Dirty Snow

by Georges Simenon

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.

  “There you are! And that’s nothing, I suppose?”

  “It’s money.”

  “Money, yes. A lot of money.”

  “I earned it.”

  “You earned it, there you are! When you earn money, there’s always someone, or some bank, that gives it to you. That is correct, isn’t it? And all I want to know is who gave you the money. It’s simple, it’s easy. You only have to tell me the name. There you are!”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know who gave you the mone
y?”

  “I got it from different places.”

  “Really?”

  “I’m in business.”

  “You don’t say!”

  “You get paid here and there. Bills change hands. You don’t pay attention …”

  But suddenly the man’s tone changed, he shut the drawer with a bang before pronouncing categorically, “No!”

  He looked furious, menacing. For a moment, as he came around the desk and again put his hand on his shoulder, Frank thought he was going to slap him. Instead he pulled him to his feet. All the while the officer was talking, almost as if to himself.

  “It’s just money from wherever, isn’t it? You’re paid here and there and you stuff it in your pockets without bothering to take a look.”

  “Yes.”

  “No!”

  Frank’s throat tightened. He didn’t know what his inter-locutor was driving at. He felt a vague threat, a mystery. He had been racking his brains for eighteen, almost nineteen days. He had tried to foresee everything, and nothing was happening the way it should. All at once they confronted him with an entirely different situation. The school, the old gentleman with glasses, suddenly represented a world that was almost reassuring, and yet now he had a cigarette in his mouth, he could hear the clatter of typewriters in the next room, women walking down the corridor.

  “Look carefully, Friedmaier, and tell me if it’s still just money from somewhere or other.”

  He had taken one of the bills from the desk. He led Frank toward the window with his hand on his shoulder and held the money against the light.

  “Closer! Don’t be afraid! You needn’t be afraid.”

  Why did those words seem more threatening than the sound of the blows he had heard the first day in the old gentleman’s office?

  “Look carefully. In the left-hand corner. Tiny little holes. Six little holes. There you are! And the little holes form a design. And there are little holes like these in all the bills that were found in your pocket as well as in the ones you spent.”

  Frank was struck dumb and couldn’t think. It was as if a chasm had unexpectedly opened up in front of him, as if the wall around the window had suddenly ceased to exist, leaving the two men on the edge of the void over the street.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know, do you?”

  “No.”

  “And you also didn’t know the significance of these little holes? There you are! You don’t know!”

  It was true. He had never heard of such a thing. He had the impression that merely knowing the meaning of what the officer called the little holes would be a more crushing indictment against him than any crime. He wanted someone to look into his eyes and read his good faith in them, his absolute sincerity.

  “I swear I don’t know.”

  “But I know.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I do know, yes. And that’s why I also have to know where you got those bills.”

  “I told you …”

  “No!”

  “I swear to you …”

  “Those bills were stolen.”

  “Not by me.”

  “No!”

  How could he be so sure? And then he said, articulating and emphasizing each syllable: “They were stolen from here.”

  As Frank looked around the room in terror, the officer corrected himself. “They were stolen here, from this building.”

  Frank was afraid he was going to faint. From then on he understood the meaning of the phrase “cold sweat.” He understood other things. Everything, it seemed.

  The little holes in the bills were made by the Occupation authorities. Which bills? Of what issue?

  No one knew, no one even suspected, and it was terrifying just to be in on the secret.

  Damn it, they weren’t accusing him! And not Kromer, either. They knew very well that they were only petty crooks and that people like them didn’t have access to certain safes.

  Did they already suspect the general? Had they arrested Kromer? Had they questioned him? Had he talked?

  Frank had been groping in the dark for eighteen and a half days. Everything had been false, stupid. He had been concentrating on unimportant people, people like himself, as though destiny had any use for them.

  Destiny had chosen a banknote, probably one he had spent at Timo’s, or at the tailor’s where he had bought his camel-hair coat. Perhaps one of the bills he had given to Kropetzki for his sister’s eyes.

  “We have to know, you see?” said the officer, sitting down.

  Once again he pushed the box of cigarettes toward Frank.

  “There you are, Friedmaier. There you have the whole business.”

  PART THREE:

  The Woman at the Window

  1

  HE WAS lying on his stomach, asleep. He was conscious of being asleep. It was something he’d learned recently, along with a lot of other things. Before, it had been only toward morning, especially when the sun was coming up, that he had been conscious of being asleep. And since the feeling was stronger after getting drunk the night before, he often came home after drinking simply to relish that conscious sleep.

  Still, it hadn’t been quite the same as this new sleep. Before, he never slept flat on his stomach. Did all prisoners learn to sleep flat on their stomachs? He had no idea. He didn’t care. And yet, if he’d had the patience and will to study it, he would have gladly used their complicated system of communication just to let them all know: “Sleep flat on your stomachs!”

  But it wasn’t just sleeping flat on your stomach. It was crushing yourself, like an animal, like a bug, onto the boards that he had for bedsprings. Hard as they were, he felt like he was leaving the imprint of his body on them, as if he was sleeping on a field of soft earth.

  He was lying flat on his stomach, and it hurt. Lots of little bones and muscles hurt, not all at once, not all together, but in a regular sequence that he was beginning to recognize, and that he had learned to orchestrate like a symphony. There were deep, dark pains and there were much sharper ones, so sharp that you saw everything in pale yellow light. Some lasted only a few seconds, but were so voluptuous in their intensity that you regretted it when they were over; others formed a background, mingling and harmonizing so completely that it was impossible to tell where each pain came from.

  His face was buried in his jacket, which he had rolled into a ball to make a pillow—a jacket, he was sorry to say, that had been almost new when he arrived. And he had been stupid, at first, to be so careful with it, to take it off at night, so that now it didn’t smell as good as it might.

  To get a good whiff of himself—to breathe in that smell of earth, of being alive, of sweat. Deliberately he sank his nose in where it stank most, under the arms. He wanted to stink, as people said outside, to stink as the earth stinks, because outside people think that men stink, that the earth stinks.

  To feel his heart beat, everywhere, in his temples, his wrists, his big toes. To smell the smell of his breath, the warmth of it. To mix up the images in his mind, larger, bigger than life, things seen, heard, and lived, and others, too, that might have happened, to mix them all together, his eyes closed, his body still, while he listened for a certain footstep on the iron stairs.

  He had gotten good at this game. But why call it a game? It was life. At school they had said, “He’s good at math.” Not him, but a schoolmate with an enormous head.

  And now Frank was good at life. He knew how to sink into the boards, bury his face in his jacket, shut his eyes, sink in, throw ballast overboard, sink down and surface again at will, or almost. Somewhere there were still days, hours, minutes. Not here, not for him. Since arriving, when he really wanted to keep track of time, he counted it in so many “dives.”

  It sounded stupid. But he wasn’t getting stupid. He hadn’t lost his grip, and he was more determined than ever not to let himself go. Instead, he made progress. What was the use of bothering about hours, outside hours, in a buildin
g where nothing depended on them?

  If you had a sweet tooth, and you cut a cake in quarters, you’d keep an eye on the quarters. But what if you cut slices? What if you sliced the cake to bits?

  Everything had to be learned, starting with sleep. To think that people believed they knew how to sleep! They all had too many hours to devote to it if they wanted. People complained about being slaves to alarm clocks, yet they set them themselves when they went to bed, they even checked, half asleep, to make sure it was on.

  To wake up to an alarm clock you set yourself! To wake yourself up, in other words! They called that slavery!

  Let them learn to sleep on their stomachs first, sleep anywhere, on the ground like worms, like bugs. And if they couldn’t have the smell of the earth, let them be satisfied to stink.

  Lotte sprayed perfume under her arms and probably between her legs. She made her girls do the same.

  It was unthinkable!

  To sleep flat on your stomach, to measure out, to be in wait for, to orchestrate your aches, to feel with your tongue the hole where two teeth were missing, to tell yourself that if everything went well, if it was a lucky day, you’d see the window beyond the courtyard, way over there, to sleep like that, to think like that—this was already getting closer to the truth. It wasn’t the whole truth yet, he knew that very well. But it was a comfort to know you were on the right track.

  There was a signal that meant that the others in the next classroom were going for recess. What else could he call it? Their steps were joyous. Whatever they said, their steps were joyous, even the ones who were going to be shot the very next day, maybe because they didn’t know it yet.

  They’d gone by. Very well! Now the question was whether the old gentleman had enough work or not. The old gentleman was more important than anyone else in the world. He wasn’t married. Or if he was, his wife must have stayed in his country, which came to the same thing. Busy or not, all he had to do was raise his head and order, “Bring me Frank Friedmaier.”

  Luckily, he rarely summoned him at this hour. It was even luckier that no one knew—that was one of the reasons Frank slept on his stomach. Because if they knew what it was he was waiting for, if they suspected even for a moment how much joy it gave him, they would have been sure to change the school’s whole schedule.