Dirty Snow (19 page)

How would you describe the look they had exchanged when Holst was at the window and Frank was waiting for the streetcar?

There was no word for it.

And there wasn't a word for Holst's expression, either. It was a mystery, an enigma. And when you were in Frank's position, you didn't have the right to puzzle over enigmas, even if for the moment it seemed to do you good.

The questions had to be taken up one after another, with determination. You had to force yourself to keep calm, to be lucid, not to let yourself fall into the mentality of a prisoner.

There was this.

That happened.

So-and-so, so-and-so, and so-and-so might have acted like that.

Without overlooking anything, neither the details nor the people.

All day long he kept his coat on, his collar turned up, hat on his head. He spent most of his time sitting on the edge of his bed. They only emptied his bucket once a day and the bucket didn't even have a cover.

Why was it a prisoner who always came to empty it? Why hadn't Frank been taken down to the courtyard for exercise, while three of his neighbors to the left always went?

He didn't want to walk the courtyard. He couldn't see them. He could hear them. He didn't want anything. He didn't complain. He never tried to talk to his guards, who changed almost every day, and he never whined, as others must have done, in the hope of getting a cigarette or even a drag off one from a soldier.

There was this.

There was Frank.

Then there was this and that.

The neighbors from the rue Verte, Kromer, Timo, Bertha, Holst, Sissy, old man Kamp, old Wimmer, others too, including the violinist, Carl Adler, the blond man from the third floor, even Ressl, even Kropetzki. No one must be omitted. He didn't have paper or pencil, but he kept his list up-to-date in his head, tirelessly, with, in the margin, anything that was of interest, no matter how small.

There was Frank …

He wasn't going to let Holst's face, or expression, interfere with the task he'd undertaken.

Sissy was probably better now.

Or dead.

What mattered was the list, thinking, not forgetting anything, while at the same time being careful not to add extra importance to the things that meant nothing.

There was Frank, son of Lotte …

That reminded him of the Bible. He smiled with disdain— it was like a joke. He hadn't come to prison to joke.

Besides, they hadn't put him in a prison, but in a school, and that had to mean something.

T
HE NINETEENTH day
.

They hadn't put him in a prison, but in a school
.

Automatically he picked up where he'd left off the day before. It was an exercise. You got used to it quickly. It started by itself, and then the wheels kept going round, like a watch. You did this and that. You made the same movements at the same times, and, as long as you took some care, your thoughts went on ticking.

There was nothing annoying about the school itself, but if there really were sections, as Timo claimed, Frank was certainly in a serious one, since they shot prisoners almost every day. If they kept on paying no attention to him, or pretending not to, it might become more disturbing.

They hadn't questioned him before and he still wasn't being questioned. They didn't spy on him. If they had been watching all the time he would have noticed. They simply left him alone. They'd done nothing about his clothes, which he'd been wearing for nineteen days. He hadn't been able to wash properly once, since he was never given enough water.

But he wasn't angry at them. As long as it didn't imply contempt, he didn't mind. He hadn't shaved. Other young men his age didn't have real beards, but he had started shaving just for fun when he was very young. Before, he shaved every day. His beard was almost an inch long now. At first it was bristly, but it was starting to feel soft.

In town there was a real prison. Naturally, they'd taken it over, and it must be full. It didn't follow that they put the most interesting cases there.

Nothing proved they were making fun of him. He had come to the conclusion that if the guards never spoke to him it was because they couldn't speak his language. The prisoners who brought him his pitcher of water and emptied his pail also avoided speaking. They could roam freely about the buildings. Some of them were shaved and had their hair cut, which showed that there was a barber in the school. If they didn't take him to the barber, did that mean they'd forgotten about him? Was he being kept in solitary?

Someone was at the bottom of all this, an informer, something of that sort. He reviewed the names and the actions of everyone, studied all the possibilities. It always embarrassed him to sit on his pail with that big window through which everything could be seen from the walkway. Yet he wasn't ashamed of being unshaven anymore, of his dirty underwear and clothes, all wrinkled because he slept in them.

The others went down for exercise at nine o'clock. Probably, they made them go out that early on purpose, so they would feel the cold even more, especially the ones without overcoats. Why didn't they wait until eleven or noon, after the sun had warmed things up a little?

That wasn't his problem, since he never went out. If he had, he would have missed the scene at the window a little later.

The wheels kept going around, his thoughts had started to whir again, which didn't stop him, after nine o'clock, from waiting. It was nothing, less than nothing, in fact. It would have been impossible in a real prison, where they're careful to prevent contact with the outside, even for an instant. It seemed that no one had thought of the window. And it had been careless of them not to take adequate precautions, because it could turn out to be important.

Beyond the assembly hall or gym, on the other side of the courtyard, there seemed to be an empty space, perhaps a street, perhaps a row of low single-family houses like most of the others in this neighborhood. Far away, much farther, rose the back of a building at least four stories high and almost entirely hidden by the gym. Because of the slope of the roof one window was visible, only one, probably on the top floor, suggesting the tenants there were poor.

Every morning, a little before nine-thirty, a woman opened the window. She wore a dressing gown—like Lotte—with a light-colored scarf around her head, while she shook out the rugs and blankets over the emptiness below.

From so far away you couldn't make out her features. But from her brisk movements and from what she was doing, he guessed she had to be young. In spite of the cold, she left the window open for a long time while she came and went, tending to things inside, her cooking or her baby. He knew she had a baby, since the clothes she hung out to dry on the line stretched across the window were always tiny.

Who knows? Maybe she was singing. She must be happy. He was fairly sure she was happy. After she closed the window she would be in her own home, with all the familiar household smells taking possession again.

That day, his nineteenth, he was furious because they came to get him at a quarter past nine, or at least before she had appeared at the window. Ever since his arrival he had been waiting for them to come. He thought about it all day long. And now that it had happened, he was furious because they had disturbed him a quarter of an hour too early.

A civilian, accompanied by a soldier, stopped on the walk-way outside his door. He had a brown mustache. He made Frank think of a school principal. Immediately Frank said to himself it must be one of the two men who had been beating the man ahead of him while he was waiting on the day of his arrival. He was a man who beat prisoners when he was ordered to—beat them calmly, without hate or enthusiasm, just as he might add up columns of figures in an office.

Were they taking Frank down for that? Neither the civilian nor the soldier took the trouble to glance around the room. They said nothing. They simply motioned for him to come. The civilian went ahead and he followed, unthinking, without looking into the other classrooms, though he'd intended to. There were other things to see. It was the hour when the prisoners were taking their exercise in the large courtyard. He saw them from the walkway and also as he came down the stairs outside.

He forgot to observe them closely. Later he could only remember a sort of long, dark snake. They walked single file about a yard or so apart, and formed an almost closed oval, undulating a bit.

If they hit him, what would it mean? That they'd made a mistake, that they suspected him of things he hadn't done—because they couldn't care less about Mademoiselle Vilmos. Strangely, he never even thought about the non-commissioned officer. That seemed to him so minor he felt innocent.

They turned toward—they turned him toward—the little building where he'd been received the first morning, and he went up the same steps. This time they didn't keep him waiting. Without pausing, they took him into the office of the old gentleman, who was at his place behind the desk, and Frank, looking around the room, saw his mother.

His first reaction was to frown, and, before looking again, before speaking, he waited for instructions from the official. He seemed just as indifferent as before. He was busy writing, in a very small hand, and it was Lotte who spoke first. It was a moment or two before her voice sounded natural. It had been too flat, like a voice in a cave.

“You see, Frank, these gentlemen have permitted me to come see you and to bring you a few things. I didn't know where you were.”

The last words were said quickly. They must have set guidelines. There were certain subjects she could broach, others that were forbidden.

Why was he so glum? In truth, he felt uneasy. He didn't trust her. She came from somewhere else. She looked too much like herself. It was awful how much she looked like herself. He recognized the scent of her powder. She had put rouge on her cheeks, the way she always did when she went out. She was wearing her white hat with a tiny veil halfway over her eyes, out of vanity, because of the little wrinkles on her “onionskins,” as she called her eyelids. She must have spent at least half an hour in front of her mirror in the big bedroom. He could see her putting on her kid gloves, fluffing out her hair to either side of her hat.

“I can't stay long.”

They had told her how long she could stay. Why didn't she say so?

“You look well. You don't know how happy I am to see you looking so well.”

That meant: “To see you alive.”

Because she had thought he was dead.

“When did they tell you?”

She answered in a low voice, casting an anxious eye on the old gentleman.

“Yesterday.”

“Who?”

She didn't reply, but said with forced animation, “Guess what, they've let me bring you a few things. First, some clothes. At last, my poor Frank, you'll be able to change.”

This failed to give him the pleasure he would have imagined. Two weeks before, he would have valued it more than anything.

He shocked her. His appearance shocked her. She looked at his rumpled clothes, the collar of his coat turned up to hide his filthy, tieless shirt, his unkempt hair, his nineteen-day-old beard, and his shoes with no laces. She was sorry for him, you could feel that. He didn't need anyone's pity, especially Lotte's. She was sickening, with her makeup and white hat.

Would the old gentleman like a taste of her? Had she tried? She had probably paid special attention to her underthings.

“I put everything in a suitcase. These gentlemen will give it to you.”

He saw her eyes casting about, and he recognized his own suitcase standing against the wall.

“You mustn't, above all, let yourself go …”

Let himself go how?

“Everybody has been very kind. Everything is going well.”

“What's going well?”

He was brusque, almost curt. He didn't like it, but he couldn't seem to help it.

“I've decided to close down the shop.”

She held her handkerchief, rolled into a ball in the palm of her hand. She looked like she was ready to cry.

“Hamling advised me to. You're wrong not to trust him. He's done everything he could.”

“Is Minna still there?”

“She doesn't want to leave me. She sends her best. If I could find an apartment somewhere else, we'd move, but it's practically impossible.”

This time the look Frank gave her was pitiless, almost ferocious. “You'd leave the building?”

“You know how people are. Now that you're not there it's even worse.”

He asked curtly, “Is Sissy dead?”

“Good Lord, no! Why on earth would you say that?”

She glanced at her little gold wristwatch. Time still counted for her. She knew how many minutes were left.

“Does she go out?”

“She doesn't go out. She's … Well, Frank, I really don't know how she is. I think she's depressed. She can't seem to get well.”

“What's the matter?”

“I don't know. I haven't seen her myself. Nobody sees her except her father and Monsieur Wimmer. They say she's neurasthenic.”

“Has Holst gone back to driving his streetcar?”

“No. He works at home.”

“Doing what?”

“I'm not sure. Bookkeeping, I think. The little I know comes from Hamling.”

“He sees them?”

Before, the chief inspector only knew the Holsts by name.

“He's been to see them a few times.”

“Why?”

“Come on, Frank, what do you expect me to say? You ask me questions as though you didn't know the building. I don't see anyone. Anny left. It seems she's being kept by a …”

Here, you didn't have the right to talk about members of the Occupation forces.

“If Minna had left me, too, I don't know what would have become of me.”

“Have you seen any of my friends?”