Free Laughter in the Dark by Vladimir Nabokov, John Banville

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 it 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 closeup 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-rimmedglasses 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