‘Tell me, little Frank, seems to me you’re—’
Fortunately, he breaks off. He isn’t anybody’s ‘little Frank’ now. He never was. They all imagined what they wanted.
But now he has paid his dues.
‘What?’ he asks, absently, as if he hasn’t been listening.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Nothing. I’m just asking: what?’
‘And I was asking if you were going to be at Timo’s tonight.’
‘And I’m answering: what?’
He can’t stand it any more. The feeling on the left side of his chest is getting to be unbearable, as if he is about to die.
‘Well, my friend—’
‘Yes, go!’
He just wants to sit down, to lie down. Why doesn’t Kromer go? Let him tell Timo and his friends whatever he likes!
Frank has done what he wanted to do. He has turned the corner. He has looked on the other side.
He didn’t see what he had been expecting to see.
Never mind!
Why doesn’t Kromer go? For God’s sake, why doesn’t he go?
‘What are you waiting for?’
‘But . . .’
Minna, who has gone into the bedroom, who should never have taken that liberty, who is incapable of understanding these things, comes back with one black stocking in each hand.
Sissy left without her stockings, with her feet bare in her shoes.
And Kromer doesn’t understand either. If they both continue, he is going to go mad, throw himself on the floor, bite something, anything.
‘Get out of here, for God’s sake! Just get out!’
Won’t anyone realize that he has turned the corner and that he has nothing more in common with them?
2.
In the garden of Mrs Porse, his nurse, there was only one tree, a big lime tree. Once, as night was just starting to fall and a low sky seemed to be weighing on the earth and gradually absorbing everything like a fog, the dog started barking, and they discovered a strange cat in the tree.
It was winter. The barrel of rainwater beneath the drainpipe was frozen. From behind the house, you could see the lights come on in the windows of the village, one after the other.
The cat was huddled on the first branch, four or five metres from the ground, staring down. It was black and white and did not belong to anyone local: Mrs Porse, the nurse, knew all the cats.
When the dog barked, the tub standing on the tiled floor of the kitchen had just been filled with hot water for Frank’s bath. Actually, it was not a real tub, but half of a barrel that had been sawn down the middle. The windows were steamed up. From the garden, they could hear Mr Porse, who was a road mender, say with the conviction he brought to everything, especially when he had been drinking a bit, which happened frequently:
‘I’ll get my rifle and shoot it.’
Frank caught the word rifle. The hunting rifle was hanging on the white wall above the fireplace. Already half dressed, Frank put his jacket and trousers back on.
‘Try to catch it first. It might not be as badly wounded as all that.’
They could still see clearly enough to make out red stains on the white parts of the fur, and one of the cat’s eyes was coming out of its socket.
Frank would no longer be able to say how exactly it happened. Very soon, there were five people, ten people, looking up, not to mention the children. Then someone came with a lantern.
They tried to attract the cat by placing a saucer of hot milk in full view on the ground. Naturally, they had first taken care to tie the dog to its kennel. Everyone was standing back, avoiding abrupt movements. But the cat did not budge. From time to time, it would miaow plaintively.
‘See? It’s calling.’
‘It may be calling, but it’s not calling us!’
The proof of that was that when someone tried to grab it by climbing on a chair, it jumped on to a higher branch.
This all lasted a long time, at least an hour. Neighbours kept arriving, and they could only be recognized by their voices. A young man climbed the tree, and each time he reached out his arm, the cat climbed higher, so that by the end, all that was visible from below was a dark ball of fur.
‘On the left, Helmut . . . At the end of the big branch . . .’
The most surprising thing was that, as soon as they abandoned the hunt, the wounded animal miaowed even more. It was as if it was indignant at being abandoned!
So they went to look for ladders. Everyone joined in, very excited; Mr Porse kept talking about going to get his rifle, and they told him to shut up.
They did not get the cat down. They had to go home. They left some milk and some cat food.
‘If it was able to get up, it’ll be able to come down.’
The next day, the cat was still in the lime tree, almost at the top, and miaowed all day long. They again tried to catch it. They stopped Frank from going to have a look at it, because of the eye coming out of its head. Even Mrs Porse was almost ill because of it.
He never learned the end of the story. On the third day, he was told that the cat had gone. Was it true, or did they tell him that to spare his feelings?
That is almost what has happened now, except that this time, it is not a cat that is involved but Sissy.
Frank ended up going into the back room, all alone, almost solemnly, carefully closing the doors behind him, rather as he would have entered a mortuary.
Avoiding looking at the sheets, he straightened the blanket and might have been about to lie down on the bed when he noticed an object on the night table.
A few moments earlier, he had held Sissy’s stockings in his hand, woollen stockings with the feet finely darned, the way young girls are taught to do in convents.
It wasn’t out of curiosity that he picked up the handbag from the night table. He just wanted to touch it. There was nothing to stop him, since he was alone. And that was when a thought occurred to him. He remembered Lotte, who almost always rang the bell when she came home and would apologize by saying, ‘I left my key in my old bag again.’
Sissy also has a key, the key to the apartment opposite. And where would she have put this key if not in her handbag? She didn’t think of it when she fled. At that moment, she wasn’t thinking about going home. She didn’t even see Mr Wimmer, who was trying to stop her as she passed.
So the key was here, in the bag, with a handkerchief and some ration cards, a few banknotes, some small change and a pencil.
‘Where are you going, Mr Frank?’
It was not yet six. He clearly saw the black hands on the dial of the alarm-clock in the kitchen. Minna hadn’t gone back to bed but was sitting by the stove. She was calling him Mr Frank again and watching him with a fearful look on her face.
He didn’t realize he was holding a little black oilcloth bag, or that he wasn’t wearing a coat or a hat as he opened the door.
‘At least put your coat on if you go out.’
People who are sick don’t feel their own sickness when they have someone sicker than themselves to look after. Minna could no longer feel the pain in her insides. If she hadn’t known that he wouldn’t have allowed it, she would have gone with Frank.
‘You will come straight back, won’t you? You’re not well.’
The door opposite was shut, with no thin line of pink light beneath it. Frank walked resolutely down the stairs. It was as if he knew where to find her.
At the end of Green Street, there is a street on the right, the one where Timo’s is, with the old basin behind. From that street, you get to Bridge Street, and once there you are almost in the centre of town; there are lights, shops, people on the streets.
If, on the other hand, you turn left, as he did once with Sissy, all you see are the backs of houses and patches of waste ground. Some parts of the basin are filled in, others not. They started building a teacher training college here, but the war interrupted the work; all that is left is a huge roofless carcass, with iron girders and un
finished walls. Two rows of trees, still quite small and thin, protected by railings, demarcate what was meant to be a boulevard, but it is pitted with gullies and ends in a sheer drop into a sand quarry.
Night had fallen. For the whole of this part of town, there was just a single streetlamp, which seemed to have been forgotten, whereas on the other side of the river the lights formed an almost continuous garland in front of the houses and there were trams passing.
He knew he would find her again, but he wanted to avoid scaring her. He had no intention of talking to her. He just wanted to give her back her key. Because Holst wouldn’t be home before midnight, and she couldn’t stay outside, her feet bare in her shoes, her legs bare, without any money.
He passed close to someone, a man, on the corner of the street, and he was certain it was Mr Wimmer. He recoiled for a moment, feeling afraid, because if the man had taken it into his head to hit him, he would have been obliged to let him do it.
Mr Wimmer, too, must be looking for Sissy. Maybe he had followed her for a while and had only lost track of her on the waste ground?
For a split second, the two men almost touched. There was a little light here. Although you couldn’t see the moon, it was behind the clouds and made it possible to make out the outlines of objects.
Did Mr Wimmer see the handbag Frank is still holding in his hand? Did he think of the key? Did he understand what the young man was doing here?
In any case, he has let him pass. Frank walks in all directions, very fast, bumping into heaps of hardened snow; every now and again, he stops abruptly and looks around him.
He would like to call out Sissy’s name, but that would probably be the best way for her not to come, for her to plunge further into the dark patches of waste ground or for her to go to ground somewhere, like the black and white cat in the village.
Occasionally, there is the sound of something moving, and he hurries forwards but finds nothing. Then he hears footsteps going in another direction, breaks into a run and realizes that it is Mr Wimmer, who has been following a route parallel to his.
Several times, his feet have broken through crusts of very hard ice and his legs have disappeared from the knees down.
She is there. He has seen her. He has recognized her figure and hasn’t dared rush forwards, or speak, or call out; he has simply held out the bag at arm’s length, the way they showed the saucer of milk to the cat.
She has already set off again. She has disappeared into an area of shadow and only now does he risk crying out, in a voice he is ashamed of in this desert of silence:
‘The key!’
He glimpses her again as she crosses a white patch and he runs, stumbling, repeating, ‘The key!’
He doesn’t want to say her name, because it might scare her away. He should have given the bag to Mr Wimmer: he might have been able to get to her. He didn’t think of it. Nor did Mr Wimmer. Does the old neighbour really have a better chance than him? Frank can’t see him or hear him any more. He is too old to be wading through this terrain strewn with potholes! She isn’t far, barely a hundred metres away. But the man who climbed the tree in Mrs Porse’s garden several times had his hand just a few centimetres from the cat. Everyone thought he would get it. Maybe the cat was hesitating over what to do, then, at the last moment, jumped on to a higher branch.
The river is frozen, but the sewer, which stops the ice from forming over a fairly wide expanse, isn’t far.
He tries again, once, twice. He could almost weep with discouragement.
It’s becoming an obsession: the key. That shiny, worn little bag, with a handkerchief, ration cards, a bit of money and a key.
Then, since he is not far from her, since she can surely see him, he chooses the brightest spot to come to a halt. He stands there, motionless, holding the bag out at arm’s length, and repeats at the top of his voice, unconcerned that he might seem ridiculous:
‘The key!’
He waves the bag. He would like to be sure she sees him and understands. As ostentatiously as possible, he puts it down in full view on the snow.
‘The key!’ he repeats. ‘I’m leaving it here!’
It’s best if he goes, for her sake. As long as he is prowling around, she will be suspicious. Discouraged, he trudges off, literally tears himself away from the waste ground, forces himself back on to the rails, on to that black path between the banks of snow that constitutes the pavement of his street.
He doesn’t go to Timo’s, even though it is very close. He passes the dark alley beside the tannery without noticing it. As he enters the building, the caretaker watches him from behind his curtain. He must already know. By tonight, or tomorrow, the whole building will know.
He climbs the stairs. There is no light in Mr Wimmer’s apartment, which means he isn’t back yet.
It all starts to form a grey, inconsistent, monotonous fog. The hours pass, one by one. They’re certainly the longest he has ever experienced. So much so that he sometimes feels like crying out when he looks at the alarm-clock and sees the hands in the same place.
Of all those hours, though, nothing will remain, just a few scraps, a residue, like a heap of ashes in a fireplace.
His mother coming home, her perfume immediately taking possession of the room. She only looks at him for a second. It is to Minna that she then turns, Minna to whom she motions to join her in the big bedroom. Do they think he can’t hear them whispering? Let Minna tell her everything! As it happens, she doesn’t wait for his permission. She must think she is obliged, for his sake. From now on, they are going to start protecting him!
He doesn’t care.
‘I’d like you to eat something, Frank, just a little.’
Lotte is expecting him to say no. But he does eat. He can’t remember what, but he does eat. Then his mother goes and tidies the bed in the back room. Minna doesn’t go back to bed. Assuming an innocent air, she sits in one of the armchairs in the salon, as close as possible to the door, keeping watch.
Who are they afraid of? Holst? The police? Old Wimmer?
He smiles contemptuously.
‘You can go to bed, Frank. Your room is ready. Unless you prefer the big bedroom tonight?’
But he didn’t go to bed. He would be incapable of saying what he did, what he thought about. There were moments – and this is the only thing he remembers – when the objects around him started coming to life in front of his eyes, just as they did when he was little: a brass ashtray, for instance, on which the gleams of light became eyes, an upholstered stool by the stove where his mother is in the habit of putting her feet when she sews.
These hours gave the impression they would never end, and yet they did. He was given something to drink, something with lemon and alcohol. His socks were changed, and he let them put his slippers on him. The women talked about Bertha, who wasn’t due back until the next morning and who would try to bring back a piece of pork and some sausages.
Mr Wimmer came back at about eight o’clock, alone. As other tenants from all the floors came in, the caretaker probably brought them up to date.
Maybe Sissy is already dead?
Mr Porse kept repeating that it was better to finish off the cat with a good shot from his rifle. There must be those in the building who think the same thing about Sissy; others who, if they dared, would happily murder Frank.
He doesn’t care about that either.
‘Why don’t you go to bed?’
And as they both knew what he was waiting for, Lotte added:
‘We’ll listen out. I promise I’ll wake you if there’s any news.’
Did he burst out laughing? He certainly felt like it.
It has to end one way or another. In the case of the cat, it lasted at least two days. Did the animal really just set off again, with its eye hanging out?
It is more likely that Mr Porse ended up using his rifle when Frank was at school, and that they preferred to lie to him.
There are the long minutes preceding midnight, even longer
than those that preceded five o’clock. That time is already so distant, it belongs to another world. It is the two women who are the first to jump when they hear footsteps on the stairs, but they pretend to continue with what they are doing, one sewing, the other reading the novel by Zola, though she would probably be hard put to tell the story.
The door downstairs has slammed. It’s him. It can only be him, and he will be stopped as he passes; the caretaker must be waiting for him to tell him the news. How is it that footsteps are immediately heard on the stairs? It’s still confused. As far as the first floor, the sound is barely perceptible. Starting from the second floor, Frank recognizes the soft sound of felt boots on the stairs, at the same time as the rhythm of someone else’s steps.
He has stopped breathing. Minna was about to get up and half open the door to take a look, but Lotte has ordered her with a sign not to move. The three of them are listening. The other steps are those of a woman; they make out the click of high heels, then hear the key turn in the lock. And Holst’s voice saying simply, gently:
‘Go on!’
Frank won’t learn until much later that she was waiting for her father at the corner of the alley, in the very place where, one night, he himself had stood with his back against the wall. He may also learn that she was on the verge of letting him pass, that Holst was already no longer visible from the corner where she was huddled when, her strength failing, she cried, ‘Father!’
Now they are home. The door has shut behind them.
‘Please go to bed now, Frank. Be sensible.’
He knows why she is saying that. His mother is afraid that once his daughter is in bed, Holst will come and knock at their door. She would prefer to receive him herself. If she dared – but Frank’s excessively motionless stare puts her off – she would advise Frank to go and spend a few days in the country, or at a friend’s.
And yet it all happens simply! Old Wimmer hasn’t emerged from his lair. He can’t be in bed either. Through his fanlight, he can hear everything.
Did Holst go to bed that night? For a long time, there was noise in his apartment. They must still have a little wood or coal left, because he lit a fire; they poked it and put on water to boil.
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