The Snow of the Spring

by Nick Carcano

I.

  Like every morning in the Andes, this one greeted Franz Krupp with a deep pain in his chest brought on by the thin mountain air. The breeze came in off the mountains, swirled his curtains, and shivered his frail body to its core. He lay in his bed, motionless, counting the swirls in the woodwork of the rafters at the top of the vaulted ceiling in his chamber. There was pain in every inch of his body, from very core of his insides to the very tips of his fingers. He bore the looks of a typical 94 year old man: His hair was wispy and white like that of a ghost; his face was wrinkled and weathered after so many years, and his hands were always shaking. Franz Krupp was dying. He could feel it in the breeze and smell it in the air.

  He was soon greeted by his servant girls who brought him some tea and his breakfast. They were both young daughters of some of his farm tenants and both wore colorful skirts and had their hair tied with delicate silk ribbons. That was one thing Krupp had always preferred in Bolivia over Germany, the women were much more down to earth than the blonde, ice cold witches he had swooned over at many parties and beer halls in his youth. The young girl helped him sit up and served him his pipe as he tried to conjure some feeling in his legs. He smoked a mixture of the herbs that grew in the foothills around his estate. It soothed his aching body and dulled his overactive senses. He stepped out on to the marble floor and walked across the cool surface out on to his balcony. He motioned for one of the servant girls who rushed over to hear him utter the first word he had said all morning.

  “Puccini.” He uttered under his breath before he inhaled a little more smoke from his pipe.

  “Si, master.” The servant girl squeaked and she scurried over to the stack of records Franz had accumulated. She pulled out a collection of his favorite arias and placed on the old antique record player. It had one of those enormous brass bells on top and intricate gold working around the bottom mechanism. The tenor voice faded in as the needle struck the vinyl record filling the chamber with the pulsating sound of the opera. Franz sat on the balcony and drifted away as the smoke from his pipe ascended into the air with blue-grey spirals.

  He looked out across his estate which sat perched high above the entire valley. It had been a true labor to build such a hulking mansion this high in the mountains. Franz had used the site of an old Spanish fort for the construction of his residence. He had hired hundreds of villagers to haul stone and building materials up the winding mountain paths often times by hand or on the backs of burros. He had cut a new road up through a few of the villages so that supplies could be easily brought up from the bigger cities to the south. The Bolivian government didn’t look twice over such a radical change to the area as Franz kept them in such large gold payments; they had no room to complain. Franz had successfully irrigated the valley and terraced the sides of the foothills to create a successful farm. It was a much larger operation than what he had grown up on in Prussia but the nostalgia sometimes over took him. Franz continued to watch over the land from his balcony. In the distance he could see the farm tenants painstakingly digging away on the terraces. They all wore bright, colorful ponchos to help stop the breeze. They were like little ants toiling away with tools far in the distance. Below him the house servants worked to clean the entirety of the estate around his house. He was hosting a party not two days from now with all the big wigs and military brass from the capital so he needed his home to be pristine. A few skinny men skimmed the marble swimming pool and the burlier hombres cleared the brush and trimmed the foliage. Women scrubbed the floors and polished the Etruscan statues in the garden. Franz could hear the birds singing as the sun rose higher and the wind began to settle. The balcony was bright as the sun pierced through the overcast and reflected off the snowy peaks. Franz shut his eyes from the irritation and nodded off with the effect of the herbal smoke beginning to settle in.

  He was awoken by a sharp knocking on the heavy wooden door of his chamber. One of the servant girls quickly jumped up and answered it. She swung open the door and let in Joaquin, one of the head tenants. He had a solemn and distraught look on his face as he slowly approached the intoxicated Krupp. Franz slowly removed the pipe from between his lips and looked up at Joaquin with his piercing blue eyes.

  “Master Krupp…” Joaquin murmured “One of our young boys has been shot on the outskirts of the east field.”

  Krupp nodded and motioned for Joaquin to leave as he got up and got dressed. He buttoned a white shirt and wore a pair of tan pants with his fedora which held a red feather on the left side of the brim. He grabbed his cane and made his way to the exit of the chamber where he told one of the servant girls to get one of the house attendants to bring his car around. He hobbled to the grand stair case where one of the servants helped him make his way to the bottom. All of the men and women in the house stopped their frantic clean-up to nod to the house master as he slowly made his way to the front of the house. He stepped down the stone steps of the main entrance to his white Rolls Royce which sat idling at the bottom. A tall and thin chauffeur nodded to Franz as he sat on the leather seat and the car revved its engine.

  The car followed a winding dirt path out of the mansion grounds and to the fields. On the outside workers and tenants were hard at work perfecting the appearance of the garden for the guests. Little boys in soccer jerseys and shorts carried bundles of sticks to a fire which burned with ferocity sending a towering column of smoke into the morning air. Krupp looked at the blaze and suddenly a sharp pained stuck the front of his head and he had to look away. He had seen smoke like that before, the black billowing smoke, it seemed all too familiar to Franz Krupp.

  The driver was silent as he turned on past the fields and terraces where the poncho-wearing men and women knelt in the fields working the land. The driver stopped at the entrance to the vineyard where the boy had been found. Franz had seen the vineyards in Alsace-Lorraine along the Rhine where the grapes blanketed the banks along the river. He used this inspiration to put in the grapes a while ago. The vines were thick and well established and Franz was able to make a Cabernet Franc suit his needs here in South America. The driver opened the door and helped Franz to his feet. The cool morning air stung Franz’s nostrils and he steadied himself on his cane. Joaquin was waiting for him and soon led him down in between the vines to where the boy was lying. Franz slowly descended the steep bank where he could see a group of the tenants were crowding around. Franz could also see a few of his security personnel scanning the hillsides for any sign of the shooter. They wore military camo uniforms, big black army boots, and had huge aviator sunglasses. They had their carbines slung over their shoulders as they peered through their binoculars. Franz had to stop for a moment to catch his breath from the hike. Out of the corner of his eye he saw something, just a flash which looked like something small, a child maybe. It was something blue, but Franz couldn’t dwell on it any longer; he steadied himself and finished his way to the crowd at the bottom.

  The air was silent. The little boy lay there, shot in the chest, his blood spilling on to the ground. His face was turned off to the side with a look of distress permanently stuck on his face. His skinny little arms and legs flailed on the ground like twigs. The men tenants stood around their faces focused on the dead child. No words or sounds were emitted from them their silence spoke enough. The women cried profusely and turned away from the tragic sight, they could not take such a horrible happening. The boy’s parents knelt at his side holding his bloody hand against them. They embraced each other and sobbed quietly.

  Franz remained stoic before the dead child and simply looked on to the tan face of the boy who yesterday frolicked around the town square kicking a soccer ball. The pain returned to Franz’s head but instead of the sharp pain he had felt earlier,
it was a dull throbbing pain that persisted from the back of his head to the front. He closed his eyes and opened them only to see something he couldn’t believe. It was snow. It wasn’t uncommon for snow to blow off the mountaintops this late in the season but this consistency was certainly a rarity. It was a light delicate snow that could barely be seen in the sunlight. It fell effortlessly to the ground. It didn’t feel like snow though, it was like air, it had no texture or temperature. What confused Franz even more was how none of the mourners seemed to notice. The pain in Franz’s head persisted and soon he turned to return to the car. The driver followed him back up to the Rolls – Royce and Franz looked back to see the security men carrying the little boy to where he would be buried. The bank was steep and Franz held himself against the mountain breeze, gripping the wooden post at the end of the row of vines. He glanced down the row watching the leaves of the grapes move ever so slightly with the wind. The blue flash he had seen earlier was back. It was moving quickly out of his sight and something deep inside him forced his body to pursue it.

  He moved along the row holding onto the wire holding the vines in place his eyes focused on unearthing what it was that had caught his eye. He froze when it stopped 20 yards in front of him. It was a little girl, not more than 7 years old; she had big golden curls on her head and puffy rosy cheeks. Her dress was a dark blue with little red bows decorating it. She wore a red ribbon in her hair that danced in the air as the breeze continued to blow. Franz tried to see her face with all his persistence but his frailty held him back from getting any closer. She sat on the ground drawing in the dirt with a snipping from one of the vines. Franz watched intently as she reached up and plucked a single grape from the bunch hanging adjacent to her. She popped the sweet morsel into her mouth and chewed with a girlish delight. She had not yet noticed Franz watching from several yards away nor had she even turned her head to face the direction. Franz was in a trance watching such youth and innocence before him. The pain in his head even began to subside but just as the girl spit the grape seed on to the ground and began to face in Franz’s direction the pain returned. A moment before Franz could see the little girl’s smiling face Franz was hit with a throbbing ache to the front of his head. He collapsed momentarily, ripping the nearby vine to the ground with him.

  He slowly awoke from his dizzying slumber to see the brown eyes of Joaquin examining him to see if he was ok. He looked from where he was lying to where the little girl had been before only to see a small cloud of dust that the wind had caught. He watched it swirl back in forth before it dissipated into the air. He found his way to his feet and was helped by Joaquin and the driver back into his car. He settled in the seat, beads of sweat running down his back while breathing erratically. He drew his pipe from the front pocket of his shirt and lit it as the Rolls turned to head back up the path to the house. He inhaled the mellow smoke and watched as the mysterious snow continued to fall from above.