Dirty Snow (28 page)

“What names did he use when he introduced you?”

“He didn't mention names.”

“Would you recognize the one in the back?”

“I don't think so.”

“Describe him.”

“He was fairly big and had a mustache.”

He was lying, but he'd gained some time.

“Go on.”

“He was wearing overalls.”

“In the bar?”

“Yes.” They didn't know him. He felt sure of that. He wasn't risking anything, then. “Wait a minute. I think he had a scar.”

“Where?”

He thought of the brass ruler. He improvised: “Across his face … the left cheek … Yes.”

“You are lying, are you not?”

“No.”

“I would be very sorry if you were, because that would prevent me, a priori, from giving the authorization I have been asked for.”

“I swear I don't know him.”

“And the scar?”

“I don't know.”

“The description?”

“Again, I don't know. I'd certainly recognize him if I saw him, but I can't describe him.”

“The bar?”

“That's true.”

“Carl Adler?”

“I really don't know why I didn't tell you his name. I saw him again twice in the street. He didn't recognize me.”

“The radio transmitter?”

“They never mentioned it to me.”

Would he give permission? He anxiously studied the face of the old gentleman, who seemed to take a secret pleasure in being more inscrutable than ever. He rolled a cigarette. Then he began speaking slowly and softly.

“Carl Adler was shot yesterday by another service. He did not talk. It is necessary for us to find his accomplices.”

Suddenly Frank flushed. Were they going to make him the kind of offer Lotte had accepted?

He knew nothing, it was true. They would end up convinced of that. But he might know. They would use him to try to find out.

He found it hard to breathe. He didn't know where to look. Once again, he was ashamed. What would he do if they asked him outright, if they made him a deal? What would Holst do?

He closed his eyes and stiffened. It was too easy. He shouldn't count on it. It would never happen. He wasn't crying. He wouldn't start crying in a moment like this.

He waited. The old gentleman must be playing with his scraps of paper. Why didn't he say something? Nothing could be heard but the purring of the stove. Time passed. Then Frank opened his eyes and saw the acolyte standing next to him, waiting to take him back. The soldier was already at the door.

It was over. Perhaps for a little while—until tomorrow.

They didn't nod at each other. No one here ever nodded at anyone. It must have been one of the local customs. It lent the building an impression of emptiness.

It was very cold outside, much colder than it had been over the last few days. The sky was as bright as polished steel. The crests of the roofs seemed sharper than usual.

Tomorrow morning there would be frost flowers on the windowpanes.

I
T WAS
funny. He had spent the greater part of his life—it wasn't an exaggeration—hating destiny with an almost personal hatred, to the point of looking for it everywhere, wanting to defy it, to wrestle with it.

And here, when he wasn't even thinking about it, destiny gave him a gift.

There was no other way to put it. Of course the old gentleman, cold-blooded fish that he was, might have had a moment of weakness and felt some pity. Or it could have been a tactical error on his part, but that wasn't very likely, since he never made mistakes. But probably it had happened on another level entirely, in that
very high
section to which Holst had addressed his request, and where someone who knew nothing at all about the whole matter had attached a note to the request meaning “yes.”

Holst was downstairs! Holst was in the little room by the stove, and with him, a little behind him, was Sissy.

They were both there.

Frank hadn't been warned. They had come to collect him as if for further interrogation. In the five days or so since his mother and Minna had been there, he had been interrogated twelve, maybe fifteen times. He was almost at the end of his rope. He was so weak that his mind wandered.

Holst was there. Frank stopped short and looked at him. He had seen Sissy, too, but he continued to stare at Holst, and his feet wouldn't stir, his body wouldn't stir. The marvelous thing was that Holst didn't even dream of opening his mouth.

To say what?

He seemed to understand the question in Frank's eyes. As though in answer, he pushed Sissy forward a little.

The old gentleman must have been presiding at his pulpit. The two acolytes were standing at their posts, he was sure of that. There was the stove, the window, the courtyard, the guard near the sentry box.

In fact, there was nothing at all: just Sissy in a black coat that made her look very thin, wearing a black beret that didn't completely hide her fair hair. She looked at him. She didn't want to cry like Lotte. She wasn't overcome by pity like Minna. Perhaps she didn't even notice his two missing teeth, his unkempt beard or rumpled clothes.

She didn't come any closer. Neither of them dared to come closer. And if they had dared, would they have done it? He wasn't sure.

She started to open her mouth. She was about to speak. Finally she said—exactly as he had known she would— “Frank …”

She wanted to say something else and he was afraid.

“I came to tell you …”

He was embarrassed. “I know,” he murmured.

He thought she was going to say, he was afraid she was going to say: “… I'm not angry with you.” Or perhaps: “… I forgive you.”

But that wasn't what she said. She kept looking at him, and it seemed impossible that two people ever looked at each other so intensely ever before. She simply said, “I came to tell you I love you.”

She was holding her little black bag in her hand. Everything was happening as it had in his dream, except that the old gentleman had just meticulously rolled a cigarette and was licking the paper with the tip of his tongue.

Frank didn't answer. He didn't have the right to. He had nothing to say. He looked over at Holst. Holst wasn't wearing the gray felt boots he always wore on the streetcar. He had shoes on like everybody else. He was dressed in gray. His cap was in his hand.

Frank was afraid to stir. He felt his lips move, but he wasn't trying to speak. He was nervous—maybe, he didn't know. Then Holst stepped forward, without paying any attention to the old gentleman and the two mustachioed acolytes, and he laid his hand on Frank's shoulder exactly as Frank had always known a father would.

Did Holst think that explanations were necessary? Was he afraid Frank hadn't understood? Did he still have doubts?

The hand lay on Frank's shoulder and as Holst began to recite—he really seemed to be reciting, in a voice that was both solemn and without expression; it was reminiscent of certain ceremonies during Holy Week. “I had a son, a boy who was a little older than you. He wanted to be a doctor. Medicine was his passion. Nothing else mattered to him. When I ran out of money, he decided to continue his studies in spite of everything.

“One day some expensive supplies, mercury, platinum, were found missing from the physics laboratory. Then people began to complain about minor thefts around the university. Finally a student, coming into the cloakroom suddenly, caught my son in the act of stealing a wallet.

“He was twenty-one. As they were taking him to the rector's office, he jumped out of a third-story window.”

Holst gripped his shoulder more tightly.

Frank would have liked to say something. There was one thing he wanted to say above all, but it meant nothing, and Holst might take it the wrong way: he would have liked to have been Holst's son. It would have made him so happy—it would have relieved him of such a burden—to say, “Father!”

Sissy continued to stare at him. He couldn't say whether, like Minna, she'd gotten thinner and paler. It didn't matter. She had come. She'd wanted to come and Holst had agreed. Holst had had taken her by the hand and brought her to Frank.

“You see,” he finished, “it's not an easy job, being a man.”

And he seemed to smile a little as he said these words, as if he was sorry.

“Sissy talks about you to Monsieur Wimmer all day long. I found work in an office, but I get home early.”

He turned toward the window so they could look at each other, just the two of them.

There was no ring. There was no key. There were no prayers. Holst's words had taken their place.

Sissy was there. Holst was there.

They mustn't stay too long. Frank probably wouldn't be able to stand it. That was all he had and all he wanted. It was his lot. He had nothing before and nothing would exist after.

This was his wedding, his own wedding. This was his honeymoon, his life—it had to be lived all at once, taken in a single dose, while the old gentleman went on rummaging among his scraps.

They wouldn't have a window that opened, laundry to hang out to dry, a cradle.

If there had been all that, then perhaps there would have been nothing at all—just Frank raging against destiny. It wasn't whether it lasted that mattered. It just mattered that it was.

“Sissy …”

He didn't know if he had murmured her name or only thought it. His lips moved, but he couldn't prevent them from moving. His hands moved, too, reaching out, though he stopped them just in time. Sissy's hands also moved. She controlled them by clutching at her bag with her fingers.

For her, too, and for Holst, it mustn't go on.

“We'll try to come back,” Holst said.

Frank smiled, still looking at Sissy. He nodded his head, knowing of course it wasn't true, just as Holst knew it wasn't, and as Sissy probably did, too.

“You'll come back, yes.”

That was all. His eyes couldn't take it anymore. He was afraid he'd faint. He hadn't had anything to eat since the day before. He'd hardly slept in a week.

Holst went to his daughter and took her arm. “Be brave, Frank,” he said.

Sissy said nothing. She let herself be led off, head still turned toward him, eyes fixed on his with an expression that he had never seen in human eyes.

They hadn't touched each other, not even their fingers. It hadn't been necessary.

They left. He saw them through the window, against the white background of the courtyard, and Sissy's face was still turned toward him.

Quick! He was going to scream! It was too much! Quick!

He couldn't keep still any longer. He walked toward the old gentleman, opened his mouth. He was going to gesture wildly, say something loud and furious, but the sounds wouldn't emerge. He stood paralyzed.

She had come. She was there. She was in him. His. Holst had given them his blessing.

Destiny had given him a gift, and now, by an absurd aberration, with unheard-of generosity, it handed him another. Instead of interrogating him, which was no doubt what was supposed to take place, the old gentleman got up and went to put on his hat—it had never happened before—and Frank was led back to his room.

He owed it to himself not to sleep on his wedding night, and they didn't disturb him.

It was better that he couldn't feel his exhaustion anymore, that he was so calm when he got up, so sure of everything. He waited for them. He looked at the window across the way, but it hardly mattered if they came before it opened.

Sissy was in him.

Civilian in front, soldier behind, he came along, and though they kept him waiting, he didn't care. It was the last time. It had to be the last. And there must have been a new light in his eyes, because the old gentleman looked up and then paused, taken aback, before studying him uneasily.

“Sit down.”

“No.”

It wasn't going to be a seated session, he had decided that.

“First, I should like to ask permission to make an important statement.”

He would speak slowly. It would give more weight to his words.

“I stole the watches and I killed Mademoiselle Vilmos, the sister of the watchmaker in my village. I had already killed one of your officers, at the corner of the blind alley that leads to the tannery, in order to take his automatic, because I wanted one. I did things that were much more shameful. I committed the worst crime in the world, but that has nothing to do with you. I am not a fanatic, an agitator, or a patriot. I am a piece of shit. Since you began interrogating me I've done everything I could to gain time, because I simply had to have more time. Now it's over.”

He spoke without taking a breath, almost as if trying to imitate the old gentleman's icy voice. At times, though, he sounded more like Holst.

“I know nothing about whatever it is you're investigating. That I swear. But if I did know something, I wouldn't tell. You could interrogate me as long as you wanted, but I wouldn't tell you a word. You can torture me. I'm not afraid of torture. You can promise me my life. I don't want it. I want to die, as soon as possible, in whatever fashion you choose.

“Don't resent my talking to you like this. I have nothing against you personally. You've done your job. As for me, I've decided to stop talking, and these are the last words I'll say to you.”

They beat him. They brought him down two or three times to beat him. The last time, they stripped him naked in the room. Then the men with mustaches went to work, but without excitement and without animosity. They had been ordered, no doubt, to hit him hard, to knee him in the balls, and he had blushed when for an instant he had thought of Kromer and of Sissy.

He had nothing to eat but soup. They had taken away the rest.

It wouldn't be long now. If they didn't hurry, it might happen anyway.

He still hoped they'd take him to the cellar. It was his old obsession with wanting to be treated differently from other people.