Dirty Snow (15 page)

Minna tried to make friends with her, but Anny spent all her time reading. As for Bertha, she was increasingly relegated to the role of maid, and she never said a word to the new girl, serving her sullenly, since Anny expected to be waited on. She even got them to help her wash and dry her hair.

Frank was asleep when the argument started. Like every morning, they had pushed his bed—with him in it—into the back room. Much later he heard an outburst of loud voices and recognized Bertha's accent. He had never seen her angry before. And the words she was screaming were not part of her ordinary vocabulary, which was timid and polite.

“I'm fed up with this dump and I'm not going to stay another day. With all this dirty business, soon things are going to go wrong, and I don't want to be here when they do.”

“Bertha!” Lotte said sharply. “Be quiet!”

“You can yell at me as loud as you want, but I wouldn't if I were you. There are enough people in this building who have it in for you already who'd settle your hash if they dared.”

“Bertha, I order you …”

“Order me! Order me! Yesterday at the market a kid no bigger than that spit right in my face yet again, and it wasn't for me, it was for you. I don't know what's keeping me from doing the same thing to you now!”

Would she have done it? Probably not. She was a girl who had kept her resentments bottled up for a long time, but now they were flooding out. She hadn't heard Frank come into the kitchen behind her in his bare feet and pajamas. So she was shocked into silence, while she was glaring at Lotte and threatening to spit in her face, when she got slapped. The slap seemed to come out of nowhere.

When she saw Frank, she set her jaw.

“You snot-nosed brat, why don't you just try that again?” Lotte didn't have time to interfere before two fresh slaps resounded, loud and distinct as at the circus. Suddenly Bertha threw herself at him, purple in the face, grabbing at him any which way, while he tried to hold her off.

“Bertha! Frank!”

Minna had fled into the salon while Anny, smoking a cigarette in a long ivory holder, leaned against the doorjamb, watching.

“A snot-nosed little bastard, that's what you are, a little louse who thinks he can get away with anything because his mother runs a whorehouse! Dirty, filthy things that would make a whore blush … Let me go! Let go of me or I'll yell loud enough to rouse the whole building! You won't get rid of them with your gun or your damn papers once they're after you!”

“Frank!”

He let her go. His cheek, where she had scratched him, was bleeding a little.

“Just wait till they get you cornered, that won't be long. There won't always be foreign soldiers in the country to protect you, you and everyone like you …”

“Come here, Bertha. I'll settle up.”

“I'll come when I'm good and ready! Let's see what you do tomorrow morning with no one to make your coffee and empty your piss pots! And to think that I even brought you pork from my parents!”

“Come here, Bertha.”

She turned toward Frank again, her eyes shining, and spat at him by way of good-bye. “Coward! Dirty little coward! “

And yet it had been Bertha who was the most tender when he slept with her, with a tenderness that was almost motherly.

Bertha probably wouldn't say anything. Yet Lotte was worried. She should have remembered that it wasn't the first time. Dozens of scenes like this had taken place before, none of them with the least consequence. She listened when Bertha went downstairs with her bundle, trying to determine if she was speaking to other tenants or the concierge. It wasn't likely, since Bertha was just as badly thought of as they were. Hadn't the kid spit at her? If anything, it would be easier to take his anger out on her.

She could be seen waiting at the streetcar stop on the corner, perhaps already regretting what she'd done.

Lotte regretted the fallout even more. Though men were never very enthusiastic about Bertha, she still managed to get them off, and besides, the good thing about her was that she did practically all the housework.

Minna would begin doing that now, but she wasn't strong and her insides still hurt. As for Anny, the most you could hope for from her was that she'd make her bed in the morning.

And then there was the shopping, the standing in line, where you inevitably found yourself rubbing elbows with people from the neighborhood, sometimes other tenants in the building.

“You shouldn't have slapped her … Anyway, it's all over now.”

She noticed how pale her son was, the dark circles under his eyes. Frank had never drunk so much. And he had never gone out as often without saying where he was going, his eyes hard, and always with his loaded pistol in his pocket.

“Do you think it's a good idea to walk around with that on you?”

He didn't bother answering or even shrugging his shoulders. He had acquired a new habit that quickly became automatic: he would look at people talking to him as though he didn't see them and hadn't heard a thing.

Not once had he met Holst on the stairs, though he went up and down them five or six times a day, much more than usual. Holst had probably asked the streetcar company for time off in order to nurse his daughter. Frank felt sure that Holst would have to go out, if only to buy medicines and food. But other arrangements had been made. First thing every morning, Monsieur Wimmer knocked on his neighbor's door. He did all the errands. Once, when the door had been left open, Frank caught sight of him in a woman's apron, doing the housework.

The doctor came at around two o'clock every day. Frank contrived to run into him. He was quite a young man, and he looked like an athlete. He didn't seem worried. True, it wasn't his daughter or wife. Could Holst be ill, too? That had occurred to Frank. Then Wednesday, just as he was getting into the streetcar, he happened to glance up at the window and saw him there through the curtains. Their eyes had met across the distance, Frank was sure of it. Nothing would come of it, of course, but Frank was completely shaken by that moment of contact. They remained calm and serious, both of them, without hatred, the only thing between them was something akin to a great void.

His mother would be even more anxious if she knew that every day, sometimes twice a day, he made a point of going to the little café near the streetcar stop, the one where you had to go down two steps. It was practically a provocation, since there was no reason to go. The regulars always stopped talking when he came in and immediately looked away. The owner, Monsieur Kamp, who usually sat with them—they played cards—would get up to serve him with obvious reluctance.

Monday, Frank paid for his drink with a very large bill pulled from his roll.

“I'm sorry,” said Monsieur Kamp, handing it back, “I can't make change for this.”

When he left, Frank put the bill on the bar saying casually, “Keep it.”

On Tuesday he could have sworn the regulars were waiting for him, and he felt something like a cold shiver. It wasn't the first time. One fine day something was bound to happen, exactly when or what he couldn't tell. It could just as well be in this quiet, old-fashioned café. Why had the customers looked at Monsieur Kamp expectantly, with barely concealed smiles?

Monsieur Kamp served Frank without a word. Then, when he was about to pay, Kamp took an envelope that was lying in plain sight on the shelf, between two bottles, and held it out.

Frank could feel the notes and coins. It was change from the big bill he'd left the day before.

He said thank you and left. It didn't stop him from going back.

He almost had a fight with Timo. It was two o'clock in the morning. He had been drinking. He saw, sitting with a woman in a corner of the room, a man whose face he didn't like. Frank, who was standing at the bar, showed Timo his gun and said, “When that guy leaves, I'm going to take him down!”

Timo looked at him stonily, without a hint of friendliness. “You're crazy, right?”

“I'm not crazy. I don't like his face and I'm going to take him down.”

“You'd better watch it or I'll take you down with my fist.”

“What did you say?”

“I said I don't like the way you're acting lately. Go have your fun somewhere else if you want, not here. If you touch that guy I'll have you arrested immediately—that's number one. And from now on you'll leave your little toy somewhere else; if you don't, you won't set foot in here again—that's number two. And now I'll give you some advice. Don't drink so much. It makes you cocky, and at your age that won't do.”

But Timo came over a little later to apologize. This time he talked in earnest.

“I laid it on a bit heavy just now, but it's for your own good. Even your friend Kromer says you're getting dangerous. I don't want to know anything about what you do. But for some time now you've been acting like you think you're a big shot. You think it's smart to flash your roll of bills at anybody who comes along? You think people don't know how that kind of money is made?”

Frank showed him his green card. Timo didn't seem impressed. Embarrassed, rather. He made him put it back in his pocket.

“That, too, it's better not to wave it around too much.”

He returned to the attack a third time. Conversations with Timo took place in snatches, since customers were always calling him from every direction.

“Listen here, my friend. I know you'll think it's envy on my part, but I'm just telling you the way it is. I'm not saying that card's not valuable. Only there's a right way to use it. And then things get more complicated …”

He wasn't anxious to explain.

“Like what?”

“What's the use talking about it? People always end up saying too much. I'm in fine with them. They leave me alone. Some of them bring me merchandise and they've always been straight with me, business-wise. Maybe it's because I see a lot of them, all kinds, but there are other things I can figure out.”

“What?”

“I'll give you an example. About a month ago, over there, at that third table, there was an officer, a colonel, a good-looking guy, still young, in good shape, medals all over his chest. He was with two women, and I don't know what he was telling them—I was busy somewhere else. Anyway they were laughing loudly. And at one point he took his wallet out of his pocket, I guess to pay the check. The women grabbed it and began having fun with it. They were all drunk, the three of them. The women kept passing his papers and photographs back and forth. I was at the bar. And just then I saw a guy get up, someone I hadn't even noticed, just an ordinary-looking guy, a civilian, like anybody you'd see in the street. He wasn't even well dressed. He went over to the table and the colonel looked at him sort of startled, but still trying to smile. The other man said just one word, and I tell you, that officer got right up and stood at attention. He took his wallet from the women. He paid his check. You could see the starch go right out of him. He left the women there, without a word of explanation, and went out with the civilian.”

“What's that got to do with me?” Frank mumbled.

“The next day he was seen at the station, headed for an unknown destination. That's what I mean. Some of them seem powerful, and maybe for the moment they are. But they're never—and don't forget it—as powerful as they pretend, because no matter how powerful they are, there are always others who are more powerful still. And they're the ones you never hear about.

“You work with one department where everybody shakes hands with you and you think you're safe. Only, at the same moment, in another department, there's a paper being drawn up with your name on it.

“If you want to know what I think, well, they have several sections. And no matter how good you're in with one, you shouldn't mess with another one.”

Frank remembered that the next morning, and it bothered him, all the more because he had a hangover. It was getting to be a habit. Every morning he promised himself to be more careful, but then he'd start drinking again because he needed to calm himself.

What struck him was the connection in his mind between Timo's talk and something Lotte had said that he hadn't paid any attention to at the time.

“You can feel that Christmas is coming. The faces are beginning to change.”

That meant her clientele was changing, at least as far as the occupiers were concerned. For her it was always an unpleasant period, since it kept her in a constant state of uneasiness. Every three months, or every six months—it usually happened around the big holidays, but that was probably a coincidence—there were personnel changes, both civil and military. Some went back to their country, others arrived who had different ways and whose characters were still an unknown quantity. Everything had to start all over again. Whenever a new client rang, Lotte believed she had to put on the manicure act again, and she never relaxed until the man pronounced the name of the friend who had sent him.

Without knowing exactly why, Frank didn't want his general to leave. He called him his general, but he didn't know him, in fact had never seen him. It was Kromer who knew him. His passion for watches had something innocent and reassuring about it. Frank was like his mother. He felt more comfortable with people who had a passion. For example, when you knew about Otto's vices, you couldn't be afraid of him. He was someone Frank could probably make use of one day. Otto would pay a good deal to avoid having certain of his peculiarities made known.

The sun had come out and there was a fine frost in the air. The last snowfall hadn't had time to get dirty yet, and in certain areas gangs of unemployed men hired by the city were still busy shoveling the snow into dazzling piles on either side of the walkways.

He had the impression Kromer was avoiding him. True, he was also avoiding Kromer. So what was worrying him? And why say he was worried when he was perfectly calm, when it was he, of his own free will and in full awareness, who was doing everything to bring about his own destruction?