Laughter in the Dark Read online

  He broke off. The black cross on his cheek went up and down.

  "She's like a dead woman, as it is. You have ...You are ... In fact, you're a scoundrel, sir, an absolute scoundrel."

  "Aren't you being rather rude?" said Albinus, trying to smile.

  "It's monstrous!" shouted Paul, looking at his brother-in-law for the first time. "Where did you pick her up? How did this prostitute dare to write to you?"

  "Gently, gently," said Albinus, and licked his lips.

  "I'll thrash you, I'm hanged if I don't!" shouted Paul still louder.

  "Remember Frieda," muttered Albinus. "She can hear every word."

  "Will you give me an answer?"--and Paul tried to catch hold of the lapel of his coat, but Albinus with a sickly grin slapped him on the hand.

  "I refuse to be cross-examined," he whispered. "All this is extremely painful. Can't you think it's some dreadful misunderstanding? Suppose--"

  "You're lying!" roared Paul, thumping the floor with a chair, "you cad! I've just been to see her. A little harlot, who ought to be in a reformatory. I knew you'd lie, you cad. How could you do such a thing? This is not mere vice, it's ..."

  "That's enough," Albinus interrupted almost inaudibly.

  A motor lorry drove past; the window panes rattled slightly.

  "Oh, Albert," said Paul, in an unexpectedly calm and melancholy tone, "who would have thought it ..."

  He went out. Frieda was sobbing in the wings. Someone carried out the luggage. Then all was silent.

  10

  THAT afternoon Albinus packed his suitcase and drove to Margot's rooms. It had not been easy to persuade Frieda to remain in the empty flat, Finally she agreed when he proposed that her young man, a worthy police-sergeant, should occupy what had been the nurse's bedroom. And if anyone rang up she was to say that Albinus had unexpectedly left for Italy with his family.

  Margot received him coldly. That morning she had been roused by a fat irate gentleman who was looking for his brother-in-law; he had called her names. The cook, a particularly hefty woman, had pushed him out, thank goodness!

  "This flat is really only meant for one person," she said, glancing at Albinus' suitcase.

  "Oh, please," he murmured miserably.

  "Anyway there's a lot of things we must talk about. I've no intention of listening to the insults of your idiotic relations"--and she walked up and down the room in her red silk wrapper, her right hand at her left armpit, and puffed hard at a cigarette. With her dark hair falling over her brow she looked like a gypsy.

  After tea she drove off to buy a gramophone. Why a gramophone? On this of all days ... Utterly exhausted and with a splitting headache, Albinus lay on the sofa in the hideous drawing room and thought: "Something unspeakably awful has happened, but I'm really quite calm. Elisabeth's swoon lasted twenty minutes, and then she screamed; probably it was terrible to hear her; and I'm quite calm. She is still my wife and I love her, and I shall, of course, shoot myself if she dies by my fault. I wonder how they explained to Irma the move to Paul's flat and all the hurry and upset? It was disgusting the way Frieda described it: 'and madam screamed, and madam screamed.'... Odd, because Elisabeth had never raised her voice before in her life."

  The next day, while Margot was out buying records, he wrote a long letter. In this he assured his wife quite sincerely, although maybe in too florid a style, that he treasured her as before, despite his little escapade "which has bruised our family happiness as the knife of a madman slashes a picture." He wept, listened to make sure that Margot was not coming back and wrote on, sobbing and muttering to himself. He begged his wife's forgiveness, but his letter gave no indication as to whether he was prepared to give up his mistress.

  He received no answer.

  Then he realized that, if he was not to go on tormenting himself, he must erase the image of his family from his memory and abandon himself utterly to the fierce, almost morbid passion which Margot's gay loveliness excited in him. She on her part was always ready to respond to his love-making; it only refreshed her; she was playful and without a care; the doctor had told her two years before that she could never have a child, and she regarded this as a boon and a blessing.

  Albinus taught her to bathe daily instead of only washing her hands and neck as she had done hitherto. Her nails were always clean now, and polished a brilliant red, on both fingers and toes.

  He kept discovering new charms in her--touching little things which in any other girl would have seemed to him coarse and vulgar. The childish lines of her body, her shamelessness and the gradual dimming of her eyes (as if they were being slowly extinguished like the lights in a theater) roused him to such frenzy that he lost the last vestige of that diffidence which his prim and delicate wife had demanded of his embraces.

  He hardly ever left the house for fear of meeting acquaintances. It was with reluctance, and only in the mornings, that he let Margot go out--on her adventurous hunts after stockings and silk underwear. He was amazed at her lack of curiosity: she never questioned him about his former life. Sometimes he tried to interest her in his past, telling her of his childhood, his mother whom he remembered but vaguely, and his father, a full-blooded country squire, who had loved well his dogs and horses, his oaks and his corn, and who had died quite suddenly--of a fit of virile laughter in the billiard room where a guest was telling a bawdy story.

  "What was the story? Tell it to me," Margot asked--but he had forgotten it.

  He told her about his early passion for painting, his works, his discoveries; he told her how a picture could be restored with the aid of garlic and crushed resin which converted the old varnish into dust and how, under a flannel rag moistened with turpentine, the smokiness or the coarse picture painted over would vanish and the original beauty blossom out.

  Margot was chiefly interested in the market value of such a picture.

  He told her about the War, and the cold mud of the trenches, and she asked him why, being rich, he had not wangled himself into a post behind the lines.

  "What a funny darling you are!" he would cry, fondling her.

  She began to get bored in the evenings; she longed for the cinema, smart restaurants and negroid music.

  "You shall have everything, everything," he said, "only let me recover first. I have all sorts of plans.... We'll go to the seaside soon."

  He looked round her drawing room and marveled how he, who prided himself on not being able to endure anything in bad taste, could tolerate this chamber of horrors. Everything, he mused, was beautified by his passion.

  "We've really fixed ourselves up very nicely--haven't we, darling?"

  She agreed condescendingly. She knew that all this was only temporary: the memory of his luxurious flat lingered in her mind; but of course there was no need for haste.

  One day, in July, as Margot was returning from her dressmaker's on foot, and was already nearing home, someone clutched her from behind above the elbow. She wheeled round. It was her brother Otto. He grinned unpleasantly. At a little distance two of his friends were standing and they grinned too.

  "Glad to meet you, Sis," he said. "Not very nice of you to forget your folks."

  "Let go," said Margot quietly, drooping her eyelashes.

  Otto stuck his arms akimbo: "How fine you look," he said, examining her from head to foot. "Really, quite the young lady!"

  Margot turned round and walked away. But he gripped her arm again, hurting her, and she uttered a soft "Ow-wow!" as she had done when she was a child.

  "Look here," said Otto, "this is the third day I've been watching you. I know where you live. But we'd better move on a little farther."

  "Let me go," whispered Margot, trying to loosen his fingers. A passer-by stopped, anticipating a row. Her house was quite near. Albinus might happen to look out of the window. That would be a nuisance.

  She yielded to his pressure. He led her round the corner; leering and swinging their arms, the other two, Kaspar and Kurt, followed.

  "What is i
t you want?" she asked, gazing with disgust at her brother's greasy cap and at the cigarette behind his ear.

  He motioned with his head to one side: "Let's go into the bar there."

  "No," she cried, but the other two came close up to her and snarled as they shoved her toward the door. She began to feel frightened.

  At the bar a few men were discussing the coming elections in loud barking tones.

  "Let's sit here, in this corner," said Otto.

  They sat down. Margot remembered vividly and with a kind of wonder how they all used to go out on suburban sprees--she, Otto, and these two sun-tanned youths. They taught her to swim and grabbed at her bared thighs under the water. Kurt had an anchor tattooed on his forearm and a dragon on his chest. They sprawled on the bank and pelted one another with clammy velvety sand. They slapped her on her wet bathing pants as soon as she lay down flat. How jolly it all was, the merry crowd, litter of paper everywhere, and muscular, fair-haired Kaspar on the edge of the lake shaking his arms as though he were quaking, and roaring: "The water is wet, wet!" When swimming, he held his mouth under water and trumpeted like a seal. And when he came out, the first thing he did was to comb back his hair and carefully put on his cap. She remembered how they played ball; and then she lay down and they covered her with sand leaving only her face bare, and made a cross of pebbles on top.

  "See here," said Otto, when four gold-rimmed glasses of light beer appeared on the table. "You've no need to be ashamed of your people because you've got a rich friend. On the contrary, you must think about us." He took a sip, and his friends did the same. They both watched Margot with contemptuous hostility.

  "You don't know what you're talking about," she said disdainfully. "It's quite different from what you think. As a matter of fact we're engaged."

  All three burst out laughing. Margot was filled with such loathing that she looked away and fidgeted with the fastening of her handbag. Otto took it out of her hand, opened it and found there a powder-box, keys, a tiny handkerchief and three and a half marks, which he took.

  "That'll be enough for the beer," he remarked, then he made a little bow and laid the bag in front of her.

  They ordered more. Margot, too, swallowed some with an effort: she hated beer, but she did not want them to have hers.

  "Can I go now?" she asked, patting the twin locks on her temples.

  "What? Don't you like sitting with your brother and his friends?" asked Otto in mock astonishment. "My dear, you've changed a lot. But--we've not yet come to business ..."

  "You've stolen my money, and now I'm going."

  Again they all snarled and again she felt frightened.

  "No question of stealing," said Otto nastily. "This isn't your money, but money which you got hold of from someone who sweated it out of the working classes. So you'd better not talk about stealing. You--"

  He checked himself and continued more calmly:

  "Listen here, you. Get some cash from your friend for us, for the family. Fifty will do. See?"

  "And suppose I don't?"

  "Then we'll have our sweet revenge," answered Otto quietly. "Oh, we know all about you. Engaged! That's a good one."

  Margot beamed suddenly and whispered with lowered eyelashes:

  "All right, I'll get it. Is that all? Can I go now?"

  "Good girl. But what's the hurry? Besides, we ought to see a little more of one another. How about taking a trip to the lake one day, eh?" He turned to his friends. "What larks we used to have! She ought not to give herself such airs, ought she?"

  But Margot had already risen to her feet and was emptying her glass, standing.

  "Noon tomorrow, at the same corner," said Otto, "and then we'll drive out for the whole day. Agreed?"

  "Agreed," said Margot brightly. She shook hands all round and went out.

  She returned home and when Albinus put down his paper and rose to meet her, she tottered and pretended to faint. It was an indifferent performance, but it worked. He was thoroughly frightened, made her comfortable on the couch, brought her some water.

  "What's the matter? Do tell me," he kept repeating, as he stroked her hair.

  "Now you'll leave me," groaned Margot.

  He gulped and immediately leaped to the worst conclusion: she had been unfaithful to him.

  "Good. Then I'll kill her," he thought swiftly. But aloud he repeated quite calmly: "What's the matter, Margot?"

  "I have deceived you," she whimpered.

  "She must die," thought Albinus.

  "I've deceived you terribly, Albert. First of all, my father is not an artist; he used to be a locksmith, and now he's a porter; my mother polishes the banisters, and my brother's a common workman. I had a hard, hard childhood. I was flogged, tortured."

  Albinus felt exquisite relief, and then a flood of pity.

  "No, don't kiss me. You must know all. I escaped from home. I earned money as a model. A terrible old woman exploited me. Then I had a love affair. He was married like you, and his wife wouldn't divorce him, so I left him, as I could not bear to be only his mistress--although I loved him madly. Then I was pestered by an old banker. He offered his whole fortune to me, but of course I refused him. He died of a broken heart. Then I took that job at the 'Argus.' "

  "Oh, my poor, poor, hunted little bunny," murmured Albinus (who, incidentally, had long ceased to believe that he was her first lover).

  "And you really don't despise me?" she asked, smiling through her tears, which was difficult, seeing there were no tears to smile through. "I'm so glad you don't despise me. But now let me tell you the most terrible part: my brother has found out where I live, I met him today and he demands money--trying to blackmail me, because he thinks you know nothing--about my past, I mean. You see, when I saw him and thought what a disgrace it was to have such a brother and then when I thought that my sweet trusting woggy had no idea what my family was like--you know I was so ashamed of them, and because I had not told you the truth, too ..."

  He took her up in his arms and rocked her to and fro; he would have crooned a lullaby had he known one. She began to laugh softly.

  "What's to be done about it?" he asked. "I'll be afraid to let you go out alone now. Shall we tell the police?"

  "No, not that," exclaimed Margot with extraordinary emphasis.

  11

  NEXT day for the first time Albinus accompanied her when she went out. She wanted many light frocks and bathing things and pounds of cream that would help the sun to bronze her. Solfi, the Adriatic resort which Albinus had selected for their first trip together, was a hot and dazzling place. As they were getting into a cab, she noticed her brother standing on the other side of the street, but she did not point him out to Albinus.

  Showing himself with Margot made him acutely uncomfortable; he could not get used to his new position. When they returned, Otto had vanished. Margot rightly supposed that he was very hurt and would now act injudiciously.

  Two days before their departure Albinus was seated at a peculiarly uncomfortable desk writing a business letter while she was packing things into the new shiny black trunk in the adjoining room. He heard the rustling of tissue paper and a little song which she was softly humming to herself, her mouth shut.

  "How strange it all is," thought he. "Had I been told on New Year's Eve that my life would change so completely in a few months ..."

  Margot dropped something in the next room. The humming stopped for a moment, and was then softly resumed.

  "Six months ago I was a model husband in a Margot-less world. Quick work fate made of it! Other men can combine a happy family life with little infidelities, but in my case everything went crash immediately. Why? And here I sit and seem to be thinking clearly and sensibly. Yet in reality the earthquake is in full swing and God knows how things will settle themselves ..."

  Suddenly the bell rang. From three different doors Albinus, Margot and the cook all ran out into the hall simultaneously.

  "Albert," whispered Margot, "be very careful. I'm sur
e it's him."

  "Go to your room," he whispered back. "I'll handle him nicely."

  He opened the door. It was the girl from the milliner's. Hardly had she gone, than there was another ring. He opened again. Before him stood a youth with a coarse oafish countenance, yet resembling Margot strikingly--those dark eyes, that sleek hair, that straight nose slightly wedged at the tip. He wore his Sunday suit and the end of his tie was tucked into his shirt between the buttons.

  "What do you want?" asked Albinus.

  Otto coughed and said with a confidential huskiness in his voice:

  "I must talk to you about my sister. I'm Margot's brother."

  "And why to me particularly, may I ask?"

  "You are Herr ...?" began Otto in a questioning tone. "Herr ...?"

  "Schiffermiller," said Albinus, rather relieved to learn that the boy did not know his identity.

  "Well, Herr Schiffermiller, I happened to see you with my sister. So I thought it would perhaps interest you if I ... if we ..."

  "Certainly--but why stand in the doorway? Please come inside."

  He came and coughed again.

  "What I want to say is this, Herr Schiffermiller. My sister is young and inexperienced. Mother hasn't slept a single night since our little Margot left home. She's only sixteen, you know--don't believe her if she says she's older. Let me tell you, we're decent people--my father's an old soldier. It's a very, very unpleasant situation. I don't know what amends can be made ..."

  Otto, gaining confidence, was beginning almost to believe what he said.

  "I really don't know," he continued with rising excitement. "Just imagine, Herr Schiffermiller, if you had a loved and innocent sister whom someone had bought ..."

  "Now listen, my good fellow," Albinus interrupted him. "There seems to be some mistake. My fiancee told me that her family was only too thankful to be rid of her."

  "Oh, no," said Otto winking. "You're not going to make me believe you'll marry her. When a man wants to marry a respectable girl, he talks to her family about it. A little more care and a little less pride, Herr Schiffermiller!"

  Albinus gazed at Otto with curiosity, as he reflected that the young brute was talking sense in a way, for he had as much right to concern himself over Margot's welfare as Paul had to worry on behalf of his sister. Indeed, there was a fine flavor of parody about this talk, in comparison with that other dreadful conversation two months ago. And it was pleasant to think that now at least he could stand his own ground, brother or no brother--take advantage, as it were, of the fact that Otto was simply a bluffer and a bully.