Dirty Snow

by Georges Simenon

  Even Kromer was going home, about twenty miles away, for the holidays.

  Sissy would still be in her bed. Holst would spend his last pennies, if he had any, or sell some of his books to decorate a tree for her. They would have old Wimmer with them, who had discovered his vocation and become their housemaid.

  “What are you thinking about?” his friend asked him.

  He gave a start. “Me?”

  “I didn’t mean the pope.”

  “Nothing. Sorry.”

  “You looked like you wanted to strangle the musicians.”

  He hadn’t been looking at the musicians. He had forgotten about them.

  “Listen, Frank, I wanted to ask you a favor, but I don’t dare.”

  “How much?”

  “It’s not what you think. It’s not for me. It’s my sister. She’s needed an operation for a long time. They told me you have lots of money.”

  “What’s the matter with your sister?”

  And Frank thought ironically that she, at least, hadn’t done time at Lotte’s.

  “It’s her eyes. If she isn’t operated on she’ll go blind.”

  Kropetzki was a young man about his own age, but soft and timid, born to be pushed around. There were tears in his eyes already.

  “How much do you need?”

  “I don’t know exactly, but I think if you could lend me …”

  Frank handled his roll of bills like a magician. It had become a game.

  “If you say thanks, you’re a bigger fool than I thought.”

  “Frank, I …”

  “What did I say? Come on, let’s go.”

  And then, by chance, there was the blond guy from the third floor only a few steps away again, this time standing in front of a shop window full of dolls. He had a little daughter. Christmas was coming. Maybe it was only natural for him to look at window displays.

  What if Frank went up to him and asked him straight out what he wanted, if necessary sticking his green card or automatic under his nose?

  Timo’s talk had had an effect on him. He kept on walking, then turned to look back. The man wasn’t following him. It was Kropetzki who stuck to him, and Frank had a world of trouble shaking him.

  If destiny awaited, it wasn’t apparent that night, since he was able to have dinner in town, meet Kromer—who was preoccupied, almost distant—have drinks in three different places, and engage in a long conversation with some stranger at a bar, without anything happening.

  Between Timo’s and his house, passing by the blind alley that led to the tannery, nothing happened either. It would be funny if destiny should choose just that spot to lie in wait. It was the sort of idea you got at three o’clock in the morning when you’d been drinking.

  There was a light in Holst’s window. Perhaps it was the hour for compresses, or drops, or God knows what. He listened at the door. They had heard his footsteps. Holst knew he was on the landing, and Frank intentionally lingered for some time, his ear glued to the door.

  Holst didn’t open the door, didn’t make a movement.

  Idiot!

  There was nothing to do but go to bed, and if he hadn’t been so tired he would have screwed Anny first, just to annoy her. As for Minna, she disgusted him. She was stupidly in love. She sometimes cried, probably when she thought about him. Maybe she prayed, too. And she was ashamed of her belly.

  He went to bed alone. There was a little fire left in the stove and for a long time he lay staring at the red circle where you stuck in the poker.

  Idiot!

  It was in the morning, when he had a hangover again, that it happened. He had searched for destiny in every corner and it was in none of the places he’d looked.

  It was pure chance again: there was no more wine in the house, the two carafes were empty. For several days, Lotte had forgotten to tell him that their stock was exhausted.

  He had to go to Timo’s. It was better to see him in the morning about things like that. Timo didn’t like to sell, even at a stiff price. He insisted that he always lost out that way, that a good bottle was worth more than bad money.

  Frank was thirsty. Lotte’s hair was in curlers. She had put on a loose smock to do the cleaning with Minna, while Anny didn’t even move as they swept around her legs. She was imperturbable as a goddess, plunged not in reverie or contemplation but in one of her magazines, and flicking her cigarette ashes on the floor.

  “Don’t buy too much at once, Frank.”

  Strange. He was on the point of leaving his gun in the apartment, but he didn’t—not because of what Timo had said, but because to do so would seem like cheating.

  He didn’t want to cheat.

  He met Monsieur Wimmer coming upstairs with provisions, a shopping bag in which there was a cabbage and some turnips, but Monsieur Wimmer didn’t do anything, just went past him without a word.

  Idiot!

  He remembered stopping on the second landing to light his cigarette—it had tasted rotten, as always after he’d been drinking the night before—and glancing mechanically down the hall to the left. He saw no one. The hall was empty except for a baby carriage at one end. Somewhere a baby was crying.

  He was downstairs in the hall and about to pass the concierge’s apartment. At that moment the door opened.

  He had never thought it would happen like this. To tell the truth, he didn’t even realize it was happening.

  The concierge was the same as usual, the same face, the same cap. Beside him stood a commonplace-looking man with a vaguely foreign air who was wearing an overcoat that was too long for him.

  As Frank went by, the stranger touched the brim of his hat, as though thanking the concierge. He followed Frank out and overtook him before he reached the middle of the sidewalk.

  “You will kindly follow me.”

  That was all. He showed Frank something he was holding in the palm of his hand, a cellophane-covered card with a photograph and seals. What kind of card? Frank had no idea.

  Very calm, a bit stiffly, Frank said, “Okay.”

  “Hand it over.”

  He hadn’t time to wonder what he was meant to give him. The man had already plunged his hand into the correct pocket and appropriated the automatic, which he slipped into his overcoat.

  If people were watching—Frank didn’t know if they were —they couldn’t have understood what was going on.

  There wasn’t a car waiting at the curb. They walked side by side toward the streetcar stop and waited for the streetcar like anybody else, not even looking at each other.

  4

  IT WAS the eighteenth day. He was holding out. He would keep on holding out. He had discovered that everything depended on holding out, and that if he did he would get the better of them. Was it really a question of getting the better of them? That was another problem he would have to solve eventually. He had thought a great deal—too much. Thinking, too, was dangerous. He must stick to a strict discipline. When he thought he’d get the better of them, it simply meant that he’d get out. And the term “get out” wasn’t limited to the place he was in now.

  It was amazing how, outside, words were used without anyone paying any attention to what they meant. He certainly wasn’t well educated, but then there were lots like him—in fact, most poeple were like him—and now he realized that he had always been satisfied with words that were just approximations.

  This question of the meaning of words had lasted him two days. Maybe it would come back to him later.

  In any case, it was the eighteenth day, that was an absolute certainty. He made sure this certainty was absolute. He had chosen an almost untouched piece of wall where he scratched a line with his thumbnail every morning. It was harder than you’d think. Not to draw the line, even though the nail was already worn down. But to draw only one. To be sure you had drawn it. The wall was covered with plaster, which made the operation easier. But it hadn’t been easy to find a clean spot, because of all the others who’d been there before him.

  And
it was impossible to be too careful—this was another of his discoveries—because here you tended to doubt, and he realized that anyone who doubted was lost.

  He would solve the problem all alone, provided he observed his rules and kept from dreaming. You became very strict about certain matters. For example, the last morning he had spent outside, he hadn’t known the date. He’d known it without knowing it. He wasn’t sure. The result was, though he knew for certain he had spent eighteen days here, he couldn’t swear to the exact date of his arrival.

  That was how you lived.

  Today was probably the seventh of January. Maybe the eighth. Before that he lacked clear points of reference. As to the time he had been here, there were his scratches.

  If he held out, if he didn’t let himself go, if he concentrated enough—without, however, concentrating too hard—it wouldn’t be long before he understood, and everything would be over. That reminded him of a dream he’d had several times. There were many dreams, but the one that mattered most was the flying one. He would rise into the air. Not outside, in a garden or on the street, but always in a room, always in the presence of witnesses who didn’t know how to fly. He would say to them, “Look how easy it is!”

  He would put his two hands flat against the air and press. The takeoff was slow and painful. He had to use a lot of will-power. Once in the air, he had only to move slightly to make it happen, sometimes with his hands, sometimes with his feet. His head almost touched the ceiling. He never understood why the others were so amazed. He would smile at them condescendingly.

  “I’m telling you, it’s easy! It’s simply a question of wanting to!”

  Well, here it was the same thing, and if he only wanted to badly enough, he would understand. Conditions were difficult. He had realized from the first that he’d have to be careful about adjusting.

  One little example: his arrival. Those last hours, his last minutes outside. Or before. He used the two terms interchangeably. He had to preserve the memory of those moments with almost mathematical precision. He did. He guarded them carefully. But it required constant effort. Every day he risked changing certain details, he was tempted to, he would force himself to go over the events again, one by one, to link each image with the one that followed.

  Thus it wasn’t true that Kamp had come and stood in the doorway, nor had there been a burst of laughter from the regulars inside the little café. He had been on the point of putting that in. He almost believed it. The truth was that he’d seen nobody, absolutely nobody until the streetcar, rattling along as usual, came to a stop in front of them. They hadn’t looked at each other to decide whether to get in up front or in back. It was as though the man knew Frank’s habits and wanted to please him. They got in front.

  Frank had been smoking a cigarette; the other man had about a quarter of a cigar in his mouth. He might have preferred to toss it away and sit inside. Except when he had been little and forced to, Frank had never sat down in a streetcar. For no reason, it made him feel panicky.

  The man had stayed with him on the front platform.

  After crossing the bridges, the streetcar ran almost the entire length of the Upper Town, ending up in a working-class neighborhood not far from open country. They had passed quite close to some military administration offices, and yet they had stayed on the streetcar. Three blocks farther, he signaled to Frank, and they got off and waited for another streetcar at a yellow sign.

  The sky had been dazzling that morning. It seemed that the whole town was glittering, all its windowpanes, all its snow, all its white roofs. Was he misremembering things? There was one detail, at least, that wasn’t a delusion. While waiting for the second streetcar, he had dropped his cigarette butt on the snow. Ordinarily, the snow was hard and crusted. The cigarette should have continued burning. But it had gone out, doused by the wetness of the melting snow. If he were less disciplined, he would have said that it had stuck in the snow and sputtered out.

  That was the sort of detail he tried to look out for, since it was a point of reference. Without details like that, you could start to think anything at all and believe it.

  The second streetcar they took followed a sort of circular boulevard through neighborhoods that were no longer actually in town, but not quite in the suburbs either. Several times, women with shopping bags climbed onto the streetcar for short stretches. Frank helped them once or twice and the man didn’t object.

  For a moment, Frank had almost wondered if it weren’t all some sort of joke. On Kromer’s part? Or Timo’s? Revenge on the part of Chief Inspector Kurt Hamling?

  He’d been right not to show anything. Overall he was pleased with himself, even now that he’d had time to go over the details carefully. Others would have probably asked questions, gotten angry, or even made stupid jokes. He had been simple but dignified, modeling his behavior on that of the man he was with, who must have been a minor official, a mere inspector without special instructions.

  They must have ordered him, “Bring us that young man.” Adding, “Be careful. He’s armed.”

  It was out of habit that he had known right away which pocket Frank carried his pistol in. What Frank was even prouder of, with respect to his own behavior, was that he hadn’t nervously smoked one cigarette after another. When he threw one away, he would say to himself, “Not another one for two more stops.”

  They got out of the streetcar in a bright, newly built district that people in town would barely have known about, where the bricks were still pink and the paint fresh. Just opposite the stop was a group of large buildings with a courtyard in front, surrounded by a high iron fence.

  It was a school. Most likely a high school. There was a sentry box at the gate with a guard in it, but there was nothing sinister about the place. Directly opposite, Frank noticed a little café, the same sort of café as Monsieur Kamp’s, but newer.

  “We may have to wait a bit. We’re ahead of schedule.”

  Those were the first words the man had spoken since accosting Frank. He said them guardedly, as though afraid of being proved wrong. It occurred to Frank that ordinarily he never went out so early, and that he had gone out that morning only because there was no more wine in the house.

  Did Lotte know yet? And Holst? And Sissy?

  He was calm. He had been calm the whole time. Even now, reviewing his actions over and over again, he was satisfied with himself. It wasn’t too daunting to enter a school courtyard, even one with a sentry box and guard at its gate.

  They headed to the right and up a few steps. The man walked ahead of him to a glass door that he opened, standing aside to let Frank enter first.

  It was hard to say what this little building had been before. Maybe the concierge’s apartment?. There was a bench, and the room was cut in half by a high desk, like a counter. The woodwork and furniture were painted a light gray. The man went toward an adjoining room, said a few words, came back, and sat down beside Frank.

  He didn’t look any happier than Frank. On the contrary. He was sad and conscientious. He did his duty without pleasure, maybe even against his principles. He kept his cigar butt, soggy with saliva, in his mouth and it was starting to smell. He made no objection when Frank stamped his cigarette out on the floor and lit another.

  He was what Frank called a “nothing,” someone like Kropetzki, born to be pushed around. There must have been more important people in the adjoining room. The door to that room was open, but only the upper half of it was visible since the counter blocked the view. Frank and his companion must have arrived at a slow hour. He had hardly lit his cigarette before he heard the dull sound of a blow against a face, but without any groan after, just the voice of the person who had landed the blow, or someone else, asking: “Well?”

  Frank was sorry he couldn’t see, but he didn’t dare stand up. He waited for the blows that followed one another in quick succession, but only once was a feeble groan exacted from the man they were beating.

  “Well, you swine?”

 
Frank had remained calm. He was sure of that. He had had eighteen days to think about it, and they only had made him more honest with himself.

  What stirred in him was curiosity. First he asked himself, “Do they really make you strip naked?”

  Very soon, probably, it would be his turn. Why was he suddenly thinking about Minna’s belly? Because it was said they hit you in the genitals with their feet or knees. That had made him turn pale. But the man in the next room didn’t break. In the intervals of silence you could hear his wheezy breathing.

  “You still say it wasn’t you?”

  A blow. With a little practice, you should to be able to tell what part of the body had been hit.

  An avalanche of blows now. Then a dull groan. Then nothing.

  Nothing but a few words spoken in a foreign language in a tone of reproach.

  Had it all been arranged simply for his benefit? He had to find out. It was hard to believe, of course. He no longer thought like people outside, but he wasn’t thinking like his neighbors in the classrooms yet either. He tried to keep his mind clear, to find a balance. He was convinced he would succeed. They wouldn’t get him.

  Especially if this was only a test. He couldn’t speak like this to Lotte, to Kromer, even to Timo. Frank had come a long way since he had seen them. They hadn’t. Their little lives were going on, they continued to think in the same way, they wouldn’t make any progress.

  He felt like smiling when he remembered what Timo had said about the green card and the different sections.

  Was Frank now in one of those sections?

  Was it a serious section?

  Timo could walk by in the street, see the gate with the guard, and not suspect anything. Things had to be seen from inside, and Frank was inside. But was he actually inside?

  He was willing to admit that there was some truth in what Timo said. Timo hadn’t known it, he had just been talking, the way people talked outside. The green card existed. If they had created it, it had its importance. If it was important, it was no less important that it shouldn’t fall into the wrong hands.