Dirty Snow (23 page)

It was a question of tactics. Timo had been right, generally speaking, about some things. Timo didn't know everything, but he had a pretty good idea about the big picture.

Here, they treated him. They took him down to the infirmary several times. The painful thing was that they almost always came for him at the hour of the open window.

Maybe that was why he had recovered quickly.

He thought about it. The morning after his return from the city, he had deliberately not scratched a new line in the plaster to mark the day. For five whole days he left off doing it. Then he started trying to erase the marks he had already made.

From this point on they bothered him. They were the signs that an era was over. He hadn't known then. He thought life was outside. He kept thinking of the time when he would go back.

A funny thing: it was when he scratched his daily line in the plaster that he felt the most despair.

But not now. He'd learned to sleep. He'd learned to flatten his stomach against the boards of his bed and to breathe in the stink of the armpits of his coat.

He had also learned, above all, that you had to hold out as long as possible, and that that depended only on himself. He was holding out. He was holding out so well, he was so proud of it, that if he could have communicated with the outside, he would have written a treatise on how to hold out.

First of all, you had to make your corner, bury yourself deep in your corner. Did that mean anything to people who were free to wander the streets?

For ten days, at least, he was afraid of being called downstairs and finding himself face-to-face with Lotte. She had mentioned wanting to come again. They probably hadn't allowed her to because they didn't want her to see Frank in his present condition. Were they waiting for his face to get back to something like normal?

He liked it better that way. Lotte had come, or at least she had gone to one of their offices. She was doing everything she could. He knew that, since he had received two more packages of salami, salt pork, chocolate, soap, and clothes, just like the first time.

What did they think they'd find in the packages that made them rummage through them like that? Every evening in the room above the gym, a blind was pulled down, a light went on, and he could see nothing but a golden rectangle.

Was the man there, right then? Was there really a man? Probably, because of the child, but maybe he was a prisoner, too, or somewhere beyond the border.

What did he do, when he came home from outside, to absorb the house, the room, the peaceful warmth, the woman, the baby in its cradle, all of it at once? And the smell of cooking, his slippers waiting for him!

Lotte would have to come after all. He would do everything that was necessary. He would be docile for now. He would seem to be giving in.

Because he knew them. They had found out everything they wanted to know. Not the ones in the big building in the city, where officers smoked cigars and offered you cigarettes before hitting you with a brass ruler like a hysterical woman. Those fellows counted for nothing, Frank admitted.

The real ones were like the old gentleman with glasses.

With him, it was a different struggle. In the end, no matter what happened, no matter what the vicissitudes of the contest, it was over for Frank. The old gentleman would win. He couldn't help but win. All Frank could do was keep him from winning too soon. But if he made an effort, if he exercised enormous self-control, he might gain some time.

The old gentleman didn't hit him. And he didn't have others hit him. After two weeks of personal experience, Frank was inclined to conclude that if they had struck someone here the day of his arrival, it was because he deserved it.

The old gentleman didn't hit him and he was generous with his time. He was utterly patient. Apparently he knew nothing about the general and the banknotes, since he never alluded to them at all.

Was it really another section? Were the compartments between the sections airtight? Was there rivalry between them, or something worse? In any case, day after day the old gentleman looked with consternation at the gash on Frank's face.

His contempt was directed not at Frank but at the officer with the light-colored cigar. He never mentioned him. He acted as if he didn't exist. He never said a word outside the interrogations, which, no matter how disconnected or rambling they might appear, were following a terribly straight road.

Here no one offered him cigarettes. No one called him “Friedmaier” or patted him on the shoulder, no one bothered being friendly.

It was another world. In high school, Frank had never understood math. The word itself had always seemed a little mysterious.

Well, here they were using math. It was a world without boundaries, lit by a cold light in which it wasn't men that roamed but entities, names, numbers, signs that changed places and values every day.

The word “math” wasn't quite right. What was the space called where the stars went around? He couldn't recall the word. There were times when he was so tired! Not to mention that such precision didn't mean anything anymore. What counted was to understand, for him to understand.

Kromer, for a time, had figured as a star of the first magnitude. What Frank called “quite a time” was the interval between two interrogations. And nothing about them, not their length, not their rhythm, bore any resemblance to the officer's interrogation.

But Kromer was almost forgotten now, wandering among the anonymous stars, though brought in from time to time. An indifferent gesture would fish him out for a question or two before tossing him back in.

There was the logic of the one side and the logic of the other. The logic of the officer who thought of nothing but the banknotes and the general, maybe, and then the logic of the old gentleman who, you would swear, didn't give a damn about all that, if he even knew.

It all came to the same thing. They wouldn't free a man who knew what he knew.

For the officer, in short, he was already dead.

He had slapped him on the shoulder and Frank hadn't talked.

Dead!

But then the old gentleman showed up, sniffing around, deciding, “Not quite dead, not yet!”

Because even a dead man, even a man three-quarters dead, could be brought to account. And the old gentleman's job was to bring people to account.

What did the banknotes and the general matter, as long as there was
something
?

And there was definitely something, because Frank was there.

It could be Frank, it could be anybody at all. There would always be something.

What mattered, in order to stand up to the old gentleman, was sleep. The old gentleman didn't sleep. He didn't need to sleep. If he dozed off, he could wake himself up like an alarm clock. Every day, at the appointed hour, he found himself just as fit, just as cold, just as lucid as ever.

He was a fish, a man with a fish's blood. Fishes were cold- blooded. This one certainly didn't sniff his armpits, he didn't watch for a figure as small as a doll in a distant window.

He would win. The game was over. He had all the trumps, and in any case he was allowed to cheat. For Frank, it was a long time since there'd been a chance of winning.

And even if he could win, would he want to?

He wasn't sure. Probably not. It was holding out that counted, holding out for a long time, seeing the window each morning, the woman leaning out, the diapers drying in the sun on the line hanging over the void.

What mattered, each day, was to gain another day.

Which was why it was ridiculous now to go on scratching those meaningless marks in the plaster wall.

The point was not to give in, not on principle, not to save anyone, not out of honor, but because one day, without even knowing why, he had decided not to give in.

Did the old gentleman also sleep with one eye open?

A fish's eye, perfectly round, without eyelids, fixed, while Frank deliberately, voluptuously pressed his belly into the earth as he would into a woman.

H
E DIDN'T
blame them. It was their job to use every possible means to break down his resistance. They thought they'd get him by depriving him of sleep. They arranged it so he never had more than a couple of hours at a time, and they hadn't guessed—they had to be kept from guessing—that he'd learned how to sleep, and that they had taught him how.

Since the window across the way was closed, he knew it wouldn't be long before they summoned him. It was never at the same time two days running. Another of their little tricks. Otherwise it would be too easy. For the afternoon sessions, and especially the ones at night, the variation was considerable. For the morning sessions, it was more limited. The prisoners next door had come back from their exercise. They must hate him and think him a traitor. It wasn't only that he didn't listen to or answer their messages: he broke the chain. The messages were transmitted from classroom to classroom, from wall to wall, even if they weren't understood by everyone. There was always a chance they'd reach someone who would find them precious.

It wasn't his fault. He didn't have time. He didn't care. It seemed childish. Those men were interested in the outside, in their lives, in child's play. They were wrong to blame him. He was playing a game that was much more important than theirs, and he had to win it. It would be terrible to leave without having made it through to the very end.

He was asleep. He had gone to sleep as soon as the window closed. He plunged as deeply into sleep as he could, to recover. He could hear footsteps in the classroom next door, moaning in the room to the left, where someone very old or very young spent his whole time doing nothing but moaning.

As always, or almost always, they'd come just before a meal. Frank still had a little salt pork left as well as the last of the salami. In fact, he wondered why they had given him the two packages, since without them he would have been much weaker.

He was almost ready to credit the old gentleman with a certain honesty in the means he employed, a sort of fair play. Did he have a taste for difficult cases? Or did he, because of Frank's age, since he must think of him as just a kid, want to give him a better chance so he wouldn't have to be ashamed of his victory?

As far as dinner went, they played the same trick again today. What day it was didn't matter, since he no longer counted days or weeks. He had other points of reference. Principally he went by the subject of the interrogation, insofar as there was a subject, since the old man took pleasure in mixing everything up.

It was the day after Bertha, four days after the spring cleaning in the room with the open window. That was enough.

Besides, he was expecting it. He had noticed a rhythm, like the ebb and flow of the tides. One day they'd call for him very early; another, late; sometimes it was just before the soup, when the clatter of tin bowls could already be heard on the stairs.

In the beginning, he probably hadn't been able to eat all the soup. It was no good. It was nothing but hot water and some turnips, sometimes a few beans. Once in a while there was grease floating on top, like dishwater, and then you'd be lucky if you found a tiny piece of grayish meat at the bottom.

It shouldn't have mattered to someone who had salami and salt pork. But he liked to sit on the edge of his bed, tin bowl between his knees, feeling the warmth run down his throat to his stomach.

The old gentleman, who was never seen in the courtyard, and of course never on the walkway, must have guessed, since he always called for him just before the soup arrived.

Frank recognized the footsteps in his sleep, two different ones: the footsteps of the man in city shoes and those of a soldier in boots. They were coming for him. Those two always came. You'd think he was the only prisoner they ever questioned. He didn't lose a moment of sleep. He waited until the door opened. Even then he pretended to be snoring to gain a few seconds. They had to shake him. It had become a game, but they must never find that out.

He practically never washed now, just to gain a little more time. Whatever time he had to himself was consecrated to sleep. And what he meant by sleep was infinitely more important than what the rest of the world meant by it. Otherwise there would be no sense in scraping up all the crumbs of time the way he did.

He never smiled at them. They never said good morning. Everything happened without a word, with a grim indifference. He would take off his overcoat and put on his jacket. Downstairs it was very hot. The first few days he had suffered because he had worn his coat. It was better to risk catching cold on the walkway and stairs. His own body warmth ought to last for such a short distance.

He didn't have a mirror, but he felt that his eyelids were red like an insomniac's. They stung and burned. His skin was too tight, too sensitive.

He walked behind the civilian, in front of the soldier, and all the while he slept. He was still sleeping when he entered the little building where they would often make him wait a long time—an hour, perhaps?—on the bench in the first room, even when there was no one with the old gentleman.

He kept working on getting better. It was a habit. There were noises, sometimes voices, and, at regular intervals, the rattle of the streetcar outside. Even children's shouts sometimes reached him, probably when a nearby school was letting out.

The children had a schoolteacher. At college there were professors, and there was always somebody who played the part of the old gentleman. For most grown-ups there was the boss, the head of the office or the factory foreman, or the owner.

Everyone had his old gentleman. He understood that, and it was why he bore him no grudge. He would hear pages being turned in the next room, papers rustling. Then a civilian would stand in the doorway and beckon, like at the doctor's or dentist's, and he would stand up.

Why were there always two civilians in the room? He thought about that. There were several plausible reasons, but they didn't satisfy him. Sometimes it was the ones who had taken him to the city on the day of the brass ruler, sometimes he recognized the one who had come to the rue Verte to arrest him, and sometimes it was others, but there weren't many of them: seven or eight in all, who took turns. They did nothing. They didn't sit at a desk. They never took part in the interrogation, perhaps because they didn't dare. They just stood there looking indifferent.