The Snowman Read online

  “May I have one of your cigarettes? HB, oh well, better than nothing.” She spoke a neutral big-city German with a trace of south German accent. Her voice sounded slightly husky, as if she hadn’t quite recovered from a cough. “I was going to ask if I can sleep with you?”

  “Sleep with me?”

  “Well, spend the night at your place, know what I mean? I can give you some shit if you want. You must have an apartment somewhere, and they chucked me out of my room in the place where I was sharing three days ago because I was going to leave anyway, so I didn’t see why I should pay the full rent. Anyway they’re so stupid there, understand?”

  “You want to spend the night with me?”

  Blum stared at her. Was she a decoy? But the CID wouldn’t go to those lengths, and the cartels could afford something smarter. He smiled again.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Cora. What’s yours?”

  “Blum. Like a flower in bloom. Well, look, Cora, I’m no Jack the Ripper, and I don’t have a wife to make objections, but I’m afraid I don’t have an apartment either, only a hotel room. I’m just passing through.”

  She pushed a strand of hair back from her brow. Strictly speaking it was ash-blonde hair, but ash blonde is still blonde.

  “Passing through, I see. Typical, just my luck. But maybe your hotel room is big enough. I mean, I don’t have much baggage. Where is it, then – the Intercontinental?”

  “Not exactly. What’ll you have to drink?”

  “I’d rather have something to eat, if you don’t mind. I’ve only had a few chips all day.”

  “Broke?”

  She nodded and looked piercingly at him. Her eyes were rather large: cool and grey.

  “Then let’s go and get something proper to eat.”

  “I still have to find a place to sleep, though . . .”

  “That’ll be okay.”

  “You think so?”

  She stood up, and those breasts curved out right before his eyes. She really did look a little like the early BB, and somehow more voluptuous.

  The only place to eat that was still open was an Onkel Max. They sat among the drunks and ate Wiener schnitzel, or rather Cora ate Wiener schnitzel while Blum slowly drank a beer and watched her. He liked a girl with a good appetite. “How old are you, Cora?”

  “Do you have to know? Not quite thirty yet. Are you sure you don’t have a first name?”

  “Blum sounds better.”

  “Come on, tell me.”

  “Listen, my name’s Blum.”

  “Okay, just as you like. And how old are you?”

  “Not quite forty yet.”

  “Then we go well together.”

  “How do you mean?”

  She had finished eating and lit a cigarette. He had given her three marks for Roth-Händle. She smoked as hard as she ate.

  “For the night,” she said. “You have to go well together even for one night. Oh, do take those sunglasses off, they look silly, you’re not in the Mafia. Your eyes are okay. Almost green. Eyes are so important, nice eyes. Mine are a bit too big, don’t you think? What are you looking at? Are you in the Mafia?”

  He put the glasses back on. There was no point. He couldn’t drag this girl into it. Perhaps the guys the coke belonged to would strike tonight, or perhaps the cops were on his track and already waiting for him back at the hotel.

  “Listen, Cora, I’ll give you fifty marks and you can get yourself a hotel room . . .”

  “Why? I thought I could sleep with you . . .”

  “I didn’t say so.”

  “Oh, I thought you did. Well, never mind. But I’m not taking money from you, I mean, that’s crazy. I’ll find something else. Or I can just sleep in the park.”

  “Do sit down, Cora.”

  “I’ll go when it suits me.”

  But she sat down again, inhaled on her cigarette and puffed out a thick cloud of smoke. It’s all one to her, thought Blum. No room, no money, wandering around the streets, talking to men, and she probably has enough stuff in her bag to land her in the loony bin. She’s not afraid of the Rossis and Renées of this world either. True enough, there was something that bothered him about this picture; perhaps the colours were laid on a bit too thick here and there. But another night alone in that bleak room . . .

  “The fact is,” he said cautiously, “things could get rather lively in my room tonight.”

  She grinned meaningfully.

  “Not the way you think,” he said. “Something like superior forces at work.”

  “We’re helpless against superior forces, isn’t that right, Blum?”

  “The bill, please, waiter.”

  They took a taxi. Blum had the impression that they were being followed, but there was nothing to be done about it. Anyone who wanted to find him could find him. Where could he hide? You can’t hide with five pounds of coke, not if you want to make money out of it. And now he’d landed himself with a blonde too, a tarty blonde pot-head, probably with the police after her, but she was what he wanted. At twenty he’d dreamed of such blondes and jerked himself off. Now at forty he finally had one, even if she was shop-soiled and run-down. But it was never too late for blondes.

  19

  “Hey, this is really stylish,” said Cora, when they were in his hotel room. Blum had give the night porter a twenty.

  “What’s so stylish about it?”

  “Well, I mean, even a bathroom. Almost like in the Intercontinental. Do you think I could have a bath now?”

  Before he could reply she kissed him fleetingly on the mouth and then disappeared into the bathroom with her bag. He heard the water running. The bed next door squealed again, and there was a noise in the room above as if someone were pushing the wardrobe back and forth. Blum poured himself a small Cutty Sark, sat by the window and stared out into the street. Two drunks, a police car, showers of rain. The light of the street lamps was reflected back from the bank façades. Why shouldn’t he strike lucky for once? Another sixteen hours. He switched the radio on. A smoky alto voice sang:

  “When the day has turned

  to evenin’ . . . baby

  and the stars are out

  to show their magic

  that’s the time you feel

  so lonesome

  it’s so strange and blue

  ’round midnight . . .”

  When Cora came out of the bathroom she was wearing nothing but her overshirt and lilac panties. Her wet hair fell to her shoulders, and Blum saw that she had made up her eyes. She had a smoking joint in her hand.

  “Want a drag?”

  Blum shook his head. She hadn’t dried herself. Water was running down her legs and trickling into the coconut-fibre carpet, which turned dark. She had strong, shapely legs. She was strong and shapely in general. In five years’ time she’d have weight problems, but at the moment everything was just the way Blum liked it. She sat down on the bed.

  “Anyone would think you wanted to seduce me,” said Blum. “A bath, a joint, bare legs . . .”

  “There’s only one bed here, after all,” she said. “It’ll be better if we fancy each other.”

  “Do you fancy me?”

  She blew a cloud of hashish in his direction and narrowed her eyes.

  “Can’t see much of you right now. But I guess I might if you were a bit more forthcoming. Sure you don’t want a drag?”

  Blum’s expression was gloomy. He did not particularly like hash, and anyway it was about time to find out why this woman was sitting on his bed.

  “Who set you on to me, baby?”

  She placed the remnants of the joint in the ashtray and stared at him. Her face coarsened, and she looked like a country slut come to town for the dancing but ready to slap down anyone who takes liberties.

  “I don’t understand, Blum,” she said hoarsely

  “You understand perfectly well. Who was it? Rossi? The syndicate? Hermes? Renée? That shady adman here in Frankfurt? Come on, tell me. You’re fro
m Munich, aren’t you? I can tell from your voice.”

  He had jumped up and gone to the bathroom before she could answer. The key was still inside the cistern. Her things were lying around, her bag, one of those Moroccan leather jobs, was under the wash-basin on which she had laid out her makeup. He picked up the bag and looked inside it.

  “What do you expect to find in there?” She was standing in the doorway, smoking again, Roth-Händle this time. “A pistol? A kilo of heroin? You’ve been watching too many gangster films, if you ask me. Or are you really in the underworld? Did you nick stuff from them and now they’re after you?”

  He dropped the bag. She reached for him, pulled him towards her and looked into his face at close quarters. Seeming to see the fear there, she dropped her cigarette and embraced him, pressed him to her with her damp hair on his shirt, her damp mouth on his face. After a while he pushed her gently away.

  “Pick that cigarette end up, Cora. Hotel fires can be pretty unpleasant.”

  She smiled and picked up the smouldering cigarette end. The curves of her lilac-clad buttocks swelled. He went into the bedroom, sat down by the window again and drank his whisky. She lay on the bed and listened as he told her the broad outlines of the story.

  “So you think one of them planted me on you?”

  “Could be. I mean, it’s an elegant solution – we screw, you pretend to be asleep, and when I wake up, assuming I ever wake up at all, you’re off and away with the snow. To whoever sent you.”

  “If you go on like that you’ll have me scared too.”

  “Why did you approach me in the jazz cellar?”

  “I thought I told you.”

  “Tell me your story.”

  “I don’t have one.”

  “Oh, come on, everyone has a story: let’s hear all about your childhood in the orphanage, your marriage, your suicide attempts . . .”

  “I don’t like that kind of story. You don’t need to know anything about me. I didn’t want to know anything about you either until you started acting so crazy.”

  “Have you been in jail? The nuthouse? You must come from somewhere. You must have done something.”

  “I’ve lived, same as you. You think only men can live as they like?”

  “Oh, very well, I’ll find out some time. And what do you want to do now?”

  “Before you flipped—”

  “Me, flipped?”

  “— I was going to sleep. Maybe even with you.” She looked at him, and then past him. “Got any of that snow with you? The night will soon be over.”

  So she was a coke-head after all. He hesitated. He liked her. She had some style, and she was right, the night would soon be over. After all, he must try the stuff himself some time, and who with if not her? And when if not now? He removed his ankleboots and took the bag out of his pocket. She gave him her make-up mirror, and he tipped a pinch of powder on the glass. Cora knelt beside him, her arms wrapped round her legs. Her face was gleaming.

  “Hey, that looks good, Blum.”

  “Peruvian flake, top quality. Have you often snorted?”

  “Can’t often afford to. But I know people who deal in it. If you’re looking for buyers, I guess they’d be interested.”

  “I have a buyer,” he said. They hadn’t yet discussed that point. He carefully cleaned his nose.

  “Go on.”

  “Looks like you can’t wait, right? Are you an addict?”

  “You don’t get addicted to cocaine, Blum. Cocaine means other kinds of problems. You ought to know that.”

  She watched him snort two lines. He waited until he felt the tingling in his head as the flakes reached his body, then lit a cigarette. Cora put the mirror on her knee and snorted the other two lines. Then she closed her eyes and put her head down between her legs, hands on her ankles. Blum looked down on her breasts as they rose and fell. There was rather a lot of them. She took his hand with the cigarette, kissed the palm, took a deep pull and slowly blew the smoke over his fingers. Then she took his socks off and massaged his feet. Her fingers were cool. His member swelled and pressed against the nape of her neck. He began stroking her shoulders with his left hand, and had reached her breasts when she closed her eyes, put her head right back on his swollen, throbbing penis and said, “Come on, let’s snort a little more.”

  They snorted a little more. This time Blum couldn’t sit still. He rose, walked up and down the room, alternately drank a sip of water and some whisky, lit two cigarettes at once, made his way into the bathroom, examined himself intently in the mirror, put his tongue out – everything fine, nice and pink, not coated. Then he stared out of the window again. Outside, there were faint grey edges to the darkness. The first tram rattled around the corner. Cora was lying in the armchair all this time, one bare leg over its arm, hands behind her head, eyes sometimes closed, sometimes looking at Blum, who took off his shirt and lit his tenth cigarette.

  “How are you doing, Blum?”

  “Fine,” he grunted.

  “It always makes me feel so peaceful. I like it that you don’t keep talking. Other people rabbit on for hours.”

  “Not me,” said Blum, who would have liked nothing better.

  “You don’t look peaceful, though.”

  “That’s just appearances. I can see it all clear as day – the whole thing. The connections, understand?”

  “What connections?”

  “Oh God, it all hangs together. Everything.”

  “You and me too?”

  “Sure, you and me too. The way it all worked out – when I think of Malta—”

  She stretched her arms out to him.

  “Come on, show me the connection.”

  From the chair, the coconut-fibre carpet and the bedside rug they moved to the bed, clinging together, drenched in sweat, Cora with her pubic hair damp, her eyelids smeared green, Blum gasping, in extremis.

  “Now, now, now,” cried Cora, but he couldn’t come. She kissed his penis, which was standing out from his body, hard and quivering, she stroked his thighs.

  “I can’t come,” he murmured.

  “Yes, you can. You can.”

  Overhead a radio was switched on, full volume, music for morning exercises. A woman’s voice said: “And now we crouch down, we loosen up our hips, with a left two three, and a right two three.” Then someone hammered on the wall and the radio was turned down. Blum laughed. His throat was burning. He switched off the light and they lay side by side, sweating into the bedclothes.

  “Do you think it’s possible, Blum?”

  “Of course. Sure. Everything’s possible. I don’t know. Why not?”

  “I mean are we possible?”

  He said nothing. What did she mean? He heard seagulls screaming. Gulls were possible. You lay on the beach exhausted, among the empty cans and crusts of bread, and suddenly they were over you. That was possible.

  Cora sighed, rubbed his penis over her breasts, pressed one nipple to the slit, wound strands of her hair around the glans, licked them off, laughed, reached for the cocaine, tipped a trail of bluish snow on his penis and slid it into her. Something exploded in his head, the sky was rent apart, the gulls dived into the sea, Cora screamed, screamed, screamed, and Blum came.

  20

  When Blum woke up a few hours later Cora was still lying at the other end of the bed. She had a sketchpad on her knees and was chewing a pencil.

  “Slept well, Blum?”

  “Not too bad,” he said. “How about you? Haven’t you had any sleep?”

  She looked tired. The cold sunlight coming in through the window put ten years on her age.

  “I had a dream, and it woke me up, and then I did some drawing. I like to draw, you see. To me it’s like meditating or yoga. Or praying.”

  “What did you dream?”

  “I never remember my dreams.”

  “I don’t believe you. That’s not the way you look.”

  “How do I look, then?”

  “Well, good.”
<
br />   It sounded feeble. He felt feeble too. He patted her leg and crawled out of bed. The room looked wrecked, and the Roth-Händle smoke clung to the ceiling like smog. He glanced at the time. Ten-thirty. Time to visit Mr Haq. He made his way into the bathroom, drank a pint of tap-water and showered. After shaving he felt almost like a man of thirty-nine again. He got dressed.

  “I have something to do, Cora. Will you stay here till I come back?”

  She seemed to be entirely absorbed in her sketching, and it was only after a while that she said, without raising her head, “How much are you asking for the stuff?”

  He was just buttoning up his navy-blue shirt. He hesitated for a moment, and then said, “I’ll get 100,000 marks for it.” There was no reason not to tell her. Maybe he’d even take her away with him – for a while.

  At that she raised her head and smiled incredulously. Or rather, she just thrust her lips out.

  “For five pounds of this stuff?”

  “Yes, not bad. A hundred thousand smackers.” It sounded good in the circumstances, in this bleak room. “In cash, too.”

  “That’s nothing like enough, Blum. You can make far more out of this stuff.”

  “Yes, sure. I thought so too. But don’t forget I’m in a hurry. I want to get away from here. I’m not keen to spend weeks on end trudging around Frankfurt with my sample case, selling the stuff off in little bags. I want to get out as fast as I can, and I’ll be happy if I get 100 grand this evening. The day after tomorrow I could be in the Bahamas.”

  “Why the Bahamas?”

  “Why not? Here, look at this book, there’s any number of opportunities. You could invest – it’s still classic boom time in Freeport, I could get a foothold there . . .”

  She looked at him in dismay and put down the sketchpad.

  “You’re crazy,” she said.

  The phone rang. Blum picked it up. It was the tall man. If voices could sound pinched, then his was.

  “We’ve changed our minds,” he said. “We don’t want the deal.”

  “But listen . . .”

  “Read today’s paper. Then you’ll know why we’re not interested any longer.”