Dirty Snow (6 page)

Sissy closed the damper on the stove. She retraced her steps to get her gloves. The old man didn't move. It looked like he was going to let himself be shut up in the apartment by way of protest. He watched them go down the stairs, and he couldn't have failed to admire the splendid youthfulness of their steps.

“I wonder if he'll tell my father?”

“He won't.”

“I know Papa doesn't like him, but …”

“People never tell.”

He said this with conviction, because it was true: he knew it from experience. Had Holst turned him in? He was tempted to talk to Sissy about it, to show her the automatic that was still in his pocket. He was risking his life carrying a firearm on him, and she didn't suspect a thing. Once in the street, she asked, “What are we going to do?”

There had been one really extraordinary, completely unexpected moment—when he had replied to the old man and she had taken her coat and they had raced past the unhappy old fellow and down the stairs as if they were going to start dancing there and then.

At that moment she might quite naturally have taken his arm. But now they were in the street and the moment was gone. Did Sissy realize what had happened? They didn't know where to go. Luckily, Frank had mentioned the movies. He said, much too seriously, “There's a good movie at the Lido.”

It was across the river. He didn't want to take a streetcar. Not because of her father but because he wouldn't have known how to act. They had to cross over the Old Basin. On the bridge the wind kept them from talking, and he didn't dare take her arm, although she instinctively walked very close to him.

“We never go to the movies.”

“Why not?”

He was sorry he'd asked. Because it cost too much, of course. And thinking of money suddenly troubled him. He would have liked, for example, to take her to a pastry shop. There were still a few where, if they knew you, you could get anything you wanted. He even knew two places where you could dance, and Sissy would no doubt have liked that.

She had probably never danced. She was too young. Before it all began, she had been just a little girl. She had never tasted liqueur or an aperitif.

He was embarrassed. In the Upper Town he took her to the Lido, where the electric lights were already on, like fake daylight.

“Two box seats.”

And it shocked him to say it. Because he came here often. His friends did the same. When you were with a girl, you took a box at the Lido, everybody did. They were very dark, with sides high enough to make it safe to do almost anything you liked. There were several times when he'd procured girls for Lotte that way:

“Do you have a job?”

“The workshop closed last week.”

“Would you like to make a little money?”

Sissy followed him like the others, thrilled to be in the warm theater, to be shown to a box by an usher in uniform wearing a little red cap with the word “Lido” on it in gold letters.

That was going to ruin his mood: she was like all the others. She was acting exactly like all the others. In the dark she turned toward him, smiling because she was happy to be there and because she was grateful, and she said nothing, she hardly even trembled when he put his arm around the back of her chair.

In a bit, that arm would be around her shoulders. She had skinny shoulders. She was waiting for him to kiss her: he knew it, and he did it almost regretfully. She didn't know how to kiss. She kept her mouth half open, and it was all wet, a little sour. At the same time she grabbed his hand and squeezed it hard, and then held on to it as if it belonged to her.

They were all alike. She believed in the picture. She shushed him when he whispered in her ear, because she was trying to understand the movie, having missed the first part, and at certain moments her fingers tightened around his because of what was happening on the screen.

“Sissy …”

“Yes …”

“Look …”

“What?”

“In my hand …”

It was the automatic, shining faintly in the half darkness. She shuddered and glanced around. “Be careful!”

It had produced an effect, but she didn't seem that surprised.

“Is it loaded?”

“I think so.”

“Have you used it?”

He hesitated. He told the truth.

“Not yet.”

Then he seized the occasion to put his hand on her knee, to lift her skirt a little.

Again she didn't object, just like the others. And then suddenly he was gripped by dumb anger—with her, with himself, with Holst. Yes, with Holst, too, though it would have been difficult for him to say why.

“Frank!”

She had said his name. So she knew it. She said it again, on purpose, when she tried to push his hand away.

Now he felt nothing. No, he was furious. Images were dancing before his eyes, enormous faces appeared on the screen and disappeared, black and white, voices, music. What he wanted to know, what he had to find out no matter what she did, was whether she was a virgin, because there was still that to cling to.

That forced him to kiss her, and each time he kissed her she let herself go, she softened, and he gained ground on her bare thigh, where a hand feebly pushed at his, which was groping along the rough groove of her stocking.

He had to find out. Because if she wasn't a virgin, Holst would lose all meaning, all value in Frank's eyes. He would be ridiculous. Frank, too. Whatever had possessed him to have anything to do with either of them?

Her skin must be very white, like Minna's. Chicken skin, as Lotte said. Chicken thighs. Was Minna, at this moment, stark naked in the bedroom, standing in front of a gentleman she had never seen before?

It was warm. His hand crept on. She hadn't the strength to resist forever, and when she lost ground, her fingers would squeeze Frank's gently, like a prayer.

She put her lips close to his ear and stammered, “Frank …”

And in the way that she pronounced that word, which he hadn't even had to teach her, she admitted she was beaten.

He would have thought it would take weeks at best, and already he was almost there. It was only a question of inches; the skin grew smoother, warmer, moist.

She was a virgin, and he suddenly stopped. But he felt no pity. He was unmoved.

She was like all the others!

He told himself it wasn't Sissy who interested him, but her father, and it was preposterous to think of Holst while he had his hand where it was.

“You hurt me.”

“Pardon me,” he said politely.

And suddenly he became formal again, while, in the darkness, Sissy's face must be full of disappointment. If she could have seen him it would have been worse. When he was formal, he was terrible, calm, cold, absent—no one knew how to handle him. At such moments even Lotte was afraid of him.

“At least get mad!” she would say, exasperated. “Go on, yell, hit me, do something, anything!”

Too bad for Sissy. She no longer interested him. Several times lately he had caught himself thinking of those couples walking down the streets, thigh pressed to thigh, of their warm, interminable kisses at every corner. He had sincerely thought that it might be exciting. One detail, among others, had always intrigued him—the steam issuing from the lips of two people, under a streetlight, as they drew close to each other to kiss.

“How about a bite to eat?”

All she could do was follow. Besides, she'd be happy to have some pastry.

“We'll go to Taste's.”

“They say it's always full of officers.”

“So?”

She would have to get used to the fact that he wasn't just a young man you exchanged love letters with. He hadn't even let her see the end of the movie. He had dragged her out. And when they were outside the pastry shop with its lighted windows, he saw her glancing at him stealthily, with a curiosity already full of respect.

“It's expensive,” she ventured again.

“So?”

“I'm not dressed to go there.”

He was used to that, too: the too-short, too-tight coats with their sewn-on, hand-me-down fur collars. She would find Taste's full of girls like her. He might have replied that they always showed up there like that, the first time.

“Frank …”

It was one of the few doors that still had a neon light around it, this one a very soft blue. The dimly lit hall was thickly carpeted, but here the lack of light wasn't due to poverty. Instead it conveyed an air of luxury, and the liveried doorman was as well dressed as a general.

“Come on.”

They went upstairs. There was a shining copper strip on each riser, and the lights along the stairway were imitation candles. From behind mysterious curtains a young woman stretched out a hand to take Sissy's coat. And meekly Sissy asked, “Should I?”

Like all the others! Frank was at home. He smiled at the cloakroom girl, gave her his coat, and stopped in front of a mirror to run a comb through his hair.

In her little black wool dress Sissy looked like an orphan. Frank drew back one of the hangings and disclosed a warm, scented room, pulsing with soft music, full of well-dressed women whose complexions vied with the bright braiding of the men's uniforms.

For a moment she felt like crying, and he knew it.

Who cared?

Kromer arrived very late at Timo's, at ten-thirty. Frank had been waiting for him for more than an hour. Kromer had been drinking, which the unnatural tautness of his skin, the brilliance of his eyes, and the violence of his gestures immediately made obvious. He almost knocked over his chair when he sat down. His cigar smelled wonderful. It was even better than the ones he usually smoked, and he always bought the best available.

“I've just had dinner with the commanding general,” he announced in a low voice.

After that he was silent to let the meaning of his words sink in.

“I brought you back your knife.”

“Thanks.”

He took it without looking and dropped it into his pocket. He was too preoccupied with his own doings to think much about Frank. But remembering their conversation yesterday, he asked out of politeness, “Did you use it?”

Frank had returned to Timo's the night before, after it happened, for no other reason than to show Kromer the pistol he had just acquired. He had shown it to Sissy. There were a good many people he would have shown it to willingly, and yet, without quite knowing why, he answered, “I didn't get the chance.”

“Perhaps that's just as well. Tell me—you don't know where I could find some watches, do you?”

No matter what Kromer talked about, he always seemed to be discussing important and mysterious matters. He was the same way with everyone he knew, the people with whom he ate and drank. He seldom mentioned names. He would whisper, “Someone very high up. You understand, very, very high up …”

“What kind of watches?” Frank asked.

“Old ones, preferably. Piles of them. Watches by the shovelful. You don't get it, huh?”

Frank drank a lot, too. Everybody drank a lot. First of all, obviously, because they spent most of their time in places like Timo's. And because good drinks were scarce, hard to find, and fantastically expensive.

Unlike most people, Frank's face never got red, he never spoke in a loud voice, never waved his arms. Instead his face turned paler, his features more pointed, and his lips so thin that they looked like a line drawn by a pen across his face. His eyes would grow small, with a hard, cruel light in them, as though he hated the whole human race.

That was probably true.

He didn't like Kromer and Kromer didn't like him. Kromer, who so easily took on a genial, cordial manner, didn't like anyone, but was ready to humor people who admired him, keeping his pockets full of all sorts of things, rare cigars, cigarette lighters, ties, and silk handkerchiefs, that he would offer when least expected.

“Go on, take it!”

Frank would have trusted Timo sooner than Kromer. And he noticed that Timo didn't place too much confidence in Kromer, either.

Kromer did a lot of trafficking, of course. Some of his deals got talked about, and he filled you in on the details because he needed you, and in that case he would hand over a very fair share of the profits. He had lots of connections among the Occupation forces. That, too, was profitable.

Exactly how far did he go? How far would he be capable of going if he had to, if his interests were at stake?

No, Frank wouldn't mention the automatic. He preferred to discuss watches, because the word had awakened memories in him.

“It's for the person I just mentioned, the general. Do you know what he was just ten years ago? A worker in a lamp factory. He's forty now and a general. We drank four bottles of champagne between us. Right away he began talking about his watches. He collects them. He's crazy about them. He claims he has several hundred. ‘In a town like yours,' he said to me, ‘where there have always been a lot of rich bourgeois, officials, people with independent incomes, there must be piles of old watches. You know the kind,' he said, ‘made of silver or gold with one or more cases. Some of them strike the hour. Some of them even have little people that move around … '”

While Kromer was talking, Frank was thinking of old Vilmos's watches; he could see old Vilmos again in that room, always dimly lit, where the sunlight trickled in through the closed blinds, winding up the watches one by one, putting them to Frank's ear, making them strike, making the tiny automata move.

“We could get anything we wanted out of him,” sighed Kromer, “considering his position, you understand … It's his passion. He practically drools over them. Somewhere he read that the king of Egypt has the finest collection of watches in the world, and now he'd give anything for his country to declare war on Egypt.”

“Fifty-fifty?” Frank asked bluntly.

“You know where to find watches?”

“Fifty-fifty?”