Why do two plainclothes men remain in the room? He has thought about that. He has found several plausible solutions, but they don’t satisfy him. Sometimes it is the ones who took him to town on the day of the brass ruler, sometimes he recognizes the one who came to arrest him in Green Street, sometimes there are others, but not many: there are seven or eight in total, and they take turns. They don’t do anything. They don’t sit at a desk. They never take part in the interrogation, even in a small way; they would probably never dare. They remain standing, looking indifferent.
To stop him from running away, or from strangling the old man? It’s possible. That is the answer that comes immediately to mind. Although there are armed soldiers in the courtyard. They could put one to guard each door.
It’s also possible that they don’t trust each other. He doesn’t reject out of hand the apparently absurd idea that these men are there to observe what the old man does and record his words. Who knows? Maybe there is one among them who is more powerful than he is? Maybe the old man doesn’t know which one, maybe he is terrified at the thought of the reports about him that are transmitted to a higher authority?
In appearance, they are like acolytes, like the altar boys who accompany the priest during services. They don’t sit down, and they don’t smoke.
The old man, on the other hand, smokes all the time. It is almost his only human side. He smokes cigarette after cigarette. On his desk, there is an ashtray which is much too small, and it irritates Frank that nobody ever thinks of changing it for a larger one. It is a green ashtray in the shape of a vine leaf. Even in the morning sessions, it is overflowing with cigarette ends and ashes.
There is a stove in the room, and a coal bucket. All they would have to do, at a pinch, is occasionally empty the ashtray into the bucket, even if it was just once or twice a day.
But they don’t. Maybe he doesn’t want it? The cigarette ends accumulate, and they are dirty cigarette ends. The old man is a dirty smoker who never takes his cigarette out of his mouth. He salivates, lets it go out several times, lights it again, wets the paper, chews the wisps of tobacco.
His fingertips are brown. So are his teeth. And two little stains, above and below his lips, mark the place where the cigarette goes.
The most unexpected thing, on the part of a man like him, is that he rolls them himself. He seems to attach no importance to material things. You wonder when he eats, when he sleeps, when he shaves. Frank doesn’t recall ever seeing him clean-shaven. And yet he takes the trouble, even in the middle of an interrogation, to reach into his pocket and pull out a pig’s bladder containing his tobacco. From another pocket, in his waistcoat, he extracts the packet of cigarette papers.
He is meticulous about it. The operation takes time, which is maddening, because during that time it is as if all life is suspended. Is it a trick?
Last night, towards the end of the interrogation – in fact, it was almost morning – he mentioned Bertha. As always when he throws a new name into the ring, he did it in the most unexpected fashion. He didn’t use her surname. Anybody would think the old man was a regular there, or someone like Chief Inspector Hamling, for whom Lotte’s business affairs have no secrets.
‘Why did Bertha leave you?’
Frank has learned to play for time. Isn’t that the only reason he is here?
‘She didn’t leave me. She left my mother.’
‘It’s the same thing.’
‘No. I was never involved in my mother’s business.’
‘But you slept with Bertha.’
They know everything. God knows how many people they questioned to find out everything they know! God knows how many hours that represents, how many comings and goings!
‘You did sleep with Bertha, didn’t you?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘Often?’
‘I don’t know what you call often.’
‘Once, twice, three times a week?’
‘It’s hard to say. It depended.’
‘Did you love her?’
‘No.’
‘But you slept with her?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘And did you talk to her?’
‘No.’
‘You slept with her and you didn’t talk to her?’
Sometimes, when he is pressed on subjects like this, he feels like replying with an obscenity. Like at school. But you don’t use obscenities to your teacher. Or to the old man. The old man doesn’t play games.
‘Let’s just say I used as few words as possible.’
‘What kind of words?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Did you ever talk to her about what you’d done during the day?’
‘No.’
‘Or ask her what she had done?’
‘Even less.’
‘You didn’t talk to her about the men who slept with her?’
‘I wasn’t jealous.’
That’s the tone. But what needs to be taken into account is that the old man chooses his words carefully, sifts through them before uttering them, which takes time. His desk is a monumental American desk, with lots of compartments and drawers. It is full of pieces of paper which don’t look like anything. He takes them out from one place or another at a particular moment, according to need, and glances at them.
Frank is familiar with those pieces of paper. There is no clerk of the court here, nobody to record his answers. The two plainclothes men, who always remain standing near the doors, don’t have pens or pencils. It wouldn’t surprise Frank unduly if they didn’t know how to write.
It is the old man who writes, always on pieces of paper, on parts of old envelopes, the bottoms of letters or circulars which he carefully cuts. He has tiny, exceptionally fine handwriting, which is probably unreadable to anybody but him.
The fact that there is a piece of paper relating to Bertha in one of his compartments must mean that she has been interrogated. Is that how it should be interpreted? Sometimes, Frank sniffs as he enters the office, searching for smells, traces of whoever has been brought here in his absence.
‘Your mother received officers and high-ranking officials.’
‘It’s possible.’
‘You were often in the apartment during those visits.’
‘I guess I must have been.’
‘You’re young, you’re curious.’
‘I’m young but I’m not curious and I’m certainly not a pervert.’
‘You have friends, contacts. It’s very interesting to know what officers say and do.’
‘Not to me.’
‘Your friend Bertha—’
‘She wasn’t my friend.’
‘She’s not your friend any more, because she left you, you and your mother. I wonder why. I also wonder why raised voices were heard in your apartment that day, to the point where some of the tenants were alarmed.’
Which tenants? Who have they questioned? He thinks about old Mr Wimmer but doesn’t suspect him.
‘It’s curious that Bertha, who, according to your mother, was almost part of the family, should have left you at that time.’
Has he deliberately implied that Lotte has been questioned? Frank isn’t worried about that. He’s heard it all before.
‘Bertha was very valuable to your mama.’ He doesn’t know that Frank has never called his mother that, that you don’t call someone like Lotte ‘mama’. ‘I don’t know who it was who said . . .’ – he pretends to look through his pieces of paper – ‘ . . . that she was as strong as a horse.’
‘As a mare.’
‘As a mare, yes. We’ll have to talk about her again.’
At first, Frank thought these were idle words, a way of intimidating him. He never imagined that, in the eyes of the old man, his actions were so important as to set in motion a machine as complicated as the one that must be at work right now.
The most extraordinary thing is that, from his point of view, the old man isn’t wrong. He knows where he is going. He knows better
than Frank, who is only just starting to discover secrets he never even knew existed.
In this place, they don’t go in for idle words. They don’t bluff. If the old man says, ‘We’ll have to talk about her again,’ it means he will do more than just talk about her. Poor fat Bertha!
All the same, he doesn’t feel any real pity for her, or for anybody. He’s past that. He doesn’t resent her. He doesn’t despise her. He feels no hatred. He ends up looking at some people with the old man’s fish eyes, as if through the glass of an aquarium.
The proof that the old man doesn’t say anything idly came when he touched on Kromer. That was right at the beginning, when Frank hadn’t yet understood. He had imagined that, as had been the case when answering the officer with the ruler, all he had to do was deny everything.
‘Do you know someone called Fred Kromer?’
‘No.’
‘You’ve never met anybody of that name?’
‘I don’t recall.’
‘And yet he frequents the same places as you, the same restaurants, the same bars.’
‘It’s possible.’
‘Are you sure you never drank champagne with him at Timo’s?’
They are making it easy for him.
‘There are people I’ve drunk with at Timo’s, even champagne!’
That was careless of him. He realizes it immediately, but it’s too late. The old man writes illegibly on his pieces of paper. It doesn’t look like something to be taken seriously, not for a man of his age and in his position. And yet not one of those pieces of paper ever gets lost, there isn’t one that doesn’t come back when the time is right.
‘Are you sure you didn’t just know him by his first name: Fred? There are places where some people are only known by their first names. For example, lots of people who met you pretty much every day don’t know that your surname is Friedmaier.’
‘It’s not the same.’
‘Not the same for you as for Kromer?’
Everything counts. Everything is significant. Everything is recorded. He spends two exhausting hours denying his relationship with Kromer, for no reason, just because it’s the course of action he has decided on. The next day and the following days, Kromer isn’t even mentioned. He thinks they’ve forgotten about him. Then, in the middle of a night session, when he is literally swaying, when his eyes are burning and they are deliberately keeping him standing, he is shown an amateur snapshot of himself with Kromer and two women on the banks of a river in the middle of summer. They have taken their jackets off. It looks very much like a country outing. Kromer can’t resist putting his big hand on the breasts of the blonde who’s with him.
‘Do you know him?’
‘I don’t remember his name.’
‘Or the names of the girls?’
‘Do you expect me to remember the names of all the girls I’ve gone boating with?’
‘One of them, this one, the brunette, is called Lili.’
‘I believe you.’
‘Her father works in the town hall.’
‘That’s possible.’
‘And your companion is Kromer.’
‘Oh?’
He couldn’t remember the photograph. He had never had a print of it in his hands. What he does remember is that there were five of them that day, three men and two women, which is never convenient. Fortunately, the third man was busy taking photographs! It was he, too, who did the rowing when they were in the boat. Even if Frank had wanted to tell the old man his name, he wouldn’t have been able to.
That proves the seriousness with which they’re investigating. God knows where they dug up that photograph! Have they searched Kromer’s place? If it was there, it’s curious that Frank has never seen it. At the friend’s place? At the photographer’s that developed the film?
That’s precisely what’s good about the old man, what encourages Frank and gives him hope. The officer would probably have had him shot immediately, to get rid of him, not to complicate his own life. With this man, he has all the time in the world.
What he really thinks – and it is more a matter of faith than conviction – is that it all depends on him, only on him. Like people who sleep little, who have learned how to sleep, he thinks above all in images, in sensations.
He would have to go back to his dream of flying, when he only had to place his hands flat and press on the air with all his might, with all his will, to rise, slowly at first, then with ease, until his head touched the ceiling.
He can’t talk about that. Even if Holst was here in person, he wouldn’t admit to him his secret hope. Not yet. It is exactly like in a dream, and it is wonderful that he has had that dream several times, because it helps him now. It may be a dream, too, that he is living through right now. There are moments when, because of sleeping so much, he is no longer sure. It depends on him, on his will, this time, too.
If he has the energy, if he continues to keep the faith, it will last as long as it has to.
It’s not a question of going back outside. For him, it’s not a question of the kind of hope the people confined in the next classroom must entertain. That kind of hope doesn’t interest him, in fact it shocks him.
They are doing what they can. It’s not their fault.
For him, there is a certain amount of time to be gained. If he was asked the length of this amount of time, to specify it in days, weeks, months, he would be incapable of answering. And what if he was asked what there must be at the end of it?
Come on! It’s better to argue with the old man! There is a time for everything. It is a standing interrogation. He distinguishes the standing interrogations from the seated interrogations. It is quite a naive trick, when all is said and done. It is always in order to put him in a state of least resistance. He doesn’t let on that he prefers to stand. When they make him sit, it is on a stool without a back, which over a long period is even more tiring.
As for the old man, he never stands up, never feels the need to walk about the room in order to stretch his legs. Not once, even during an interrogation of five hours, has he walked out to relieve himself or drink a glass of water. He doesn’t drink anything. There is nothing to drink on his desk. He makes do with smoking cigarettes, and even then he always lets them go out two or three times.
He uses a whole lot of tricks. The one, for example, of always leaving Frank’s revolver on his desk, as if it had been forgotten, as if it were an anonymous object of no importance. He uses it as a paperweight. Since the first day, since the search, he has never referred to it. The weapon is nevertheless there, like a threat.
It is important to think clearly. Frank isn’t the only one in this sector. In spite of the time that the old man is devoting to him, which is considerable, it is to be assumed that a man of his importance has other problems to solve, other prisoners to question. Does his revolver stay there while he interrogates the others? Or is it an element of the decor that changes for each person? Is the revolver sometimes replaced by another object, a knife, a cheque, a letter, some other piece of evidence?
How to explain that this man is a godsend? Others wouldn’t understand and would start to hate him. Without him, Frank wouldn’t have a constant sense of the time remaining to him. Without him, without these exhausting interrogations, he might never have suspected it was possible to achieve the level of clear-headedness he has now, so different from what he used to think of as clear-headedness.
He has to remain on his guard, though, avoid cutting him too much slack at any one time. There would be a risk of it going too quickly, and they would get directly to the end.
It mustn’t finish too soon. Frank still has things to get straight. It’s slow. It’s both fast and slow at the same time.
That stops him from being concerned with the men they take out of the classroom next door and shoot. The most impressive thing, when it comes down to it, is the time of day chosen for that: it is when the prisoners are barely awake, wild-eyed, unwashed, unshaven, without a cup of cof
fee in their stomachs, and the cold forces them, without exception, to turn up the collars of their jackets. Why aren’t they allowed to put their coats on? It’s a mystery. It’s not because of the value of the garment. And the material, however thick it is, won’t stop the bullets. Maybe it’s just to make it more sinister?
Would Frank turn up the collar of his jacket? Possibly. He doesn’t think about it. He seldom thinks about it. Actually, he is convinced he won’t be shot in the courtyard, near the covered playground with the piled-up desks.
These people are men who have been judged, who have committed a crime, who can be judged and inscribed in the big books of justice. Cheating a little, if need be.
If they had had to judge him, it is more than likely he would have been sent back to the officer with the brass ruler.
When it is all over, when the old man, in all good conscience, judges that he has wormed everything he possibly can out of him, he will be made to disappear unceremoniously, he doesn’t yet know where, he doesn’t know the place well enough; they will shoot him in the back, on a staircase or in a corridor. There must be a cellar that is used for that.
By then, he won’t care. He isn’t afraid. His one fear, his obsession, is that it should happen too soon, before the time he will have decided, before it is over.
He will be the first one, if they insist, to say to them, ‘Go ahead!’
If he could express a last wish, he would ask them to do what they had to do while he was lying flat on his stomach on his bed.
Doesn’t all this prove that the old man is a godsend? He will find something new again. Every day he finds something new. It’s a question of being alert on all fronts at once, thinking as much about Timo as about the people he met at Taste’s, or the anonymous tenants of the building. That old demon with the glasses deliberately mixes everything up.
What is his latest find? He has taken the time to wipe his glasses with the vast coloured handkerchief that always sticks out of the pocket of his trousers. He has played with his pieces of paper as usual. To anyone observing him through the window who didn’t know, it would almost look like a lottery, or a game of lotto. He really does seem to be plucking things at random. Then he rolls a cigarette, with the irritating slowness of an obsessive. He sticks his tongue out to lick the paper and searches for his box of matches.
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