Laughter in the Dark

by Vladimir Nabokov

  Albinus swung round in his chair. "What's that? Who's there?" he repeated.

  "Oh, it's only Emilia. Why are you so jumpy?"

  "But she never comes in here."

  "Well, today she did!"

  "I thought that my ears were beginning to get hallucinations," said Albinus. "Yesterday, for instance, I had the most definite impression that someone was stealing barefoot along the corridor."

  "You'll go out of your mind, if you're not careful," said Margot drily.

  In the afternoon, during Albinus' usual nap, she would sometimes go for a stroll with Rex. They fetched the letters and newspapers from the post office, or climbed up to the waterfall--and a couple of times went to a cafe in the pretty little town lower down. Once, as they were returning to the house and already tackling the steep footpath which led to the cottage, Rex said:

  "I advise you not to insist on marriage. I'm very much afraid that, just because he deserted his wife, he has come to look upon her as a precious saint painted on glass. He will not care to smash that particular church-window. It's a simpler and better plan to get hold of his fortune gradually."

  "Well, we've collected quite a large bit of it, haven't we?"

  "You must get him to sell that land he has in Pomerania and his pictures," continued Rex, "or else one of his houses in Berlin. With a little cunning we could manage it. For the time being the checkbook answers the purpose admirably. He signs everything like a machine--but his bank account will soon run dry. We must hurry up, too. It would be nice to leave him, say, this winter; and before we go we'll buy him a dogas a small token of our gratitude."

  "Don't talk so loud," said Margot, "we're at the stone already."

  This stone, a large gray one, which was overgrown with convolvulus and looked like a sheep, marked the boundary beyond which it was dangerous to talk at all. So they walked on in silence and after a few minutes were near the garden gate. Margot laughed suddenly and pointed to a squirrel. Rex chucked a stone at the animal, but missed it.

  "Oh, kill it--they do a lot of damage to the trees," said Margot softly.

  "Who does damage to the trees?" asked a loud voice. It was Albinus.

  He was standing--rocking slightly--among the syringa shrubs on a little stone step which led from the footpath onto the lawn.

  "Margot, whom are you talking to down there?" he went on. Suddenly he stumbled, dropped his stick and sat down heavily on the step.

  "How dare you wander so far by yourself?" she exclaimed and, seizing him roughly, she helped him to get up. Some little bits of gravel had stuck to his hand; he spread out his fingers and tried to rub the gravel off, as a child might do.

  "I wanted to catch a squirrel," declared Margot, thrusting the stick into his hand. "What did you think I was doing?"

  "I fancied ..." Albinus began. "Who's there?" he cried sharply, nearly losing his balance again as he veered in the direction of Rex, who was cautiously walking across the lawn.

  "There's no one here," said Margot, "I'm alone. Why are you in such a state?" She felt her patience going.

  "Lead me back to the house," he said, almost in tears. "There are too many sounds here. Trees, wind, squirrels, and things I cannot name. I don't know what's happening round me ... It's all so noisy."

  "From now on you shall be shut in," she said, and dragged him into the house.

  Then, as usual, the sun went down behind the neighboring ridge. As usual, Margot and Rex sat side by side on the sofa and smoked, and half a dozen feet away from them sat Albinus in his leather armchair, staring at them fixedly with his milky blue eyes. At his request Margot told him about her childhood. She rather liked doing it. He went to bed early, slowly climbing the staircase and feeling for every step with toe and stick.

  In the middle of the night he woke up and fingered the unglazed dial of an alarm clock until he found out the position of the hands. It was about half past one. He was filled with a strange uneasiness. Of late something had hindered him from concentrating on those grave and beautiful thoughts which alone were capable of shielding him against the horrors of blindness.

  He lay and thought: "What is it? Elisabeth? No, she is far away. She is very far below, somewhere. A dear, pale, sorrowful shade which I must never disturb. Margot? No, this brother-and-sister state of things is only for the time being. What is it then?"

  Without quite knowing what he wanted, he crept out of bed and groped his way to Margot's door (his room had no other exit). She always locked it at night and so he was shut in.

  "How wise she is," he thought tenderly, and he put his ear to the keyhole, hoping to hear her breathing in her sleep. But he heard nothing.

  "Quiet as a little mouse," he whispered. "If I could just stroke her head and then go away. Perhaps she has forgotten to lock the door."

  Without much hope he pressed the latch. No, she had not forgotten.

  He suddenly remembered how, one sultry summer night when he was a pimply youth, he had clambered along the cornice of a house on the Rhine from his room into that of the housemaid (only to find that she was not sleeping alone) --but at that time he was light and nimble; at that time he could see.

  "Still, why should I not try?" he thought with melancholy daring. "And if I do fall and break my neck, will it matter?"

  First he found his stick, leaned out of the window and groped with it to the left over the sill to the neighboring window. It was open and the pane tinkled as the stick touched it.

  "How fast asleep she is!" he thought. "Must be exhausting, looking after me all day long."

  As he drew back the stick he caught it on something. It slipped from his grasp and fell to the ground below with a faint thud.

  Albinus held onto the window frame, clambered out onto the sill, made his way to the left along the cornice, clutching at what was presumably the water-pipe, stepped across its cold iron bend and clutched the window sill of the next room.

  "How simple!" he thought, not without pride, and "Hello, Margot," he said, softly, trying to crawl in through the open window. He slipped and almost fell backward into the abstraction of a garden. His heart was beating violently. He wriggled over the sill into the room and some heavy object which he displaced fell to the ground noisily.

  He stood still. His face was covered with sweat. On his hand he felt something sticky (it was resin which had oozed out of the pine-wood of which the house was built).

  "Margot, darling," he said cheerfully. Silence. He found the bed. It was covered with a lace spread--had not been slept in.

  Albinus seated himself on it and reflected. If the bed had been open and warm, then it would have been easy to understand, she would be back in a moment.

  After a few moments he went out into the corridor (much hampered by the absence of his stick) and listened. He fancied that he heard somewhere a low smothered sound--something between a creak and a rustle. It began to be uncanny. He called out:

  "Margot, where are you?"

  Everything remained silent. Then a door opened.

  "Margot, Margot," he repeated, groping his way down the corridor.

  "Yes, yes, I'm here," her voice answered calmly.

  "What's happened, Margot? Why haven't you gone to bed?"

  She collided with him in the dark passage and when he touched her he felt that she was undressed.

  "I was lying in the sun," she said, "as I always do in the morning."

  "But now it's night," he exclaimed, breathing heavily. "I can't understand. There's something wrong somewhere. I know because I felt the hands of the clock. It's half past one."

  "Rubbish. It's half past six and a lovely sunny morning. Your clock must have gone wrong. You feel the hands too often. But look here--how did you get out of your room?"

  "Margot, is it really morning? Are you telling the truth?"

  She suddenly went close up to him and, standing on tiptoe, laid her arms round his neck as she had done in the old days.

  "Although it's day," she said softly, "if you like, if
you like, dearest ... As a great exception ..."

  She did not much want to do it, but it was the only way. Now Albinus could no longer notice that the air was still cold, and that no birds were singing, for he felt only one thing--fierce, fiery bliss, and then he sank into a deep sleep and slept until midday. When he woke up Margot scolded him for his climbing exploit, was still more furious when she saw his melancholy smile, and slapped his cheek.

  The whole of that day he sat in the drawing room, thinking of his happy morning and wondering how many days it would be before this happiness would be repeated. All of a sudden, quite distinctly, he heard someone emit a dubious little cough. That could not be Margot. He knew she was in the kitchen.

  "Who's there?" he asked.

  But no one answered.

  "Another hallucination!" thought Albinus wearily and then, all at once, he understood what it was that had worried him so at night--yes, yes, it was these strange noises which he sometimes heard.

  "Tell me, Margot," he said, as she came back, "is there no one in the house besides Emilia? Are you quite sure?"

  "You nut!" she answered curtly.

  But once the suspicion had been aroused, it refused to give him any rest. He sat still all day and listened gloomily.

  Rex was very much amused at this, and although Margot had besought him to be more prudent, he paid no heed to her warning. Once even, when he was only two feet away from Albinus, he very skilfully began to whistle like an oriole. Margot had to explain that the bird had perched on the window sill and was singing there.

  "Drive it away," said Albinus sternly.

  "Ssh, ssh," said Margot, laying her hand on Rex's fat lips.

  "Do you know," said Albinus a few days later, "I should like to have a chat with Emilia. I like her puddings."

  "Absolutely out of the question," answered Margot. "She is quite deaf and mortally afraid of you."

  Albinus thought hard for some minutes.

  "Impossible," he said slowly.

  "What's impossible, Albert?"

  "Oh, nothing," he muttered, "nothing."

  "Do you know, Margot," he said shortly afterward, "I'm badly in need of a shave. Send for the hairdresser from the village."

  "Unnecessary," said Margot. "The beard suits you very well."

  Albinus fancied that someone--not Margot, but someone by the side of Margot--tittered softly.

  37

  THE Berliner Zeitung, with a brief account of the accident, was shown to Paul by a man in his office, and he at once drove home, fearing that Elisabeth had read it, too. She had not, though curiously enough a copy of that particular paper (which they did not usually read) was in the house. He wired the same day to the Grasse police station and eventually got into touch with the hospital doctor, who replied, saying that Albinus was out of danger, but quite blind. Very gently he broke the news to Elisabeth.

  Then, owing to the simple fact that he and his brother-in-law both had the same bank, he discovered Albinus' address in Switzerland. The manager, an old business friend of his, showed him the checks that were pouring in from there with a kind of hasty regularity, and Paul was amazed at the amount of cash Albinus was drawing out. The signature was all right, though very shaky about the curves and pathetically down-sloping, but the figures were written in another hand--a bold masculine hand with a dash and a flourish, and there was somehow a faint whiff of forgery about the whole thing. He wondered whether it was the fact of the blind man signing what he was told, and not what he saw, that created this queer impression. Queer, too, were the large sums he demanded--as if he, or somebody else, were in a frantic hurry to get out as much money as he could. And then came a check that was uncovered.

  "There's some foul business going on," thought Paul, "I feel it in my bones. But what is it exactly?"

  He pictured to himself Albinus, alone with his dangerous mistress, completely at her mercy, in the black house of his blindness ...

  Some days passed. Paul was dreadfully uneasy. It was not the mere fact of the man signing checks he could not see (anyway, the money was his to squander consciously or unconsciously--Elisabeth did not need it and there was no longer any Irma to be thought about), but the fact of his being so utterly helpless in the wicked world that he had let grow up around him.

  One evening, as Paul came home, he found Elisabeth packing a portmanteau. It was curious that she looked happier than she had done for many months.

  "What's up?" he asked. "Are you going anywhere?"

  "You are," she said quietly.

  38

  THE next day Paul traveled to Switzerland. At Brigaud he took a taxi, and in something over an hour reached the little town above which Albinus was living. Paul stopped in front of the post office and a very talkative young woman in charge of the latter told him the way to the chalet and added that Albinus was staying there with his niece and a doctor. Paul drove on immediately. He knew who the niece was. But the presence of a doctor surprised him. It seemed to suggest that Albinus was being better looked after than might be supposed.

  "Perhaps, after all, I've come here on a fool's errand," thought Paul uncomfortably. "He may be quite contented. But now that I'm here ... Well, anyway, I'll have a talk with this doctor. Poor fellow, a shattered life ... Who could have thought ..."

  That morning Margot had gone to the village with Emilia. She did not notice Paul's taxi; but at the post office she was told that a stout gentleman had just inquired after Albinus and had driven on up to see him.

  At this moment Albinus and Rex were seated opposite one another in the little drawing room into which the sunlight was streaming through the glass door leading to the terrace. Rex sat on a folding stool. He was stark naked. As a result of his daily sunbaths his lean but robust body with, on his breast, black hair in the shape of a spread eagle, was tanned a deep brown. Between his full red lips he held a long stalk of grass and, with his hairy legs crossed and his chin cupped in his hand (rather in the pose of Rodin's "Thinker") he was staring at Albinus who, in return, seemed to be gazing at him quite as intently.

  The blind man was wearing an ample, mouse-gray dressing-gown and his bearded face expressed agonized tension. He was listening--of late he had done nothing else but listen. Rex knew this and was watching how the man's thoughts were mirrored on his face as if that face had become one big eye since his actual pair of eyes had gone. One or two little tests might add to the fun: he slapped his knee softly, and Albinus, who had just raised his hand to his knitted brow, remained transfixed with uplifted arm. Then Rex bent slowly forward and touched Albinus' forehead very gently with the flowering end of the grass stem which he had just been sucking. Albinus sighed strangely and brushed away the imaginary fly. Rex tickled his lips and again Albinus made that helpless movement. This was good fun indeed.

  Suddenly the blind man cocked his head abruptly. Rex, too, turned and through the glass door he saw a stout gentleman in a checkered cap whose red face he recognized at once and who was standing there, on the terrace, and looking on in amazement.

  Rex put his finger to his lips and made a sign to him, meaning that he would join him in a moment. But the other pushed open the door and stepped into the room.

  "Of course, I know you. Your name is Rex," said Paul, taking a deep breath and staring at this naked man who still smiled and held his finger to his lips.

  Albinus had meanwhile risen to his feet. The reddish hue of his scar seemed to have spread over his whole forehead. Suddenly he began to scream and jabber and only gradually words formed themselves out of these jagged sounds.

  "Paul, I'm here alone," he cried. "Paul, do say that I'm alone. That man is in America. He is not here. Paul, I implore you. I'm quite blind."

  "Pity you've spoiled everything," said Rex, and then he ran out and began mounting the stairs.

  Paul seized the blind man's stick, caught up with Rex, who turned round and held up his hands to protect himself; and Paul, good-natured Paul who had never in his life hit a living creature,
swung out mightily at Rex's head and got it with a tremendous bang. Rex leaped back--his face still twisted in a smile--and suddenly something very remarkable occurred: like Adam after the Fall, Rex, cowering by the white wall and grinning wanly, covered his nakedness with his hand.

  Paul rushed after him again, but the man dodged and ran up the steps.

  At this moment someone fell upon Paul from behind. It was Albinus--clutching, whimpering and holding a marble letter-weight in his hand.

  "Paul," he groaned, "Paul, I understand everything. Give me my overcoat, quick. It's hanging in the wardrobe there."

  "Which--the yellow one?" asked Paul, struggling for breath.

  Albinus immediately felt what he wanted in the pocket, and he stopped blubbering.

  "I'll take you away from here at once," panted Paul. "Take off your dressing-gown and put on that coat. Give me that letter-weight. Come on. I'll help you ... There, take my cap. It doesn't matter that you've only got bedroom slippers on. Let's get away, let's get away, Albert. I've got a taxi down there. The first thing to be done is to get you out of this torture chamber."

  "Wait a bit," said Albinus. "I must speak to her first. She will be back in a moment. I must, Paul. It won't take long."

  But Paul pushed him out into the garden and then shouted and beckoned to the chauffeur.

  "I must speak to her," repeated Albinus. "Quite close. For God's sake, Paul, tell me, perhaps she's here already? Perhaps she's come back?"

  "No, calm yourself. We must go. There's no one here. Only that naked wretch looking out of the window. Come on, Albert, come on!"

  "Yes, we'll go," said Albinus, "but you must tell me if you see her. We may meet her on the way. Then I must speak to her. Quite close, quite close."

  They went down the footpath, but after a few steps Albinus suddenly opened his arms and fell back in a swoon. The taxi driver came hurrying up and together they lifted Albinus into the car. One of his slippers remained there on the footpath.

  At that moment a trap drove up and Margot jumped out of it. She ran toward them and shouted something, but the car was already turning in the road; it almost knocked her down as it backed, then it lurched forward and disappeared round the bend.

  39