Dirty Snow by Georges Simenon Page B

himself.
    â€œTell me, who is this Carl Adler?”
    â€œThe driver of the car? I think he’s a radio engineer.”
    â€œWhat does he do?”
    â€œHe works for them, locating underground transmitters in the telegraph office. You can trust him.”
    â€œI hope so.”
    And Kromer kept coming back to his obsession.
    â€œWhy don’t you ever bring her here?”
    â€œWho?”
    â€œThe little girl.”
    â€œI told you, she lives with her father.”
    â€œWhat difference does it make?”
    â€œWe’ll see. Maybe I’ll get around to it.”
    People must think he was hard. Even his mother was afraid of him. Yet he was capable of great tenderness, lapsing into a daydream while staring at a splash of greenish color, as he was now. It was nothing—part of the background of a decorative wall panel at Leonard’s. It showed a meadow, and each blade of grass was distinct, the daisies had all their petals.
    â€œWhat are you thinking about?”
    â€œI’m not thinking about anything.”
    It was a question his wet-nurse used to ask him long ago. So had his mother, when she came to see him on Sundays.
    â€œWhat’s my little Frank thinking about?”
    â€œNothing.” He answered angrily because he hated being called “my little Frank.”
    â€œSay, Frank! If I get that green card for you …”
    â€œYou’ll get it.”
    â€œAll right. Supposing. Then we could really pull something off, right?”
    â€œMaybe.”
    That night he knew his mother had understood. He came home early because he was coming down with a bad cold, and he had always been afraid of being sick. They were sitting in the front room, the one they always called the salon. There was fat Bertha darning stockings, Minna with a hot-water bottle on her belly, and Lotte reading the paper.
    They were all three so still and silent in the sleeping house that they looked like a painting. It was surprising to see their lips move.
    â€œHome so soon?”
    The paper must have reported what had happened to Mademoiselle Vilmos. There was no longer much fuss made over attacks of that sort, since they happened every day. But even if there had been only three lines on the last page, Lotte wouldn’t have missed them. She never missed information about people she had known.
    She must have understood part of the truth and guessed the rest. Even the noise he had made with Minna the night before must have come back to her. Knowing men the way she did, she would have found a special significance in a detail like that.
    â€œHave you had dinner?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œWould you like a cup of coffee?”
    â€œNo, thanks.”
    She was afraid of him. She walked on eggshells around him. It had always been like that, though not as flagrant or obvious.
    â€œYou’re sniffling.”
    â€œI have a cold.”
    â€œWhy not have some hot rum and let me cup you?”
    He agreed to the rum but not the cupping. He had a horror of those little glasses that his mother had a perfect mania for putting on her girls at the slightest sign of a cough, leaving round pink or brown spots on their skin.
    â€œBertha!”
    â€œI’ll go,” Minna said quickly, a sudden pain twisting her face as she rose.
    It was warm and peaceful, Frank’s cigarette smoke gathered around the light, the fire roared—there were four fires roaring in the apartment—while a very fine snow had once again started to drift lazily through the darkness outside the windows.
    â€œYou really don’t want anything to eat? There’s some liver sausage.”
    In the end, words meant nothing. They served only as a means of contact. He understood that Lotte simply needed to hear his voice, to see if anything about it had changed.
    Because of the old Vilmos woman!
    He smoked his cigarette, leaning back in a deep red-velvet armchair, legs stretched out toward the fire. The oddest