Dirty Snow (20 page)

“No.”

She was disconcerted, disappointed. She must have been excited and happy at first, the way people are when they visit a sick person in the hospital, bringing grapes or oranges, and he hadn't thanked her at all for her good intentions. Instead you would have sworn he blamed her, held her responsible for her own disappointment.

He pointed to a package beside her on the chair. “What's that?”

“Nothing. Things in the suitcase I wasn't allowed to leave.”

“I don't want you to move to another building.”

She sighed impatiently. Didn't he understand that she couldn't say what she wanted to? Yes, he knew. But he didn't care. The other tenants were making life impossible for Lotte? So what. He absolutely forbade her to leave the building. Was it for her or for him to decide? Who counted most?

“Has Holst spoken to you?”

She seem embarrassed when she replied: “Not directly.”

“He sent you a message through Hamling?”

“No, Frank. Why bother about it? It's nothing to worry about. My time is up. If I'm to see you again, I mustn't overdo it the first time. I'd like to kiss you, but I guess I'd better not. They might think you're slipping me a message or whispering something in my ear.”

He didn't want to kiss her anyway. She must have been there for some time before he had come down, since they'd had time to go through the suitcase.

“Don't give up. Take care of yourself. But mostly, don't worry.”

“I'm not worried.”

“You're acting so funny.”

She, too, was eager to for it to be over. She would go wait for her streetcar opposite the gate and snivel all the way back home.

“Good-bye, Frank.”

“Good-bye, Mother.”

“Take care of yourself.”

Of course! Of course! What did she think? That he was going to let himself fall to pieces?

The old gentleman raised his eyes to look from one to the other, then motioned Frank to take the suitcase. A civilian escorted Lotte across the courtyard, and you could hear the sound of her high heels tapping on the hard-packed snow and then fading away. The old gentleman spoke slowly, choosing his words. He insisted on finding just the right term, and was very careful about his pronunciation. He had taken lessons and was still trying to improve.

“You will now go and get yourself ready.”

He enunciated each syllable. He didn't seem to be a bad sort. He just liked things done the right way. He hesitated before launching into a longer sentence, rehearsing it in his mind before he risked speaking out loud.

“If you desire to be shaved, they will take you.”

Frank refused. A mistake. It would have given him a chance to see more of the buildings. He wasn't sure what had made him refuse. He wasn't particularly happy about being dirty or playing the bearded prisoner. The truth was—it would take him days to admit it—that when they mentioned his beard, he had automatically thought of Holst's felt boots.

There was no connection. He didn't want any sort of connection. He wanted to think about something else.

And there was no lack of things to think about now. They let him carry his suitcase. Again, on the way back to his classroom, a civilian went ahead of him and the soldier followed. He almost had the illusion of being escorted to a room in a hotel. They closed the door and left him alone.

Why had he been ordered to get ready? It was an order, no doubt about it. The moment had come. They were taking him somewhere. Would they make him bring his suitcase? Would he come back afterward? They must have removed the newspaper wrapping from the things in the suitcase— everything in it was disordered. There were little cakes of pink soap that reminded him of Bertha's skin, a smoked salami, a largish piece of salt pork, a pound of sugar, chocolate bars. And he found half a dozen shirts and several pairs of socks, as well as a new sweater his mother must have just bought. There was even, at the bottom, a pair of thick woolen gloves he would never think of wearing outside.

He changed clothes. He had missed the woman at the window. He was thinking too fast. Today didn't count. They were rushing him, and that made his mood worse. He even began to regret his solitude and all his little habits. When he came back, if he came back, he had to straighten it all out in his head. He munched on the chocolate without realizing that it had been nineteen days since he had done that, and what lingered after Lotte's visit was a sense of disappointment.

He didn't know how it had happened, but he was disappointed. There had been no point of contact between them. He had asked her questions, and it had seemed to him, it still seemed to him, that what she answered had nothing to do with what he asked.

Yet she had given him all the news as quickly and straightforwardly as possible. She couldn't have been hounded by the authorities because she had only been told where he was the day before. So he hadn't been in the newspaper. The local police had had nothing to do with his case, or she would have heard from Hamling.

Hamling continued to visit the apartment, but he had crossed the landing like someone fording a river. Now he was going to the Holsts'. Why? Holst no longer drove a streetcar. There was a very simple reason for that. Because of his job, Holst had had to come home in the middle of the night every other week, and while he was away Sissy was alone. He must have found some other job that kept him busy only during the day.

Sissy was never alone. He knew well enough how his mother and people like her talked about such things. If she used the word “neurasthenic,” if she seemed embarrassed, it must be a lot more serious than that.

Was Sissy crazy?

He wasn't afraid of words. He made himself say it aloud: “Crazy!”

That was it! With the two men, her father and old Wimmer, taking turns staying with her, and the chief inspector coming from time to time, sitting in a chair in his overcoat and galoshes, which left wet marks on the floor.

They were going to take Frank somewhere. Otherwise there was no sense telling him to get ready. Well, and now he was ready much too soon. There was nothing to do and no use thinking in the meantime. That would only lessen his power to resist. After the chocolate, he gnawed on the salami. It hadn't occurred to his mother that he wouldn't have a knife. And there wasn't any water left to wash his face with. He smelled of smoked meat.

Where were they? Why didn't they come for him? If only they'd take him! And, more than anything, bring him back as soon as possible and leave him alone.

The same civilian as before. In fact, apart from the soldiers, who kept changing all the time, there weren't that many civilians there. And they all bore a kind of family resemblance. If Timo was right, the section to which they belonged must be pretty important. Hadn't Timo told him that the man who had made the colonel shake in his boots looked like a minor functionary?

Here that's what they all looked like. Not one was lighthearted or showy. You couldn't imagine them in front of a really good dinner or chasing girls. From the way they looked, you'd say they were born to add up figures.

Since appearances were the opposite of the truth with these people—according, again, to Timo—they must be truly powerful.

The little office again. The old gentleman wasn't there. Had he gone out for lunch? Frank found his tie and shoelaces on the desk. They pointed to them and said in their terrible accent, “You are permitted!”

He sat down on a chair. He wasn't at all worried now. Had these people known his language a bit better, he would have talked about anything.

Two others were waiting with their hats on. Just before going out, one of them handed him a cigarette and then a match.

“Thank you.”

A car was waiting in the courtyard, not a police van or a military car, but one of those long shiny black cars that rich people who could afford a chauffeur used to own. It glided smoothly and noiselessly out of the gate and turned toward town, following the streetcar tracks. And although the windows were rolled up, the air tasted like the outdoors. He saw people on the sidewalks, shop windows, a little boy hopping on one leg kicking a brick along in front of him.

They hadn't made him take his suitcase. And he wasn't asked to sign anything. He'd come back. He was convinced that he'd come back, that he'd once more see the woman at the window, hanging up baby clothes. Hey! Had he only turned in time, he might have recognized the house. He should remember that on the way back.

It was faster in a car than in the trolley. They were already nearing the center of town. They circled an impressive building that housed most of the military offices. This must be where his general had his. There were guards at all the doors, and the sidewalks were barricaded to prevent civilians from using them.

They didn't stop at the monumental entrance but at a low door on a side street instead, where a police station had once been. They didn't have to tell him to get out. He knew. He lingered for a moment, very briefly, on the sidewalk. He saw people on the other side of the street. He didn't recognize anyone. No one recognized him, no one looked at him. He didn't stop long. That was certainly not permitted.

He went in first. He waited a second for them to lead the way through a labyrinth of dark and intricate corridors with mysterious signs on the doors. Occasionally secretaries, carrying files under their arms, passed by.

They wouldn't torture him here. There were too many stenographers in white blouses. They didn't look at him as they went by. There was nothing dramatic. There were simply offices, lots of offices, where papers piled up and officers and their subordinates smoked cigars while they worked. The mysterious signs on the doors, letters followed by numerals, evidently represented the different departments.

This was another section. Timo had been right. You could feel the difference right away. Was it less or more important? He wasn't able to tell yet. Here, for example, you heard bursts of chatter, whispering, laughter. Well-fed men stuck out their chests and buckled their belts before leaving. Women's breasts could be sensed under their blouses, the softness of their thighs under their skirts. Some of them surely made love on office desks.

Frank behaved differently. He looked around as he would have anywhere, and he was a little embarrassed because of his beard. He carried himself almost as before. He tried to catch a glimpse of himself in a glass door and his hand went instinctively to his tie.

They had arrived. It was almost at the top of the building. The ceilings were lower, the windows smaller, the hallways dusty. They led him into an empty office containing nothing but files and a large unpainted table covered with dirty blotters.

Was he wrong? It seemed that his two companions didn't feel at home, that their expressions had grown distant and at the same time humble, with a touch of irony perhaps, or contempt. They glanced questioningly at each other before one of them knocked on a side door. One man disappeared and returned almost immediately, followed by a fat officer in an unbuttoned tunic.

Standing in the doorway, the officer looked Frank over from head to foot, drawing on his cigar with an air of importance.

He seemed satisfied. At first glance he had appeared surprised to find that Frank was so young.

“Come in!”

He was gruff but hearty, placing his hand on Frank's shoulder as he guided him into the room. The two civilians didn't follow them in, and the officer closed the door. In one corner,

near another door, a younger officer of a lower rank was working under an electric light, since that part of the room was almost dark.

“Friedmaier, isn't it?”

“That's my name.”

The officer glanced at a typewritten sheet of paper that had been prepared for him.

“Frank Friedmaier. Very good. Sit down.”

He motioned to a cane-seated chair on the other side of the desk and pushed forward a box of cigarettes and a lighter. That must be protocol. The cigarettes were there for visitors, since he himself was smoking an extraordinarily light-colored and aromatic cigar.

He leaned back in his armchair, his belly in evidence. He had sparse hair and the complexion of a heavy eater.

“Now then, my friend, what's the story?”

In spite of his accent he had a perfect command of the language, understood all its subtleties, and his familiar tone was intentional.

“I don't know,” Frank replied.

“Ha! Ha!
I don't know!
”

He translated the reply for the benefit of the other officer, who seemed delighted.

“But it is most necessary that you should know, isn't it? You've been given plenty of time to think.”

“To think about what?”

This time the officer frowned, stood up, went over to a cabinet, consulted a file. It was probably just for effect. He sat down again, resumed his former position, and flipped his cigar ash off with his little finger.

“I'm listening.”

“I'd be glad to answer any questions you have.”

“There you are! What questions? I bet you don't know, do you?”

“No.”

“You don't know what you've done?”

“I don't know what I'm accused of having done.”

“There you are! There you are!”

It was a verbal tic with him. He had a funny way of pronouncing the words.

“You'd like to know what we want to know. There you are. Is that it?”

“That's it.”

“Because, maybe, you know other things, too?”

“I don't know anything.”

“Nothing at all! You know nothing at all! And yet this was found in your pocket, wasn't it?”

For a moment Frank expected to see his hand come out of the desk drawer holding the automatic. He turned pale. He felt he was being scrutinized. Reluctantly he followed his questioner's hand with his eyes, and was astonished to recognize the roll of bills he had carried around in his pocket and flashed at every chance.