“Not yet.”
Then he seized the occasion to put his hand on her knee, to lift her skirt a little.
Again she didn’t object, just like the others. And then suddenly he was gripped by dumb anger—with her, with himself, with Holst. Yes, with Holst, too, though it would have been difficult for him to say why.
“Frank!”
She had said his name. So she knew it. She said it again, on purpose, when she tried to push his hand away.
Now he felt nothing. No, he was furious. Images were dancing before his eyes, enormous faces appeared on the screen and disappeared, black and white, voices, music. What he wanted to know, what he had to find out no matter what she did, was whether she was a virgin, because there was still that to cling to.
That forced him to kiss her, and each time he kissed her she let herself go, she softened, and he gained ground on her bare thigh, where a hand feebly pushed at his, which was groping along the rough groove of her stocking.
He had to find out. Because if she wasn’t a virgin, Holst would lose all meaning, all value in Frank’s eyes. He would be ridiculous. Frank, too. Whatever had possessed him to have anything to do with either of them?
Her skin must be very white, like Minna’s. Chicken skin, as Lotte said. Chicken thighs. Was Minna, at this moment, stark naked in the bedroom, standing in front of a gentleman she had never seen before?
It was warm. His hand crept on. She hadn’t the strength to resist forever, and when she lost ground, her fingers would squeeze Frank’s gently, like a prayer.
She put her lips close to his ear and stammered, “Frank …”
And in the way that she pronounced that word, which he hadn’t even had to teach her, she admitted she was beaten.
He would have thought it would take weeks at best, and already he was almost there. It was only a question of inches; the skin grew smoother, warmer, moist.
She was a virgin, and he suddenly stopped. But he felt no pity. He was unmoved.
She was like all the others!
He told himself it wasn’t Sissy who interested him, but her father, and it was preposterous to think of Holst while he had his hand where it was.
“You hurt me.”
“Pardon me,” he said politely.
And suddenly he became formal again, while, in the darkness, Sissy’s face must be full of disappointment. If she could have seen him it would have been worse. When he was formal, he was terrible, calm, cold, absent—no one knew how to handle him. At such moments even Lotte was afraid of him.
“At least get mad!” she would say, exasperated. “Go on, yell, hit me, do something, anything!”
Too bad for Sissy. She no longer interested him. Several times lately he had caught himself thinking of those couples walking down the streets, thigh pressed to thigh, of their warm, interminable kisses at every corner. He had sincerely thought that it might be exciting. One detail, among others, had always intrigued him—the steam issuing from the lips of two people, under a streetlight, as they drew close to each other to kiss.
“How about a bite to eat?”
All she could do was follow. Besides, she’d be happy to have some pastry.
“We’ll go to Taste’s.”
“They say it’s always full of officers.”
“So?”
She would have to get used to the fact that he wasn’t just a young man you exchanged love letters with. He hadn’t even let her see the end of the movie. He had dragged her out. And when they were outside the pastry shop with its lighted windows, he saw her glancing at him stealthily, with a curiosity already full of respect.
“It’s expensive,” she ventured again.
“So?”
“I’m not dressed to go there.”
He was used to that, too: the too-short, too-tight coats with their sewn-on, hand-me-down fur collars. She would find Taste’s full of girls like her. He might have replied that they always showed up there like that, the first time.
“Frank …”
It was one of the few doors that still had a neon light around it, this one a very soft blue. The dimly lit hall was thickly carpeted, but here the lack of light wasn’t due to poverty. Instead it conveyed an air of luxury, and the liveried doorman was as well dressed as a general.
“Come on.”
They went upstairs. There was a shining copper strip on each riser, and the lights along the stairway were imitation candles. From behind mysterious curtains a young woman stretched out a hand to take Sissy’s coat. And meekly Sissy asked, “Should I?”
Like all the others! Frank was at home. He smiled at the cloakroom girl, gave her his coat, and stopped in front of a mirror to run a comb through his hair.
In her little black wool dress Sissy looked like an orphan. Frank drew back one of the hangings and disclosed a warm, scented room, pulsing with soft music, full of well-dressed women whose complexions vied with the bright braiding of the men’s uniforms.
For a moment she felt like crying, and he knew it.
Who cared?
Kromer arrived very late at Timo’s, at ten-thirty. Frank had been waiting for him for more than an hour. Kromer had been drinking, which the unnatural tautness of his skin, the brilliance of his eyes, and the violence of his gestures immediately made obvious. He almost knocked over his chair when he sat down. His cigar smelled wonderful. It was even better than the ones he usually smoked, and he always bought the best available.
“I’ve just had dinner with the commanding general,” he announced in a low voice.
After that he was silent to let the meaning of his words sink in.
“I brought you back your knife.”
“Thanks.”
He took it without looking and dropped it into his pocket. He was too preoccupied with his own doings to think much about Frank. But remembering their conversation yesterday, he asked out of politeness, “Did you use it?”
Frank had returned to Timo’s the night before, after it happened, for no other reason than to show Kromer the pistol he had just acquired. He had shown it to Sissy. There were a good many people he would have shown it to willingly, and yet, without quite knowing why, he answered, “I didn’t get the chance.”
“Perhaps that’s just as well. Tell me—you don’t know where I could find some watches, do you?”
No matter what Kromer talked about, he always seemed to be discussing important and mysterious matters. He was the same way with everyone he knew, the people with whom he ate and drank. He seldom mentioned names. He would whisper, “Someone very high up. You understand, very, very high up …”
“What kind of watches?” Frank asked.
“Old ones, preferably. Piles of them. Watches by the shovelful. You don’t get it, huh?”
Frank drank a lot, too. Everybody drank a lot. First of all, obviously, because they spent most of their time in places like Timo’s. And because good drinks were scarce, hard to find, and fantastically expensive.
Unlike most people, Frank’s face never got red, he never spoke in a loud voice, never waved his arms. Instead his face turned paler, his features more pointed, and his lips so thin that they looked like a line drawn by a pen across his face. His eyes would grow small, with a hard, cruel light in them, as though he hated the whole human race.
That was probably true.
He didn’t like Kromer and Kromer didn’t like him. Kromer, who so easily took on a genial, cordial manner, didn’t like anyone, but was ready to humor people who admired him, keeping his pockets full of all sorts of things, rare cigars, cigarette lighters, ties, and silk handkerchiefs, that he would offer when least expected.
“Go on, take it!”
Frank would have trusted Timo sooner than Kromer. And he noticed that Timo didn’t place too much confidence in Kromer, either.
Kromer did a lot of trafficking, of course. Some of his deals got talked about, and he filled you in on the details because he needed you, and in that case he would hand over a very fair share of
the profits. He had lots of connections among the Occupation forces. That, too, was profitable.
Exactly how far did he go? How far would he be capable of going if he had to, if his interests were at stake?
No, Frank wouldn’t mention the automatic. He preferred to discuss watches, because the word had awakened memories in him.
“It’s for the person I just mentioned, the general. Do you know what he was just ten years ago? A worker in a lamp factory. He’s forty now and a general. We drank four bottles of champagne between us. Right away he began talking about his watches. He collects them. He’s crazy about them. He claims he has several hundred. ‘In a town like yours,’ he said to me, ‘where there have always been a lot of rich bourgeois, officials, people with independent incomes, there must be piles of old watches. You know the kind,’ he said, ‘made of silver or gold with one or more cases. Some of them strike the hour. Some of them even have little people that move around … ’”
While Kromer was talking, Frank was thinking of old Vilmos’s watches; he could see old Vilmos again in that room, always dimly lit, where the sunlight trickled in through the closed blinds, winding up the watches one by one, putting them to Frank’s ear, making them strike, making the tiny automata move.
“We could get anything we wanted out of him,” sighed Kromer, “considering his position, you understand … It’s his passion. He practically drools over them. Somewhere he read that the king of Egypt has the finest collection of watches in the world, and now he’d give anything for his country to declare war on Egypt.”
“Fifty-fifty?” Frank asked bluntly.
“You know where to find watches?”
“Fifty-fifty?”
“Have I ever tried to cheat you?”
“No. But I’ll need a car.”
“That’s more difficult. I could ask the general, but that might not be a smart thing.”
“No … A civilian car. Just for two or three hours.”
Kromer didn’t ask for details. He was a lot more prudent than he liked people to think. Since Frank was offering to get the watches, he preferred not to know where they came from, or how Frank was going to get them.
Still, he was curious. What he was even more curious about was Frank himself, the way he had of making a decision so calmly.
“Why don’t you just pick one up in the street?”
Naturally that would have been the simplest thing to do, and at night, for the fifteen or twenty miles he would have to drive, there’d be practically no risk. But Frank didn’t want to admit he couldn’t drive.
“Just find me a car and someone you’re sure of, and I’m almost positive I can get the watches.”
“What did you do today?”
“I went to a movie.”
“With a girl?”
“Of course.”
“Did you feel her up?”
Kromer was a letch. He chased girls, especially poor ones because that was easier, and he liked them very young. He loved to talk about it, nostrils twitching, lips thick, using the crudest terms, relishing the most intimate details.
“Do I know her?”
“No.”
“Will you introduce me?”
“Maybe. She’s a virgin.”
Kromer wriggled in his chair and moistened the end of his cigar. “Do you want her?”
“Not particularly.”
“Then let me have her.”
“I’ll see.”
“Is she young?”
“Sixteen. She lives with her father. Don’t forget about the car.”
“I’ll give you the answer tomorrow. Meet me at Leonard’s around five.”
That was another bar they went to, in the Upper Town, but because of where his place was, Leonard had to close at ten every night.
“Tell me what the two of you did at the movies … Timo! A bottle. Go on, tell me.“
“The usual. Her stocking, her garter, then …”
“What did she say?”
“Nothing.”
He was going home. There was a chance his mother had kept Minna in. Lotte didn’t like to let them go out the first few days, because some of them never came back.
He would go to her, and, after all, it would be just like it was Sissy. In the dark he wouldn’t know the difference.
4
HE WALKED with his hands in his pockets and his coat collar turned up, his breath visible in the cold air, along the brightest street in town, but even here there were great patches of darkness. The meeting was in half an hour.
It was Thursday. It had been on Tuesday that Kromer had spoken to him about the watches. Wednesday, when Frank had joined him at five o’clock at Leonard’s, Kromer had asked him, “Do you still want to do it?”
To older people, it must have seemed strange to see them, so young and talking together so seriously. God knows they were deciding serious things! Frank caught sight of himself in one of the mirrors of the café, calm and blond, his overcoat well cut.
“Did you get the car?”
“I’ll introduce you to the driver in a second. He’s waiting across the street.”
It was a cheaper and noisier establishment, but you could still get pretty good drinks here. A man stood up. He was twenty-three or twenty-four, very thin, and in spite of his leather jacket he looked like a student.
“That’s him,” Kromer said, indicating Frank. Then he said, “Carl Adler. You can trust him. He’s all right.”
They had a drink, because that’s what you did.
“And the other guy?” Frank asked in a low voice.
“Ah! Yes. Will he have to …”
Kromer hesitated. He hated to speak plainly and there were certain words it was better never to say, words that people had, out of superstition, erased from their vocabulary.
“Will there be any … rough stuff?”
“Not likely.”
Kromer, who knew everybody, glanced around the café, found a certain face in the smoke, and disappeared onto the sidewalk, taking someone with him. When he came back, he was accompanied by a young fellow who looked working class. Frank didn’t catch his name.
“What time do you think you’ll be through? He has to be back at his mother’s by ten o’clock. Later than that and the concierge won’t open the door, and his mother is sick and often needs him in the night.”
Frank had almost decided to give the project up, not because of this second man, but because of the first, Adler, who hadn’t opened his mouth the whole time they were alone together. Frank wasn’t sure, but he could have sworn he’d seen him with the violinist from the second floor. Where, he couldn’t remember. Maybe it was only an impression. It was enough to bother him.
“When do you want to meet?”
“As soon as possible.”
“Tomorrow? What time?”
“Eight o’clock in the evening. Here.”
“Not here,” Adler interposed. “My car will be in the back street, opposite the fish market. All you’ll have to do is hop in.”
When they were alone, Frank couldn’t help asking Kromer, “You’re sure they’re okay?”
“Have I ever introduced you to anyone I wasn’t sure of?”
“What does he do, this Adler?”
A vague gesture. “Don’t worry about it.”
It was odd. You suspected someone and trusted him at the same time. Perhaps it came from the fact that people had, more or less, a hold on one another, and everyone, if you looked hard enough, had something on his conscience. In short, if you hadn’t been betrayed, it was because the other fellow was afraid you’d betray him first.
“And the little girl? Have you thought about it?”
Frank didn’t answer. He didn’t tell him that on that very day, Wednesday—he had taken her to the movies on Tuesday— he had seen Sissy again. Not for very long. And not right after Holst had left. He had watched him from the window going toward the streetcar stop.
He had waited until four o’clock. Finally
, shrugging his shoulders, he had said to himself, We’ll see.
He knocked on the door as though he was just passing by. On account of the old fool lying in ambush on the other side of the transom, he had no intention of going in. He simply said, “I’ll wait for you outside. Will you comedown?”
He didn’t have to wait long. She came. She ran the last few yards over the sidewalk, glancing up automatically at the windows of the building, then, automatically too, slipping her hand through his arm.
“Monsieur Wimmer didn’t speak to my father,” she announced right away.
“I was sure he wouldn’t.”
“I can’t stay out very long.”
They never could stay on the second day.
It was just beginning to grow dark. He drew her into the blind alley. She offered her lips to him and asked, “Have you been thinking about me, Frank?”
He didn’t do anything to her. He just slipped his hand inside her blouse because the day before, at the Lido, his mind wasn’t on her breasts and he still didn’t know what they were like. The question had crossed his mind at night, when he was in bed with Minna, who hardly had any.
Was that it, curiosity, that had prompted him to knock at Sissy’s door and ask her to come down?
He had seen her again today at the same time, but today he said, “I only have a few minutes.”
She didn’t question him, though he knew she wanted to. Making a little face, she murmured, “Do you think I’m ugly, Frank?”
Again, just like all the others, though he would have been at a loss to say whether he found any young girl ugly or not.
Well, it didn’t matter. He wouldn’t promise Kromer anything, but he wouldn’t say no. He would wait and see. Minna insisted she was in love with him, that she was ashamed now of what she had to do with the clients. She hadn’t been lucky with the first one. More complications! Frank had done his best to calm her. On top of everything else, she was worried about him. She had seen the gun, and it had terrified her.
Today he had had to promise to wake her up, no matter what time he came in.
“I won’t go to sleep before then,” she promised him.
She already smelled like the other women in the house. Probably due to the regime Lotte put them through and the soap she provided. Whatever the case, the transformation was quick. And all morning she had wandered around the apartment in a black chemise trimmed with lace.
Dirty Snow Page 5
