Dirty Snow (16 page)

Going to Kamp's, for example. There were surely, among the customers of the little café, people from the underground and the patriots' leagues. There must be some, too, in the lines he passed every day, and he knew that his clothes and his shoes alone constituted a provocation.

Twice he had run into Carl Adler, the driver of the little truck that had taken him to the village the night of the Mademoiselle Vilmos business. It was odd: twice in four days, and both times by chance in unexpected places—the first time on the sidewalk opposite the Lido, the other time in a tobacco shop in the Upper Town.

Yet he had never met him before. Or rather, since he didn't know him then, he might have brushed by him a hundred times without noticing.

That's how ideas get into your head.

Was it on purpose, out of caution or a sort of decency, that Adler pretended not to recognize him?

But that didn't matter. Even if it did, if there was treachery behind it, Frank would be delighted. One little detail, however, troubled him. Adler hadn't been alone across from the theater. He had been with a man who lived in their building.

It was someone he had only caught a glimpse of on the stairs. Frank knew he lived on the third floor to the left and had a wife and a little girl. He must have been twenty-eight or thirty. He was thin and unhealthy looking, with a beard that was too blond and too sparse. He didn't work in a factory. In an office, perhaps? No, not that, since Frank ran into him at all hours, and he didn't look like a traveling salesman.

He was probably a technician like Adler, and in that case it was only natural that they should know each other.

One never knew who belonged to the underground or to a patriots' league. They were often the most inoffensive-looking people, and the young blond man, with the wife and little girl, on the third floor was just the kind of tenant you never noticed.

Why should those people want to eliminate him? He hadn't done anything to them. Mostly they killed their own members who betrayed them, and Frank couldn't possibly do that, since he didn't know them. That they despised him he was certain. But, like his mother, he had much more to fear from the animosity of their neighbors, which was based on envy and was only a matter of coal, warm clothes, and food.

And Lotte, too, only worried about the neighborhood. Since the authorities had left him alone so far about the Mademoiselle Vilmos affair, she realized he would never be asked about it. Even Kurt Hamling's attitude, the little remarks he had let fall, implied nothing more than a local danger. Otherwise there would have been no sense in advising Frank to go to the country for a few days or to friends somewhere else in town.

He hadn't succeeded in meeting Holst, as he would have liked, but they had seen each other at a distance. Holst, who must be as familiar with his footstep as Frank was with his, heard him coming in and out ten times a day, and could have accosted him on the landing.

Frank wasn't afraid. It wasn't a question of fear. It was much more subtle than that. It was a game he had invented, like the games he used to make up as a child, which he alone understood. It had usually been in his bed in the morning, while Madame Porse was preparing breakfast, and preferably when it was sunny outside. His eyes closed, he would think, for example, “Fly!”

Then he would half open his eyes, looking at a certain spot on the wallpaper. If there was a fly there, he won.

Now he might have said, “Destiny!”

Because he wanted destiny to pay attention to him, he had done everything to force it to, and he continued to defy it from morning to night. The day before, he had said in an offhand way to Kromer, “Ask your general if there's anything else besides watches that he'd like to have.”

He didn't need the money. Even at the rate he was going, he still had enough for months. There was nothing he needed. He had bought himself another overcoat—even flashier than the one he already had—light beige, of pure camel's hair, a coat like maybe only five others in the whole town. It wasn't quite warm enough for the season, but he wore it out of bravado. Likewise, he always carried his automatic in his pocket, although it was uncomfortably heavy and might one day, in spite of his green card, put him in a bad spot.

He didn't want to be a martyr. He didn't want to be a mere victim. But it did him good to think, as he walked around the neighborhood, especially at night, that a shot might suddenly come out of the shadows.

No one took any notice of him. Even Holst didn't seem to, and yet Frank had done enough to attract his attention.

Sissy must hate him. Anybody else, after what he'd done, would have moved out of the building.

Destiny was lying in ambush somewhere. But where? Instead of waiting for it to appear in its own good time, Frank went out looking for it, poking around everywhere in his search. He was calling out to it just as he had done when he held out the bag with the key at arm's length in the vacant lot. “Here I am. What are you waiting for?”

He didn't have enough enemies so he had to make new ones. Wasn't that why he had slapped Bertha? And now, whenever Minna was even a little affectionate, or slightly attentive, he would say, to wound her, “I hate bellyachers.”

He would bring chocolates to Anny, who never shared them with the others and never thanked him. He liked to look at her. He could have looked at her body for hours, but there was no satisfaction in taking her to bed. It bored her, too. The second time he came to her room, she had sulked, “Again?”

Though her body was a work of art, it was all she had. And it seemed lifeless, without animation. She placed it wherever or however you wanted it, as though to say, “Look at it, touch it, do whatever you want with it, only hurry up.”

Bertha left on Thursday. At three o'clock in the afternoon on Friday, he was on the street when he noticed the tenant from the third floor standing in front of a shop window. Only later did it occur to him that the man had been looking at a display of corsets. It must have been an hour later. Frank had gone with an acquaintance named Kropetzki to eat pastry at Taste's. Ressl, the editor in chief, was there. At Taste's Frank felt at home. It had the refined atmosphere he liked, and he had seldom seen a woman as well dressed, as pedigreed, as the one with Ressl.

Ressl did him the honor of greeting him with a little wave of his hand. Frank and his companion listened to the chamber music—Taste's was one of the few places left in town where you could still hear it after five o'clock in the afternoon. He thought of the violinist, because the one playing was tall and thin.

Had they shot him? People were always in a panic about being shot, but more often than not, one fine day, those who were said to have been killed came home again. Only a few of them spoke of torture. Unless the ones who said nothing were too frightened to talk.

The thought of torture made his heart skip a beat, and yet he wasn't really afraid. Would he be able to hold up under torture? He was sure he would. It was a question he often thought about. He had been familiar with it even before torture became a subject of general concern. When he was little, he had hurt himself for fun, sticking a pin into his skin in front of a mirror and watching for the spasm of pain to cross his face.

They wouldn't torture him. They wouldn't dare. The others used torture, too. At least that was what people said.

Why should they torture him when he had nothing to reveal?

In a few days it would be Christmas. Another sham Christmas. He had never known, except as a small child, anything but sham Christmases. Once, when he was seven or eight years old, he had come to town at this season of the year, when the streets were all lighted up like a ballroom. Men in heavy coats and women in furs hurried through the streets. Merchandise was piled up in the shop windows, which looked like they were about to overflow.

They would put up a little tree in Lotte's salon, as they did every year. It was mostly for the clients. Who would be there? Minna must have a family. Even if the girls never thought about their families during the rest of the year, they remembered them at Christmas. As for Anny, no one knew where she had come from. Maybe she'd stay. She'd probably be happy to stuff herself and then bury her nose in magazines.

Even Kromer was going home, about twenty miles away, for the holidays.

Sissy would still be in her bed. Holst would spend his last pennies, if he had any, or sell some of his books to decorate a tree for her. They would have old Wimmer with them, who had discovered his vocation and become their housemaid.

“What are you thinking about?” his friend asked him.

He gave a start. “Me?”

“I didn't mean the pope.”

“Nothing. Sorry.”

“You looked like you wanted to strangle the musicians.”

He hadn't been looking at the musicians. He had forgotten about them.

“Listen, Frank, I wanted to ask you a favor, but I don't dare.”

“How much?”

“It's not what you think. It's not for me. It's my sister. She's needed an operation for a long time. They told me you have lots of money.”

“What's the matter with your sister?”

And Frank thought ironically that she, at least, hadn't done time at Lotte's.

“It's her eyes. If she isn't operated on she'll go blind.”

Kropetzki was a young man about his own age, but soft and timid, born to be pushed around. There were tears in his eyes already.

“How much do you need?”

“I don't know exactly, but I think if you could lend me …”

Frank handled his roll of bills like a magician. It had become a game.

“If you say thanks, you're a bigger fool than I thought.”

“Frank, I …”

“What did I say? Come on, let's go.”

And then, by chance, there was the blond guy from the third floor only a few steps away again, this time standing in front of a shop window full of dolls. He had a little daughter. Christmas was coming. Maybe it was only natural for him to look at window displays.

What if Frank went up to him and asked him straight out what he wanted, if necessary sticking his green card or automatic under his nose?

Timo's talk had had an effect on him. He kept on walking, then turned to look back. The man wasn't following him. It was Kropetzki who stuck to him, and Frank had a world of trouble shaking him.

If destiny awaited, it wasn't apparent that night, since he was able to have dinner in town, meet Kromer—who was preoccupied, almost distant—have drinks in three different places, and engage in a long conversation with some stranger at a bar, without anything happening.

Between Timo's and his house, passing by the blind alley that led to the tannery, nothing happened either. It would be funny if destiny should choose just that spot to lie in wait. It was the sort of idea you got at three o'clock in the morning when you'd been drinking.

There was a light in Holst's window. Perhaps it was the hour for compresses, or drops, or God knows what. He listened at the door. They had heard his footsteps. Holst knew he was on the landing, and Frank intentionally lingered for some time, his ear glued to the door.

Holst didn't open the door, didn't make a movement.

Idiot!

There was nothing to do but go to bed, and if he hadn't been so tired he would have screwed Anny first, just to annoy her. As for Minna, she disgusted him. She was stupidly in love. She sometimes cried, probably when she thought about him. Maybe she prayed, too. And she was ashamed of her belly.

He went to bed alone. There was a little fire left in the stove and for a long time he lay staring at the red circle where you stuck in the poker.

Idiot!

It was in the morning, when he had a hangover again, that it happened. He had searched for destiny in every corner and it was in none of the places he'd looked.

It was pure chance again: there was no more wine in the house, the two carafes were empty. For several days, Lotte had forgotten to tell him that their stock was exhausted.

He had to go to Timo's. It was better to see him in the morning about things like that. Timo didn't like to sell, even at a stiff price. He insisted that he always lost out that way, that a good bottle was worth more than bad money.

Frank was thirsty. Lotte's hair was in curlers. She had put on a loose smock to do the cleaning with Minna, while Anny didn't even move as they swept around her legs. She was imperturbable as a goddess, plunged not in reverie or contemplation but in one of her magazines, and flicking her cigarette ashes on the floor.

“Don't buy too much at once, Frank.”

Strange. He was on the point of leaving his gun in the apartment, but he didn't—not because of what Timo had said, but because to do so would seem like cheating.

He didn't want to cheat.

He met Monsieur Wimmer coming upstairs with provisions, a shopping bag in which there was a cabbage and some turnips, but Monsieur Wimmer didn't do anything, just went past him without a word.

Idiot!

He remembered stopping on the second landing to light his cigarette—it had tasted rotten, as always after he'd been drinking the night before—and glancing mechanically down the hall to the left. He saw no one. The hall was empty except for a baby carriage at one end. Somewhere a baby was crying.

He was downstairs in the hall and about to pass the concierge's apartment. At that moment the door opened.

He had never thought it would happen like this. To tell the truth, he didn't even realize it was happening.

The concierge was the same as usual, the same face, the same cap. Beside him stood a commonplace-looking man with a vaguely foreign air who was wearing an overcoat that was too long for him.

As Frank went by, the stranger touched the brim of his hat, as though thanking the concierge. He followed Frank out and overtook him before he reached the middle of the sidewalk.