Dirty Snow (5 page)

Did Hamling despise them, his mother and him? Not because of the girls—that was no concern of his. But because of everything else, their coal, their being in with so many people, and because of the officers who frequented the house.

Suppose Kurt Hamling wanted to make trouble for Lotte, what could happen? Lotte would go see some people she knew in the military police, or else Frank would speak to Kromer, who had influence.

In the end the chief inspector would be summoned and ordered to keep quiet.

That was why Lotte wasn't really frightened. Did Hamling know that?

He was sitting in her apartment, warming himself at her fire, drinking her brandy.

What about Holst?

It was easy to tell what most of the tenants thought. They detested and despised Frank and his mother. Their lips curled angrily when they went by.

For some, it was just because Lotte had coal and more than enough to eat. Perhaps they would do the same if they could. For others, especially women of a certain age and fathers with families, it was because of the nature of Lotte's business.

But other cases were different. Frank knew it and felt it. They were the ones who never betrayed what they thought. They never looked at either of them, pretended to ignore their existence.

Was Holst one of them? Was he, like the young man with the violin, a member of the underground?

It wasn't likely. Frank had believed it for a moment because of his calm, his apparent serenity. And also because he wasn't a real streetcar conductor, because he seemed to be an intellectual—perhaps a professor who had been dismissed due to his opinions. Or had he left his post voluntarily because he was unwilling to teach against his convictions?

Outside his hours at work he never left the building, except to stand in lines. No one came to see them.

Did he already know the violinist had been arrested? He would hear about it. The concierge, who knew, would tell all the tenants except Lotte and her son.

Meanwhile, Hamling continued to sit there without saying a word, thoughtfully chewing on his cigar and exhaling little puffs of smoke.

Even if he knew or suspected something, what difference did it make to Frank? He wouldn't dare say anything.

What did count was Gerhardt Holst, who must have returned from his shopping by now and was holed up with Sissy in the apartment across the hall.

They probably had some vegetables, turnips of course, and perhaps a tiny piece of rancid bacon, the kind that was rationed out from time to time.

They saw no one and spoke to no one. What could they have to say to each other, the two of them?

Sissy was always looking out for Frank, parting the curtains to watch him walk away down the street or opening the door a crack when she heard him whistling on the stairs.

Hamling sighed and stood up.

“Another little drink?”

“Thank you. I have to go.”

From the kitchen came a tempting odor. He sniffed at it unconsciously as he left, and it floated after him down the hall, perhaps slipping beneath the Holsts' door and into their apartment.

“That old bastard,” Frank said calmly.

F
RANK HAD
come in to avoid waiting in the street, but he hated places like this. Two steps down and then a tiled floor like in a church. There were old beams in the ceiling, wooden paneling on the walls, an ornately carved bar, and massive tables.

He knew the owner by name, Monsieur Kamp, and Monsieur Kamp must have known him, too. He was a bald little man, quiet and polite, who always wore bedroom slippers. He must have been stocky once, but now his paunch was beginning to hang and his pants had grown too big for him. In this kind of place, which obeyed the regulations or at least seemed to do so to anyone passing by, you were lucky if you could get sour beer to drink.

He felt like a trespasser. At Kamp's there were always four or five regulars, the old men of the neighborhood, who smoked their long porcelain or meerschaum pipes and fell silent when you came in. The whole time you were there they kept their mouths shut, smoking their pipes and staring.

Frank was wearing new thick-soled shoes made out of real leather. His overcoat was warm. Any of these old men could have lived for a month, and his family, too, for the price of his fur-lined kid gloves alone.

He was watching for Holst through the little square windowpanes. It was because of Holst that he had left the building, because he wanted to see him face-to-face. Since the streetcar conductor had come home at twelve the night before, and since it was Monday, he would come down at half past two so as to be at his depot by three.

What had the old men been talking about when Frank came in? It made no difference to him. One of them was a shoemaker with a shop a little farther down the street, but for lack of materials he hardly worked anymore. He must have been eyeing Frank's shoes, appraising them, indignant that the young man didn't even bother to wear galoshes over them.

There were places you could go, no doubt about it, and places where you'd better not set foot. Timo's was the place for him. Not this. What would they say about him when he left?

Holst, too, was one of those big men who had shrunk. They were a race apart and you could spot them at a glance. Hamling, for example, was big but solid. Holst, much taller and with shoulders that must once have been broad, was all droopy now. And it wasn't only his clothes that were worn out and hung loose. His skin had also grown too large. It probably hung from his body in folds, just like it did from his face.

From the very onset of the present situation—and he had been barely fifteen at the time—Frank had felt contempt for abject poverty and for those who submitted to it. It amounted to a revulsion, a sort of disgust, even for the girls, thin and pale, who came to his mother's and threw themselves on their food. Some of them would weep with emotion, fill their plates, and then be unable to eat.

The road where the streetcar ran was black and white, and the snow on it was filthier than anywhere else. As far as the eye could see it was transected by the streetcar rails, black and shining, curving together where the two lines met. The sky was low and too bright, with a luminosity more depressing than any uniform gray. That whiteness, glaring, translucent, had something menacing about it, something absolute and eternal. Under it, colors became hard and mean, the brown or the dirty yellow of the houses, for example, or the dark red of the streetcar that seemed to float in the air. And, opposite Kamp's, in front of the tripe seller's, stretched a long ugly line of people waiting, the women in shawls and the little girls with their skinny legs stamping their wooden soles on the pavement, trying to keep warm.

“What do I owe you?”

He paid. The amount was ridiculous. It was really almost too much trouble to unbutton his coat for so little. The prices in these cafés were absurd. Though it was true—you got what you paid for.

Holst was standing on the curb, all gray, with his long shapeless overcoat, his muffler, and those boots of his tied around his ankles with string. In other times, in other countries, people would have stopped to stare at him, decked out like that, with newspapers stuffed under his clothes for warmth, probably, and that tin lunch box he clasped so tightly under his arm. What kind of food could he be carrying in it?

Frank joined him, as if he, too, were waiting for the streetcar. He paced up and down; a dozen times he came face-to-face with Holst and looked him straight in the eye, exhaling puffs of cigarette smoke. If he threw away the butt, would Sissy's father pick it up? Perhaps not in front of him, for the sake of dignity, although in town people often did, people who were neither beggars nor workingmen.

He had never seen Holst smoke. Had he smoked before?

Frank, annoyed, felt like a loud little dog trying to catch his attention. He prowled around the tall gray figure, and the other man, motionless, seemed unaware of his presence.

Yet last night, Holst had seen him in the blind alley. He knew about the death of the noncommissioned officer. He knew, too, it was almost certain—the concierge had drawn the tenants into his apartment one by one—that they had arrested the violinist from the second floor.

Well, then? Why didn't he do something? Frank was almost tempted to speak to him, out of defiance. Perhaps he might have, in the end, saying anything that came into his head, if the dark-red streetcar hadn't arrived at that moment with its usual clatter.

Frank didn't get in. There was nothing to do in town at this hour. He had simply wanted to see Holst, and he had— as much as he wanted to. Holst, who had taken his place on the front platform, turned and leaned out for a moment as the car started. He didn't look at Frank but at the building, at his own window, where you could make out the white blur of a face between the folds of the curtains.

This was the way father and daughter said good-bye. After the streetcar had left, the girl remained at the window because Frank was in the street. And Frank suddenly made a decision. Taking care not to look up, he went back into the building, unhurriedly climbed the three flights, and, a weight in his chest, knocked at the door directly opposite Lotte's.

He wasn't prepared, didn't know what he was going to say. He had simply decided to put his foot in the doorway to keep it from closing, but the door didn't close. Sissy looked at him, surprised, and he was almost as surprised to find himself there. He smiled. He didn't often smile. He was more apt to scowl, looking straight ahead with a hard expression on his face even when he was alone. Or else he assumed an air of such indifference that people were chilled by it.

“And yet, when you smile,” Lotte would say, “there's nothing people wouldn't do for you. You have the same smile you had when you were two years old.”

His smile wasn't intentional; it was because he was embarrassed. Sissy was hard to make out against the light. On a table near the window he noticed some little saucers and some brushes and paint pots.

He entered without speaking because he couldn't help it. He said, no longer looking for an excuse or an explanation for his visit, “You paint?”

“I decorate china. I have to help out my father.”

He had seen saucers, cups, ashtrays, and “artistic” candle-holders like these in some of the shops in town. They were bought mainly as souvenirs by the Occupation soldiers. They had flowers painted on them, or a woman in peasant costume, or a cathedral spire.

Why was she staring at him the whole time? If she didn't look at him, everything would be easier. She was devouring him with her eyes, so innocently that it was embarrassing. It reminded him of the girl this morning, Minna, the new one, who was probably busy at that very moment—the way she kept staring at him with a sort of stupid respect.

“Do you do a lot of work?”

She replied, “The days are long.”

“You never go out?”

“Sometimes.”

“Do you ever go to the movies?”

She blushed. Immediately he seized his chance.

“I'd like to take you to the movies sometime.”

Yet it wasn't Sissy who interested him, he now realized. He looked around, sniffed the air, exactly like Hamling when he had come to see them. The apartment was much smaller than Lotte's. The door led straight into the kitchen, where there was a folding cot against the wall. Was that where her father slept, his feet sticking out at the bottom? Through an open door he glimpsed a bedroom, probably Sissy's—the proof was that she looked embarrassed when she saw him glancing that way.

There was a transom like the one in their kitchen, but because it looked into the neighbor's it had been covered with a piece of cardboard.

They were still standing. She had been too scared to ask him to sit down. For something to do, he offered her his cigarette case.

“Thank you. I don't smoke.”

“You don't like it?”

There was a pipe on the table and a tin box full of cigarette butts. Did she think he didn't understand?

“Try one of these. They're very mild.”

“I know.”

She had recognized the foreign brand. These cigarettes meant more than banknotes, and everybody knew what they were worth.

She gave a start when someone knocked on the door. Frank had the same idea she did. Had Holst come back for some reason or other, perhaps because he'd seen the young man at the streetcar stop?

“Excuse me, Mademoiselle Holst …”

It was an old man Frank had seen before in the hall, a neighbor, the one whose apartment was on the other side of the transom. He eyed Frank with barely disguised contempt, like something the cat had left on the floor. On the other hand he was gently paternal toward Sissy.

“I came to ask if you might have a match.”

“Of course, Monsieur Wimmer.”

But he didn't leave. He stood there, holding his hands over the stove, which was going out. He said, in an offhand way, “We're going to have more snow before long.”

“That's likely.”

“Some people don't have to worry about the cold.”

That was for Frank, but Sissy showed him she was on his side by giving him a little wink.

Monsieur Wimmer was about sixty-five and his face was thickly covered with white bristles.

“We'll certainly have more snow before the end of the week,” he repeated, waiting for Frank to leave.

Then Frank trumped him: “Excuse me, Monsieur Wimmer …”

A minute before Frank hadn't known his name, and the old man stared at him, taken aback.

“Mademoiselle Holst and I were just going out.”

Monsieur Wimmer looked at the young girl, convinced she was going to say it wasn't true.

“We are,” she said, taking down her coat. “We have an errand to run.”

That was one of their best moments. They almost burst out laughing. They were just two children now, playing a prank—and indeed Monsieur Wimmer looked like a retired schoolteacher despite the brass collar-button that could be seen under his Adam's apple. He didn't have a tie to hide it.