Ice Carnival

by Spaeth, Janet

  She stopped and looked at him.

  “Like me?” he asked. “Am I a new story?”

  She tilted her head and studied his face. “I suppose you are. I guess the question is: Are you an adventure story? A mystery? A saga?”

  His heart tripped just a bit in his chest. “And you? Are you a new story to me?”

  She didn’t respond, and he thought he might have been a bit too bold for this minister’s daughter.

  But then her lips began to curve into a slow smile. “I guess we will both have to find out.”

  She touched his arm lightly and turned, and with quick, light steps, she ran to her front door, where she stopped and faced him, grinning conspiratorially. “If Aunt Ruth asks, I was wearing my shawl the whole time.”

  He thought he already knew what kind of book she was. She was poetry.

  ❧

  Sunday dinner over, Christal’s mother and father left on their afternoon pastoral visits, and Aunt Ruth retired to her room with her knitting and her Bible. “That,” she had told Christal’s parents, “is the proper way to spend the Sabbath, not out on the byways of St. Paul, trotting here and there like a midwestern Sherpa.”

  Her parents had merely nodded, and her father said, with a slight twinkle in his eyes, that he thought Christal was acting in the Lord’s service by befriending a newcomer and helping him acclimate to his neighborhood.

  Aunt Ruth answered with a sniff, but as she left the room, Christal was sure she saw a smile on her aunt’s face. “Wear your jacket,” the older woman called over her shoulder. “It’s not July, you know.”

  Christal compromised with her shawl again. If necessary, she could tie it around her waist. Her aunt—and truthfully, her mother, too—would be horrified to see her doing that, but it was simply so much easier than trying to keep it wrapped around her shoulders and over her forearms. Having it around her midsection left her hands free to pet friendly dogs or pick up colorful leaves.

  Isaac was waiting in the entryway next door. From the parlor behind him came the stentorian sounds of Dr. Bering’s snoring.

  “Are you ready to go for a walk?” she asked.

  He looked behind him and grinned. “I suppose Uncle Alfred doesn’t have any plans for me this afternoon.”

  Christal nodded. “Dr. Bering believes in Sunday rest.”

  “He is putting that into practice, judging from what we’re hearing.” He motioned toward the parlor.

  “He does like his Sunday nap. But he also encourages walking as a way to health. He’s told me as much. Of course,” she added, leaning toward him and speaking in a conspiratorial whisper, “that doesn’t apply to him. He explained it all to me once.”

  “Oh, he did, did he?” Amusement lit his face.

  Isaac really should smile more, she thought. When he did, the worry lines and the creases over his nose, where he’d frowned too often and too long, probably as he studied his texts, vanished.

  “Your uncle told me that for older people, recuperative sleep was one of the rare pleasures in life, especially in the afternoon. But we’re too young for Sunday naps, so let’s go for a walk. I have more of the neighborhood to show you, and I suspect that your uncle will keep you busy for the rest of the week, so this is our only chance.”

  Isaac reached for his overcoat, and she almost spoke but stopped. He’d just arrived, after all.

  “I know,” he said, “you think it’s not at all cold here. I happen to know better. It is freezing. Uncle Alfred has assured me that I’ll get used to it, but I don’t know if that’s true.”

  “Well, if you’re going to get used to it, now’s a good time to start. It’ll snow soon.”

  “I’ll get accustomed to it in stages, if you don’t mind.” He put on his overcoat. “In deference to the natives, though, I’ll skip the hat and muffler and gloves.”

  “Don’t tell Aunt Ruth. She’ll have your head. Then freezing to death would be the least of your concerns.”

  They headed out the door.

  “First we’ll go by the library,” she announced. “I know you’ll spend lots of time there. I do.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know, Christal. I’m here to learn and study. The reading I’ll be doing may not qualify as enjoyable to you, but at the moment, it’s my life.”

  She waved away his objection. “I can’t imagine life without my stories, and the library is where they are.”

  He seemed unconvinced, and Christal’s steps slowed. Could it be possible that her new friend didn’t share her love of reading?

  She realized uneasily that she was interpreting it as a character flaw on his part, and it bothered her. Certainly people were allowed to have interests other than reading. Just because she found it fascinating didn’t mean he had to.

  God gifted people with varying talents and gave them different pursuits to enjoy. “Are you a musician, like your uncle? He plays the piano so beautifully.”

  “No, I’m sorry to say that I didn’t inherit the Bering musical talent. I got my mother’s wooden pitch.”

  She tried again. “Art? Do you paint?”

  “No.”

  “Athletics? There are some superb organizations—”

  “Along with my mother’s wooden pitch, I got her arms and legs. No athletics. I can’t catch a ball, nor run, without tripping.”

  “Do you cook?” She thought of her own deficiency in that area.

  “No.”

  “Garden?”

  “No.”

  “Travel! You like to travel, don’t you?”

  He sighed. “Again, no. Christal, I am a very boring person. Boring Bering.”

  “You are not boring!”

  “I am, I’m sorry to say. Medical students are traditionally among the worst. We have a terrible leaning to single vision. We make the worst dinner companions and often have to be stopped short of an invigorating discussion of nephritis over pound cake and coffee.”

  “Nephritis?”

  “Kidney disease.”

  “Oh.” She could only imagine the details of such a conversation.

  “If I begin to ramble on about gout or infections of the sinus cavities or spasms in the esophagus, you’ll please bring me back to the here and now?”

  She laughed. “With pleasure!”

  They were nearly to the corner where the library was. It was, of course, closed on a Sunday afternoon, so all she could do was point out the brick building that housed the library on the second floor.

  Perhaps it seemed odd to him that she had brought him all the way there, just to show him the exterior of the library—not that he seemed even faintly interested in it.

  “There are doctors’ offices on the ground level.” She added the last bit with hope. Maybe at the very least that would entice him to return.

  He didn’t respond.

  “There are all kinds of wonderful stories in there,” she said, “even, I’m sure, about the history of inflamed nostrils and the philosophy of sutures.”

  His roar of laughter filled the almost empty street, and the few pedestrians that were out on a Sunday stopped and smiled curiously at the sound.

  He reached for her hand and held it in his. “I am so sorry. I’m afraid I’ve offended you.”

  She knew she was growing flushed, partially because he had done just that, even though she had fought her reaction to his indifference, and partially because he was holding on to her hand and it felt so good.

  “Philosophy of sutures, indeed. Christal, I am having an absolutely wonderful time today. Why, I’m not even cold.”

  His nose was red, and the tips of his ears were bright crimson. The chest of his overcoat rose and fell rapidly. The poor fellow looked wretchedly uncomfortable.

  “You are cold, and I’ve probably worn you out,” she said, taking pity on her new friend. She touched his arm. “Let’s go back. We’ll walk more slowly, and the next time you can wear a hat and scarf and gloves. Truthfully, you’ll probably need them by then.”


  “The next time,” he repeated. “Until it warms up, that’s as likely as my taking my own tonsils out.”

  Her heart sagged in disappointment, but she reminded herself again that God made all of His creatures blessed in diverse ways. He didn’t have to like reading to be her friend, and he didn’t have to like the cold weather as much as she did.

  “You know, it could warm up again a bit,” she said in what she hoped was an encouraging voice. “Indian summer usually comes earlier, like the end of September or the beginning of October, but there’s nothing to say it couldn’t happen now.”

  “Really?” he asked, his voice perked with renewed optimism.

  “I think it could,” she declared stoutly. “Why, even as I stand here, I can still smell the remnants of a garden, so they haven’t all died.”

  He drew a deep breath, and his forehead puckered in confusion. “I can’t smell it. Are you sure?”

  “I am. Lilacs and roses. There’s been a hint of them all day. So maybe summer still has one more hurrah in it.”

  Isaac cleared his throat and ran his hand over the top of his head. Why were his cheeks suddenly as florid as his ears and his nose? Was he really that cold?

  Christal shrugged away the odd gesture. Southerners!

  ❧

  Christal closed her Bible and placed it on her bedside. When she had fallen ill nearly a decade ago with scarlet fever, she’d begun her own tradition of reading the twenty-third Psalm each night before going to sleep. Of course she had it memorized, but the comfort of holding the Bible that had been hers since she was an infant was part of the ritual.

  The promise of the psalm that she would walk through the threat of death, the valley of the shadow of death, had been soothing. The days when she had hovered between life and death were tempered by the words I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me. Even when she hadn’t been able to talk, when she was lost in the dreams of a high fever, she had held the words closely to her heart.

  She could see a glow from the upstairs window of Dr. Bering’s house next door. One of the men was awake, too, reading perhaps.

  The night air was sweet with the smell of fireplaces, and she padded over to the window to open it an inch or two to let the aroma in and to chase the staleness of the closed room out.

  From below her came the faint notes of Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata.” Dr. Bering must be playing the piano in his parlor.

  There had never been such a beautiful piece of music. She sat beside the window and rested her chin on the windowsill and let the notes float over her. It was liquid.

  She closed her eyes and let her mind drift as she revisited all of the wonderful things that had happened in the course of the day. This had been an absolutely perfect day, from worshipping with Isaac and getting to know him a bit, to this serene end with “Moonlight Sonata” and smoke-scented air.

  Isaac. Her thoughts paused and lingered. Isaac.

  There was something very special about him. How special, she didn’t know yet. Only God knew that.

  Christal opened her eyes and looked again at the house next to hers. Isaac Bering was going to be a good friend—that much she knew. One should never overlook the value of a good friend.

  Especially, she thought with a grin, a good friend who was as handsome as Isaac.

  The October night breeze had an edge to it, and she closed the window some more, leaving it open enough to freshen the air and allow the music in.

  “Good night,” she said softly to the house next door. “Good night, and God bless you.”

  Three

  “There is only one door between my office and my living quarters,” Uncle Alfred explained as he led Isaac through the heavy oak door that separated the entryway and the waiting room of his medical suite.

  “Just one door? Why is that?” Isaac asked.

  “There are several reasons for that,” his uncle responded, “but the major one is simply to keep myself from spending all of my evenings in here, reading and puttering. I guess you could say it’s symbolic. A doctor must keep a part of his life separate from the practice of medicine.”

  The waiting room was situated on the front corner of the house so that windows opened two of the walls to daylight. An opulently upholstered sofa with golden oak arms polished to a silken sheen sat along one side of the room, while wing chairs covered in burgundy brocade were positioned next to the small fireplace.

  A glass-fronted bookcase held three rows of leather-bound volumes, each with the title stamped in gold. Isaac wandered over to them. Many of them he recognized from his own early school studies, but the others weren’t familiar.

  On a small table three volumes were placed in an inviting display near a figurine of an angel holding a child. Isaac picked them up and read the authors aloud. “Charles Dickens. John Keats. Jules Verne. This is quite the assortment here, Uncle Alfred. Are you reading these, or are they for your patients as they wait?”

  “I keep them here for anyone to read. If a patient or his family happens to start reading a book and wants to continue, he’s more than welcome to take it.”

  “Aren’t you worried about losing the book?” Isaac touched the thick binding of one of the volumes. It wasn’t an inexpensive edition.

  “I always get them back, but even if I didn’t, I wouldn’t care. Books are meant to be shared.”

  His uncle clearly shared Christal’s love of reading. It baffled Isaac. These kinds of books, with things like poetry and tales, served no educational purpose that he could see. Why else would one read, unless one wanted to increase one’s knowledge? “You’ve read these?”

  “Indeed.” Uncle Alfred opened the Jules Verne volume. “Ah, Around the World in Eighty Days. What an intriguing story! Have you read it, Isaac?”

  “No, I’m sorry, I haven’t. Schooling seems to occupy almost every waking minute of my time.”

  His uncle shook his shaggy head. “Don’t let yourself fall into that trap, my boy. A good doctor reads novels, visits with people, goes to concerts, gets out and about. The more you know, the better you’ll be as a physician. People rarely act like they’re shown in the textbooks. The cases in there are artificial. It’s important for you to know what’s going on in the world, to find out what people are really like.”

  He shoved the book into Isaac’s hands. “Read this.”

  Isaac stared at the novel. “But this is fiction.”

  “Yes.” Uncle Alfred hooked his thumbs under his suspenders and watched Isaac with a slightly bemused expression. “You don’t like fiction?”

  “I do, I guess.” Isaac was at a loss. He hadn’t read a novel in years. “Shouldn’t I be reading medical texts at this stage? After all, I’m here to learn.”

  “You will learn by reading novels, too, Isaac. Stretch your mind. Expand your knowledge. Learn expansively.”

  Jules Verne? He’d heard of Jules Verne and his novels of fantastic adventures that did not take place in the world Isaac knew. His uncle wanted him to read something by a Frenchman that was based upon a science that didn’t exist? Science and fiction—now there were two terms that should never go together.

  He started to put the book back onto the table, but his uncle stopped him. “I’m serious, Isaac. Read the book. Try something different.”

  Try something different? Wasn’t he already trying something different, leaving his home in Florida and moving north, coming into a land of ice and snow that his body would take months, if not years, to get used to? He had left the rest of his family and his friends and committed himself to at least two years with an uncle he barely knew—an uncle he respected but with whom he’d spent little time.

  He looked back at the books on the shelves. He was used to spending long hours poring over medical tomes filled with information that he would desperately need, and yet here he was being told to read a novel filled with crazy science.

  His uncle led him through the rest of the office area, through the examination room with its assortment of
tools and instruments that his uncle used in the course of the day, and on into the lab and surgery.

  He took one look at the surgical bed and swallowed. This was the part he was not ready for. The dangers were so great.

  Uncle Alfred must have understood his nephew’s hesitation, for he rubbed Isaac’s shoulder in sympathy. “I hope the day never comes, Isaac, when you walk in here and aren’t overcome with the enormity of the responsibility you face. If you ever lose that and become complacent, your doctoring skills will have failed you.”

  Isaac leaned against the bed to steady himself. He had made a terrible mistake. He was not meant to be a doctor.

  He looked at his hands, trembling and unsure. At some point, he would stand in the room and his fingers would grip a scalpel. He would be expected to cut into a patient’s skin and open his body and heal him.

  A mere mortal could not do that. He could not do that.

  “You’ll be fine,” his uncle declared. “This self-doubt does serve a purpose, you know. It means that you will think before you act, which is imperative for a physician. You do, however, need to control it. You’ll be no good if you’re unconscious on the bed beside your patient. One of you has to hold the scalpel, and it really should be you.”

  He led Isaac out of the surgery area, through the examination room, and back to the waiting area. “My first patient will be here soon. I would like for you to join me in the evaluation of his symptoms.”

  Isaac put the Jules Verne volume on the table. “I promise,” he said, before his uncle could object, “to take it with me when I’m through here.”

  “Good, because—well, hello, Mr. Lawrence.” Uncle Alfred helped the patient off with his coat.

  Isaac recognized the man from church the day before. His cough had punctuated the service, and yet he had stayed to meet Isaac afterward.

  “So your throat is quite irritated?” Uncle Alfred led Mr. Lawrence into the examination room. “I’d better take a look at it. By the way, this is my nephew, Isaac Bering, who is going to continue in my footsteps. You might remember him from church yesterday.”