The Snow Was Dirty

by Georges Simenon

  Since the bedrooms aren’t used on Sundays, the idea was to put Minna to bed in the small room all day long, and Lotte was surprised to hear her son say categorically:

  ‘No. She’ll sleep in the big bedroom.’

  Lotte senses that something is up. She knows he is expecting a visitor, and she must have guessed it is Sissy. That’s precisely why she was keeping the big bedroom free, thinking she would please him. Now she really doesn’t understand.

  ‘Whatever you want! Are you planning to stay in?’

  ‘I really don’t know. But I’d prefer it if you didn’t come back too early.’

  Minna is stupidly grateful to him for the dressing gown, which she insists on wearing in bed today. She thinks he is being nice to her. For no other reason than that, before having his bath he throws Bertha down on the bed – like every morning she has nothing on her overgrown baby’s body but her dressing gown – and makes love to her.

  It lasts less than three minutes. It’s as if he’s furious, as if he’s taking his revenge. He doesn’t even put his cheek against her cheek. Their heads don’t touch. When it’s over, he leaves her without a word.

  All the while, a nice kitchen smell hangs in the rooms. Everyone ends up washed and dressed. They eat. Lotte is dressed almost the way she used to be when she came to see him in the country, and she has barely aged since then. He suspects vaguely that it is only because of him that she has set up this manicure business and given up seeing clients herself.

  She is quite wrong to put herself out for him.

  Bertha, who has to take two trams, is the first to leave. Then Lotte powders her face, looks at herself in the mirror and hangs about a while longer, for no reason, still anxious.

  ‘I think I’ll have dinner in town.’

  ‘I’d prefer that.’

  She kisses him once on each cheek, then a second time on the first cheek, which he hates, because it reminds him of his nurse. It’s a habit some women have. He counts mechanically under his breath:

  ‘ . . . two . . . three!’

  She has gone. Now she too is waiting for a tram on the corner of the street. He knows that Minna, embarrassed to be spending all day in the big bed – which at night is Lotte’s bed – is finding it hard to concentrate on the Zola novel he has lent her.

  She is expecting him to come and talk to her, although she hardly dares believe it. She, too, has seen him from the window, walking with Sissy. She, too, has heard him knock at Holst’s door.

  She wouldn’t allow herself to be jealous, at least not to show it. She knows she wasn’t a virgin, that she came to Lotte’s of her own free will, that she has nothing to hope for.

  After an hour, though, she attempts a little ploy. She starts by breathing heavily, then moans and drops her book on the rug.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he asks, coming into the room.

  ‘It hurts.’

  He takes the hot-water bottle, fills it in the kitchen, places it back on her belly and, to make it quite clear that he has no desire to start a conversation, picks up the book and puts it down on the blanket.

  She doesn’t dare call him back in. She doesn’t hear him moving. She wonders what he’s doing. He isn’t reading: with all the doors open, she would hear him turn the pages. He isn’t drinking. He isn’t sleeping. From time to time, he simply goes to the window and stands there for a while.

  She is afraid for him, not suspecting that is the best way to alienate him. He is old enough to know what he is doing. What he is doing is what he wants. And he does it coldly. From time to time this afternoon, he even goes and looks at himself fleetingly in the mirror to make sure that his features are perfectly calm.

  Wasn’t it he who attracted Holst’s attention in the alley, even though it wasn’t necessary, even though without that there would have been no witness to his act?

  And when it came to Miss Vilmos, did he try to cover his tracks?

  He won’t accept pity from anyone. Or anything that feels like pity. He mustn’t be so cowardly as to start feeling any for himself.

  That’s something none of them will ever understand, not Lotte, not Minna, not Sissy. As far as Sissy is concerned, there will soon be no question of that anyway.

  What was she thinking about, with her head on his shoulder, all the time the film was playing? Every now and again, she would lift her head and ask:

  ‘I’m not tiring you, am I?’

  His arm was numb, but nothing would have possessed him to tell her that.

  Kromer won’t understand either. In fact, he already doesn’t understand. Deep down, he’s nervous, although he won’t admit it. Nervous about everything and nothing. It is Frank he finds disconcerting. When Frank had his green card in his pocket and they had just left the offices of the military police, Kromer asked, ‘What are you going to do with it?’

  Frank gave himself the wicked pleasure of replying, ‘Nothing.’

  Kromer doesn’t believe him. He tries to figure out what he is planning. He is no more reassured when it comes to Sissy.

  ‘Have you really not touched her?’

  ‘Just enough to make sure she’s a virgin.’

  ‘Doesn’t that mean anything to you?’ Kromer pretends to laugh, and says with a wink, ‘You’re too young!’

  He is so ill at ease that Frank spends much of the afternoon wondering if he will come. Kromer is crazy. He must have been thinking about Sissy all night long, tossing and turning in his bed. But he is the kind of man who might have cold feet at the last moment and go and get drunk at Leonard’s or some other place instead of keeping his appointment.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell her the truth?’

  ‘Because she wouldn’t have agreed.’

  ‘Do you think she’s in love with you? Is that what you mean?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘And when she realizes?’

  ‘I suppose it’ll be too late.’

  Deep down, they are all a bit scared of him because he is going all the way.

  ‘What if her father shows up?’

  ‘He’s not allowed to abandon his tram.’

  The trams run on Sundays.

  ‘What about the neighbours?’

  Frank prefers not to mention Mr Wimmer, who knows a lot and might indeed get it into his head to intervene.

  ‘The neighbours are out on Sundays,’ he replies confidently. ‘If need be, I’ll show my card, that’ll keep them quiet.’

  It’s true, generally speaking. But they have seen idiots get arrested for less than that, for the pleasure of yelling insults at passing soldiers in front of their friends. Almost always, they are people like Mr Wimmer.

  Wimmer still hasn’t said anything to Holst. Is it because he wants to avoid worrying him, because he thinks he is clever enough to keep an eye on Sissy himself? Or because he is convinced she is too sensible to do anything stupid? Old people are like that. Including those who have had a child before marriage. Later, they forget.

  Minna sighs again. Night has fallen. Frank is kind enough to light the lamp for her, close the curtains and fill the hot-water bottle one last time.

  He would have preferred it if she wasn’t there, if there weren’t any witnesses. But what of it? Isn’t it actually quite desirable for someone to know, someone who won’t say a word?

  ‘Will she come?’

  He doesn’t reply. The main reason he has chosen the back bedroom is that it has a door that communicates directly with the corridor. It’s also because you can get to it from the kitchen.

  ‘Will she come, Frank?’

  It’s a lapse of taste. In front of his mother, she calls him Mr Frank. It is annoying that she should be more familiar when they are alone, and he replies irritably:

  ‘It’s none of your business.’

  She looks apologetic, then can’t help asking almost immediately:

  ‘Is it her first time?’

  No, especially not that! No pity, please! He hates the way these girls feel sorry for those who
haven’t yet gone through what they’ve been through themselves. He bets she is going to ask him not to hurt Sissy.

  Fortunately, Kromer rings the bell. He has come in spite of everything. He is actually ten minutes early, which is annoying, because Frank has absolutely no desire to talk. Kromer is just out of his bath; his skin is too pink, too taut; he smells like a whore.

  ‘Are you alone?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Your mother?’

  ‘No.’ He deliberately says in a louder voice, ‘There’s a girl next door whose insides were damaged by a pervert.’

  Kromer would happily beat a retreat, but Frank has taken care to close the door behind him.

  ‘Come in. Don’t worry. Take your coat off.’

  He notes with contempt that Kromer isn’t smoking his usual cigar but instead is sucking a cachou lozenge.

  ‘What are you drinking?’

  He is afraid to drink, afraid it might diminish his performance.

  ‘Come into the kitchen. That’s where you’ll wait. In this apartment, the kitchen’s the holy of holies.’

  Frank laughs like someone who’s been drinking, and yet the glass he chinks against Kromer’s is his first today. Fortunately, Kromer doesn’t know that. If he did, it would really scare him.

  ‘Right. It’ll happen just like I said.’

  ‘What if she puts the light on?’

  ‘Have you ever seen a girl put the light on in a situation like that?’

  ‘What if she talks to me, and I don’t reply?’

  ‘She won’t talk,’ he asserts.

  Even these ten minutes are long. He watches them pass on the dial of the alarm-clock above the stove.

  ‘You need to have a clear idea of the way you’ll have to go in the dark. Come with me. The bed’s here, so it will be on your right directly after you come in.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He has to have another drink, or he is the one who will lose his nerve. And he mustn’t do that at any cost. Frank has planned this like a piece of clockwork, with the meticulousness of a child.

  There are things that can’t be explained, things it is pointless trying to make another person understand: it absolutely has to happen; afterwards, he’ll be fine.

  ‘Have you got it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘On the right, directly after the door.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m switching the light off.’

  ‘But where will you be?’

  ‘Here.’

  ‘You swear you won’t go away?’

  And to think that, ten days ago, he still considered Kromer someone older and stronger than him – a man, in other words – and thought of himself as a child!

  ‘You’re making such a fuss about it!’ he says scornfully, to strengthen Kromer’s resolve.

  ‘No, my friend, I’m thinking of you. I don’t know the apartment. I want to avoid—’

  ‘Shh!’

  She came. Like a mouse. And Frank, at that moment, had such a sixth sense that he heard Minna get out of bed, barefoot, without making a noise, in her beautiful dressing gown, and go to the door to listen. Which means Minna heard the Holsts’ door open and close. What led her to go and see was probably the fact that there were no footsteps on the stairs after that, as there usually are.

  Who knows? Anything is possible. Maybe Minna saw another door that was not quite closed, that moved, old Wimmer’s door? Frank is convinced that old Wimmer is on the alert.

  But Minna doesn’t know that. On reflection, Frank is convinced she doesn’t know, because she would have been too afraid for him and would have come running to warn him.

  Sissy walked down the corridor, barely touching the uneven floor. She knocked, or rather tapped, on the door of the small bedroom.

  He switched off the lamps. If they talked loudly, Kromer would be able to hear them from the kitchen.

  ‘Here I am,’ she said.

  She felt quite stiff in his arms.

  ‘You asked me to, Frank.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He closed the door behind her, but there was still the kitchen door, which she couldn’t see in the dark and which was ajar.

  ‘Do you still want to?’

  They couldn’t see anything except the vague glow of the streetlamp on the corner in the gap between the curtains.

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  He didn’t need to undress her. He started, but she continued by herself, without a word, close to the bed.

  Maybe she despises him, but can’t stop herself from loving him. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t want to know. Kromer hears them.

  ‘Tomorrow, it would have been too late,’ he says, barely able to utter the words, finding them stupid. ‘Your father will be back on the morning shift.’

  She must be almost naked, she is naked. He can feel the softness of the clothes and underwear beneath his feet. She is waiting. Now comes the hardest part: laying her down on the bed.

  She gropes in the dark for his hand.

  ‘Frank!’ she murmurs, and it is the first time she has said his name in that tone. It is a good thing Kromer is behind the door.

  ‘I’ll be right back,’ he says, very quickly, very low.

  He brushes against Kromer as they pass each other. He almost has to push him into the bedroom. He immediately closes the door behind him, with a haste he would find hard to explain, and now he stands there, motionless.

  There is no town any more, no Lotte, no Minna, nobody, no trams on the corner of the street, no cinema, no world. There is nothing now but a mounting emptiness, an anguish that brings the sweat out on his temples and forces him to put his hand on the left side of his chest.

  Someone touches him, and he almost cries out; it takes all his strength to hold back. He knows it is Minna, Minna who has left the door of the big bedroom ajar, so that a little light seeps out.

  Can she see him? Did she see him when she came in, before she touched him and woke him, the way you would touch a sleepwalker?

  He says nothing. He hates her, he will always hate her for not having come out with some stupid phrase or other, the kind they’re all so good at.

  But no! She stays beside him, as stiff and white as him, in the halo that’s too dim to make out their features, and it’s only a long time afterwards that he realizes it’s on his wrist that she has placed her hand.

  It is as if she is taking his pulse. Does she think he is sick? He won’t allow her to think of him as a sick person, to keep looking at him like that, he won’t allow her to see what nobody has a right to see.

  ‘Frank!’

  Someone has called out his name. It is Sissy, Sissy who called out his name, Sissy who is now running barefoot to the door and rattling it, Sissy crying for help or trying to escape.

  Maybe because this other girl, whom Frank doesn’t like, whom he despises, who is only a slut, less than nothing, maybe because Minna is still stupidly holding on to his wrist, he doesn’t move.

  Now there is a commotion in the bedroom, like when the military police were searching the violinist’s apartment. The two of them are coming and going, barefoot, chasing each other, struggling, and Kromer’s voice can be heard, trying not to panic.

  ‘At least put something on!’ he begs. ‘For goodness’ sake! I swear I won’t touch you again!’

  ‘The key!’

  It will come back to him later. Now, he doesn’t think. He doesn’t move. He’s going to go all the way. He vowed that he would go all the way.

  Kromer, in spite of everything, has had the presence of mind to grab the key. True, there is light in the room. There is a thin strip of luminous pink under the door. Was it Sissy who switched the light on? Did she somehow find the little switch hanging at the head of the bed?

  What are they doing? They are moving about. It sounds like a battle, with dull, inexplicable thuds.

  ‘Not until you’ve put something on,’ Kromer keeps saying like a broken record.

  She hasn’t mentioned
Frank any more. She only spoke his name once, screaming it with all her might.

  If any of the neighbours are in, they must be hearing this. It is Minna who thinks of that. Frank still doesn’t move. There is only one question he would like to ask, a question that has become so essential that he would ask it on his knees if need be.

  ‘Did Kromer . . .?’

  Something inside him breaks.

  She has gone. The door has slammed shut. There are footsteps in the corridor. Minna has let go of his wrist and run into the bedroom, because she thinks of everything, even of half opening the door to the landing.

  Kromer doesn’t appear immediately. If Frank knows him, he is probably anxiously adjusting his clothes. At last he opens the door.

  ‘Well, my friend, you and your bright ideas!’

  Frank doesn’t react.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘It’s nothing.’

  ‘If you’d warned me there was a light switch at the head of the bed, I’d have sorted it out.’

  Frank doesn’t react, won’t react.

  ‘I was careful not to answer her. I could feel her hand groping in the dark, but I never imagined she’d switch the light on.’

  Frank hasn’t asked the question. His eyes have grown quite small, there is a hard look in them, so hard that Kromer is a bit scared and wonders for a moment if the whole thing wasn’t a trap.

  But how could it be? That wouldn’t make any sense!

  ‘Anyway, now you can boast . . .’

  Minna comes back and switches on the main light, flooding them with a white light that makes them blink.

  ‘She ran downstairs like a madwoman,’ she says. ‘She didn’t try to go back to her apartment. One of the neighbours, Mr Wimmer, tried to stop her. I don’t think she even saw him.’

  Well, it’s done!

  Kromer can go now. He is scared stiff. He doesn’t think of leaving. He is furious. ‘When will I see you?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Are you coming to Timo’s tonight?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  She has gone. Mr Wimmer tried to stop her. She ran down the stairs.