Dirty Snow Read Online Free PDF Page A

dignified in line somewhere in the neighborhood. Some people accepted that sort of thing, others refused to. Frank hadn’t accepted it. He wouldn’t stand in line for anything in the world.
    â€œEveryone else does but you,” his mother had said to him. She thought he was too proud.
    Could anyone imagine Kromer standing in line? Or Timo? Any of those people?
    Didn’t Lotte have coal? And when Lotte got up in the morning, wasn’t food her first thought?
    â€œIn my house you eat!” she had once replied to a girl who had never been a prostitute before and was asking how much she would earn at Lotte’s.
    And it was true. You ate. You didn’t just eat, you stuffed yourself. You stuffed yourself from morning to night. There was always food on the kitchen table. A whole family could have survived on their leftovers.
    It had become a sort of game to think up dishes that were the most difficult to prepare, dishes full of fat or other ingredients that were almost impossible to find. It was a sport.
    â€œBacon? Go ask Kopotzki, and say I sent you. Tell him I’ll bring him sugar.”
    And if they wanted mushrooms?
    â€œTake the streetcar and go to Blang’s. Tell him …”
    Each meal was a game. A game and an act of defiance, since everyone in the building got whiffs of the cooking floating through keyholes and under doors. People were almost tempted to leave their doors open. Meanwhile the Holsts put up with a bone garnished with turnips.
    What made him keep coming back to the Holsts? He got up. He was sick of lying in bed. He went to the kitchen, rubbing his sleepy eyes. It was eleven o’clock. A girl he didn’t know had just arrived, a new one, quiet and proper-looking, who hadn’t taken her hat off yet and who was wearing a white, feminine blouse.
    â€œDon’t be afraid of helping yourself to sugar,” Lotte urged, still in her dressing gown with her elbows on the table, drinking her coffee in little sips.
    It was always that way at first. They had to be tamed. In the beginning they didn’t dare touch a thing. They looked at a piece of sugar as though it were something precious. It was the same with the milk, with everything. And after a certain time they had to be sent away because they stole from the cupboards. Although, granted, they would have been sent away in any case.
    They were well behaved. They sat with their knees together. Most of them wore little tailored suits like Sissy, with dark skirts and white blouses.
    â€œIf only they stayed like that!”
    That’s what the clients liked.
    None of this early-morning sloppiness, for instance. Still, who knows? There they were, one big happy family, un-washed, their faces shiny, drinking coffee, eating anything they liked, smoking cigarettes, doing nothing.
    â€œWill you iron my pants?” Frank asked his mother.
    And, because the outlet was in the salon, Lotte set up the ironing board there between two armchairs.
    What about the Eunuch?
    Some of the neighbors were in a panic because of what he’d done, the ones who had seen the body in the snow that morning. Because of it, they wouldn’t have an easy moment all day.
    Frank’s only worry was the automatic. At about nine he had climbed out of bed for a moment with the idea of putting it in the pocket of his overcoat and hiding it later.
    But where? And who should he be hiding it from?
    Bertha was too easygoing to let anything slip, except out of stupidity.
    The other one, the little one in the suit whose name he didn’t yet know, would keep quiet because she was new, because she was in their house, and because she was hungry.
    As for his mother, he didn’t worry about her. He was the boss. She tried to rebel at times, but in the end she knew that she would always do what Frank wanted.
    He wasn’t tall. In fact, he was short. Once—but that was a long time ago—he had worn high heels, almost as high as a