Today, he had to promise her that he will wake her when he gets back, no matter how late it is.
‘I won’t be asleep anyway,’ she asserted.
She already smells like the other girls. That must have something to do with the beauty treatments Lotte makes them use, the soap she gives them. The transformation is rapid, in any case. All morning, she roamed the apartment in a black lace nightie.
He vowed he would keep the appointment with Adler and the other man without seeing Kromer again, but at the last moment he loses his nerve. Not so much because of Kromer as because he needs to cling on to something stable, something known. The crowd in the street always scares him a little. By the light of the shop windows or the streetlamps, you see people passing with faces that are too pale, with drawn features and eyes that have absent or wild expressions. Most are secretive. The worst are those with dead eyes; there are more and more people with dead eyes.
Like Holst? It isn’t quite the same thing. There is no hatred in Holst’s eyes, and they aren’t empty; nevertheless, they give the feeling that there is no contact possible with them, and that is humiliating.
He pushes open the door and walks into Leonard’s. Kromer is there, with a man who is nothing like either of them, Ressl, the editor of the evening paper, who is always accompanied by a bodyguard with a broken nose.
‘Do you know Peter Ressl?’
‘I know his name, like everyone.’
‘My friend Frank.’
‘Pleased to meet you.’
He holds out a long, bony and very white hand. Now he comes to think of it, it might have been the hands of Carl Adler, this evening’s driver, that made Frank raise an eyebrow, because they are just like these.
The Ressl family is one of the oldest in the town, and his father was a state councillor. Even before the war, they were ruined, but it is in their town-house that the occupiers have established their headquarters; not a month goes by without some work being done on it for those gentlemen.
The story goes that Councillor Ressl, often seen hugging the buildings like a ghost, has never said a word to them, and that in his place, anyone else would have been hanged or shot by now.
Peter, who is a lawyer and used to be involved in the film business, immediately accepted the post of editor of the evening newspaper. He is probably the only person in the entire country who is allowed to travel abroad, for mysterious reasons. He has been to Rome, Paris, London. The dark suit he is wearing this evening comes from London, and he conspicuously smokes English cigarettes.
He is a nervous, sickly young man. Some say he takes drugs, others that he is homosexual.
‘I thought you had an important appointment,’ Kromer says, very proud to be seen with Ressl, but a little worried to see Frank here at this hour. ‘What are you drinking?’
‘I was passing, so I thought I’d say hello.’
‘Go on, have a drink. Barman!’
A few minutes later, when Frank leaves, Kromer takes something from his pocket and slips it into Frank’s.
‘You never know . . .’
It is a flask containing alcohol.
‘Good luck. Don’t forget about the girl . . .’
They have hardly spoken. The car turned out to be a van. Carl Adler was waiting in the driver’s seat, his foot on the starter.
‘And the other guy?’ Frank asked.
‘Behind.’
In the darkness of the van, he saw the reddish circle of a cigarette.
‘Which way?’
‘Just keep driving across town.’
They cling in passing to familiar landmarks. They even pass the Lido cinema, and for a moment Frank thinks of Sissy, busy right now painting flowers by the light of the lamp as she waits for her father to come home.
The guy in the back is really common, Frank realized that the day before. The skin of his broad hands is deeply encrusted with black, and if his face was properly washed, it would look like Kromer’s, only more open and direct. He doesn’t seem nervous at all. Even though he has no idea what they are going to do, he doesn’t ask any questions.
Nor does Carl Adler. But he has an unpleasant way of looking straight ahead, presenting to Frank a profile that is too deliberately indifferent, a scornful or at any rate superior expression.
‘What now?’
‘Turn left.’
As no car can circulate without a pass from the occupiers, who can be very difficult about it, it must mean that Adler works with them. There are lots of people who play a double game. One man was seen every day in the company of high-ranking officers and was so well-known that children spat on the pavement when he passed. Then he was shot, and now they say he was a hero.
‘Turn left again at the next crossroads.’
Frank smokes cigarettes and passes them to the man behind, who must be sitting on the spare tyre. Carl Adler has already said he doesn’t smoke. Too bad for him.
‘When you see a pylon, turn right and climb the slope.’
They are already nearing the village, and Frank could find his way with his eyes closed. He would say ‘his’ village if there was anything that was really his in the world. It was here that he was brought up, here that Lotte, when she had him at the age of nineteen, left him in the care of a nurse.
There is a fairly steep slope, and the houses at the bottom are almost all small farms. Then the road widens to form a kind of main square, with round cobbles on which cars bounce. The church is beyond the lake, which in reality is nothing but a large pond, along with the cemetery, where the grave-digger – is it still old Pruster? – only has to push his spade less than a metre down to strike water.
‘I don’t bury them, I drown them!’ he says when he has had a few drinks.
The headlights illumine a pink house with life-size painted angels on its gable. The whole village is painted like a toy. There are pink, green, blue and yellow houses. Almost every one has a little niche with a porcelain virgin, and there is a festival during the year at which candles are lit in front of all these statuettes.
Frank isn’t nervous. He made up his mind, when Kromer talked to him about watches, that it wouldn’t affect him.
On the contrary, it’s an opportunity! He doesn’t owe these people anything, he doesn’t owe anybody anything. It is all too easy to give sweets to a child and talk to him in a silly little voice.
He lived here until he was ten, and his mother came to see him almost every Sunday, at least in the summer – he remembers her white straw hats. There wasn’t a more beautiful woman in all the world. Whenever she came, the nurse would cross her red hands over her belly and go into raptures.
Lotte didn’t always come alone. Four or five times, there was a man with her – a different man each time. They always seemed diffident, and she would look at them anxiously and say with forced gaiety:
‘And this is my Frank!’
For one reason or another, it never seemed to work out. By the time she put him in school, in town, as a boarder, Frank had got the picture and begged her to stop coming to the visiting room, even though she always came bearing gifts.
‘But why?’
‘No reason.’
‘Have your classmates said something?’
‘No.’
She wanted to make him into a doctor or lawyer. It was her obsession.
Fortunately, the war came, and the schools were closed for several months. By the time they reopened, he was over fifteen.
‘I’m not going back to school,’ he declared.
‘Why, Frank?’
‘Because!’
He has never known if he reminds her of someone, but even when he was very young, he noticed that when he looked at her in a certain way, his mother wouldn’t insist, seemed scared, did whatever he wanted.
His ‘closed’ look, she calls it.
Ever since, life has been so complicated for everyone that Lotte hasn’t bothered any more with his education. They’ve got into the habit of saying, ‘Later, wh
en it’s all over.’
But it isn’t over. And now he is a man. Not so long ago, in an argument in the course of which he was the calmer of the two, he narrowed his eyes and said coldly to Lotte:
‘You whore!’
Now, he orders Adler, just as calmly:
‘Stop!’
Just before the square. There is a street on the right where the van won’t be noticed. Besides, there is nobody outside. There are hardly any lighted windows, because the villagers keep their shutters well closed; there is barely a sign of life. The windows of the school are dark too, five windows, so many of whose panes he smashed with his ball.
‘Are you coming?’ he says to the man behind.
‘Call me Stan,’ the man replies, in his vulgar, friendly way, then slaps his empty pockets and adds, ‘Your pal told me not to bring anything. Is that right?’
Frank has his revolver, which is enough. Adler will wait for them in the car.
‘Are you sure?’ he asks, trying to see his eyes.
‘That’s what I’m here for!’ Adler says condescendingly, almost with disgust.
The snow crunches more here than in town. There are gardens behind the houses, fir trees, hedges bristling with ice. The Vilmos house is on the right, set back a little from the square.
There is no light visible, but the rooms where people congregate are at the back.
‘Just let me get on with it.’
‘All right.’
‘We may need to frighten them.’
‘Sure.’
‘Maybe even rough them up a little.’
‘Right!’
He hasn’t been back here in years, but it is impossible for for him not to follow in his old footsteps. The watchmaker Vilmos and his watches, and his famous garden, may be what remains most vividly from his childhood.
Even before getting to the door, he has the impression he recognizes the smell of the house, a house that has always been a house of old people, because Vilmos and his sister have always been ageless.
Frank takes a dark scarf from his pocket and ties it around his face, under his eyes. Stan is about to object.
‘It’s not the same for you. They don’t know you. But if you like . . .’
He hands him an identical scarf: he has thought of everything.
He can still remember Miss Vilmos’ cakes, cakes such as he has never eaten anywhere else, sickly sweet, thick, with designs in pink or blue icing. She used to keep them in a tin with coloured illustrations of the adventures of Robinson Crusoe on it.
And she had the habit of calling him ‘My cherub’.
Vilmos must be at least eighty, his sister about seventy-five. He finds it hard to be quite sure, because when you are little you have a different idea of people’s ages. As far as he is concerned, they have always been old, and Vilmos is the first person in the world to have revealed to him that you can remove all your teeth from your mouth in one go, because he wore dentures.
They are stingy. The brother and the sister are both as stingy as each other.
‘Shall I ring the bell?’ Stan asks, impressed to be standing here in a deserted square in the moonlight.
Frank rings himself, surprised to find the bell-pull so low when in the old days he had to stand on tiptoe to reach it. He is holding his revolver in his right hand. His foot is ready to stop the door closing again, like the time he first went to Sissy’s. Footsteps come from a long way away, like in church. That’s another memory. The long, wide corridor, with dark walls and doors as mysterious as sacristy doors, has a floor of grey flagstones, and two or three of them are always loose.
‘Who’s there?’
It is the voice of Miss Vilmos, who isn’t scared of anything.
‘The priest sent me,’ he replies.
He hears her take off the chain and pushes his foot forwards, his revolver held close to his stomach.
He says to Stan, who suddenly appears quite gauche:
‘Go in!’
Then, to the old woman:
‘Where’s Vilmos?’
My God, how small she is! And such white hair! She puts her hands together and stammers in a cracked voice, ‘But, my good sir, you know perfectly well he’s been dead for a year.’
‘Give me the watches.’
He recognizes the corridor, the dark-brown imitation cordovan wallpaper on which the wisps of gold are still visible. The shop is on the left, with the workbench over which Vilmos would always be bent, a magnifying glass ringed with black wedged in his eye socket.
‘Where are the watches?’ he asks, adding, more nervously, ‘The collection . . .’
Then, pulling out the revolver:
‘It’s best for you if you hurry up about it.’
Is he on the verge of failure? It has never occurred to him that Vilmos might be dead. With him, it would have been easy. The watchmaker was so timorous, he would have given up his watches immediately.
The old vixen is made of sterner stuff. She has seen the revolver, but it is clear she is looking for a way out, that she is not in any mood to give up, that she will keep fighting while she thinks she still has a chance.
All at once Stan – Frank has forgotten about him – pipes up in his guttural voice:
‘Maybe we could help her recover her memory?’
He must be used to it. Kromer didn’t choose a beginner. Maybe he did it deliberately, because he didn’t really trust Frank?
The old woman has her back up against the wall. A meagre yellow lock hangs down over her face. Her arms are stretched out, and her hands are flat on the fake cordovan.
‘The watches . . .’ Frank repeats almost mechanically.
He hasn’t drunk much, and yet it is all happening the way it does when you are drunk . . . Everything is vague and blurred, with only a few details standing out with exaggerated clarity: the yellowish-grey lock of hair, the hands flat on the wall, the thick blue veins on those old hands . . .
He is always so calm, and yet he must have turned too abruptly to confer with Stan, because the scarf has come loose. Before he can pick it up and turn his face away, she has recognized him.
‘Frank!’ she cries, adding immediately – how stupid it sounds – ‘Little Frank!’
‘The watches!’ he repeats harshly.
‘I know you’ll find them in the end anyway. You always managed to get what you wanted. But don’t hurt me. I’ll tell you . . . My God! Frank! It’s little Frank!’
She is relieved and at the same time more scared than before. She has lost her inertia. There is a sense of her mind beginning to work again. She sets off at a trot towards the end of the corridor, towards the kitchen, where he can see a wicker armchair with a big ginger cat lying curled up on a red cushion.
She seems to be talking to herself, or maybe reciting prayers, as she moves her bony limbs in her ample clothes.
Maybe she is only playing for time? She throws Stan the occasional sidelong glance, no doubt wondering if he might be easier to soften up.
‘What on earth are you planning to do with them? . . . When I think that my poor brother was so happy to show them to you, that he held them up to your ear, one by one, so that you could hear them strike, and that I always had sweets for you . . . Look, the tin’s still on the mantelpiece, but it’s empty . . . You can’t find sweets these days . . . You can’t find anything . . .’
She is crying. In her way, but she is crying, and it’s quite possible it’s another ploy.
‘The watches!’
‘He’s moved them around so much, with all these events . . . He died a year ago, and you didn’t even know! . . . Nobody knows anything any more . . . If he was here, I’m sure . . .’
What is she sure of? It’s absurd. Time to get it over and done with. Adler must be getting impatient, and he would be quite capable of leaving without them.
‘Where are the watches?’
She still summons the energy to shift a log in the fireplace, and he senses that she is deliberately turning h
er back on him as she says angrily, ‘Under the flagstone.’
‘Which flagstone?’
‘You know perfectly well! The one that’s cracked. The third one.’
While Frank goes looking for a tool to prise up the flagstone in the corridor, Stan stays in the kitchen to keep an eye on the old lady. She offers him a coffee. Frank overhears her say to him, ‘He came to see us almost every day, and I always had cakes for him in that tin.’ Then she adds in a low voice, as if she wasn’t speaking to a man with the lower part of his face hidden by a scarf, ‘My God, sir, he can’t have become a thief, can he? And he’s armed! Is his revolver loaded?’
Frank has found the watches, with their cases, protected by several layers of sackcloth. ‘Stan!’ he calls in a sharp voice.
All they have to do now is leave. It’s over. Stupidly, the old woman stammers:
‘Do you think he’d like a cup of coffee?’
‘Stan!’
She clings to them, follows them into the corridor.
‘Now we’ve seen it all, Lord! To think I . . .’
All they have to do is go outside and get back to the car that is waiting for them 200 metres away. Even if she was capable of shouting loudly enough to alert the neighbours, it wouldn’t matter, because none of the cars in the village has any petrol, and the telephone doesn’t work at night.
He has half opened the door, seen the square bathed in moonlight, without a trace of life. ‘Go,’ he says to his companion.
And the other man knows what that means. The old woman has seen Frank with his face uncovered. She knows him. There are times when you can count on the protection of the occupiers. At other times, they drop you, you don’t know why, and the police are only too happy to take advantage. However well you think you know them, their behaviour is always a bit of a mystery.
You can never be sure of them.
Stan takes a few steps outside, holding the sack containing the watches at arm’s length. The hardened snow can be heard crunching.
The Snow Was Dirty Page 6
