Does Kurt Hamling despise his mother and him? Not because of the girls – that doesn’t interest him. But because of the rest, the coal, their contacts with lots of people, the officers who come here?
Supposing Hamling wanted to do something against Lotte, what would happen? Lotte would get in touch with people she knows in the military police, or else Frank would talk to Kromer, who has a long reach.
At the end of the day, those gentlemen would summon the chief inspector and order him to back off.
That’s why, deep down, Lotte isn’t scared any more. Does Hamling know that?
He comes to her apartment, sits down, warms himself at her fire, agrees to drink her alcohol.
And Holst?
With some of the tenants, it is easy to know exactly what they think. Most of them hate and despise Frank and his mother. Some lips curl with anger when they pass.
For some, it is simply because Lotte has coal and enough to eat. Maybe they would do the same if they could. For others, especially women of a certain age or fathers of families, it is because of her profession.
But there are some who are different. Frank knows it, senses it. And they are the ones who show their feelings the least. They don’t even look at them, pretending, as if out of a sense of propriety, to ignore their presence.
Is that the case with Holst? Does he, like the young man with the violin, belong to a resistance network?
It’s unlikely. Frank did think it for a while, because of his calm, his apparent serenity. And also because he isn’t a real tram driver; he comes across as some sort of intellectual. Could he have been a teacher who was dismissed for his opinions? Or did he voluntarily leave his job in order not to teach things he didn’t believe in?
Apart from his hours of work, he never goes out, except to queue. Nobody comes to see them.
Does he already know that the violinist has been arrested? He is bound to find out sooner or later. The caretaker, who does know, will tell all the tenants, except Lotte and her son.
And Hamling just sits there dreamily, without saying another word, sucking at his cigar and sending out little puffs of smoke.
Even if he knows or suspects something, why should Frank be bothered? He won’t dare talk.
What matters is Gerhardt Holst, who must have come back from his shopping expedition and who is now shut in with Sissy in the apartment opposite.
A few vegetables, some swedes, maybe a small piece of rancid bacon, the kind that is available every once in a while?
They don’t see anybody, don’t talk to anybody. What can they possibly say to each other?
And Sissy listens out for Frank, lifts the curtain to watch him walk away down the street, half opens the door when she hears him whistling on the stairs.
Hamling sighs and gets to his feet.
‘Another drink?’
‘Thanks, but I really must go.’
A nice smell comes from the kitchen, and he sniffs it mechanically as he goes out. The nice smell follows him down the corridor, maybe even enters the Holsts’ apartment under the door.
‘He’s an old idiot!’ Frank says calmly.
3.
Frank had only come in so as not to wait in the street, but he didn’t like these places. You went down two steps, and the floor had flagstones like in a church; there were old beams on the ceiling, wood panelling on the walls, a carved counter and very heavy tables.
He knew the owner, Mr Kamp, by sight and by name, and Mr Kamp probably knew him, too. He was a short, bald man, calm and polite, always wearing slippers. He must have been round once, but his belly was starting to grow flaccid; his trousers were getting to be loose on him. In places like his, which observe the rules, or at least pretend, with passing trade, to observe them, the best that is on offer is poor-quality beer.
It is easy to feel out of place. There are always four or five regulars at Kamp’s, old men from the neighbourhood, who smoke their long porcelain or meerschaum pipes and fall silent when you enter. All the time you stay there, they don’t say a word, just puff patiently on their pipes and look at you.
Frank has new shoes with thick soles in genuine leather. His overcoat is warm, and any of these old people, with their families, could live for a month on what his fur-lined leather gloves cost.
Through the little windowpanes, he is watching for Holst to arrive. It is because of Holst that he came out, because he wants to look him in the face. Because the tram driver got back at midnight the previous night, and it was a Monday, he will leave home at about 2.30 today in order to be at his depot by three.
What were the old men talking about when he came in? He doesn’t care. One of them is a cobbler and has a little shop a little further down the street, but due to the lack of raw materials, he does hardly any work these days. He must be eyeing Frank’s shoes, sizing them up, indignant that the young man doesn’t even bother to protect them with galoshes.
The fact is, there are places you can go and places it’s better not to set foot in. At Timo’s, he is at home. Not here. Here, what will they say about him when he has left?
Holst must have been another one who was big once but has grown thinner. They form a kind of race apart, and you recognize them as soon as you see them. Hamling, for example, is bulky, but with a perceptible hardness in his body. Holst, who is much taller, with shoulders that must have been broad, is now just slack. And it is not only his clothes that are worn and hang on him. It is his skin that has become too big and probably falls in folds. In fact, it already falls that way on his face.
Since the start of the events – he was barely fifteen at the time – Frank has felt contempt for poverty and for those who give in to it. Rather, it is a kind of revulsion, a disgust. Even for the girls who come to his mother’s, who are too thin and too white, and who immediately throw themselves on the food! Some burst into tears, fill their plates and are then incapable of eating.
The street where the tram runs is white and black, and the snow is dirtier here than elsewhere. For as far as the eye can see, the shiny black rails emphasize the sense of perspective, forming curves where the two tracks join. The sky is low and too bright, with that brightness that is more depressing than true greyness. There is something threatening, definitive, eternal about that livid, translucent white; the colours become hard and nasty, the brown or dirty yellow of the buildings, for example, or the dark red of the tram, which seems to float as if wanting to mount the pavement. And opposite Kamp’s café, an ugly queue stretches outside the door of the tripe butcher’s, women in shawls, little girls with spindly legs who stamp their wooden soles to warm themselves.
‘How much?’
He pays. The cost is derisory. It is almost annoying to unbutton your coat for so little. In cafés like these, the prices are ridiculously low. Admittedly, you get only what you pay for.
Holst is at the kerb, quite grey in his long shapeless overcoat, his balaclava and his famous boots tied at the calves with string. In other times, in other countries, people would stop to look at him, dressed like that, with newspapers under his clothes no doubt to keep him warm, and that tin box he hugs for dear life under his arm. What can he possibly take with him to eat?
Frank joins him, as if he too were waiting for the tram. He comes and goes; ten times, he stands in front of Holst and looks him full in the face, blowing out cigarette smoke. If he threw his cigarette end on the ground, would Sissy’s father pick it up? Maybe he has enough self-respect not to do it in front of him, although there are people in town who do it, people who are neither beggars or workers.
He has never seen Holst smoke. Did he smoke in the old days?
In his vexed state, Frank sees himself as an angry little dog trying in vain to attract attention. He turns round the long grey figure, and the man just stands there and doesn’t even seem to notice his presence.
And yet the previous night, Holst saw him in the alley. He knows about the death of the sergeant. He also knows – and this is more than certa
in, because the caretaker has been drawing the tenants one by one into his lodge – that the violinist on the first floor has been arrested.
So why doesn’t he react? Frank is almost tempted to say something to him, out of defiance. Maybe he would do so in the end, maybe he would say something, anything, if the dark-red tram didn’t arrive, with its usual racket?
Frank won’t get on. He has nothing to do in town at this hour. He simply wanted to see Holst, and he has had plenty of time to see him. Holst, who has gone and stood on the front platform, turns and leans out as the tram sets off, not to look at him, but to look at his building, his window, where the bright patch of a face is visible, framed by curtains.
Father and daughter are saying goodbye. Once the tram has gone, the girl remains at the window, because Frank is in the street. And Frank abruptly makes his mind up. Without lifting his head, he goes back inside the building, unhurriedly climbs the three floors and, with a slight tightness in his chest, knocks at the door just opposite Lotte’s door.
He hasn’t prepared anything, has no idea what he is going to say. All he has decided is that he will put his foot in the doorframe in order to stop the door closing, but in fact it doesn’t close. Sissy looks at him in surprise, and he is almost as surprised as she is to be there. He smiles. It isn’t something he does often. He tends rather to frown, to look straight ahead, harshly, even when he is all alone, or else to assume such an indifferent air that people are chilled by it.
‘And yet,’ Lotte says, ‘when you smile, nobody can ever say no to you. You still have the same smile you had when you were two.’
He doesn’t smile deliberately. He does it because he is embarrassed. He can’t see Sissy very well, because she is against the light, but on a table by the window he notices little saucers, brushes, pots of paint.
He enters without saying anything, because he can’t do otherwise. He says, with no more thought of apologizing or explaining his visit, ‘Do you paint?’
‘I decorate pottery. I have to help my father out.’
He has seen these supposedly artistic saucers, cups, ashtrays and candle holders in shops in the centre of town. It is mainly the occupiers who buy them, as souvenirs. They have flowers, or girls in peasant costumes, or the cathedral spire painted on them.
Why does she keep looking at him all the time? If she didn’t look at him, his task would be easier. She can’t take her eyes off him, but so innocently that it is embarrassing. It reminds him of the new girl who came this morning, who may well be busy at this hour; she, too, wouldn’t stop looking at him with a kind of stupid respect.
‘Do you work a lot?’
‘The days are long,’ she replies.
‘Don’t you ever go out?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘Do you ever go to the cinema?’
Why does she blush? He takes advantages of it immediately.
‘I’d like to go to the cinema with you sometime.’
Not that she is the one who interests him the most, he realizes that now. He looks around, sniffing, just the way Hamling does when he comes to see them. The apartment is a lot smaller than Lotte’s. The main door leads straight into the kitchen, where there is a folding bed pushed back against the wall. Presumably, it is her father who sleeps in it. His feet must stick out. Through an open door, he can see Sissy’s bedroom – the proof of that is that she seems embarrassed when she sees him looking in that direction.
There is a fanlight, just like the one in their apartment, but this one has been blocked with cardboard, because it looks into a neighbour’s apartment.
They are both still standing. She doesn’t dare invite him to sit down. To hide his unease, he holds out his cigarette case.
‘No, thanks. I never smoke.’
‘Because you don’t like it?’
There is a pipe on the table, an iron tin with cigarette ends. Does she imagine he doesn’t understand?
‘Try one. They’re very mild.’
‘I know.’
She has noticed the foreign brand. These cigarettes are more precious than banknotes, and everyone knows what a single one is worth.
She gives a start, because somebody has knocked at the door. Frank has had the same thought as her. Has Holst, for one reason or another, maybe because he saw Frank at the tram stop, come back home?
‘Excuse me, Miss Holst . . .’
It is an old man Frank has already seen in the corridors, a neighbour, the very one whose apartment the fanlight looks into. Making little attempt at pretence, he looks at Frank as if he is a piece of filth a cat has dumped on the floor; conversely, he is very gentle, very paternal with Sissy.
‘I came to ask if you have a match.’
‘Yes, of course, Mr Wimmer.’
But he doesn’t leave. He stays there, his hands on the stove, where there is still a little fire. ‘We’ll be having more snow before long,’ he says casually.
‘Yes, that’s quite likely.’
‘There are some people who aren’t bothered by the cold!’
That’s meant for Frank, but Sissy sides with him by winking at him.
Mr Wimmer is about sixty-five, and his face is covered in thick white hairs.
‘We’ll probably be having snow before the end of the week,’ he repeats, waiting for Frank to go.
That encourages Frank to be bolder. ‘Excuse me, Mr Wimmer . . .’
Until a few minutes ago, he didn’t even know his name. The old man looks at him in shocked surprise.
‘Miss Holst and I were just going out.’
Mr Wimmer looks at the girl, certain that she will contradict this.
‘It’s true,’ she says, taking her coat off the hook. ‘We have some shopping to do.’
This has been one of their best moments so far. They almost burst out laughing, both of them. They are just like two children playing a prank – and indeed Mr Wimmer, despite his lack of a tie and the brass collar stud over his Adam’s apple, looks like a retired schoolteacher.
Sissy has adjusted the heat on the stove. She has gone back to get her gloves. The old man has not moved. It looks for a moment as if he is going to let them lock him in the apartment, as a protest. He watches them descend the stairs, and he must surely sense the youthful spring in their steps.
‘I wonder what he’ll tell my father.’
‘He won’t tell him.’
‘I know Daddy doesn’t like him, but—’
‘People never talk.’
He states this with confidence because it is true, because he knows it from experience. Has Holst informed on him? He would like to tell Sissy about that, to show her the revolver he still has in his pocket. He is risking his life, with that weapon on him, and she doesn’t even suspect.
‘What are we going to do?’ she asks, once they are out in the street.
It was a really extraordinary moment, one that was quite unexpected, when she answered the old man and took her coat, when they passed in front of the sour-faced old fellow and started walking down the stairs in the same way as they would have started dancing.
At that moment, she could quite naturally have taken his arm if she had wanted to. But now they are in the street, and it is already over. Does Sissy realize? They don’t know which direction to go. Fortunately, Frank has mentioned the cinema. He says, much too seriously, ‘There’s a good film on at the Lido.’
It is on the other side of the river. He doesn’t want to take the tram with her. Not because of her father, but because he wouldn’t know how to behave. They have to pass the old basin. On the bridge, the wind stops them from talking, and he doesn’t dare take her by the arm, even though she is instinctively holding herself right up against him.
‘We never go to the cinema.’
‘Why?’
He regrets his question. It is too expensive, obviously. And mentioning money suddenly embarrasses him. For example, he would like to buy her something at a pastry shop. There are still a few of them around, and when you’
re known there, you can get whatever you want. He even knows a couple of places where you can dance, and he is sure Sissy would be happy to dance.
She has probably never been dancing. She is too young. Before the events, she was just a little girl. She has never drunk liqueurs or aperitifs.
He is the one who is embarrassed. In the upper town, he pushes her into the lobby of the Lido, where the electric lights are already on, producing a false daylight.
‘Two box seats.’
The words shock him. Because he comes here often. His friends do the same. When they are with girls, they get a box at the Lido, it’s well known. They are very dark, with walls high enough for you to do pretty much what you want. That’s how he several times ended up supplying girls to Lotte.
‘Do you work?’
‘The workshop closed last week.’
‘Would you like to earn some money?’
Sissy follows him like the others, excited to be entering the nice warm cinema, to be led to a box by a uniformed usherette wearing a little red cap with the word Lido in gold lettering.
That’s what puts him in a bad mood: she is just like the others! She is behaving just like the others. In the dark, she turns to him and smiles, because she is happy to be here, because she is grateful to him, and she says nothing, she barely quivers when he stretches his arm across the back of the seat.
In a little while, that arm will be round her shoulders. She has thin shoulders. She is waiting for him to kiss her, he is aware of that, and he does so almost regretfully. She doesn’t know how to kiss. She keeps her mouth half open, and it is quite wet, a little acidic. At the same time, she seizes his hand in hers and squeezes it very hard, then holds on to it as if it is her property now.
They are all the same! She believes in it. She silences him when he whispers in her ear, because she is trying to follow the film – they missed the beginning – and at times, her fingers tense because of what is happening on the screen.
‘Sissy.’
‘Yes.’
‘Look.’
‘At what?’
The Snow Was Dirty Page 4