Laughter in the Dark (10 page)

Margot sat up and smiled plaintively. Tears only added to her beauty. Her face was aflame, the iris of her eyes was dazzling, and a large tear trembled on the side of her nose: he had never before seen tears of that size and brilliance.

J
UST
as Albinus had accustomed himself never to speak to Margot of art, of which she knew and cared nothing, he had now to learn to hide from her the agonies he suffered during the first days of their life together in the old flat, where he had spent ten years with his wife. All around were objects which reminded him of Elisabeth; her presents to him and his to her. In Frieda’s eyes he read sullen censure, and, before a week had passed, she left after listening contemptuously to Margot’s second or third outburst of shrill scolding.

The bedroom and the nursery seemed to gaze at Albinus with touching and innocent reproach—especially the bedroom; for Margot had promptly cleared everything out of the nursery and turned it into a ping-pong room. But the bedroom … The first night Albinus fancied he could detect the faint scent of his wife’s eau-de-Cologne, and
this depressed and hampered him, so that Margot giggled over his unexpected reserve.

The first telephone call was torture. An old friend rang up to ask if they had had a good time in Italy, how Elisabeth was feeling and whether she could go with his wife to a concert on Sunday morning.

“As a matter of fact, we are living apart for the present,” Albinus said with an effort. (“For the present!” thought Margot mockingly, as she twisted before the mirror to examine her back which had faded from brown to golden.)

The news of the change in his life very soon spread, though he fondly hoped nobody knew that his mistress lived with him; he took the usual precaution, when they began to have parties, which was to have Margot go off with the other guests—and come back ten minutes later.

He felt a dismal interest in noticing the way people gradually stopped inquiring after his wife; how some ceased to visit him; how a few, the staunch borrowers, were surprisingly friendly and hearty; how the Bohemian crowd tried to look as if nothing had happened; finally, there were some—fellow-scholars mostly—who were ready to visit him as before, but never came with their wives, among whom there seemed to have spread a remarkable epidemic of headaches.

He grew accustomed to Margot’s presence in these rooms, once so full of memories. She had only to change the position of some trifling object, and immediately it lost its soul and the memory was extinguished; it was only a matter of how long she would take to touch everything, and, as she had quick fingers, in a couple of months his past life in these twelve rooms was quite dead. Beautiful as the flat was, it no longer had anything in common with that flat in which he had lived with his wife.

Late one night, as he was soaping Margot’s back after a dance and she was amusing herself by standing in the full bath upon her enormous sponge (bubbles coming up as in a glass of champagne), she suddenly asked him whether he did not think she could become a film actress. He laughed and said thoughtlessly, his mind wholly absorbed in other pleasant things: “Of course, why not?”

A few days later she returned to the subject, this time choosing a moment when Albinus’ head was clearer. He was delighted at her interest in the cinema and began to unfold a certain favorite theory of his regarding the comparative merits of the silent film and the talkie: “Sound,” he said, “will kill the cinema straightaway.”

“How do they make a film of you?” she interrupted.

He suggested taking her to a studio where he could show her everything and explain the process. After that things moved very rapidly.

“Stop, what am I doing?” Albinus asked himself one morning, as he recalled that the night before he had promised to finance a film which a mediocre producer wanted to make, on condition that Margot was given the second feminine part, that of a forsaken sweetheart.

“Silly of me!” he thought. “The place will be full of slick young actors dripping with sex-appeal—and I shall make myself ridiculous if I accompany her everywhere. On the other hand,” he consoled himself, “she needs some sort of occupation to keep her amused, and if she’s going to get up early we’ll quit spending every blessed night at dances.”

The contract was signed and rehearsals began. For the first two days Margot came home extremely cross and resentful. She complained that she was forced to repeat the same movement hundreds of times in succession; that the director shouted at her; that she was blinded by the lamps. She had only one consolation: the (fairly well-known) actress who was the leading lady,
Dorianna Karenina, was charming to her, praised her acting and prophesied that she would do wonders. (“A bad sign!” thought Albinus.)

She insisted that he should not be present during work: it made her self-conscious, she said. Besides, if he had seen it all beforehand, the film would not be a surprise for him—and Margot liked people to have surprises. However, he derived a great deal of pleasure from catching glimpses of her assuming dramatic poses in front of the cheval glass; a creaking board gave him away, she hurled a red cushion at him and he had to swear he had seen nothing.

He used to take her to the studio in a car and then fetch her home. One day, he was told that the rehearsal would last some two hours, so he went for a walk and blundered into the neighborhood where Paul lived. All at once he felt a keen desire to meet his pale, plain little daughter: it was about the time she usually came back from school. As he turned the corner, he half fancied that he saw her in the distance with her nurse, but suddenly he felt frightened and walked quickly away.

On this particular day Margot came out to him flushed and laughing: she had acted beautifully, beautifully—and soon the filming would be over.

“I’l tell you what,” said Albinus. “I’ll invite
Dorianna to supper. We’ll have a big supper and some interesting guests. Yesterday an artist rang me up, a cartoonist, to be correct, a man who makes funny drawings and things, you know. He’s just back from New York, and is quite a genius in his way. I’ll get him along too.”

“Only I want to sit by you,” said Margot.

“All right, but remember, my pet, I don’t want them all to know that you live with me.”

“Oh, they all know that, you fool,” said Margot, her face suddenly darkening.

“But that places you, and not me, in a false position,” Albinus pointed out. “You must realize that. It doesn’t matter to me, of course, but for your sake, please, do as you did last time.”

“But it’s so stupid.… And besides, there’s a way we could avoid these unpleasantnesses.”

“How—avoid them?”

“If you don’t understand,” she pouted. (“When will he begin to talk of the divorce?” she thought.)

“Do be reasonable,” said Albinus coaxingly. “I do everything you ask. You know quite well, pussy—”

He had gradually got together quite a little menagerie of pet names.

E
VERYTHING
was as it should be. On the lacquer tray in the hall cards had been shrewdly prepared with the names of the expected guests coupled, so that people might know at once with whom they would go in to supper: Dr. Lampert and Sonia Hirsch; Axel Rex and Margot Peters; Boris von Ivanoff and Olga Waldheim—and so on. An impressive footman (recently engaged) with the face of an English lord (or, at any rate, so Margot thought, and her eyes used to linger on him not unkindly) showed in the guests with dignity. Every few minutes the bell rang. In the drawing room there were already five besides Margot. In came Ivanoff—von Ivanoff, as he deemed fit to have himself called—lean, ferrety, with bad teeth and an eyeglass. Then—Baum, the author, a stout, red-faced, fussy-individual with strong communistic leanings and a comfortable income, accompanied by his wife,
an elderly woman, her figure still glorious, who. in her troubled youth, had swum about in a glass tank among performing seals.

Conversation was already quite lively. Olga Waldheim, a white-armed, full-bosomed singer, with waved hair the color of orange marmalade and with a gem of melody in every inflection of her voice, was telling, as she usually did, cute stories about her six Persian cats. Albinus. as he stood and laughed, gazed across old Lampert’s white brush of hair (a fine throat-specialist and an indifferent violinist) at Margot, and thought how well her black tulle gown with the velvet dahlia at her breast suited her, the darling. There was a faintly defensive smile on her bright lips, as if she were not quite sure whether her leg was being pulled, and her eyes had that special fawn-like expression which meant, he knew, that she was listening to things she did not understand: in this case, Lampert’s ideas about Hindemith’s music.

Suddenly he noticed that she had blushed violently and risen to her feet. “How foolish—why does she get up?” he thought, as several new guests entered—Dorianna Karenina, Axel Rex and two minor poets.

Dorianna embraced and kissed Margot, whose eyes were shining as brilliantly as if she had just
been crying. “How foolish,” thought Albinus again, “to grovel before that second-rate actress.” Dorianna was famous for her exquisite shoulders, her Mona Lisa smile and her husky grenadier voice.

Albinus walked up to Rex, who did not quite know which was his host and was rubbing his hands as though he were soaping them.

“Delighted to see you at last,” said Albinus. “Do you know, I had formed quite a different picture of you in my mind—short, fat, with hornrimmed glasses, though on the other hand your name always reminds me of an axe. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the man who makes two continents laugh. Let us hope he is back in Germany for good.”

Rex, his eyes twinkling, made little bows, rubbing his hands all the time. He sported a striking lounge suit in a world of badly cut German dinner jackets.

“Please, be seated,” said Albinus.

“Haven’t I met your sister once?” queried Dorianna in her lovely bass voice.

“My sister is in Heaven,” answered Rex gravely.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Dorianna.

“Never was born,” he added—and sat down on a chair next to Margot.

Laughing pleasantly, Albinus let his eyes stray back to her. She was bending toward her neighbor, Sonia Hirsch, the plain-faced, motherly cubist, in a queer childlike attitude, her shoulders a little hunched and talking unusually fast, with moist eyes and fluttering eyelids. He looked down at her small, flushed ear, the vein on her neck, the delicate shadow between her breasts. Hurriedly, feverishly, she was pouring out a stream of complete nonsense, with her hand pressed to her flaming cheek.

“Menservants steal far less,” she jabbered, “though, of course, no one would lift a really big picture, and at one time I adored big ones with men on horseback, but when one sees such a lot of pictures—”

“Fräulein Peters,” said Albinus in a soothing tone, “this is the man who makes two continents—”

Margot started and swerved round.

“Oh, really, how do you do?”

Rex bowed and, turning to Albinus, remarked quietly:

“I happened to read on the boat your excellent biography of Sebastiano del Piombo. Pity, though, you didn’t quote his sonnets.”

“Oh, but they are very poor,” answered Albinus.

“Exactly,” said Rex. “That’s what is so charming.”

Margot jumped up and with swift, almost bounding steps dashed toward the last guest—a long-limbed, withered female, who looked like a plucked eagle. Margot had taken elocution lessons with her.

Sonia Hirsch shifted to Margot’s place and turned to Rex:

“What d’you think of Cumming’s work?” she asked. “I mean, his last series—the Gallows and Factories, you know?”

“Rotten,” said Rex.

The door of the dining room opened. The gentlemen looked round for their ladies. Rex stood aloof. His host, who already had Dorianna on his arm, gazed about in search of Margot. He saw her right in front squeezing among the couples who were streaming into the dining room.

“She is not at her best tonight,” he thought anxiously, and handed over his lady to Rex.

By the time the lobsters were being tackled, the talk at the head of the table where (the following string of names would be best arranged in a curve) Dorianna, Rex, Margot, Albinus, Sonia Hirsch and Baum were seated, was in full swing although rather incoherent. Margot had emptied
her third wineglass at one gulp and was now sitting very erect with bright eyes, staring straight in front of her. Rex paid no attention either to her or to Dorianna, whose name annoyed him, but was arguing across the table with Baum, the author, concerning the means of artistic expression.

“A writer for instance,” he remarked, “talks about India which I have never seen, and gushes about dancing girls, tiger hunts, fakirs, betel nuts, serpents: the Glamour of the mysterious East. But what does it amount to? Nothing. Instead of visualizing India I merely get a bad toothache from all these Eastern delights. Now, there’s the other way as, for instance, the fellow who writes: ‘Before turning in I put out my wet boots to dry and in the morning I found that a thick blue forest had grown on them’ (“Fungi, Madam,” he explained to Dorianna who had raised one eyebrow) and at once India becomes alive for me. The rest is shop.”

“Those yogis do marvelous things,” said Dorianna. “Apparently they can breathe in such a way that—”

“But excuse me, my good sir,” cried Baum excitedly—for he had just written a five-hundred-page novel, the scene of which was laid in Ceylon, where he had spent a sun-helmeted fortnight.
“You must illuminate the picture thoroughly, so that every reader can understand. What matters is not the book one writes, but the problem it sets—and solves. If I describe the tropics I’m bound to approach my subject from its most important side, and that is—the exploitation, the cruelty of the white colonist. When you think of the millions and millions—”

“I don’t,” said Rex.

Margot, who was staring in front of her, giggled suddenly—and this, somehow, had nothing to do with the conversation. Albinus, in the middle of discussing the latest art exhibition with the motherly cubist, glanced sideways at his young mistress. Yes, she was drinking too much. Even as he looked, she took a sip out of his own glass. “What a child!” he thought, touching her knee under the table. Margot giggled again and flung a carnation across the table at old Lampert.