“Was he good-looking, this dentist?”
“I don’t know. I was too young.”
“Did your father try to get her back?”
“I don’t know, Frank. Let’s not talk about Papa.”
“Why?”
“Because!”
“What did he do, before?”
“He wrote books and magazine articles.”
“Books about what?”
“He was an art critic.”
“Did he go to museums?”
“He knew all the museums in the world.”
“And you?”
“A few.”
“Paris?”
“Yes.”
“Rome?”
“Yes. And London, Berlin, Amsterdam, Berne …”
“Did you stay at good hotels?”
“Yes. Why do you ask?”
“What do you do when you’re together, the two of you?”
“Where?”
“At home, when your father has finished driving his streetcar.”
“He reads.”
“And you?”
“He reads aloud. He explains what he reads.”
“What does he read?”
“All kinds of books. Poetry, often.”
“You like that?”
How she wanted to talk about something else! She sensed him stiffen, that he detested her. There was no use in her leaning more heavily on his arm, twining her fingers around his. He pretended not to understand.
“Come on!” he suddenly decided.
“Where are you taking me?”
“Nearby. To Timo’s. You’ll see.”
It wasn’t yet the hour for Timo’s. There was no music. The people you saw there now were making deals with Timo or with one another. There were no women. And the colors of the walls and the lampshades seemed garish. It was like going into a theater in the middle of the day while a rehearsal was going on. It was almost as if such a place couldn’t exist at this time of day.
“Frank …”
“Sit down.”
“I wish you’d taken me to the movies.”
Because of the darkness, right? But that was just what he didn’t want at the moment. Not the sour taste of her saliva. Not running his fingers along her garter.
“He doesn’t mind not seeing anyone?”
It took her a moment to understand that he was still talking about her father.
“No. Why should he mind?”
“I don’t know. Were you rich, before?”
“I think so. I had a governess for a long time.”
“Does it pay well, driving a streetcar?”
She groped for his hand under the table, begging, “Frank!”
Ignoring her, he called out, “Timo! Come here. We’d like something especially good. Appetizers to start with. Then lamb chops with french fries. And you can begin by bringing us a bottle of Hungarian wine, you know the one.”
He leaned toward her. He was going to talk about her father again. The telephone rang. Timo, wiping his hands on his white apron, answered it, looking at Frank.
“Yes … Yes … I can find that … Not too much, no, but not cheap … Who? I haven’t seen him today … But your friend Frank is here …”
He put his hand over the receiver and said to Frank, “It’s Kromer. Do you want to speak to him?”
Frank got up and went to the telephone.
“Is that you? Did you make out all right? Good … Yes … I’ll get them to you tonight. Where are you now? … At home? You’re dressed? Alone? You’d better drop by our friend Timo’s … I can’t explain … What? … Something like that … No, not today! You’ll have to be satisfied with just looking … From a distance … No, I tell you! If you make a fool of yourself, you’ll spoil everything …”
When he sat down again, Sissy asked, “Who was that?”
“A friend.”
“Is he coming here?”
“Of course not.”
“I thought you asked him to come.”
“Not now … Tonight.”
“Listen, Frank …”
“What now?”
“I want to go.”
“Why?”
Thick lamb chops with fries were brought to them on a silver dish. It must have been months, years since she had eaten fries, to say nothing of breaded chops trimmed with frilled paper.
“I’m not hungry.”
“Too bad.”
She didn’t dare tell him she was frightened, but he sensed she was.
“What is this place?”
“A restaurant. A bar. A nightclub. It’s anything you like. It’s heaven. It’s Timo’s.”
“Do you come here often?”
“Every day.”
She tried to chew the meat, couldn’t, put down her fork, and sighed as though from weariness. “I love you, Frank.”
“Is that such a catastrophe?”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because you say it with such a tragic air, like it was a catastrophe.”
Looking straight ahead of her, she repeated, “I love you.”
And he wanted to say, Well, I don’t love you.
Then he forgot about it, since Kromer had come in, with his fur-lined coat, his big cigar, his air of being—here as everywhere—the principal actor. Without seeming to recognize Frank, he went to the bar and lifted himself onto one of the stools with a sigh of contentment.
“Who’s that?” Sissy asked.
“What difference does it make?”
Why was she instinctively afraid of Kromer? He looked at them, looked at her, especially at her, through the smoke of his cigar, and when she bent her head over her plate he took the opportunity to wink at Frank.
She started eating mechanically, perhaps out of embarrassment, so as not to meet Kromer’s eyes, and she ate so conscientiously that she left nothing on her plate but the bones. She even ate the fat. She wiped her plate clean with her bread.
“How old is your father?”
“Forty-five. Why?”
“He looks sixty.”
He sensed the tears coming to her eyes, which she tried to hold back. He sensed the anger in her struggling with another sentiment, and her desire to leave without a word, to walk out of the restaurant alone, without looking back. Would she even be able to find the exit?
Kromer, very excited, kept casting glances at Frank that grew more and more significant.
Then Frank gave a little affirmative nod of his head. The agreement was made.
So that was that. Too bad!
“There’s cake with mocha icing.”
“I’m not hungry anymore.”
“Bring two mochas, Timo.”
At that moment, Holst was driving his streetcar. The big headlamps could have been part of him, shining out of his belly, as the car pushed forward, casting a puddle of light on the snow and on the two gleaming black tracks ahead. His little tin lunch box was there near the controls. Perhaps he took an occasional bite out of his sandwich, chewing slowly, his feet in the felt boots tied around his legs with string.
“Eat.”
“You really believe you love me?”
“How can you ask such a question?”
“If I asked you to go away with me, would you do it?”
She looked straight into his eyes. He had taken her home and now they were in her apartment. She was still wearing her hat and coat. The old man next door must be listening behind the transom. He would come. They didn’t have much time.
“Would you like to go away, Frank?”
He shook his head, no.
“If I asked you to sleep with me?”
He had intentionally used an expression that would shock her.
She still looked at him steadily. It was as though she wanted him to see down to the very depths of her blue eyes.
“You want to?” she said slowly.
“Not today.”
“Anytime you want.”
“Why do you lo
ve me?”
“I don’t know.” There was a catch in her voice, and her glance wavered. What had she been about to reply? There had been different words on the tip of her tongue.
He wanted to know, yet he was afraid to insist. He was a little scared of what she might say. Maybe he was wrong. He would have sworn—it was stupid, since there was nothing to make him think so—he would have sworn that she had been on the point of saying, “Because you’re unhappy.”
And it wasn’t true. He wouldn’t let her or anyone think that. Besides, why should she care?
Their neighbor had stirred. They could hear him breathing outside the door. He hesitated, then knocked.
“Excuse me, Mademoiselle Sissy. It’s me again …”
She couldn’t help smiling. Frank left, growling a vague good night. He didn’t go to his apartment. Instead he went down the stairs two at a time and headed toward Timo’s.
“Tonight?” asked Kromer, his mouth watering.
Frank gave him a stony look.
“No.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
“Have you changed your mind?”
“No.” He ordered a drink, but he wasn’t thirsty.
“When?”
“Before Sunday night, in any case, because Monday her father’s on the morning shift and he’ll be home in the late afternoon.”
“Have you spoken to her about it?”
“She doesn’t need to know.”
“I don’t understand.” Kromer was a little uneasy.
“You want … ?”
“Of course not. But I have an idea. I’ll explain when the time comes.”
His eyes had narrowed. His head ached. His skin was clammy, and every now and then he shivered, like someone coming down with the flu.
“Have you got the green card?”
“You’ll have to come to the department with me tomorrow to get it.”
And then the conversation turned to watches.
What possessed him later on, a little before midnight, to loiter around in the street just to see Holst come home?
He had no intention of sleeping at Lotte’s. Without letting her know, he went to Kromer’s, where he sank down on the couch.
PART TWO:
Sissy's Father
1
MINNA was ill. They had put her on the cot usually reserved for Frank, and they shifted her from place to place, depending on the time of day, because there wasn’t much room for a sick person in the house. They couldn’t very well let her go home to her parents in the state she was in, and they couldn’t call a doctor.
“It was that Otto again!” Lotte told her son.
His real name was Schonberg. And his first name wasn’t Otto. Almost all the clients had a nickname, especially if they were very well known, like Schonberg. He was a grandfather. Thousands of families depended on him, and people bowed in fear to him on the street.
“He always promises me to be careful, and then he goes and does it again.”
Minna was there with her red rubber hot-water bottle, being pushed from room to room, spending most of her time in the kitchen, looking ashamed, as though it was all her fault.
Then there was the matter of the green card, which had involved a lot of running back and forth, since at the last moment quantities of documents were needed and five photographs instead of the three Frank had taken with him.
“Why is your name Friedmaier, like your mother’s? You should use your father’s name.”
The redheaded official with coarse orange skin seemed to think that was suspicious. He, too, was afraid of responsibility. Kromer had to telephone the general from the poor man’s own office.
Frank got his card at last, but it had taken hours. He still looked feverish, but he wasn’t running a temperature. Lotte kept glancing at him surreptitiously. She wondered why he had become so animated all of a sudden.
“You’d better rest in bed for a day or two.”
He had also found a girl to take Minna’s place on Saturday, the busiest day of the week at Lotte’s. He knew where to go. He knew several places.
All that had taken time. He had been constantly busy and yet, during those two days, time had seemed to drag.
There was still the dirty snow, piles of it that looked like they were rotting, stained black, peppered with garbage. The white powder that loosed itself from the sky in small handfuls, like plaster falling from a ceiling, never managed to cover up the filth.
He had gone to the movies with Sissy again. By that time everything had been decided, all arrangements made between him and Kromer. Sissy, of course, knew nothing.
The same day he had asked his mother, “Are you going out on Sunday?”
“Probably. Why?”
She went out every Sunday. She went to the movies, then to eat pastry and listen to music.
“Will Bertha be going to her parents’?”
The house was usually closed on Sundays. Bertha would go see her parents, who lived in the country and thought she worked as a housemaid for a nice family.
Only Minna would be in the apartment. Nothing could be done about that.
As soon as they were seated at the movies—it was Friday—Sissy had asked, like a little girl begging for something, “Is it all right if I do this?”
She shifted in her seat a little, pushed Frank’s arm out of the way, took off her hat, and buried her head in the hollow of his shoulder.
She almost purred, there was such an innocent satisfaction in her first little sigh.
“You’re not uncomfortable? I’m not bothering you?”
He said nothing. Maybe she kept her eyes closed the whole time while he, this time, watched the film.
He hadn’t touched her that afternoon. The idea of kissing her troubled him. She had suddenly pressed her lips against his, just once, a little before they reached their building. Then, just as she was leaving, when they were a step apart, she said very quickly, “Thank you, Frank.”
It was too late. Everything had in a way already begun. On Saturday the military police had come to search the apartment of the violinist and his mother. Frank had just stepped out when they arrived. When he came home, he could sense even from outside that there was something wrong with the building, though exactly what he couldn’t tell. At the entrance a plainclothesman was talking to the concierge, who was trying to act natural.
When Frank reached the first landing—he had gone out to telephone Kromer—he found several men in uniform, three or four of them, who were keeping the housewives from going up to their apartments while preventing the other tenants from leaving.
Everyone was silent. It was deathly quiet. Other uniforms could be seen in the hall. The violinist’s door was open—had they brought him back to be present at the search? There were noises of furniture being smashed and, at times, an old woman’s pleading voice, beyond tears.
Frank had calmly taken out his green card, which he hadn’t used yet, and everyone saw it, everyone knew what it meant. The soldiers stood back to let him pass. The silence behind him had grown even more oppressive.
He had done it on purpose. And the day before, he had brought Minna a dressing gown. He hadn’t bought it in a shop; it was a long time since the shops had had any quilted satin dressing gowns. In any case, he couldn’t be bothered to actually go into a shop.
His pockets had been stuffed with the money—he didn’t know what to do with it all—that he had received as his share for the watches, enough large bills to feed an ordinary family, even two or three families, for years. At Timo’s, as often happened, someone had been unpacking merchandise in one corner, and Frank had bought the dressing gown.
He half-believed he was buying it for Sissy. Not exactly, of course, since everything had been decided down to the smallest detail already. It was something he couldn’t explain. He would give it to Minna, that was understood, but it wouldn’t stop him from thinking about Sissy. Lotte would be furious. She would
insist it looked like they were apologizing to Minna for her accident with that brute Otto.
It was the first time he had ever bought anything for a woman, something personal, and, crazy or not, the fact remained that he had Sissy partially in mind.
There was all that. Then there had been the replacement for Saturday—she had arrived already and was ill-tempered. What else had happened?
Nothing … Always this touch of a cold lingering, not getting any worse, this persistent headache, a vague discomfort in every part of his body that couldn’t actually be called illness. The sky white as a sheet, whiter and purer than the snow, which looked as though it had hardened and on which there fell only a little icy dust.
Sunday morning he had tried to read. Then he had gone over to the window and stood looking out through the frosted panes at the empty street for so long, remaining so motionless, that Lotte, more and more uneasy about him, had grumbled, “You’d better take your bath while there’s still hot water. Bertha is waiting her turn. If she goes first, the water will be lukewarm.”
Since the rooms wouldn’t be used that day, Lotte wanted to install Minna in the bed in the little room, so she was surprised when her son said brusquely, “No. Put her in the big bedroom.”
Lotte sensed something. She knew he was expecting someone. She must have guessed it was Sissy. That was why she wanted the big bedroom free, thinking it would please him. She gave up.
“Whatever you want! You’re planning on staying in?”
“I don’t know. In any case, I’d prefer it if you didn’t come home too early.”
As for Minna, she was idiotically grateful for the dressing gown, which she insisted on wearing in bed that day. She mistook it for a gesture of affection on his part. And for that very reason, before his bath, Frank seized Bertha, pushed her down across the foot of the bed, and took her. As usual in the morning she had nothing on over her big babyish body but a nightgown.
It didn’t last more than three minutes. He did it angrily, as if seeking revenge. His cheek never brushed the girl’s cheek. Their heads never touched. When it was over, he left her without a word.
During all this time an appetizing smell of cooking floated through the apartment. At last everybody was washed and dressed. They ate. Lotte was dressed almost like she used to be when she came to see him in the country; she had barely aged a day. He suspected she had started her so-called nail salon, and given up receiving men herself, for his sake.
Dirty Snow Page 8