Dirty Snow (17 page)

“You will kindly follow me.”

That was all. He showed Frank something he was holding in the palm of his hand, a cellophane-covered card with a photograph and seals. What kind of card? Frank had no idea.

Very calm, a bit stiffly, Frank said, “Okay.”

“Hand it over.”

He hadn't time to wonder what he was meant to give him. The man had already plunged his hand into the correct pocket and appropriated the automatic, which he slipped into his overcoat.

If people were watching—Frank didn't know if they were —they couldn't have understood what was going on.

There wasn't a car waiting at the curb. They walked side by side toward the streetcar stop and waited for the streetcar like anybody else, not even looking at each other.

I
T WAS
the eighteenth day. He was holding out. He would keep on holding out. He had discovered that everything depended on holding out, and that if he did he would get the better of them. Was it really a question of getting the better of them? That was another problem he would have to solve eventually. He had thought a great deal—too much. Thinking, too, was dangerous. He must stick to a strict discipline. When he thought he'd get the better of them, it simply meant that he'd get out. And the term “get out” wasn't limited to the place he was in now.

It was amazing how, outside, words were used without anyone paying any attention to what they meant. He certainly wasn't well educated, but then there were lots like him—in fact, most poeple were like him—and now he realized that he had always been satisfied with words that were just approximations.

This question of the meaning of words had lasted him two days. Maybe it would come back to him later.

In any case, it was the eighteenth day, that was an absolute certainty. He made sure this certainty was absolute. He had chosen an almost untouched piece of wall where he scratched a line with his thumbnail every morning. It was harder than you'd think. Not to draw the line, even though the nail was already worn down. But to draw only one. To be sure you had drawn it. The wall was covered with plaster, which made the operation easier. But it hadn't been easy to find a clean spot, because of all the others who'd been there before him.

And it was impossible to be too careful—this was another of his discoveries—because here you tended to doubt, and he realized that anyone who doubted was lost.

He would solve the problem all alone, provided he observed his rules and kept from dreaming. You became very strict about certain matters. For example, the last morning he had spent outside, he hadn't known the date. He'd known it without knowing it. He wasn't sure. The result was, though he knew for certain he had spent eighteen days here, he couldn't swear to the exact date of his arrival.

That was how you lived.

Today was probably the seventh of January. Maybe the eighth. Before that he lacked clear points of reference. As to the time he had been here, there were his scratches.

If he held out, if he didn't let himself go, if he concentrated enough—without, however, concentrating too hard—it wouldn't be long before he understood, and everything would be over. That reminded him of a dream he'd had several times. There were many dreams, but the one that mattered most was the flying one. He would rise into the air. Not outside, in a garden or on the street, but always in a room, always in the presence of witnesses who didn't know how to fly. He would say to them, “Look how easy it is!”

He would put his two hands flat against the air and press. The takeoff was slow and painful. He had to use a lot of will-power. Once in the air, he had only to move slightly to make it happen, sometimes with his hands, sometimes with his feet. His head almost touched the ceiling. He never understood why the others were so amazed. He would smile at them condescendingly.

“I'm telling you, it's easy! It's simply a question of wanting to!”

Well, here it was the same thing, and if he only wanted to badly enough, he would understand. Conditions were difficult. He had realized from the first that he'd have to be careful about adjusting.

One little example: his arrival. Those last hours, his last minutes
outside
. Or
before
. He used the two terms interchangeably. He had to preserve the memory of those moments with almost mathematical precision. He did. He guarded them carefully. But it required constant effort. Every day he risked changing certain details, he was tempted to, he would force himself to go over the events again, one by one, to link each image with the one that followed.

Thus it wasn't true that Kamp had come and stood in the doorway, nor had there been a burst of laughter from the regulars inside the little café. He had been on the point of putting that in. He almost believed it. The truth was that he'd seen nobody, absolutely nobody until the streetcar, rattling along as usual, came to a stop in front of them. They hadn't looked at each other to decide whether to get in up front or in back. It was as though the man knew Frank's habits and wanted to please him. They got in front.

Frank had been smoking a cigarette; the other man had about a quarter of a cigar in his mouth. He might have preferred to toss it away and sit inside. Except when he had been little and forced to, Frank had never sat down in a streetcar. For no reason, it made him feel panicky.

The man had stayed with him on the front platform.

After crossing the bridges, the streetcar ran almost the entire length of the Upper Town, ending up in a working-class neighborhood not far from open country. They had passed quite close to some military administration offices, and yet they had stayed on the streetcar. Three blocks farther, he signaled to Frank, and they got off and waited for another streetcar at a yellow sign.

The sky had been dazzling that morning. It seemed that the whole town was glittering, all its windowpanes, all its snow, all its white roofs. Was he misremembering things? There was one detail, at least, that wasn't a delusion. While waiting for the second streetcar, he had dropped his cigarette butt on the snow. Ordinarily, the snow was hard and crusted. The cigarette should have continued burning. But it had gone out, doused by the wetness of the melting snow. If he were less disciplined, he would have said that it had stuck in the snow and sputtered out.

That was the sort of detail he tried to look out for, since it was a point of reference. Without details like that, you could start to think anything at all and believe it.

The second streetcar they took followed a sort of circular boulevard through neighborhoods that were no longer actually in town, but not quite in the suburbs either. Several times, women with shopping bags climbed onto the streetcar for short stretches. Frank helped them once or twice and the man didn't object.

For a moment, Frank had almost wondered if it weren't all some sort of joke. On Kromer's part? Or Timo's? Revenge on the part of Chief Inspector Kurt Hamling?

He'd been right not to show anything. Overall he was pleased with himself, even now that he'd had time to go over the details carefully. Others would have probably asked questions, gotten angry, or even made stupid jokes. He had been simple but dignified, modeling his behavior on that of the man he was with, who must have been a minor official, a mere inspector without special instructions.

They must have ordered him, “Bring us that young man.” Adding, “Be careful. He's armed.”

It was out of habit that he had known right away which pocket Frank carried his pistol in. What Frank was even prouder of, with respect to his own behavior, was that he hadn't nervously smoked one cigarette after another. When he threw one away, he would say to himself, “Not another one for two more stops.”

They got out of the streetcar in a bright, newly built district that people in town would barely have known about, where the bricks were still pink and the paint fresh. Just opposite the stop was a group of large buildings with a courtyard in front, surrounded by a high iron fence.

It was a school. Most likely a high school. There was a sentry box at the gate with a guard in it, but there was nothing sinister about the place. Directly opposite, Frank noticed a little café, the same sort of café as Monsieur Kamp's, but newer.

“We may have to wait a bit. We're ahead of schedule.”

Those were the first words the man had spoken since accosting Frank. He said them guardedly, as though afraid of being proved wrong. It occurred to Frank that ordinarily he never went out so early, and that he had gone out that morning only because there was no more wine in the house.

Did Lotte know yet? And Holst? And Sissy?

He was calm. He had been calm the whole time. Even now, reviewing his actions over and over again, he was satisfied with himself. It wasn't too daunting to enter a school courtyard, even one with a sentry box and guard at its gate.

They headed to the right and up a few steps. The man walked ahead of him to a glass door that he opened, standing aside to let Frank enter first.

It was hard to say what this little building had been before. Maybe the concierge's apartment?. There was a bench, and the room was cut in half by a high desk, like a counter. The woodwork and furniture were painted a light gray. The man went toward an adjoining room, said a few words, came back, and sat down beside Frank.

He didn't look any happier than Frank. On the contrary. He was sad and conscientious. He did his duty without pleasure, maybe even against his principles. He kept his cigar butt, soggy with saliva, in his mouth and it was starting to smell. He made no objection when Frank stamped his cigarette out on the floor and lit another.

He was what Frank called a “nothing,” someone like Kropetzki, born to be pushed around. There must have been more important people in the adjoining room. The door to that room was open, but only the upper half of it was visible since the counter blocked the view. Frank and his companion must have arrived at a slow hour. He had hardly lit his cigarette before he heard the dull sound of a blow against a face, but without any groan after, just the voice of the person who had landed the blow, or someone else, asking: “Well?”

Frank was sorry he couldn't see, but he didn't dare stand up. He waited for the blows that followed one another in quick succession, but only once was a feeble groan exacted from the man they were beating.

“Well, you swine?”

Frank had remained calm. He was sure of that. He had had eighteen days to think about it, and they only had made him more honest with himself.

What stirred in him was curiosity. First he asked himself, “Do they really make you strip naked?”

Very soon, probably, it would be his turn. Why was he suddenly thinking about Minna's belly? Because it was said they hit you in the genitals with their feet or knees. That had made him turn pale. But the man in the next room didn't break. In the intervals of silence you could hear his wheezy breathing.

“You still say it wasn't you?”

A blow. With a little practice, you should to be able to tell what part of the body had been hit.

An avalanche of blows now. Then a dull groan. Then nothing.

Nothing but a few words spoken in a foreign language in a tone of reproach.

Had it all been arranged simply for his benefit? He had to find out. It was hard to believe, of course. He no longer thought like people outside, but he wasn't thinking like his neighbors in the classrooms yet either. He tried to keep his mind clear, to find a balance. He was convinced he would succeed. They wouldn't get him.

Especially if this was only a test
. He couldn't speak like this to Lotte, to Kromer, even to Timo. Frank had come a long way since he had seen them. They hadn't. Their little lives were going on, they continued to think in the same way, they wouldn't make any progress.

He felt like smiling when he remembered what Timo had said about the green card and the different sections.

Was Frank now in one of those sections?

Was it a serious section?

Timo could walk by in the street, see the gate with the guard, and not suspect anything. Things had to be seen from inside, and Frank was inside. But was he actually inside?

He was willing to admit that there was some truth in what Timo said. Timo hadn't known it, he had just been talking, the way people talked outside. The green card existed. If they had created it, it had its importance. If it was important, it was no less important that it shouldn't fall into the wrong hands.

Once, just to become a Freemason, as all functionaries were, you had to go through the ordeal of initiation.

That was what Timo didn't understand, what neither Timo, nor the others, and not even Frank had understood. This thought didn't contribute to his calm—he despised himself all the same—but he liked to contemplate it for a while every day, turning it around, considering it from various angles.

Why, in the office where he had first arrived, hadn't they dealt with him the way they had with his predecessor? Two men had carried him out, one at his head, the other at his feet. He'd had enough, perhaps more than enough. They must have been a bit too quick and too rough. The chief hadn't been pleased. The word he'd uttered in a flat voice, rapping on the table with a letter opener, must have meant, “Next!”

Frank's companion stood up and slipped the end of his cigar into his vest pocket. Frank, too, stood up, very composed.

Had he been confident, at that moment, that in a few minutes he would be free to walk out and take the streetcar in the opposite direction?

He was no longer sure. There were some questions he had asked himself too often, which became more complicated every day. Some he reserved for the morning, others for the afternoon, for sunrise or sunset, for before or after the soup. It was another rule he observed very strictly.

“Come along!”

Had the man told him to come along? Probably not. He hadn't said anything. He had simply motioned to Frank to go around the counter, or else he had gone in front of him to show him the way.