

  "I am traveling today from Paris to England and thence to New York, and it will be some time before I see Germany again. Please convey my friendly greetings to your companion, whose fickle and spoiled nature was presumably the cause of your disloyalty toward me. Alas, she is only constant in relation to herself; but, like so many women, she has a craving to be admired by others, which turns to spite when the man in question, by reason of his plain-spokenness, his repulsive exterior and unnatural inclinations, cannot but excite her ridicule and aversion.

  "Believe me, Albinus, I liked you well, more than I ever showed; but if you had told me in plain terms that my presence had become irksome to you both, I should have prized your frankness highly, and then the happy recollections of our talks about painting, of our rambles in the world of color, would not have been so sadly darkened by the shadow of your faithless flight."

  "Yes, that is the letter of a homosexual," said Albinus. "But all the same I'm glad he's gone. Perhaps, Margot, God has punished me for distrusting you, but woe betide you if ..."

  "If what, Albert? Go on, finish your sentence ..."

  "No. Nothing. I believe you. Oh, I believe you."

  He was silent, and then he began to make that smothered sound--half moan, half bellow--which was always the beginning of his paroxysms of horror at the darkness surrounding him.

  "The prince of all our senses," he repeated several times in a faltering voice. "Ah, yes, the prince ..."

  When he had calmed down, Margot said that she was going out to the travel agency. She kissed his cheek and then tripped swiftly along the shady side of the street.

  She entered a cool little restaurant and seated herself next to Rex. He was drinking white wine.

  "Well," he asked, "what did the poor beggar say to the letter? Didn't I word it cutely?"

  "Yes. it went down all right. On Wednesday we are leaving for Zurich to see that specialist. Please, see about the tickets. But please take yours in a different carriage--it's safer."

  "I'm doubtful," remarked Rex carelessly, "whether they'll let me have the tickets for nothing."

  Margot smiled tenderly and began taking out notes from her handbag.

  "And as a general thing," added Rex, "it would be much simpler if I were the cashier."

  35

  ALTHOUGH Albinus had several times--in the depths of a night which employed the bright small-talk of daylight--been for a walk, a pitifully hesitating walk along the scrunching gravel paths of the hospital garden, he proved to be very ill-prepared for the journey to Zurich. At the railway station his head began to swim--and there is no stranger, more helpless sensation than that of a blind man when his head is going round. He was stunned by all the different sounds, footsteps, voices, wheels, viciously sharp and strong things which all seemed to be rushing at him, so that every second was filled with the fear of knocking against something, although Margot was guiding him.

  In the train he felt his gorge rise with nausea, because he could not harmonize the clatter and rocking of the carriage with any forward motion, no matter how hard he tried to imagine the landscape which, surely, was speeding past. And then again, at Zurich, he had to make his way among invisible people and objects--obstacles and angles, which held their breath before hitting him.

  "Oh, come on, don't be afraid," said Margot irritably. "I'm leading you. Now stop. We are just going to get into the taxi. Now lift your foot. Can't you be a little less timid? Really, you might be a two-year-old."

  The professor, a famous oculist, made a thorough examination of Albinus' eyes. He had a soft unctuous voice so that Albinus pictured him as an old man with a clean-shaven priestlike face, although in reality, he was still fairly young and sported a bristly moustache. He repeated what Albinus for the most part already knew: that the optic nerves had been damaged at the point of their intersection in the brain. Possibly this contusion might heal; possibly complete atrophy might ensue--the chances were obscurely even. But in any case, in the patient's present condition, a thorough rest was the most important thing. A sanatorium in the mountains would be perfect. "And then we shall see," said the professor.

  "Shall we see?" repeated Albinus, with a melancholy smile.

  The idea of a sanatorium did not appeal to Margot. An old Irish couple whom they met in the hotel offered to let them a small chalet just above a fashionable mountain resort. She consulted Rex and then (leaving Albinus with a hired nurse) traveled in his company to see what the place was like. It turned out to be quite nice: a small two-storied cottage with clean little rooms and a cup for holy water affixed to every door.

  Rex found its position to his liking: all alone, high upon a slope amid dense black fir trees, and only a quarter of an hour's downhill walk to the village and the hotels. He chose for himself the sunniest room in the upper story. A cook was engaged in the village. Rex talked to her very impressively:

  "We are offering you such high wages," he said, "because you'll be in the service of a man who is blinded as the result of a violent mental shock. I'm the doctor in charge of him, but in view of his state of mind he must not know that a doctor is living in the house with him as well as his niece. If, therefore, you breathe the slightest hint, direct or indirect, as to my presence--addressing me, for instance, in his hearing, you'll be responsible in the eyes of the law for all the consequences of interrupting the progress of his recovery, and such conduct is, I believe, very severely punished in Switzerland. Moreover, I advise you not to come near my patient, or indeed to engage in any sort of conversation with him. He is subject to fits of the most violent insanity. You may be interested to know that he has already seriously injured one old woman (much like you in many respects, though not so attractive) by stamping on her face. Somehow, I should not care for such a thing to happen again. And most important of all, if you gossip about things in the village with the result that people become curious, my patient might, in his present condition, smash up everything in the house, beginning with your head. Do you get me?"

  The woman was so terrified that she almost refused this extraordinarily well-paid post, and made up her mind to accept it only when Rex assured her that she would not see the blind man, his niece serving him, and that he was quite peaceable if left undisturbed. He also made arrangements with her that no butcher's boy or washer woman should ever be allowed to penetrate the grounds. This done, Margot traveled back to fetch Albinus, while Rex moved into the house. He brought with him all the luggage, decided how the rooms were to be allotted and arranged that every superfluous breakable object should be removed. Then he went to his room and whistled tunefully as he fastened some rather improper pen-and-ink drawings to the wall.

  Toward five o'clock he looked through a pair of field glasses and saw, far below, a hired motorcar approaching. Margot in a brilliant red jumper skipped out and helped Albinus to alight. With hunched shoulders, in dark spectacles, he looked like an owl. The car turned round and disappeared behind a thickly wooded bend.

  Margot took the meek, clumsy man by the arm, and he climbed the footpath holding his stick in front of him. They vanished behind some fir trees, reappeared, vanished again and at length emerged upon the little garden terrace where the gloomy cook (who, incidentally, was already whole-heartedly devoted to Rex) went timorously to meet them and, trying not to look at the dangerous lunatic, relieved Margot of her attache case.

  Rex, meanwhile, leaned out of the window and made droll gestures of greeting to Margot: he pressed his hand to his heart and flung out his arms jerkily--it was a capit
al imitation of Punch--all this of course in dumb show, though he could have squeaked remarkably in more favorable circumstances. Margot smiled up at him and entered the house, still leading Albinus by the arm.

  "Take me through all the rooms and describe everything to me," said Albinus. He was not really interested, but he thought that it would give Margot pleasure: she loved settling in a new place.

  "A little dining room; a little drawing room, a little study," she explained, as she steered him through the ground floor. Albinus touched the furniture, patted the different objects as if they were the heads of strange children, and tried to get his bearings.

  "So the window is over there," he said, pointing trustfully at a blank wall. He collided painfully with the edge of a table and tried to pretend that he had done it on purpose--groping over it with his hands, as though he wanted to take its measure.

  Then they climbed side by side up the creaking wooden staircase. Above, on the top step, sat Rex, convulsed with soundless mirth. Margot shook her finger at him; he stood up cautiously and stepped back on the tips of his toes. This was really superfluous, for the staircase creaked deafeningly under the blind man's tread.

  They turned into the passage. Rex, who had now retreated to his door, crouched down several times and pressed his hand to his mouth. Margot shook her head angrily--a dangerous game; he was larking about like a schoolboy.

  "This is my bedroom, and here's yours," she said.

  "Why not one?" asked Albinus wistfully.

  "Oh, Albert," she sighed. "You know what the doctor said."

  When they had been everywhere (except into Rex's room, of course) Albinus tried to go through the house without her help, just to show her how splendidly she had made him see it all. But almost at once he lost his way, ran into a wall, smiled apologetically, and nearly smashed a wash-basin. He also strayed into the corner room (which Rex had appropriated and which could only be entered from the passage), but he was already so confused that he thought he was coming out of the bathroom.

  "Careful, that's a lumber-room," said Margot. "You're going to break your head. Now turn around and try to walk straight to bed. And really I don't know whether all this roaming is good for you. Don't imagine that I shall let you go on exploring like this; today is just an exception."

  As it was, he already felt utterly exhausted. Margot tucked him in and brought him his supper. When he had gone to sleep she joined Rex. As they were not yet on speaking terms with the acoustics of the house, they talked in whispers. But they could just as well have spoken aloud: Albinus' bedroom was far enough away.

  36

  THE impenetrable black shroud in which Albinus now lived infused an element of austerity and even of nobility into his thoughts and feelings. He was separated by darkness from that former life which had been suddenly extinguished at its sharpest bend. Remembered scenes peopled the picture gallery of his mind: Margot in a figured apron drawing aside a purple curtain (how he yearned for its dingy color now!); Margot under the shining umbrella tripping through crimson puddles; Margot naked in front of the wardrobe mirror gnawing at a yellow roll; Margot in her glistening bathing suit throwing a ball; Margot in a silvery evening gown, with her sunburned shoulders.

  Then he thought of his wife, and his life with her seemed now to be steeped in a pale subdued light, and only occasionally did something emerge from this milky haze: her fair hair in the lamp glow, the light on a picture frame, Irma playing with glass marbles (a rainbow in every one), and then haze again--and Elisabeth's quiet, almost floating, movements.

  Everything, even what was saddest and most shameful in his past life, was overlaid with the deceptive charm of colors. He was horrified to realize how little he had used his eyes--for these colors moved across too vague a background and their outlines were singularly blurred. If, for instance, he recalled a landscape in which he had once lived, he could not name a single plant except oaks and roses, nor a single bird save sparrows and crows, and even these were more akin to heraldry than to nature. Albinus now became conscious that he had not really been different from a certain narrow specialist at whom he used to scoff: from the workman who knows only his tools, or the virtuoso who is only a fleshly accessory of his violin. Albinus' speciality had been his passion for art; his most brilliant discovery had been Margot. But now, all that was left of her was a voice, a rustle and a perfume; it was as though she had returned to the darkness of the little cinema from which he had once withdrawn her.

  But Albinus could not always console himself with esthetic or moral reflections; could not always succeed in convincing himself that physical blindness was spiritual vision; in vain did he try to cheat himself with the fancy that his life with Margot was now happier, deeper and purer, and in vain did he concentrate on the thought of her touching devotion. Of course it was touching, of course she was better than the most loyal wife--this invisible Margot, this angelic coolness, this voice which begged him not to excite himself. But no sooner had he seized her hand in the darkness, no sooner did he try to express his gratitude, than there was suddenly kindled in him such a longing to see her that all his moralizing dissolved away.

  Rex was very fond of sitting in a room with him and watching his movements. Margot, as she pressed herself to the blind man's breast, pushing away at his shoulder, would cast up her eyes to the ceiling with a comical expression of resignation or put out her tongue at Albinus--this was particularly amusing in contrast with the wild and tender expression of the blind man's face. Then Margot freed herself by a dexterous movement, and retreated toward Rex, who was seated on the window sill, in white trousers, with his long-toed feet and his torso bare--he loved roasting his back in the sun. Albinus reclined in an armchair, clad in his pyjamas and dressing-gown. His face was covered with bristly hair; a pink scar glistened on his temple; he looked like a bearded convict.

  "Margot, come to me," he said imploringly, stretching out his arms.

  Now and then Rex, who loved taking risks, went up quite close to Albinus on the tips of his bare toes and touched him with the utmost delicacy. Albinus uttered an affectionate purring sound and tried to embrace the supposed Margot while Rex side-stepped noiselessly and went back to the window sill--his habitual perch.

  "My darling, do come to me," groaned Albinus, floundering out of his armchair and wading toward her. Rex on the window sill drew up his legs and Margot screamed at Albinus, declaring that she would leave him at once with a nurse if he did not do as she told him. So he shuffled back to his seat with a guilty grin.

  "All right, all right," he sighed. "Read something aloud to me. The paper."

  She once more cast her eyes to the ceiling.

  Rex seated himself cautiously on the sofa and took Margot on his knees. She spread out the newspaper and, after patting it and poring over it, began to read aloud. Albinus nodded his head now and then and slowly consumed invisible cherries, spitting the invisible stones into his fist. Rex mimicked Margot, pursing his lips and then drawing them in again as she did when she was reading. Or he pretended he was just going to let her fall, so that suddenly her voice would jump and she had to search for the end of the snapped sentence.

  "Yes, perhaps it's all for the best," thought Albinus. "Our love is now purer and loftier. If she sticks to me now, it means that she really loves me. That is good, that is good." And suddenly he began to sob aloud, he wrung his hands and begged her to take him to another specialist, to a third, to a fourth--an operation, torture--anything that might restore his sight.

  Rex, with a silent yawn, took a handful of cherries from the bowl on the table and departed to the garden.

  During the first days of their life together, Rex and Margot were cautious enough, although they indulged in various harmless jests. Before the door leading from his room into the corridor Rex had erected, in case of emergency, a barricade of boxes and trunks, over which Margot clambered at night. However, after his first stroll through the house, Albinus was no longer interested in the topography of it,
but he had quite got his bearings in his bedroom and in the study.

  Margot described all the colors to him--the blue wallpaper, the yellow blinds--but, egged on by Rex, she changed all the colors. The fact that the blind man was obliged to picture his little world in the hues prescribed by Rex afforded the latter exquisite amusement.

  In his own rooms Albinus almost had the feeling that he could see the furniture and the various objects, and this gave him a sense of security. But when he was sitting in the garden he felt himself surrounded by a vast unknown, because everything was too big, too unsubstantial and too full of sounds to enable him to form a picture of it. He tried to sharpen his hearing and to divine movements from sound. Soon it became quite difficult for Rex to come in or go out unnoticed. No matter how noiselessly he passed, Albinus turned his head at once in that direction and asked: "Is that you, darling?" and was vexed at his miscalculation if Margot answered him from quite another corner.

  The days passed and the more keenly Albinus strained his hearing, the more daring did Rex and Margot become: they accustomed themselves to the safety curtain of his blindness, and, instead of having his meals under the adoring dumb gaze of old Emilia in the kitchen as he had done at first, Rex now contrived to sit at table with both of them. He ate with a masterly noiselessness, never touching his plate with knife or fork, and munching like a silent film diner, in perfect rhythm with Albinus' moving jaws and to the bright music of Margot's voice who purposely talked very loudly while the men chewed and swallowed. Once he choked himself: Albinus, for whom Margot was just pouring out a cup of coffee, suddenly heard at the far end of the table a strange bursting sound, an ignoble sputter. Margot promptly began to chatter, but he interrupted her, his hand raised: "What was that? What was that?"

  Rex had taken his plate and moved away on tiptoe holding the napkin to his mouth. But as he was slipping through the half-open door he dropped a fork.