The Snowman (24 page)

“Either Sekt or seltzer water, that's what I always say.”

“Then you've been drinking an awful lot of seltzer water recently, you poor thing. Have you finished packing yet?”

“Take it easy, little one. What do you want to do, then? Fuck?”

“Sometimes you make me want to throw up, Blum. But somehow I like you all the same, and I didn't betray you. To anyone. I don't know why you ran away from James like that, but you never stick around long enough for anyone to explain anything. Except when you're packing, then you take your time. And now this so-called businessman – I see how it is, he waved a few banknotes at you and now it's yes and amen to everything. And later you'll feel insulted because he's a cop after all. Haven't you thought of that one?”

“You really think I'm naïve, child, don't you.”

“And don't keep calling me child.”

“What else do I say? You don't like baby either.”

“You're crazy – baby, child! Haven't you noticed that I'm a grown woman?”

“Not losing your sense of humour, are you?”

That was payback for the seltzer remark. He took off his ankleboots and held them up to the light. It was nearly mid-day, and a strip of spring sunlight shone on
one side of the roof outside. Cora had been here for an hour, and he still didn't know why. He dampened a towel with hot water and rubbed his ankleboots till they shone. Cora smoked and stared at him.

“All right, neither of us is naïve and we haven't lost our sense of humour either. That man's not a cop, Cora. A businessman, say he's gone broke ten times, he simply says to himself, I'll never get my villa in Ascona by legal means so let's try the narcotics, maybe that's better than the used-car business or a dry-cleaning outfit. There are plenty of his sort around. They don't all start dealing in drugs, but after a while they get to thinking of it. It's not the exclusive affair it was ten or twenty years ago, with a lot of fuss and bother. The fuss and bother is just for the poor bastards who do themselves in with the stuff.”

“Sometimes you talk like a cop yourself. Are your boots clean yet?”

“If either of us is like a cop it's you, Cora. It takes a cop mentality to let yourself be planted on me, to spy on me. And who for? For a narcotics pro like Hermes. Or was he only putting on an act for the hell of it too? And who says you haven't been planted on Hermes by the cops. Where's your police tag, Cora? Third jacket pocket from the left?”

Her face froze. Two tears dyed with mascara ran down her cheeks, drawing two fine lines on her skin. She stared at him, her hands clutching the chair back, her white knuckles standing out. Blum turned away and put his boots on. When he looked up again she was reaching out her hands.

“Help me, Blum!”

He stayed where he was.

“Help me, you idiot! My legs have gone to sleep, I can't stand up! Blum!”

He pulled her up, the chair fell over, and of course she landed in his arms. Gone to sleep nothing – she was pressing close to him, trembling, hot, her ash-blonde hair crackling, then they were lying on the bed, he below, she on top of him, her eyes closed, like a parachutist leaping from a plane. But Blum was not a cloud, nor was he going to be the meadow on which the bold conqueror of the heights might land.

“I have to leave, Cora. Really, this isn't the moment.”

“You wanted us to stay together once.”

“That was before I knew what your job was.”

“Aren't you making it a little easy for yourself?”

“Is that what it looks like? Do I look as if I'd ever made things easy for myself? The deal will finally go through in an hour's time – I'm only risking a couple of years or a knock on the head – and here I am lying with you on this bed which is creaking under us, and you're working on me with your lies, claiming I make it easy for myself just because I don't fall for your line.”

“Hermes had a hold over me. I owed him something. And I told him you didn't have any snow. I—”

“Because you wanted it yourself. You and your nice clean fashion photographer, you wanted the whole five pounds for yourselves, that's why you didn't tell Hermes anything.”

“Oh, for heaven's sake, if I'd wanted your coke I'd have it by now! Do you really think I didn't know where the key to the locker was all the time? Do you think I'd have needed someone like James to get at your stuff? You poor fool, you thought we were all after your pathetic bit of Peruvian snow the whole time.”

“Well, you are, admit it. You must see it's no use soft-soaping me.”

“Is that what you really think? Weren't things ever different between us?”

“I don't believe in that any more, Cora. I don't believe in us.”

“I need you, Blum.”

“You're crazy. You don't need any clapped-out desperado with receding hair and a sample case full of stolen coke.”

“And how about you? You think you can do it alone. You know you can't. Let's at least try. Working together we have a chance.”

“No, not together. We have even less chance together than working alone. Anyway, I don't like sharing – either the profits or the expenses.”

“Is that your last word?”

“We're not on stage, Cora.”

“Do you have to make everything sound ridiculous?”

“I don't think your role in all this was particularly amusing, but I expect I'll be having a good laugh about it in the end.”

“I didn't give you away, Blum.”

“Perhaps not. But that was your role.”

“I told you, Hermes—”

“Cora, I don't want to hear your side of the story any more. When I did, you said you didn't have any stories, there weren't any. And now I don't have any desire to hear them. Or any time either.”

“No, you never have time. You do make things easy for yourself, Blum. You let yourself off lightly when it gets serious. You let your friend Mr Haq down too. Speedy Blum rushing from date to date. Do you remember how I told you in Frankfurt you ought to just leave the coke in that locker? The stuff does for some people because they take too much of it. And it does for others even when they're only selling it.”

“And you say I make things easy for myself. Look, Cora, I really do have to leave now.”

She made no effort to get up, so Blum rose on his own. She just looked at him.

“Blum like a flower in bloom, no first name. But you're missing more than a first name.”

“I'm not missing anything. Only money, same as most people. Come on, Cora.”

Even the most persistent have to give up some time. She painted her pouting mouth pink and slipped her fake fur on. Then she took a piece of paper out of her shoulder bag, put it on the wash-stand, looked at him once more with a strand of her ash-blonde hair falling between her big grey eyes, and disappeared. He stared at the door. Funny girl, Cora. First you saw girls like her as a dream, then you realized they were performing plays of their own. But life seldom doled out the best parts. He looked at the piece of paper. It was a drawing, a delicate line drawing in coloured pencils. He was mixing drinks in his bar down by the harbour, wearing a Hawaiian shirt. Even the awning was there, the words Bahamas Bar stood over the entrance, a parrot was perched on the counter between the peanut machine and the little barrel of rum, exactly as he had imagined it, and Cora was in the picture too, just coming down the steps into the saloon, waving to him as the drinkers at the bar raised their heads, and Blum – the Blum looking at the drawing – recognized in them all the people from whom he had fled.

Blum paid and got out of the taxi. A school class was just leaving the zoo. Their teacher was urging them to hurry, because the rain was beginning again. It had kept raining from time to time all through the middle of the day. A cold breeze blew from the harbour, and an old man with a beret and a dark coat was standing at the ticket office in front of Blum. The cashier seemed to know him; they were having a little chat. A regular customer. Patience, Blum told himself, and lit another HB. I mustn't attract attention now. In the end he was allowed to shell out his own couple of guilders. The man with the beret disappeared into the reptile house. Blum went on, past the enclosures for the big cats. It was raining harder. The sample case of coke gleamed wet. Blum looked at the time. On the dot, in spite of Cora. He kept his left hand in his jacket pocket.

Outside the elephant enclosure, a Javanese with a lot of gold jewellery was taking a photo of his Dutch girlfriend, a blonde with a receding chin. Probably a bombshell in bed, thought Blum. His steps were slower and slower. By now it was impossible to overlook the symbolism: the narcotics deal in the zoo, and in front of the cages of captive animals the trap was closing on him too. Although the customer had wanted to meet him in the Rijksmuseum, and the zoo had been Blum's idea. There was the man now, over by the aviaries. The hell with it, thought Blum, he's as
nervous as I am. His hat was on the back of his head, his tie loose, his dark glasses looked ridiculous. But he was carrying a similar sample case. Two young girls were looking at the eagles, an Indian in a turban was talking to an Indian without a turban, otherwise there was no one to be seen except for a keeper pushing a wheelbarrow full of garbage away.

“There you are,” said the customer, clearing his throat so much that Blum could hardly understand him.

“I almost didn't recognize you with those glasses on,” said Blum.

“Oh, the glasses. You think they're too conspicuous?”

“You must know they are.”

“Then I'll take them off. And the case . . .?”

“Yes, it's in there. And do you have the money?”

“Ha, ha, that's a good one! Did you think I'd come with a load of poker chips?”

“Show me, then.”

“Shall we go a little further . . .?”

They went a little further and found a bench, but the Indians were strolling along behind them. They stopped in front of the bench. The Indians stopped too, gesticulating vigorously.

“Could look a little odd sitting on a bench in the rain. This wouldn't have happened to us in the Rijksmuseum.”

“There are far too many people there,” said Blum.

“But we're going to get drenched!”

“Do you have a better idea?”

“Let's go into the monkey house. It's dry there.”

“But it'll be crowded there too.”

“Just a few schoolkids, they won't bother us.”

“You like monkeys?”

“I heard the gorillas here are really enormous.”

So that's where the trap's to be, thought Blum. In the monkey house.

Not only a shady character, tasteless too. If a man was a criminal at fifty, did he have to be a tasteless criminal at fifty-five?

He nodded. “I like gorillas myself.”

They made for the monkey house. Blum glanced back. The Indians were just settling down on the bench.
Chacun à son goût
. A couple in leather jackets and blue jeans were disappearing into the monkey house. Blum stopped.

“What bad luck. Those two know me. From the hotel. It wouldn't be particularly clever to do it in there.”

The customer looked bothered. “So what do you suggest?”

“Let's go over to the big cats' house.”

“No, I can't stand the stink there.”

“Look, don't you feel this is getting ridiculous? We're doing a 50,000-mark deal, and you get worked up about the stink of the big cats . . .”

“I never liked the idea of the zoo anyway.”

“Let's go into the reptile house.”

“Why not the café?”

“Oh, come on, for heaven's sake! In a café! How many witnesses do you want?”

“We wouldn't have had any witnesses at all in my hotel room.”

“No, just three gorillas to knock me out.”

“Your suspicious nature isn't making things any easier.”

“We'll go to the reptile house. Or do have you anything against crocodiles too? Did you know crocodiles have existed for 18 million years? They've seen so much already that they won't take any interest in our dirty little deal.”

The customer looked decidedly alarmed. He was clutching his sample case in one hand and using the other to hold on the dark glasses that kept slipping off his nose.

“You're planning something. The reptile house. Why the reptile house? Do you have your friends waiting there? Is that where you're planning to snatch my money?”

“Who's talking about a suspicious nature now? You have persecution mania, you do. How am I to know you have the money in your case at all?”

“And how am I to know you have the – the stuff in yours?”

“Well, let's go to the reptile house and take a look. You can see how hard it's raining. We're looking really ridiculous! You get my case, I get yours, and if everything's okay you never need step inside the zoo again in all your life.”