‘All right.’
He would have preferred to talk about the revolver, which he can see on the desk. That way, he would be done with that threat, which they must be keeping for the end.
‘Why did he give you money?’
‘Because I supplied him with merchandise.’
‘What kind of merchandise?’
‘Watches.’
‘Was he trading in watches?’
He wants to ask, ‘Are you going to grant the authorization?’ Throughout the interrogation, he will swallow his tongue to avoid asking that question.
‘Someone had asked him for watches.’
‘Who?’
‘I think it was an officer.’
‘You think so?’
‘That’s what he told me.’
‘What officer?’
‘I don’t know his name. A high-ranking officer who collects watches.’
‘Where did you meet him?’
‘I never saw him.’
‘How did he pay you?’
‘He paid Kromer, and Kromer gave me my share.’
‘How big was your share?’
‘Half.’
‘Where did you buy the watches?’
‘I didn’t buy them.’
‘Did you steal them?’
‘I took them.’
‘Where?’
‘From the house of a watchmaker I used to know, who’s dead.’
‘Did you kill him?’
‘No. He died a year ago.’
It’s going too fast, much too fast. Normally, there should have been enough here for three or four sessions, but he feels as if he is caught up in a fever, as if he is the one who is now hurrying things along, to get to the end more quickly.
‘Who owned the watches?’
The old man consults one of his pieces of paper. They know. Frank could swear they have known it all right from the start. What’s the point of all this play-acting? What more do they want to find out? What are they hoping for? After all, it’s their time they are wasting much more than his.
‘They were hidden in his sister’s house. I went there, took the watches and left.’
‘Is that all?’
‘I went back and killed her,’ he says sullenly, like a child caught doing something wrong.
‘Why?’
‘Because she’d recognized me.’
‘Who were you with?’
‘I was alone.’
‘Where did it happen?’
‘In the country.’
‘A long way from town?’
‘About ten kilometres.’
‘Did you get there on foot?’
‘Yes.’
‘No!’
‘You’re right: no.’
‘How did you get there?’
‘By bicycle.’
‘You don’t own a bicycle.’
‘I borrowed one.’
‘Who from?’
‘I rented it.’
‘Where?’
‘I don’t remember. From a garage in the upper town.’
‘Would you recognize the garage if you were taken to the upper town?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘And if you were shown the van you used, would you recognize that?’
They know that, too. It’s depressing.
‘You’ll see it in the courtyard tomorrow morning.’
He doesn’t reply. He’s thirsty. His shirt is sodden under the arms, and his temples are starting to throb.
‘How did you meet Carl Adler?’
‘I don’t know him.’
‘He drove the van.’
‘It was dark.’
‘What do you know about him?’
‘I don’t know anything.’
‘But you know he dealt with radios?’
‘I had no idea.’
‘There was a transmitter in the van.’
‘I didn’t see it. It was dark. I didn’t look in the back.’
‘Who was in the back?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘But there was somebody?’
‘Yes.’
‘You must have been introduced. Who introduced you?’
‘Kromer.’
‘Where?’
‘In a bar opposite the cinema.’
‘Who was he with?’
‘He was on his own.’
‘When he introduced his friends, what names did he tell you?’
‘He didn’t tell me any names.’
‘Would you recognize the man who was in the back?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Describe him.’
‘He was quite big, with a moustache.’
He’s lying. It’s more time gained.
‘Carry on.’
‘He was wearing a boiler suit.’
‘In the bar?’
‘Yes.’
It looks like they don’t know that one, so Frank isn’t running any risks.
‘Wait. I think he had a scar.’
‘Where?’
He thinks of the brass ruler. He improvises, ‘Across one of his cheeks . . . The left one . . . Yes . . .’
‘You’re lying, aren’t you?’
‘No.’
‘I’d be sorry if you were lying, because that would prevent me from granting the authorization I’ve been asked for.’
‘I swear to you I don’t know him.’
‘Did he have a scar?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What about the rest of your description?’
‘I really don’t know. I’m sure I’d recognize him if I saw him, but I can’t describe him.’
‘And the bar?’
‘No, that’s true.’
‘Carl Adler?’
‘I don’t know why I remember his name. I saw him again twice in the street. He didn’t recognize me. Or pretended not to recognize me.’
‘And the wireless?’
‘They didn’t tell me about it.’
Will he get his authorization? Anxiously, he scrutinizes the face of the old man, who must be taking a secret pleasure in looking even more inscrutable than usual. He rolls a cigarette. Then slowly, softly, he says:
‘Carl Adler was shot yesterday by another department. He didn’t talk. We really need to track down his accomplices.’
Abruptly, Frank turns red. Are they going to offer him a deal, like the one Lotte agreed to?
It’s true that he doesn’t know anything. They must be starting to realize that. But he could find out. They could use him to find out.
He’s finding it hard to breathe. He doesn’t know where to look any more. Once again, he feels ashamed. What will he do if they suddenly put the question to him, if they hand him the deal on a platter? What would Holst do?
He closes his eyes, braces himself. It was too good to be true. He mustn’t count on it any more. It’ll probably never happen. He doesn’t cry. Now is not the time to start crying.
He waits. The old man must be playing with his pieces of paper. Why isn’t he saying anything? The only sound is the humming of the stove. Time passes. Then Frank ventures to open his eyes and sees the acolyte, standing next to him, waiting to take him back. The soldier is already at the door.
It’s over. Maybe until later, maybe until tomorrow.
They don’t salute each other. Here, they never salute. It must be the way they do things in this place, and it gives an impression of emptiness.
It’s very cold outside, much colder than the previous days. The sky is as clear as a blade, and the ridges of the roofs seem sharper than usual.
Tomorrow morning there will be flowers of frost on the windowpanes.
4.
It’s odd. He has spent the greater part of his life – by far the greater part! – hating fate, with a hatred that is almost personal, hating it to the point of searching it out in every corner to defy it, to fight it.
And now all of a sudden, when he was least expecting it, fate has gi
ven him a gift.
There is no other way of putting it. Obviously, it’s possible that the old man, in spite of his fish blood, has had a moment of weakness, of pity. He may also have committed a technical error, but that’s highly unlikely, because he’s never made a mistake before. More probably it happened somewhere else, in another sector, the high authority that Holst approached, where someone who knows nothing about the case put his initials on the request, meaning ‘yes’.
Holst is downstairs! Holst is in the little office, by the stove, and next to him, slightly further back, is Sissy.
They’re both here!
Frank wasn’t told. They came to get him as if for an interrogation. It has been about five days since his mother and Minna came, there have been twelve or fifteen more interrogations, and he is almost at the end of his tether, feeling so weak that he has had mental blanks.
Holst is here, and Frank has stopped dead on seeing him. He has seen Sissy, but he continues to look at Holst, and his feet won’t move, his body won’t move. What’s wonderful is that Holst doesn’t think of opening his mouth.
What would he say anyway?
As if he has understood the question in Frank’s eyes, as if replying to it, he pushes Sissy forwards slightly.
The old man is here, of course, behind his desk. The acolytes are in their posts, too. There is the stove, the window, the courtyard, the sentry by his box.
But in fact there is nothing at all. There is Sissy, in a black coat that makes her look very thin and a black beret from which her blonde hair peeps out. She looks at him. She isn’t on the verge of tears, like Lotte. She isn’t moved to pity, like Minna. Could it be she doesn’t even notice his two missing teeth, or his beard, or his crumpled clothes?
She doesn’t go to him. They don’t dare move, either of them. Would they do so if they dared? It’s by no means certain.
She half opens her mouth. She is about to speak. She says first, as he has so often expected:
‘Frank . . .’
She is determined to say something more, and he’s scared.
‘I’ve come to tell you . . .’
‘I know,’ he murmurs, embarrassed.
He thought she was going to say, he’s afraid she will say, ‘ . . . that I don’t bear you any grudge.’ Or else, ‘ . . . that I forgive you.’
But that is not what she says. She is still looking at him. It isn’t possible that two people have ever looked at each other with such intensity.
‘I’ve come to tell you that I love you,’ she says simply.
She is holding her bag, her little black bag in her hand. Things are happening almost like in his dream, except that the old man, who has just meticulously rolled a cigarette, sticks out his tongue to lick the paper.
Frank doesn’t reply. He has nothing to say. He doesn’t have the right to say anything. He just has to hurry up and look at her. He has to look at Holst, too. He doesn’t have his felt boots on, the ones he wore when he drove a tram. He’s wearing shoes like everyone else. He’s in grey. He’s holding his hat in his hand.
Frank doesn’t move, doesn’t dare move. He senses that his lips are moving, but not to speak. It may just be a nervous thing, he doesn’t know. It is then that Holst advances, heedless of the old man and the altar boys with their moustaches, and places a hand on his shoulder, exactly as Frank has always thought a father would do.
Does Holst think he owes him an explanation? Is he afraid Frank hasn’t completely understood? Does he still have a doubt?
His hand presses down slightly on his shoulder and he recites – he really does sound as if he is reciting – in a voice at once grave and neutral, reminiscent of some of the ceremonies during Holy Week:
‘I had a son, a boy not much older than you. His ambition was to be a great doctor. He loved medicine, it was the only thing he cared about. When I lost all my money, he decided to continue his studies, come what may.
‘One day, some expensive products – mercury, platinum – disappeared from the physics lab. Then people started to complain about petty thefts at the university. Finally, a student, rushing into the cloakroom, found my son stealing a wallet.
‘He was twenty-one. As he was being taken to the rector’s office, he jumped out of a window on the second floor . . .’
The pressure of his fingers has increased.
Frank would like to say something. There is one thing in particular he would like to say, although it’s a thing that means nothing, that might be misinterpreted: he would have liked to be Holst’s son, he would like to be Holst’s son. He would be so happy – and it would take such a weight off him – to utter the word ‘Father!’
Sissy has that right. Sissy hasn’t taken her eyes off him. He couldn’t say, as he could for Minna, if she is thinner or paler than before. It doesn’t matter. She came. She wanted to come, and Holst agreed, Holst took her by the hand and brought her to see Frank.
‘There you are,’ he concludes. ‘It’s a hard job, being a man.’
He seems to smile weakly as he says these words, as if to apologize.
‘Sissy talks about you to Mr Wimmer all day long. I’ve found work in an office, but I finish early.’
He turns to the window, so that they can look at each other, just the two of them.
There are no rings. There is no key. Nor are there any prayers, but Holst’s words take their place.
Sissy is here. Holst is here.
They mustn’t stay too long. Frank might not be able to bear it. This is all there is. This is all there will ever have been. This is his entire share. There was nothing before and there will be nothing afterwards.
This is his wedding! This is his honeymoon, this is his life, a life that has to be lived in one go, swallowed like a pill, while the old man fiddles with his pieces of paper.
They won’t have a window that opens, or linen they put out to dry, and they won’t have a cradle.
If there had been all that, there might not have been anything at all, just Frank struggling against fate. It isn’t how long something lasts that matters. What matters is that it happens.
‘Sissy . . .’
He doesn’t know if he has murmured her name or just thought it. His lips have moved, but he can’t stop them moving. His hands move, too, move ceaselessly forwards, with a movement he stops just in time. Sissy’s hands do the same. Sissy has found a way to hold back by keeping her fingers tight on her bag.
For her sake, too, and for Holst’s, it mustn’t go on for too long.
‘We’ll try and come again,’ Holst says.
Frank smiles, still looking at Sissy, and nods, knowing perfectly well it isn’t true, just as Holst knows it, just as Sissy probably knows it, too.
‘You’ll come again, yes.’
That’s all. His eyes can’t take it any more. He is afraid he will faint. He hasn’t eaten anything since yesterday. He has hardly slept for a week.
Holst goes to his daughter and takes her by the arm. It is he who says:
‘Be brave, Frank.’
Sissy doesn’t say another word. She lets herself be taken out, her head turned towards him, her eyes fixed on him with an expression he has never before seen in human eyes.
They haven’t touched, not even with their fingers. They didn’t have to.
They have gone. He can still see them through the window, in the whiteness of the courtyard, and Sissy’s face is still turned towards him.
Hurry up! He’s going to cry out! It’s too much! Hurry up!
He can’t stay in one place any more. He walks over to the old man and opens his mouth. He is going to gesticulate, to speak vehemently, but no sound emerges from his throat, and he stands there frozen.
She came. She is here. She is in him. She is his. Holst has blessed them.
By what aberration, by what unprecedented generosity, does fate, after such a gift, the kind it gives to few men, grant him another? Instead of questioning him, as should have happened in all probability, the old man s
tands up and puts on his hat and fur-lined coat – it is the first time he has done this – and Frank is taken back to his room.
He owed it to himself to spend his wedding night without sleeping, and he hasn’t been interrupted.
It’s best that he should no longer feel his fatigue, that he should be calm and self-controlled when he gets up. He is waiting for them, looking at the window over there, but it doesn’t really matter if they come for him before it is opened.
Sissy is in him.
He walks behind the plainclothes man and in front of the soldier. They make him wait, but it doesn’t bother him. It’s the last time. It has to be the last time. No doubt there is a new light in his face, because when the old man raises his head, he is speechless for a moment, then looks at him with anxious curiosity.
‘Sit down.’
‘No.’
This won’t be a seated interrogation, he has decided that.
‘Before anything else, I ask permission to make an important statement.’
He will speak calmly. It will give more weight to his words.
‘I stole the watches and I killed Miss Vilmos, the sister of the watchmaker in my village. I’d already killed one of your officers, on the corner of the alley by the tannery, just to get his revolver, because I wanted a revolver. I’ve done much more shameful things than that; I’ve committed the worst crime in the world, but that’s no concern of yours. I’m not a fanatic, or an agitator, or a patriot. I’m a lowlife. Ever since you started interrogating me, I’ve done my best to play for time, because it was essential to me to have more time. Now it’s over.’
He doesn’t pause for breath. It is as if he is trying to adopt the old man’s icy voice, but at times his voice sounds more like Holst’s.
‘I don’t know anything about the things you’re trying to find out. You have my word on that. Even if I knew something, I wouldn’t tell you. You can question me for as long as you like, I won’t say another word. You can torture me if you want. I’m not afraid of torture. You can also promise to let me live. I don’t want to. I want to die as soon as possible. I’ll let you decide how.
‘Don’t resent me for talking to you like this. I have nothing against you personally. You’ve been doing your job. But I’ve decided to remain silent from now on, and these are the last words I’ll ever say to you.’
They beat him. They took him down three or four times and beat him. The last time, they stripped him naked in the office. The men with moustaches set about their work without emotion and without spite. No doubt following orders, they kneed him hard in his private parts, and he turned red because for a moment he thought of Kromer and Sissy.
The Snow Was Dirty Page 22
