Laughter in the Dark Read Online Free PDF Page B

and then: “Oh, you’re lying, of course.”
    March was rainy. These nocturnal strolls under the umbrella tortured Albinus, so he soon suggested they should go into a café. He selected a dingy little place where he felt sure of not meeting any acquaintances.
    It was his habit when settling down at a table to lay out at once his cigarette case and lighter. On the case Margot espied his initials. She said nothing, but after a little reflection asked him to fetch her the telephone book. While he was walking toward the booth with his slow flopping gait, she took up his hat from the chair and swiftly examined its lining: there was his name (he had had it put there in order to thwart absent-minded artists at parties).
    Presently he came back with the telephone directory, holding it like a Bible, smiling tenderly, and, while he was gazing at her long drooping lashes, Margot sped through the R’s and found Albinus’ address and his telephone number. Then she quietly closed the well-thumbed blue volume.
    “Take off your coat,” murmured Albinus.
    Without bothering to stand up she began to wriggle out of the sleeves, inclining her pretty neck and thrusting forward first the right and then the left shoulder. As Albinus helped her, he caught a hot whiff of violets and saw her shoulder blades move, and the sallow skin between them ripple and smooth out again. Then she took off her hat, peered into her pocket-mirror and, wetting her forefinger, tapped the black lovelocks on her temples.
    Albinus sat down beside her and looked and looked at that face in which everything was so charming—the burning cheeks, the lips glistening from the cherry brandy, the childish solemnity of the long hazel eyes and the small downy mole on the soft curve just beneath the left one.
    “If I knew I should hang for it,” he thought, “I would still look at her.”
    Even that vulgar Berlin slang of hers only enhanced the charm of her throaty voice and largewhite teeth. When laughing she half closed her eyes and a dimple danced on her cheek. He pawed at her little hand, but she withdrew it briskly.
    “You’re driving me crazy,” he said.
    Margot patted his cuff and said:
    “Now, be a good boy.”
    His first thought next morning was: it can’t go on like this, it just can’t. I must get her a room. Curse that aunt. We shall be alone, quite alone. A textbook of love for beginners. Oh, the things I shall teach her. So young, so pure, so maddening …
    “Are you asleep?” asked Elisabeth softly.
    He achieved the perfect yawn and opened his eyes. Elisabeth was seated in her pale blue nightgown on the edge of the double bed and was looking through the mail.
    “Anything interesting?” asked Albinus, gazing in dull wonder at her white shoulder.
    “Ach, he asks you for money again. Says his wife and his mother-in-law have been ill and that people are plotting against him. Says he can’t afford to buy paints. We’ll have to help him again, I suppose.”
    “Yes, of course,” said Albinus, and in his mind there formed an extraordinary, vivid picture of Margot’s dead father: he, too, no doubt had beena seedy, bad-tempered and not very gifted artist whom life had treated harshly.
    “And here’s an invitation to the Artists’ Club. We shall have to go this time. And here’s a letter from the States.”
    “Read it aloud,” he asked.
    “My dear Sir, I am afraid I have not much news to convey, but still there are a few things I should like to add to my last long letter, which, in parenthesis, you have not answered yet. As I may be coming in the Fall …”
    At that moment the telephone rang on the bedside table. “Tut, tut,” said Elisabeth, and leaned forward. Albinus followed absent-mindedly the movements of her delicate fingers as they took and clasped the white receiver, and then he heard the tiny ghost of a voice squeaking at the other end.
    “Oh, good morning,” exclaimed Elisabeth, at the same time making a certain face at her husband,