Dirty Snow by Georges Simenon Read Free Book Online

floor.
    Well, then? Why didn’t he do something? Frank was almost tempted to speak to him, out of defiance. Perhaps he might have, in the end, saying anything that came into his head, if the dark-red streetcar hadn’t arrived at that moment with its usual clatter.
    Frank didn’t get in. There was nothing to do in town at this hour. He had simply wanted to see Holst, and he had— as much as he wanted to. Holst, who had taken his place on the front platform, turned and leaned out for a moment as the car started. He didn’t look at Frank but at the building, at his own window, where you could make out the white blur of a face between the folds of the curtains.
    This was the way father and daughter said good-bye. After the streetcar had left, the girl remained at the window because Frank was in the street. And Frank suddenly made a decision. Taking care not to look up, he went back into the building, unhurriedly climbed the three flights, and, a weight in his chest, knocked at the door directly opposite Lotte’s.
    He wasn’t prepared, didn’t know what he was going to say. He had simply decided to put his foot in the doorway to keep it from closing, but the door didn’t close. Sissy looked at him, surprised, and he was almost as surprised to find himself there. He smiled. He didn’t often smile. He was more apt to scowl, looking straight ahead with a hard expression on his face even when he was alone. Or else he assumed an air of such indifference that people were chilled by it.
    â€œAnd yet, when you smile,” Lotte would say, “there’s nothing people wouldn’t do for you. You have the same smile you had when you were two years old.”
    His smile wasn’t intentional; it was because he was embarrassed. Sissy was hard to make out against the light. On a table near the window he noticed some little saucers and some brushes and paint pots.
    He entered without speaking because he couldn’t help it. He said, no longer looking for an excuse or an explanation for his visit, “You paint?”
    â€œI decorate china. I have to help out my father.”
    He had seen saucers, cups, ashtrays, and “artistic” candle-holders like these in some of the shops in town. They were bought mainly as souvenirs by the Occupation soldiers. They had flowers painted on them, or a woman in peasant costume, or a cathedral spire.
    Why was she staring at him the whole time? If she didn’t look at him, everything would be easier. She was devouring him with her eyes, so innocently that it was embarrassing. It reminded him of the girl this morning, Minna, the new one, who was probably busy at that very moment—the way she kept staring at him with a sort of stupid respect.
    â€œDo you do a lot of work?”
    She replied, “The days are long.”
    â€œYou never go out?”
    â€œSometimes.”
    â€œDo you ever go to the movies?”
    She blushed. Immediately he seized his chance.
    â€œI’d like to take you to the movies sometime.”
    Yet it wasn’t Sissy who interested him, he now realized. He looked around, sniffed the air, exactly like Hamling when he had come to see them. The apartment was much smaller than Lotte’s. The door led straight into the kitchen, where there was a folding cot against the wall. Was that where her father slept, his feet sticking out at the bottom? Through an open door he glimpsed a bedroom, probably Sissy’s—the proof was that she looked embarrassed when she saw him glancing that way.
    There was a transom like the one in their kitchen, but because it looked into the neighbor’s it had been covered with a piece of cardboard.
    They were still standing. She had been too scared to ask him to sit down. For something to do, he offered her his cigarette case.
    â€œThank you. I don’t smoke.”
    â€œYou don’t like it?”
    There was a pipe on the table and a tin box full of cigarette butts.