“Comment, Monsieur?” she asked.
“What perfect nonsense,” he repeated, as he stopped at the corner, and stood there, with knitted brows, in the way of passers-by. He had the obscure sensation of everything’s being suddenly turned the other way round, so that he had to read it all backward if he wanted to understand. It was a sensation devoid of any pain or astonishment. It was simply something dark and looming, and yet smooth and soundless, coming toward him; and there he stood, in a kind of dreamy, helpless stupor, not even trying to avoid that ghostly impact, as if it were some curious phenomenon which could do him no harm so long as this stupor lasted.
“Impossible,” he said suddenly—and a queer, twisted thought occurred to him; he followed its weird, bat-like shudder and flight as if, again, it were a thing to study, not to be frightened of. Then he turned round, almost knocking down a little girl in a black pinafore, and hastily went back the way he had just come.
Conrad, who had been writing in the garden, went to his study on the ground floor for a notebook he needed, and was in the act of looking for it on his desk by the window when he saw Albinus’ face peering at him from outside. (“Bother the man,” he thought swiftly. “Isn’t he going to give me any peace now?—popping out from nowhere.”)
“Look here, Udo,” said Albinus in a strange, blurred kind of voice, “I forgot to ask you something. What did they talk about in the bus?”
“Pardon?” said Conrad.
“What did those two talk about in the bus? You said it was a fascinating experience.”
“A what?” asked Conrad. “Oh, yes, now I see. Well, it was fascinating in a way. Yes, quite right. I wanted to give you that example of how Germans behave when they think no one can understand? Is that what you mean?”
Albinus nodded.
“Well,” said Conrad, “it was the cheapest, loudest, nastiest amorous prattle that I’ve ever heard in my life. Those friends of yours talked as freely of their love as though they were alone in Paradise—a rather gross Paradise, I’m afraid.”
“Udo,” said Albinus, “can you swear to what you’re saying?”
“Pardon?”
“Are you perfectly, perfectly sure of what you’re saying?”
“Why, yes. What’s the idea? Wait a bit, I’m coming into the garden. I can’t hear a word through this window.”
He found his notebook and went out. “Hullo, where are you?” he cried. But Albinus had disappeared. Conrad walked out into the lane. No—the man was gone.
“I wonder,” muttered Conrad, “I wonder whether I haven’t committed some blunder (… nasty rhyme, that! ‘Was it, I wonder, a—la, la, la—blunder?’ Horrible!).”
30
ALBINUS descended into the town, crossed the boulevard without quickening his steady pace, and reached his hotel. He went up and into his room—their room. It was empty, the bed was not made; some coffee had been spilled and a little spoon was gleaming on the white rug. With bent head he gazed at that shiny spot. At that moment Margot’s shrill laugh sounded from the garden below.
He leaned out of the window. She was walking by the side of a youth in white shorts, and the racket which she brandished as she chattered, glistened like gold in the sun. Her partner caught sight of Albinus at the third-floor window. Margot looked up and stopped.
Albinus moved his arm as if grabbing something to his breast: it was supposed to mean “come up” and so Margot understood it. She nodded and lazily came down the gravel walk toward the oleander shrubs which flanked the entrance.
He walked back from the window, squatted down and unlocked his suitcase, but then remembered that what he was looking for was in another place. He walked over to the wardrobe and thrust his hand into the pocket of his yellow camel’s-hair overcoat. He rapidly examined the thing he had got out to see if it was loaded: then he posted himself at the door.
As soon as she opened it he would shoot her down. He would not bother to ask her any questions. It was all as plain as death and, with a kind of hideous smoothness, fitted into the logical scheme of things. They had been deceiving him steadily, astutely, artistically. She must be killed at once.
As he waited for her at the door, his mind went out to track her. Now she would have entered the hotel; now she would be coming up in the lift. He listened for the click of her heels along the corridor. But his imagination had outstripped her. Everything was silent. He must begin afresh. He held the automatic pistol and it seemed like a natural extension of his hand which was tense and eager to discharge itself: there was almost a sensual pleasure in the thought of pressing back that incurved trigger.
He almost fired at the white closed door when he heard the light patter of her rubber soles—yes, of course: she was wearing tennis shoes, there were no heels to click. Now! But at that moment he heard other steps.
“Will Madame permit me to fetch the tray?” asked a French voice outside the door. Margot came in at the same time as the chambermaid. Unconsciously he slipped the pistol into his pocket.
“What d’you want?” demanded Margot. “You might have come down, you know, instead of calling me up so rudely.”
He made no reply, but watched with bowed head while the chambermaid placed the crockery on the tray and picked up the little spoon. She lifted the tray, beamed, went out, and now the door closed.
“Albert, whatever has happened?”
He lowered his hand into his pocket. Margot, with a shiver of pain, dropped down on a chair by the bed, bent her sunburned neck and began to untie quickly the laces of her white shoe. He looked at her glossy black head, at the bluish shade on her neck where the hair had been shaved. Impossible to fire while she was taking off her shoe. She had a sore place just above her heel and the blood had soaked through her white sock.
“It’s absurd how badly I rub it every time,” she said, lifting her head. She saw the black gun in his hand.
“Don’t play with that thing, you fool,” she said very calmly.
“Stand up,” whispered Albinus, and clutched her wrist.
“I won’t stand up,” answered Margot, pulling the sock off with her free hand. “Let me go. Look, it’s got stuck to the sock.”
He shook her so violently that the chair rattled. She gripped the edge of the bedstead and began to laugh.
“Please, shoot me, do,” she said. “It will be just like that play we saw, with the nigger and the pillow, and I’m just as innocent as she was.”
“You lie,” whispered Albinus. “You and that scoundrel. Nothing but trickery and de-de-deceit, and …” His upper lip trembled. He struggled with his stammer.
“Please, put that thing down. I won’t speak to you until you have. I don’t know what’s happened and I don’t want to. I only know one thing: I am faithful to you, I am faithful …”
“All right,” said Albinus hoarsely. “You can say what you have to say. But after that you shall die.”
“You need not kill me—really, you needn’t, darling.”
“Go on. Speak.”
(“… if I were to rush to the door,” she thought, “I might just manage to run out. Then I’d scream, and people would come running up. But then everything would be spoiled—everything …”)
“I can’t speak as long as you’re holding that thing. Please, put it away.”
(“… or perhaps I could knock it out of his hand? …”)
“No,” said Albinus. “First of all, you must confess … I’ve got information. I know all … I know all …” he repeated in a broken voice, walking up and down the room and striking the furniture with the edge of his palm. “I know all. He sat behind you in that bus, and you behaved like lovers. Oh, of course, I shall shoot you.”
“Yes, I thought as much,” said Margot. “I knew that you wouldn’t understand. For God’s sake, put that thing down, Albert.”
“What is there to understand?” screamed Albinus. “What is there to be explained?”
“In the first place, Albert, you know very well that he d
oesn’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 café, 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 an
d 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 with 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.
Laughter in the Dark Page 14
