Dirty Snow by Georges Simenon Page A

any case, because Monday her father’s on the morning shift and he’ll be home in the late afternoon.”
    â€œHave you spoken to her about it?”
    â€œShe doesn’t need to know.”
    â€œI don’t understand.” Kromer was a little uneasy.
    â€œYou want … ?”
    â€œOf course not. But I have an idea. I’ll explain when the time comes.”
    His eyes had narrowed. His head ached. His skin was clammy, and every now and then he shivered, like someone coming down with the flu.
    â€œHave you got the green card?”
    â€œYou’ll have to come to the department with me tomorrow to get it.”
    And then the conversation turned to watches.
    What possessed him later on, a little before midnight, to loiter around in the street just to see Holst come home?
    He had no intention of sleeping at Lotte’s. Without letting her know, he went to Kromer’s, where he sank down on the couch.

PART TWO:
Sissy's Father

1
    M INNA was ill. They had put her on the cot usually reserved for Frank, and they shifted her from place to place, depending on the time of day, because there wasn’t much room for a sick person in the house. They couldn’t very well let her go home to her parents in the state she was in, and they couldn’t call a doctor.
    â€œIt was that Otto again!” Lotte told her son.
    His real name was Schonberg. And his first name wasn’t Otto. Almost all the clients had a nickname, especially if they were very well known, like Schonberg. He was a grandfather. Thousands of families depended on him, and people bowed in fear to him on the street.
    â€œHe always promises me to be careful, and then he goes and does it again.”
    Minna was there with her red rubber hot-water bottle, being pushed from room to room, spending most of her time in the kitchen, looking ashamed, as though it was all her fault.
    Then there was the matter of the green card, which had involved a lot of running back and forth, since at the last moment quantities of documents were needed and five photographs instead of the three Frank had taken with him.
    â€œWhy is your name Friedmaier, like your mother’s? You should use your father’s name.”
    The redheaded official with coarse orange skin seemed to think that was suspicious. He, too, was afraid of responsibility. Kromer had to telephone the general from the poor man’s own office.
    Frank got his card at last, but it had taken hours. He still looked feverish, but he wasn’t running a temperature. Lotte kept glancing at him surreptitiously. She wondered why he had become so animated all of a sudden.
    â€œYou’d better rest in bed for a day or two.”
    He had also found a girl to take Minna’s place on Saturday, the busiest day of the week at Lotte’s. He knew where to go. He knew several places.
    All that had taken time. He had been constantly busy and yet, during those two days, time had seemed to drag.
    There was still the dirty snow, piles of it that looked like they were rotting, stained black, peppered with garbage. The white powder that loosed itself from the sky in small handfuls, like plaster falling from a ceiling, never managed to cover up the filth.
    He had gone to the movies with Sissy again. By that time everything had been decided, all arrangements made between him and Kromer. Sissy, of course, knew nothing.
    The same day he had asked his mother, “Are you going out on Sunday?”
    â€œProbably. Why?”
    She went out every Sunday. She went to the movies, then to eat pastry and listen to music.
    â€œWill Bertha be going to her parents’?”
    The house was usually closed on Sundays. Bertha would go see her parents, who lived in the country and thought she worked as a housemaid for a nice family.
    Only Minna would be in the apartment. Nothing could be done about that.
    As soon as they were seated at the movies—it was Friday—Sissy had asked, like a little