She didn’t need to be ashamed on his account.
Bertha, who had to make connecting trains, was the first to leave. Then Lotte powdered her face, looked at herself in the mirror, and hung around a while longer for no reason, still anxious.
“I think I’ll have dinner in town.”
“I’d prefer that.”
She kissed him once on each cheek, then a second time on the first cheek, a thing that he detested because it reminded him of his wet-nurse. It was a mania with some people. Mechanically he counted, “Two … three!”
She went out and also waited for the streetcar at the corner. He knew that Minna, troubled about spending the whole day in the double bed in the big bedroom—at night it was Lotte’s—couldn’t keep her mind on the Zola novel he had loaned her.
She was waiting, without quite daring to expect it, for him to come to her, talk to her. She too had heard him knock on the door of the Holsts’ apartment.
She wouldn’t allow herself to be jealous, or at least to show it. She knew she wasn’t a virgin, that she had come to Lotte’s of her own free will, that she had nothing to hope for.
Nevertheless, after an hour, she tried a little ruse. She began by breathing hard, then she let out a little groan and allowed her book to fall to the floor.
“What’s the matter?” he came in to ask.
“It hurts.”
He took the hot-water bottle and filled it in the kitchen, put it back on her belly, and, to show her that he didn’t want to talk, picked up the book and laid it on the quilt beside her.
She didn’t dare call him back. She couldn’t hear him moving around. She wondered what he was doing. He wasn’t reading, since all the doors were open and she would have heard him turning the pages. He wasn’t drinking. He wasn’t sleeping. Only from time to time he would go to the window and stand there for a minute.
She was frightened for him, and she knew that was the best way to repel him. He was old enough to know what he was doing. He was doing what he wanted to do. And he was doing it coldly. Once he had even gone over to the mirror to look at himself furtively, wanting to make sure his face was perfectly composed.
Hadn’t he attracted Holst’s attention, in the blind alley, when it wasn’t necessary, when otherwise there would have been no witness to his act?
And, with the old Vilmos woman, had he used any tricks or ruses?
He wouldn’t accept pity from anyone. Or anything that resembled pity. He never wanted to be the sort of coward who feels pity for himself.
That was what they would never understand, none of them, neither Lotte nor Minna nor Sissy. And in a little while Sissy would be out of the picture.
What had she been thinking, with her head on his shoulder all through the movie? Sometimes she lifted her head a little and asked, “I’m not bothering you, am I?”
His arm had fallen asleep, but nothing could have induced him to admit it.
Kromer wouldn’t understand either. He didn’t understand even now. Deep down Kromer was worried, although he wasn’t going to say so. Worried about everything and nothing. Frank troubled him. Frank had his green card in his pocket and they were barely out of the offices of the military police when Kromer had asked him, “What are you going to do with it?”
And Frank had taken malicious pleasure in replying, “Nothing.”
Kromer didn’t believe him. He tried to guess what Frank was scheming. He was no more reassured about the situation with Sissy.
“You really haven’t touched her?”
“Only enough to know she’s a virgin.”
“That doesn’t do anything for you?” Then Kromer pretended to laugh, adding with a wink, “You’re still too young!”
Kromer had seemed so ill at ease that Frank spent a good part of the afternoon wondering if he would show up. He was excited about Sissy. He must have tossed and turned all night thinking about her. But he was liable to panic at the last moment and go to Leonard’s or somewhere and get drunk instead of keeping the appointment.
“Why didn’t you tell her the truth?”
“Because she wouldn’t have agreed.”
“You think she’s in love with you? That’s what you mean?”
“Maybe.”
“And when she finds out?”
“I guess it will be too late.”
In reality they were all a little bit afraid of Frank because he was willing to do what had to be done.
“What if her father shows up?”
“He can’t leave his streetcar and it runs on Sunday.”
“If the neighbors … ?”
Frank preferred not to mention Monsieur Wimmer, who knew too much and might decide to interfere.
“The neighbors are always out on Sunday. If necessary the sight of my card will shut them up.”
That was true, broadly speaking. But there were fools who had let themselves be arrested for less than that, for the pleasure of shouting an insult in front of their friends at soldiers going by. And they were almost always people like Monsieur Wimmer.
Wimmer hadn’t said anything to Holst so far. Perhaps because he didn’t want to worry him, or because he thought he was clever enough to look out for Sissy himself. Or again, perhaps because he was convinced that she was a good enough girl not to get herself in trouble. Old people were like that. Including the ones who had had a child before they were married. Later on they forgot.
Minna let out another sigh. It was dark now. Frank thoughtfully went in to turn on her light, draw the curtains, and fill her hot-water bottle for the last time.
He would have preferred that she wasn’t there. He didn’t want any witnesses. So what? Wasn’t it better, in fact, that someone should know, someone who would say nothing?
“Is she coming?” Minna asked.
He didn’t reply. If he had picked the back room it was, first of all, because it had a door that opened right into the hall. And you could get to it from the kitchen.
“Is she coming, Frank?”
That was in bad taste. In front of his mother she called him “Monsieur Frank.” It annoyed him that she should be less formal when they were alone, and he replied impatiently, “It’s none of your business.”
She seemed contrite, but then almost immediately she asked, “Will it be her first time?”
No, not that, of all things! No sentimentality, please! He had a horror of girls who felt sorry for other girls who hadn’t gone through the things they had. Was she going to ask him, in another minute, to promise not to hurt Sissy?
Luckily, Kromer rang just then. He had come after all. He was even ten minutes early, which was irritating because Frank didn’t want to talk. Kromer had just had a bath. His skin, too pink, too smooth, smelled like a whore’s.
“Are you alone?”
“No.”
“Your mother?”
“No.” And out loud, on purpose, “There’s a girl in the next room who got her plumbing wrecked by some bastard.”
It wouldn’t have taken much for Kromer to run away, but Frank was careful to shut the door behind him.
“Come in. Don’t be frightened. Take off your coat.”
He noted scornfully that Kromer wasn’t smoking his usual cigar but sucking a mint instead.
“What’ll you have?”
Kromer was afraid of drinking, which might affect his performance.
“Come into the kitchen. That’s where you’ll wait. In our house it’s the holy of holies.”
Frank sniggered like a drunk, and yet the glass of brandy he clinked against Kromer’s was the first drink he’d had today. Happily his companion didn’t know it. He would probably have been really terrified if he did.
“There it is. It’ll happen the way I told you.”
“What if she turns on the light?”
“Have you ever known a girl who wanted the lights on?”
“What if she speaks to me and I don’t answer?”
“She won’t speak.”
Even t
hose ten minutes were long. He followed their slow passage on the face of the alarm clock over the stove.
“Make sure you can find your way in the dark. Follow me. The bed’s to the right there, just as you come in the door.”
“I see.”
Frank had to make him another drink, otherwise Kromer would lose his nerve. And he mustn’t lose his nerve at any cost. Frank had arranged the whole thing like clockwork, with the minute care of a child.
There were things that couldn’t be explained, that it was useless to try to ask someone else to understand. It was absolutely necessary for this to happen. Afterward he would be all right.
“Got it?”
“Yes.”
“To the right, as soon as you go in.”
“Yes.”
“I’ll turn out the light.”
“What about you? Where will you be?”
“Here.”
“You swear you won’t leave?”
And to think that just ten days ago he had regarded Kromer as an older, stronger man, in short, as a man, while he himself was nothing but a child.
“It’s really no big deal,” he said contemptuously, to bolster Kromer’s flagging courage.
“Of course it isn’t, Frank … It’s for your sake. I don’t know the house. I don’t want to …”
“Hush!”
She had come. Like a mouse. And Frank had such keen ears that he heard Minna get up and, barefoot, noiselessly, in her pretty dressing gown, go listen at the door. So from her bed Minna had heard the Holsts’ door open and close. What had made her go look, probably, was that this time there hadn’t been any footsteps going downstairs.
Who knew? Anything was possible. Maybe Minna had seen another door, one that wasn’t quite closed, move a bit, maybe old Wimmer’s. Frank was sure old Wimmer was on the lookout.
But Minna didn’t know that. On second thought, Frank was sure she didn’t, because if she had she would have been so frightened for him that she would have come running to tell him.
Sissy slipped along the hall, her feet hardly touching the uneven floor. She knocked, or rather scratched, at the door of the little bedroom.
He had turned out the light. If they spoke, Kromer could hear from the kitchen.
She said, “I’m here.”
He felt her rigid in his arms.
“You asked me to, Frank.”
“Yes.”
He shut the door behind her, but there was still the one into the kitchen that she couldn’t see because of the darkness. It was ajar.
“You still want to?”
They could see nothing except the dull reflection, through the curtains, of the gaslight on the corner lamppost.
“Yes.”
He didn’t have to undress her. He began to, and she continued on her own, standing beside the bed, not saying a thing.
Perhaps she hated him without being able to keep from loving him. He didn’t know. He didn’t want to know. Kromer could hear them. Frank said, and the words he forced out with such difficulty sounded stupid, “Tomorrow it would have been too late. Your father is on the morning shift.”
She must be naked. She was naked. He could feel the soft heap of her clothes under his feet. She was waiting. Now came the hardest part: laying her down on the bed.
She groped for his hand in the dark. She murmured, and it was the first time her voice uttered his name with that intonation. Fortunately, Kromer was waiting behind the door.
“Frank!”
Then he said, very quickly, very softly, “I’ll be right back.” He brushed against Kromer as he passed. He almost had to shove him into the room. He closed the door at once with a haste he would have been at pains to explain. He stood there, motionless.
There was no more town, there was no more Lotte, no more Minna, no more anyone, no more streetcars on the corner, no more theaters, and no more universe. There was nothing but an emptiness rising around him, an anxiety that made beads of sweat stand out on his temples and forced him to put his hand to the left side of his chest.
Someone touched him and he almost screamed. It took all his strength not to. He knew it was Minna, who had left the door of the big bedroom ajar, from which a bit of light filtered.
Could she see him? Had she been able to see him when she came in, before waking him with her touch, the way one wakes a sleepwalker?
He kept his mouth shut. He hated her, he loathed her for not having uttered one of the stupid expressions they all knew so well how to use.
But no! She just stood there beside him, as stiff and pale as he was, in a halo of dim light that made it impossible to distinguish any features, and not until much later did he realize she had put her hand on his wrist.
It was as though she were taking his pulse. Did he look ill? He wouldn’t allow her to look at him as though he were ill, to look at him at all, to see what no one had the right to see.
“Frank!”
Someone shrieked his name. Sissy had shrieked it. Sissy had shrieked his name to him; Sissy was running in her bare feet, shaking the handle of the hall door, crying for help, trying to escape.
It was perhaps because the other girl, whom Frank didn’t like, whom he despised, who was nothing but a prostitute, less than nothing—it was perhaps because Minna kept stupidly holding his wrist that he didn’t budge.
Now there was an uproar in the room, like the day the military police had searched the violinist’s place. The two of them were running around in bare feet, chasing each other, struggling, and Kromer’s voice was on the edge of panic.
“At least put something on,” he begged.
“Please, you must! I swear I won’t touch you again …”
“The key …”
It would all come back to him later. Now he didn’t think. He didn’t move. He was going to see it through to the end.
Kromer, in spite of everything, had had enough presence of mind to take the key out of the lock. There was a light on in there, yes. A thin rosy line of it showed under the door. Had Sissy turned it on? Had she, by chance, found the electric switch hanging from its cord at the head of the bed?
What were they doing? They were banging around. It was as though they were fighting. There were inexplicable dull thuds. Kromer kept repeating, like a skipping phonograph record, “Not before you put something on …”
She didn’t say Frank’s name again. She had spoken his name only once, had shouted it with all her strength.
If any of the tenants were home, they’d hear. It was Minna who thought of that. Frank still hadn’t moved. There was just one question he wanted to ask somebody, it didn’t matter who, on his knees if necessary, so vital had it suddenly become, “Had Kromer … ?”
Something snapped in him.
She was gone. The door had slammed. They heard footsteps in the hall. Minna let go of his wrist and dashed into the front room, since she thought of everything, even of opening the door to the hall a crack to peer out.
Kromer didn’t come out immediately. Frank knew him well enough. He was careful to pull himself together first. At last he opened the door.
“Well, there you are, Frank …”
Frank didn’t move a muscle.
“What’s the matter with you?”
“Nothing.”
“If you’d only told me there was an electric switch at the head of the bed, everything would have been all right.”
Frank didn’t move, wouldn’t move.
“I was very careful not to say anything to her. I felt her hand groping in the dark, but I didn’t think she was going to turn on the light.”
Frank hadn’t asked the question. His eyes were pinpoints, his glance hard, so hard that Kromer was a little frightened, even wondering for a moment if it wasn’t some sort of a trap.
It didn’t make sense. There was no rhyme or reason to it.
“At any rate, you can boast …”
Minna came back and turned on the light switch in the kitchen, flooding the room with whit
e light that made them blink.
“She ran downstairs like a madwoman. She went right past her own door. One of the neighbors, Monsieur Wimmer, tried to stop her in the hall. I bet she didn’t even see him.”
So! It was done!
Kromer could go. But he was in a state. Leaving didn’t cross his mind. He was furious.
“When will I see you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are you coming to Timo’s tonight?”
“Maybe.”
She had gone, and Monsieur Wimmer had tried to stop her. She had run down the stairs.
“Look here, my little Frank, it seems to me that you …” Kromer hesitated, which was just as well. He was no longer anybody’s “little Frank.” He had never been. They might think anything they pleased.
Now he had paid for his seat.
He asked, with the absent look of someone who hadn’t been listening, “What?”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing. I asked you: What?”
“And I asked you if you were coming to Timo’s tonight.”
“And I answered you: What?”
He couldn’t stand much more. The sensation in his chest, on the left side, was getting unbearable, as though he were going to die.
“Well, in that case …”
“Yes, go!”
He had to sit down, lie down, quickly. Why didn’t Kromer go? Why didn’t he go tell Timo and his friends whatever he pleased?
Frank had done what he wanted to do. He had rounded the cape. He had looked at the other side. He hadn’t seen what he expected to see. Who cared?
Why didn’t he go? In God’s name, why didn’t he go?
“What are you waiting for?”
“But …”
Minna, who had gone into the little bedroom, who should never have done so, who was incapable of understanding such things, came back with a black stocking in each hand.
She had left without her stockings, her feet bare in her shoes.
And Kromer didn’t understand either. If they continued, the two of them, he would go mad, roll on the floor, start chewing on something, anything.
Dirty Snow Page 9