Laughter in the Dark by Vladimir Nabokov, John Banville Page A

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.
    “I don’t know, gentlemen, what you think of Udo Conrad,” said Albinus, joining in the fray. “It would seem to me that he is that type of author with exquisite vision and a divine style which might please you, Herr Rex, and that if he isn’t a great writer it is because—and here, Herr Baum, I am with you—he has a contempt for social problems which, in this age of social upheavals, isdisgraceful and, let me add, sinful. I knew him well in my student days, as we were together at Heidelberg, and afterward we used to meet now and then. I consider his best book to be
The Vanishing Trick
, the first chapter of which, as a matter of fact, he read here, at this table—I mean—well—at a similar table, and …”
    After supper they lolled and smoked and drank liqueurs. Margot flitted from place to place and one of the minor poets followed her like a shaggy dog. She suggested burning a hole in his palm with her cigarette and started doing so and, though perspiring freely, he kept smiling like the little hero he was. Rex, who had at length been impossibly offensive to Baum in a corner of the library, now joined Albinus and began to describe to him certain aspects of Berlin as if it were a distant picturesque city; he did it so well that Albinus promised to look up, in his company, that lane, that bridge, that queer-colored wall …
    “I’m dreadfully sorry,” he said, “that we can’t get to work together on my film idea. I’m sure you’d have achieved wonders, but to be quite frank I cannot afford it—not just now, at any rate.”
    At length the guests were caught in that wave which, beginning as a low murmur, swells until,in a whirl of foamy farewells, it has swept them out of the house.
    Albinus was left alone. The air was blue and heavy with cigar smoke. Somebody had spilled something on the Turkish table—it was all sticky. The solemn, though slightly unsteady, footman (“If he gets drunk again, I’ll dismiss him”) opened the window, and the black clear frosty night streamed in.
    “Not a very successful party, somehow,” thought Albinus as he yawned himself out of his dinner jacket.

17
    “A CERTAIN man,” said Rex, as he turned round the corner with Margot, “once lost a diamond cuff-link in the wide blue sea, and twenty years later, on the exact day, a Friday apparently, he was eating a large fish—but there was no diamond inside. That’s what I like about coincidence.”
    Margot trotted along by his side with her sealskin coat wrapped tightly around her. Rex seized her by the elbow and forced her to come to a halt.
    “I never expected to run across you again. How did you get there? I couldn’t believe my eyes, as the blind man said. Look at me. I’m not sure