Laughter in the Dark by Vladimir Nabokov, John Banville

Now please go.”
    “Oh, really,” said Otto frowning. “Very well.”
    He was silent, twisted his cap in his hand and looked at the floor. Then he tried a different key.
    “You may have to pay dearly for it before you’ve done, Herr Schiffermiller. My little sister is not exactly what you think her to be. I called her innocent, but that was brotherly compassion. You’re too easily led by the nose, Herr Schiffermiller. It’s mighty funny to hear you call her your fiancée. It makes me laugh. Now, I could tell you a thing or two …”
    “Quite superfluous,” replied Albinus flushing. “She has told me everything herself. An unfortunate child whom her family could not protect. Please, go at once”—and Albinus opened the door.
    “You’ll regret it,” said Otto awkwardly.
    “Go or I’ll kick you out,” said Albinus (putting the last sweet touch to victory, so to speak).
    Otto retired very slowly.
    Being endowed with that kind of shallow sentimentality peculiar to his bourgeois set, Albinus(with the plum in his mouth) suddenly pictured to himself how poor and ugly the life of this boy must be. Also—he
did
look like Margot, when Margot sulked. Before shutting the door he swiftly produced a ten-mark note and pressed it into Otto’s hand.
    The door closed. Otto alone on the landing examined the note, stood there a moment lost in thought, then rang the bell.
    “What, back again?” exclaimed Albinus.
    Otto stretched out his hand with the money.
    “I don’t want your tips,” he muttered angrily. “Better give it to the unemployed—there are plenty of them about.”
    “But, please take it,” said Albinus feeling terribly embarrassed.
    Otto shrugged his shoulders.
    “I don’t accept crumbs from the bloody rich. A poor man has his pride. I …”
    “Well, it was only meant …” began Albinus.
    Otto shuffled his feet, thrust the note sullenly into his pocket and, muttering, walked on downstairs. Social honor was satisfied, now he could afford to satisfy more human needs.
    “Not much,” he reflected, “but better than nothing, anyway—and he’s afraid of me, the popeyed, stammering fool.”

12
    F ROM the moment when Elisabeth had read Margot’s short letter, her life had turned into one of those long grotesque riddles that one is set to work out in the dream classroom of dull delirium. And, at first, she felt as if her husband were dead and people were trying to deceive her into thinking that he had only deserted her.
    She remembered how—on that evening which now seemed so remote—she had kissed him on the forehead before he went, and he had said as he stooped: “Anyhow, you had better see Lampert. She can’t go on scratching herself like that.”
    These had been his last words in this life, simple homely words referring to a slight rash which had broken out on Irma’s neck—and then he had gone forever.
    The zinc ointment had cured the rash in a few days—but there was no ointment in the worldwhich could mollify and erase the memory of his big white forehead and the way he had patted his pockets as he left the room.
    During the first days she wept so much that she herself was surprised at the capacity of her lachrymal glands. Do scientists know how much salted water can flow from a person’s eyes? And that reminded her of how, one summer on the Italian coast, they had used to bathe the baby in a tub of sea water—oh, one might fill a far bigger tub with her tears, and wash a struggling giant.
    Somehow his abandonment of Irma seemed to her far more monstrous than his desertion of her. Or would he be trying to steal his daughter? Was it prudent to have sent her to the country alone with the nurse? It was, said Paul, and he urged her to go there too. But she would not hear of it. Although she felt she could never forgive (not that he had humiliated her—she was much too proud to feel wronged that way—but because he had abased himself), still Elisabeth waited on, hoping from day to day