When the Snow Fell

by Mankell Henning

  Joel would have preferred to stand just inside the gate, but he forced himself to continue. Now he had gravestones on all sides. Just ahead, the church loomed like a gigantic beast, fast asleep.

  He jumped when the clock started striking twelve. It sounded much louder when he was there in the darkness, all alone.

  Now it was time. The last stroke had died away.

  Joel closed his eyes tightly. And concentrated hard on his resolutions:

  I hereby promise faithfully to live to be a hundred. In order to do that, I must toughen up. I shall start on that this year. I shall learn how to tolerate both cold and heat.

  That was his first resolution. He had three. He moved on to number two:

  During the year to come I shall find a solution to Samuel’s big problem, which is also my big problem. The fact that we never move away from this place. That he doesn’t become a sailor again. Before this year is over, I shall have seen the sea for the first time.

  That was his second resolution. Now he only had one left. The most difficult one. Because he was afraid that somebody might hear his thoughts, despite everything. Or see what he was thinking by looking at him.

  I shall see a naked woman. At some point this coming year.

  He thought that one as quickly as possible. His third resolution. So that was that. Now he could leave the churchyard. The dead, who could hear nothing, had been able to hear his New Year’s resolutions even so. He couldn’t possibly break them now. Standing in a churchyard and promising something was similar to swearing something with your hand on the Bible. As he had read about and seen in the cinema.

  He turned round. There was the gate. The streetlamps. The light. It hadn’t been necessary to use the onion or the potatoes. Now he could go home and go back to sleep.

  That was when he realized he had lost one of his mittens. He knew it must be somewhere close by. It was here, just before he had made his New Year’s resolutions, that he had taken his mittens off. He’d packed a box of matches in his rucksack. He took it off and fumbled around for the matches. He lit one and looked around on the ground. It blew out. He lit another one. There was the mitten. He bent down to pick it up. As he did, he happened to glance at the gravestone next to where it was lying. Before the match went out he just had time to register that there was something odd about what it said on the stone. He lit another one. Lars Olson. Born 1922, died 1936.

  Under that stone was somebody who had only lived to be fourteen years old.

  The match burnt out. Joel was panic-stricken. He grabbed his rucksack and ran to the gate. He started pushing it, but it wouldn’t move. His heart was pounding. Moreover, he thought he could hear heavy breathing behind him. He pushed as hard as he could. The gate opened. Joel ran for it, without looking round. Kept on running until he could no longer see the church or the churchyard. He stopped under a streetlamp outside the bookshop. Only then did he turn round. There was nobody there.

  He continued walking home.

  Now he had made his resolutions. That was good. But he wished he hadn’t seen that gravestone. It was the fault of that damned mitten of his. Missing mittens always caused problems.

  Why could nobody invent mittens that never got lost?

  Joel crept in through the front door and tiptoed upstairs. He paused in the kitchen and listened. Samuel was asleep.

  A few minutes later, he was in bed. Heat spread slowly through his body. His alarm clock with the luminous hands was on a stool beside his bed.

  Half past twelve.

  Everything had gone well after all. He would forget about Lars Olson’s gravestone. He had another pair of mittens. They needed darning, but if he did that he could wear them. Anyway, he’d made his New Year’s resolutions.

  The new year had begun.

  He had so much to do. If he was going to be able to do it all, he would have to start as early as the next day.

  — FOUR —

  When Joel woke up next morning, he felt ill. He was hot and sweaty. And he had a sore throat. Samuel came to his room and wondered why he was still in bed.

  “I feel awful,” said Joel. “I have a sore throat.”

  Samuel felt his forehead.

  “You seem to have a bit of a temperature,” he said. “I think you ought to stay at home today.”

  That was exactly what Joel had hoped to hear. He was really ill. Many a time he’d woken up and wished he’d been ill. Mornings when the last thing he’d wanted to do was to go to school. But needless to say, he’d been unable to find anything at all wrong with himself, no matter how much he’d squeezed and poked at his body.

  “Will you be all right on your own?” Samuel asked.

  Joel wondered what Samuel would have done if he’d said no. Would he have stayed at home and not gone to work? He couldn’t have done that. Samuel didn’t earn much money. They couldn’t afford for him to miss a single day’s work in the forest.

  “I’ll manage OK,” said Joel. “I’m only a little bit ill.”

  “Wrap something warm round your neck,” Samuel said. “And I think we’d better lay the cat fur over your feet.”

  Joel smiled. There was no cat fur. But there was a little Arabian carpet that Samuel had bought ages ago in some Mediterranean port or other. It was no bigger than a door-mat. But when Joel was a little lad, Samuel had told him stories about its magical properties. If you laid it over your feet when you were ill, you would be cured straightaway. In those days Joel had believed it was true. But he didn’t any longer.

  Even so, he was pleased that Samuel went to fetch the little mat and placed it over the bottom of the bed. Even if it didn’t have any magical properties, at least it made your feet warm.

  “Drink plenty of water,” Samuel said. “Do you want me to open the blind?”

  Yes, Joel did. And the roller blind was raised.

  Samuel set off for work.

  Joel lay in his bed, listening to the silence. Nothing could make as much noise as a silent room. There was a creaking in the walls, and a swishing from the water pipes.

  He swallowed several times, as a sort of test. It hurt. But not all that much.

  He thought about what had happened last night. The New Year’s resolutions he’d made, which had been witnessed by all those dead people.

  The fact that he’d dropped his mitten in front of Lars Olson’s gravestone didn’t mean a thing. Even if Lars Olson had died at the age of fourteen, Joel’s name was Joel and not Lars Olson. Joel had made a solemn resolution to the effect that he would toughen himself up and live to be a hundred. The year that would eventually be carved on his gravestone was 2045.

  Joel was aware that lots of people would no doubt think it was a childish resolution. Lots of people who didn’t understand.

  OK, maybe I am childish, Joel thought. But I don’t know what I ought to do in order not to be. To be different.

  He went to the kitchen and poured himself a glass of water. He put it at the side of his alarm clock. It would soon be time for the first lesson to start.

  And then he remembered. The harmonium! He’d forgotten all about it.

  He felt a pain in his stomach. The moment Miss Nederström started to pedal and no sound emerged from the organ, she would know that it was Joel who was responsible. Joel Gustafson, who wasn’t sitting at his desk.

  Oh, hell! Joel thought. Why did I have to be ill today of all days?

  Then he tried to think it through, totally calm. He had left no traces. Nobody could know that he’d been responsible. The bellows could have become disconnected as a result of normal wear and tear.

  Joel tried to convince himself that maybe it wasn’t all that bad. He also hoped that he wasn’t the only one to feel ill that morning.

  He felt tired. And as Samuel had said, he had a bit of a temperature.

  He pulled the covers up to his chin.

  He was soon fast asleep.

  When he woke up, it was ten o’clock. He swallowed. It still hurt, but he felt better even so. H
e didn’t feel quite as hot as he had been. Perhaps the mat at the bottom of his bed had helped after all? You could never be certain about things that sailors bought in mysterious shops in foreign ports.

  Joel sat up, emptied his glass of water and noted that he didn’t feel hungry. He propped up the cushion behind his back and started thinking. Or maybe he was just dreaming? Very often he wasn’t at all sure what the difference was. Thoughts and dreams came from the same place. From somewhere inside yourself, from an underground cave system deep down in your head. Thinking was harder than dreaming. You had to make an effort in order to think. Dreaming was the opposite. You couldn’t do it if you made an effort. Just now his instinct was to let dreams have the upper hand. If he started to think, he would soon start worrying about whether Miss Nederström had realized that it was Joel who had disconnected the bellows from the pedals. And perhaps, despite everything, he had left some traces behind to prove that he’d been in the classroom in the middle of the night? Perhaps drops of water had dripped from his boots and formed the word Joel on the floor?

  So, it was all down to dreaming. Joel chose between the dreams he used to have while he was awake. He couldn’t pick and choose between the dreams he had when he was asleep, but he could when he was awake.

  The ship, he thought. The brig Three Lilies. The sister ship of the Celestine, resplendent in its showcase. Captain Gustafson is confined to his cabin, suffering badly from some tropical fever or other. But he hasn’t yet given up the ghost. He’s still in command of his ship….

  They hadn’t set eyes on land for more than fifty days. The sails were drooping down round the masts. Supplies of fresh water had almost run out. All they had left to eat was moldy ship’s biscuits. It was becoming difficult to keep the crew under control. They wanted to turn back. Ahead was the abyss: the ship would be hurled over the edge of the world, and sink down to the very bottom of an unknown ocean. Soon there would be no fresh water left to drink. But Captain Gustafson had a map inside his head that revealed itself to him every night. He knew as a result that they would soon strike land. An unknown continent. And they would step ashore in paradise itself.

  They were there now. After sixty-four days at sea. A tropical island. Parrots were chattering in the trees.

  Captain Gustafson is still ill, and is carried ashore. Somebody comes to greet him. At first he can’t make out who it is. Then he sees that it is a naked woman. He seems to recognize her. Where has he seen her before? And then it dawns on him. The woman walking towards him along the sand, the naked woman, is somebody he’s seen in one of the magazines Otto hands round behind the bicycle sheds during the breaks.

  Joel woke up with a start. This had never happened to him before. A naked woman coming towards him in a dream. Not as unexpectedly as this, in any case. Before, he’d always been able to dictate who turned up in his dreams. But not this time; she’d come of her own accord.

  There was something else that was different. It eventually dawned on him that she wasn’t only like somebody he’d seen in one of Otto’s magazines: she had reminded him of the new shop assistant in Ehnström’s grocery store.

  Joel tried to escape back into his dream. Closed his eyes and leaned back on the pillows. But no matter what he did, he couldn’t get back there. His dream had gone away. And he couldn’t get back in touch with it.

  But he knew that it was connected to his New Year’s resolutions. He knew that in the coming year, he would see a real naked woman.

  Something had happened during the past year. Something that had shaken his whole world to its foundations. Something inside him. Hatches that had opened up, secret doors that had been flung open wide.

  Feelings were like doors. Joel knew that. Sorrow had its own room; so did disappointment, and happiness. Life was like a long corridor. Every door you walked past concealed something you could choose to accept. Or reject. If you knocked on the door and went in. Always assuming you were allowed in. But doors you hoped would remain closed could also open unexpectedly.

  It was all to do with Otto’s magazines. Where more or less naked women were climbing up ladders, or sitting on balconies in front of some photographer or others who snapped and snapped away. He couldn’t say whether what was happening inside him was good or not. But it worried him. He was on fire.

  During breaks Otto often went on and on and on about how things stood. He hissed when he spoke. Not too loud, not too soft. Just so that those gathered round him could hear. No girls, only boys. And Otto hissed. About big girls’ secrets. And Joel had always listened carefully. But there again, he didn’t trust Otto. Not just because they had more or less always been enemies. Otto was always bragging. But on the other hand, Joel could never be absolutely sure. You could only be sure when you knew yourself. And not always then.

  Joel thought about the woman in his dream. How she had walked towards him. Captain Joel Gustafson had dared to look at her. But the one having the dream, Joel Gustafson with a sore throat, had looked away. He hadn’t really dared to look at her, not even in his dream. He hadn’t really had much more than a glimpse.

  Joel had chosen that word carefully. A glimpse. Something you nearly saw, not quite. And that was exactly what the woman had been.

  But he had seen something. All the unknown things that worried him.

  And she had been very much like the new shop assistant at Ehnström’s. The one who spoke with a Stockholm accent, and hadn’t become an old woman yet.

  Then it dawned on Joel. He was ill in bed, but he knew. The New Year’s resolution he had made, about seeing a naked woman: it would be Ehnström’s shop assistant. With no clothes on. But goodness only knew how he would be able to manage that.

  Nevertheless, it was a step in the right direction. He knew now who he had picked out. Or rather, who the dream had chosen for him.

  He noticed that the dream had made him hungry. And his throat was hardly sore anymore. He went to the pantry and fetched what was left of the black pudding from the previous evening. Cold black pudding was not exactly tasty. But when you were really hungry, it didn’t much matter what you ate. He prepared a plate of black pudding and jam. Then he clambered up onto the window seat. A car drove past, then another one shortly afterwards. Fat old women were shuffling along the pavements, trying not to slip. No doubt they were heading for Ehnströms Livs to do their shopping. And none of them saw Joel sitting on the window seat, hoping they would slip and fall down.

  Joel ate. He was really hungry. Then he went back to his room. Wondered if Lars Olson, lying dead out there in the churchyard, had ever eaten black pudding. Had Captain Joel Gustafson ever been forced to survive on any of his long voyages with nothing to eat but cold black pudding?

  He banished the thought as he went back to bed and snuggled down under the cover. What he would most have liked to do was to continue dreaming about the woman who had come towards him on the beach. But he had other New Year’s resolutions to think about. And besides, there was a long day ahead of him. It would be many hours before Samuel came back from the forest.

  He was going to live to be a hundred. Live until at least 2045. If he was going to live that long, he’d have to toughen himself up. But in the world he lived in, there were no giants to fight.

  The only thing was winter: the snow and the cold.

  Yes, winter would be the giant he would challenge and overcome. He would show that he was stronger than the cold.

  And he knew what he was going to do. As soon as he was fit again, he would begin.

  He would start sleeping outdoors.

  There was an old bed in the woodshed at the bottom of the garden. That was what he would use. When Samuel had fallen asleep Joel would take his bedclothes and make up a bed outside the shed. To start with, he would dress in outdoor clothes and boots. But when he’d got used to it and become tough, he would only wear his pajamas.

  He felt a stabbing pain in his stomach at the very thought.

  Sleeping in a bed out there in the snow.<
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  But he’d made the resolution. The dead had heard him make it. Lars Olson had been a witness to Joel’s New Year’s resolutions. There was no getting away from it.

  He curled up under the blanket. Swallowed. His throat felt rough and jagged. Like a piece of wood he’d sawn up in his woodworking lesson. But at least it didn’t seem to be getting any worse.

  Then he thought about his third resolution. How he was going to devote the coming year to solving the biggest of all the problems he faced. To persuading Samuel to dig his axe deep down into some tree stump or other and leave it there once and for all, to take out his old suitcases and sailor’s kitbag from the wardrobe, and say: The time has come. Now we’re going to the sea. The waves are waiting for us.

  The waves are waiting for us.

  Joel could feel a surge of hot blood running through him. The waves were waiting for them somewhere in the far distance. But would they wait forever?

  Joel knew that there were only two possibilities. The first was that he do something that brought such disgrace on himself and Samuel that it was impossible for them to stay in this place any longer. That was option number one. They would have to run away.

  The other was that Joel find a way of earning vast amounts of money. So that Samuel no longer needed to chop down lots of trees in order to earn enough money for them to be able to eat.

  But how could he possibly earn as much money as that? He was thirteen years of age. Just a young brat. And young brats didn’t earn any money.

  Even so, he had a few ideas.

  One was to become Sweden’s youngest rock idol. A Snow Elvis.

  Another was to sell trailers. He’d heard all about that. Selling trailers was an excellent way of getting rich quick.

  His train of thought was broken. Something had disturbed him. Then he looked out the window and jumped out of bed.