The door has closed behind him. He is sure he heard a muffled shot. Then the door opens again, and he sees a rectangle of yellowish light, which gets thinner and thinner until it disappears completely.
Footsteps join his. In the shadows, a hand takes the sack from him.
Then, just before they get to the car, taking advantage of the fact that there are only the two of them, Stan says:
‘An old maid!’
There is no response. In the car, Frank holds out the packet of cigarettes behind him without turning, then lights his own cigarette and orders curtly:
‘To town!’
There is a bad moment for him to get through, although he knows it won’t last long. It has only taken hold of him since he has been back in the car. Up until that point, he has been in control of his nerves.
They have given way all at once. Only a little. The others won’t notice a thing. It’s a kind of quiver, a spasm inside him. He has to make an effort to stop his hands from shaking, and there is something like an air bubble trying to escape from his chest.
He lowers the car window. The icy air on his forehead does him good. He breathes it in greedily.
Just seeing the lights as they approach town starts to calm him. And he hasn’t touched the flask of alcohol Kromer stuffed in his pocket.
It’s almost over. It’s purely physical. He felt pretty much the same thing with the sergeant, though it was less strong that time.
He’s pleased. He had to get through this once and for all, and now it’s done. With the Eunuch, it didn’t count. It didn’t mean anything. In a way, that was just a matter of technique.
The strange thing is that now he has done something he was feeling the need to do for a long time.
‘Where shall I drop you?’
Does Adler suspect what happened? He probably didn’t hear the shot. He hasn’t asked any questions. He simply pushed away the sack, which would have got in the way of his driving and is now between their feet.
Frank is about to say, ‘My place.’ Then his mistrust gains the upper hand:
‘Timo’s. Not too close, though.’
He thinks again and decides not to go straight to Timo’s. There is no point handing the watches over to Kromer immediately. The loot will be safer in the house at the back, where the girls lodge.
Before they reach town, he plunges his arm in the sack, feels the cases, because there are some that he recognizes, takes one out and slips it in his pocket.
He feels perfectly fine. He’s looking forward to seeing Kromer. He’s looking forward to having a drink.
The car barely stops and leaves again without him. He walks along the street and enters the room of one of the hostesses. She isn’t in, but he’ll see her at Timo’s. He stuffs the revolver, which he hasn’t had time to clean, into the sack, then slides the sack itself under the bed.
The moment is almost a solemn one. He recognizes the lights, the faces, the smell of wine and spirits, Timo gesturing to him with his hand from the counter.
He walks slowly, small and squat in his overcoat, his features quite relaxed, a slight gleam in his eyes. Kromer isn’t alone. He’s never alone. Frank knows his two companions and has no desire to talk to them right now.
He leans over Kromer. ‘Can I talk to you for a minute?’
They go to the toilets at the back. There, without a word, Frank puts the case in his companion’s hand. He didn’t get it wrong, even though it was dark in the car. It is the big blue case containing a watch with a porcelain face, with a shepherd and shepherdess carved on it.
‘Only one?’
‘I got about fifty, but you have to talk to him first, to know what we’re doing.’
Has it left any mark on him? Already, in the car, on the ride back, Adler avoided turning towards him, and not once did their shoulders brush against each other.
But Kromer is different. He is embarrassed. He doesn’t dare ask questions, and he keeps looking away, his gaze only returning to Frank in short, surreptitious bursts.
The other times they did business, he was the boss, and he made sure Frank knew it.
Now he doesn’t argue. He is in a hurry to return to the bar.
‘I’ll try to see him tomorrow,’ he says meekly, then, as he is sitting back down at the table:
‘Are you having a drink?’
Frank has forgotten to give him back the flask he didn’t use. Now he looks him full in the face as he hands it to him.
Does Kromer understand?
Then he goes home, joins Minna in her bed and makes love to her so violently that she is frightened.
She understands, too. They all understand!
5.
He spent all day in the kitchen, unshaven, unwashed, his feet in the stove, reading a cheap edition of Zola. Does his mother have her suspicions? Usually, when it gets to midday, she urges him to wash and dress, because there is only one bathroom, and they need it in the afternoon for the girls and the clients.
But this time she didn’t say anything. She must have heard the noise he and Minna had made last night, and Minna was looking haggard and anxious; she spent her time either at the window, as if expecting to see the police show up, or staring into his eyes, disappointed that he seemed concerned only about the cold he thinks he has caught.
As for him, he stuffed himself full of aspirins, put drops in his nose and plunged stubbornly back into his reading.
Sissy must have waited for him. Several times, especially after Holst left, Frank looked at the alarm-clock above the stove but didn’t move. There were the usual comings and goings in the apartment, voices behind the doors, noises he knew well. Not once was he curious enough to climb on the table and look through the fanlight. Minna came in once to get a kettle of hot water, stark naked and wild-eyed, her hand on her lower abdomen, and even she didn’t grab his attention.
All the same, he got dressed in the end, once night had fallen. He passed the Holsts’ door. He could have sworn that the door moved slightly, that Sissy was behind it, ready to open, but he continued calmly on his way, smoking his cigarette, which tasted of menthol.
Kromer didn’t get to Leonard’s until after seven. He was trying to hide his excitement.
‘I’ve spoken to the general.’
Frank didn’t react.
Kromer quoted a large figure. ‘Half for you, half for me, and I’ll take care of the other two.’
Kromer is already trying to behave with him the way he used to, as if he is a very busy and important man.
Frank puts his foot down. ‘I want sixty per cent.’
‘All right.’
Kromer must be thinking he will con him all the same, since Frank won’t see the general and won’t know what he paid.
‘Or rather, no. Fifty, as we agreed. But I want a green card.’
Kromer doesn’t have one. The reason Frank said it is probably because it is the hardest thing to obtain. It is rare to get more than a glimpse of these cards. A man like Ressl must have one, but he takes care not to show it. There is a whole hierarchy of permits: passes for cars, then those that allow free movement at night, then those that allow the bearer to enter certain areas.
The green card, with a photograph and fingerprints, signatures of the commander of the armed forces and the chief of the political police, charges all the authorities to leave the bearer free to ‘carry out his mission’.
In other words, nobody has the right to search you. At the sight of a green card, the patrols salute you and apologize profusely, looking vaguely worried.
The most surprising thing is that Frank had never thought about it before his conversation with Kromer. The idea occurred to him all of a sudden as they were discussing the percentage, and he was wondering what he could demand that was exorbitant.
And the strange thing is that Kromer, after a moment’s astonishment, doesn’t burst out laughing, doesn’t launch into objections.
‘I can always mention it.’
‘Well, it’
s up to your general: take it or leave it. If he really wants the watches, he’ll know what he has to do.’
He will have his green card, he is sure of it.
‘What about the girl?’
‘Nothing new. It’s all OK.’
‘Have you touched her yet?’
‘No.’
‘Will you leave her to me?’
‘Maybe.’
‘I hope she’s not too skinny. Is she clean?’
Why is Frank now almost certain that the story of the strangled girl in the barn is pure invention? He doesn’t care. He despises Kromer. And it’s amusing to think that a man like Kromer is going to go to great lengths to get him a green card he wouldn’t dare ask for himself.
‘By the way, who is this Carl Adler fellow?’
‘The driver? I think he’s a wireless engineer.’
‘What does he do?’
‘He works with them, locating clandestine radios. He’s a trustworthy guy.’
‘Oh, really?’
Kromer keeps coming back to his obsession:
‘Why do you never bring her?’
‘Who?’
‘The girl.’
‘I already told you, she lives with her father.’
‘What’s that got to do with it?’
‘We’ll see. Maybe I’ll work something out.’
People must imagine he’s hard. Even his mother is scared of him. And yet he can suddenly go all dreamy, like now, looking at a green patch with real tenderness. It’s nothing, just the bottom of a decorative panel at Leonard’s. It depicts a meadow, and each blade of grass is distinct, each petal on the daisies.
‘What are you thinking about?’
‘I’m not thinking.’
It’s a question his nurse used to ask him, or that his mother would ask him whenever she came to see him on Sundays.
‘What are you thinking about, little Frank?’
‘Nothing.’
He would always answer moodily, because he didn’t like being called ‘little Frank’.
‘Hey! If I get you your green card—’
‘You will.’
‘All right. Let’s assume I do. We’ll be able to do some interesting things, won’t we?’
‘Maybe.’
This evening, he knows his mother has understood. He got back early, because he really is starting a cold and he has always been afraid of illness. The women were all in the front room, the one they call the salon. There was big Bertha darning stockings, Minna with a hot-water bottle on her belly and Lotte reading the paper.
The three of them were still, so still and silent in the sleeping building that they could have been a painting; it was a surprise to see them open their mouths.
‘Back already?’
The paper must have mentioned what happened to Miss Vilmos. Nobody makes a fuss about these things the way they used to, because there are attacks like this every day. But even if there were only three lines on the last page, Lotte wouldn’t miss them; she never misses an item about people she has known.
She must have realized part of the truth and guessed the rest. She probably even remembered the noise he made last night with Minna, and she knows men so well that such details have a specific meaning for her.
‘Have you eaten?’
‘Yes.’
‘Would you like a cup of coffee?’
‘No, thanks.’
She is afraid of him. She tiptoes anxiously around him. When it comes down to it, it has always been that way, although less blatant, less acknowledged, so to speak.
‘You’re sniffling.’
‘I’ve caught a cold.’
‘Why don’t you have a hot toddy and let us put cupping glasses on you?’
He would be happy with the toddy, but not the cupping glasses. He hates those pockets of glass his mother is in the habit of sticking on the girls’ backs at the slightest cough and which leave round pink or brown patches on their skin.
‘Bertha!’
‘I’ll get it,’ Minna says hurriedly, grimacing in pain as she gets up.
It is hot and calm, Frank’s smoke accumulates around the lamp, the fire purrs; there are four fires purring in the apartment, while a fine snow again starts falling from the sky, passing slowly in the darkness beyond the windows.
‘Are you sure you don’t want anything to eat? There’s liver sausage.’
Words, basically, are meaningless. They are only there to make contact. He realizes that it is his voice Lotte needs to hear, as if she wants to see if it has changed.
Because of old Miss Vilmos!
He smokes his cigarette, sitting deep in a dark-red velvet armchair, his legs stretched towards the fire. The most curious thing is that he senses guilty feelings in his mother. If she had recognized his footsteps earlier, would she have hidden the newspaper? Did he deliberately climb the stairs on tiptoe, skipping some steps?
The truth is, he wasn’t thinking of Lotte but Sissy, for fear she would half open the door of the Holsts’ apartment.
Right now, she is alone with her saucers. Does she go to bed while she is waiting for her father? Or does she stay awake, all alone, until midnight?
He was afraid, he admits it to himself, that the door would open and he would be obliged to go in and find himself alone with her in the dimly lit kitchen, maybe with the remains of a meal on the table.
In the evening, she probably takes down the folding bed. And the door of the bedroom stays open to let the warmth in.
It’s all too sentimental, too sad, too ugly.
‘Why don’t you take your shoes off? Bertha!’
It is Bertha who will take them off for him. Sissy would take them off, too, wouldn’t hesitate to get down on her knees.
‘You look tired.’
‘It’s the cold.’
‘You need to get a good night’s sleep.’
He continues to understand. It is as if he was automatically translating a foreign language. Lotte is advising him to sleep alone, not to make love today. There is something she doesn’t know, that she doesn’t know yet, which he himself merely senses, which is that he has no desire for Minna, or Bertha, or even Sissy.
In a while, she will supervise the making of his bed.
‘Will you be warm enough?’
‘Yes.’
He won’t sleep there. Tonight, he would go to anyone’s bed, even an old woman’s, because he needs someone next to him.
It looks as if Minna, who had no experience when she arrived – the insides of her thighs are still bow-shaped, like a little girl’s – has learned everything in three days. She has reached out her arm for him to put his head on. She is careful not to talk to him. She strokes him gently, the way nurses do.
His mother knows. There is no more room for doubt. The proof is that this morning’s newspaper has disappeared. And there is a detail he notices, one that she would definitely deny. Kissing him, as she does every morning, she recoiled slightly from him in spite of herself. She immediately hated herself for it, and to make up for it was very sweet to him.
He will get the green card, he is convinced of it. To anyone else, that would represent an extraordinary success, an unattainable dream, because it puts you in the same position as – on the other side – the head of a network.
He could have been the head of a network.
He tried to join up, at the start, when they were still fighting with tanks and cannon, and he was sent back to school.
For a long time, he hung around a tenant on the fifth floor, a bachelor in his forties with a big brown moustache, who acted mysteriously and was, in fact, one of the first to be shot.
Has the violinist already been shot, or deported? Is he being tortured? . . . They will probably never know, and his mother will wear herself out more every day, as so many others have; for a while she will continue to queue, to go from office to office and be sent away from all of them, then they will stop seeing her, they will forget all about her, until one fine day
the caretaker will make up his mind to call a locksmith.
They will find her in her bedroom, all shrivelled, having been dead for a week or more.
He doesn’t feel any pity for her. He doesn’t feel pity for anyone, himself included. He doesn’t ask for pity, and he won’t accept any, which is what annoys him about Lotte, who keeps giving him looks that are both anxious and loving.
What would interest him is having a good long man-to-man talk with Holst. This desire has been tormenting him for a long time, even when he wasn’t yet aware of it.
Why Holst? He has no idea. He may never know. He refuses to think it’s because he has never had a father.
Sissy is stupid. This morning, slipped under the door of the salon, there was an envelope addressed to Frank, which Bertha discovered as she was doing the housework. In the envelope, a sheet of paper, with a question mark in pencil and a signature: Sissy.
Because he didn’t get in touch with her yesterday! She’s crying. She imagines her life is over. Just because of that insistence, he decides not to see her, to go to the cinema on his own if necessary, while waiting for his appointment with Kromer.
But she is even more stubborn than he thought. He has barely started down the stairs, taking care not to make any noise, when she comes out with her hat and coat on, all ready to go, which means she may have been waiting behind the door, dressed like that, for hours.
He has no choice but to wait for her in the street. Wisps of snow melt as they touch his lips.
‘Don’t you want to see me any more?’
‘Of course I do.’
‘You’ve been running away from me for the last two days.’
‘I haven’t been running away from anyone. I’ve been very busy.’
‘Frank!’
Has she also been thinking about old Miss Vilmos? Is she intelligent enough to have made a connection with the item in the newspaper?
‘Why don’t you trust me?’ she says reproachfully.
‘I do.’
‘You never tell me what you’re up to.’
‘Because it’s no business of women.’
‘I’m scared, Frank.’
‘What of?’
‘I’m scared for you.’
‘Why do you even care?’
The Snow Was Dirty Page 7
