Last Winter's Snow

by Hans M Hirschi

  Jon-Anders was the first of the guests to speak, as he looked at his son. “Aren’t you going to kiss him?”

  Nilas blushed but obliged, and the crowd cheered them on. One by one, or as couples and families, people came forward to hug them, congratulate them, and celebrate their marriage. Yes, marriage. Because to everybody involved that day, registrar, family, friends, or onlookers, they all saw two men getting married, no matter what the law said.

  It was a beautiful day on Marstrand, and after the ceremony, the entire wedding party strolled from the fortress down into the old island city and to the venue where the party would go on for many hours. Along the way, they met tourists and locals, waving and cheering them on, and for a while, Nilas and Casper felt as if what they’d done was just the most ordinary thing to happen on a summer Saturday on the Swedish West Coast.

  ***

  But it was not. They learned that soon after they returned home, as they called their local paper to place the marriage ad. They’d had many pictures taken and wanted to celebrate their wedding by placing a customary ad in the paper to inform acquaintances and others. Through his job at the university, Casper knew a great many people in the city, as did Nilas, who had been promoted to the position of director at the firm for which he was working.

  They had decided that Casper would assume Nilas’s last name, since Casper felt the need to honor Nilas’s Sami relatives and desperately wanted to distance himself from his own. An ad in the marriage section of the paper was the best way of informing people, as everybody in greater Gothenburg would be able to read it.

  “Yes, good morning. This is Nilas Jonsson speaking. I’d like to place a marriage ad?”

  “Please hold, I’ll transfer you,” a pleasant voice sounded through Nilas’s receiver.

  “Good morning and welcome to the Gothenburg Post. How may I be of assistance?”

  “Hi. My name is Nilas Jonsson. I would like to place an ad in the marriage section.”

  “I see. Is this a marriage announcement or post-marriage ad?”

  “We got married last week.”

  “Let me just grab something to write.” Nilas could hear a shuffle in the background, before the woman spoke again. “Ready. First, would this be with or without a photograph of the happy couple?”

  “With photograph, I think.”

  “Of course. We find that more people read the ads with a picture. People are always so impressed with a beautiful bride… Let me just jog down your details. What is your name?”

  “Nilas Jonsson.”

  “And what is the name of the bride?”

  Nilas felt embarrassed, knowing where this was heading. “Uh, erm, it’s not a bride. My husband’s name is Casper.”

  “I see.” Nilas could hear the change in tone on the other side of the line. “A partnership ad, then. We do not allow for registered partners to advertise in the marriage section.”

  Nilas was confused, and hurt. “Why not? We are married, after all.”

  “Well, that is debatable, and our editors are clear on the issue. There is a separate section for registered partners, after the marriage, birth, and baptism section. We list the sections alphabetically.”

  Nilas was frustrated, but he’d not given up quite yet. “So are there a lot of partnership ads in the paper?” He hadn’t seen any, but then again, he’d not really looked for them, either.

  “We haven’t had one yet.”

  “Well, then why can’t you put it in the marriage section?”

  The woman sounded positively annoyed. “Please understand, we have to abide by public decency standards, and our readers are not ready to see homosexual partnerships as anything similar to a holy matrimony. Our editors are quite clear on this issue. Now, are you still interested in placing an ad?”

  Nilas felt deflated, and nauseous, and he was barely able to remain civil on the phone. “I will have to think about it,” he said, to which the woman on the other end replied, “You know where to find us. Have a good day.” Then she hung up.

  * * * * *

  Honeymoon

  “But I’ve never even had my head under water, Casper. Scuba diving? Are you sure that’s the right way to spend our honeymoon?” It had been the only real concern Nilas had voiced when Casper had suggested they fly to the Maldives for a couple of weeks for their honeymoon.

  Casper had found this amazing little island in the South Malé Atoll, with pristine waters and less than fifty bungalows. He’d always dreamed of learning to scuba dive, to see the many wonders of the ocean from up close, in real life, not just in the city aquarium. That had been before their wedding. Now, they were waiting in the departure hall of Gothenburg’s Landvetter airport, waiting for their flight to Copenhagen. From there, they’d connect to a flight to Dubai and onward to Malé, where a speedboat would take them to their island paradise in a couple of hours. Neither of them had ever been to the Maldives before, but a friend of Casper’s at the university was an avid scuba diver and had shown him pictures, capturing his interest.

  Nilas had never been much of a traveler himself. He was content to stay at home, take walks or make small excursions in the immediate vicinity or to go home to Sápmi, to hike, ski, or use his father’s snowmobile to roam about the wilderness. He had always felt strongly connected to the mountains, the forest, and the landscape around Ammarnäs.

  There was something in the air, the endless views, where the horizon blurred with the barren landscape, particularly in the wintertime on a cloudy day, when you couldn’t discern what was snow and what was the sky. Not to mention the fact that his family, on both sides, had lived in the area for as long as human memory served them.

  Even now, fifteen years after having moved away from home, the mountains beckoned. Yet here he stood, looking at the plane in front of him, and old MD-80, which would take him the first stretch of his first trip abroad. He’d been to Denmark, of course; most everybody in Gothenburg had taken the ferry over to Fredrikshavn to see the famed dunes of northernmost Jutland. He’d often been across the border to Norway, with his dad or relatives, on the lookout for their reindeer—animals who were unaccustomed to borders imposed by the dádtjh, the colonists, and marked only by a thick red line on maps. Reindeer didn’t read maps, and to the Sami people, those borders weren’t theirs. They belonged to the Swedes, the Norwegians, the Russians, and the Finns. The Sami couldn’t care less about them.

  Nilas sighed nervously, clutching his passport and boarding pass in his hand.

  Casper had to chuckle. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes, I’m fine. I’m just nervous, excited. I’ve never been outside of the Nordic countries before. Never needed a passport before.”

  “You’ll be fine. Remember, you’re not alone. I’m with you. I’ve never been outside of Europe, either. My parents used to take us to Italy, the Greek islands, or Mallorca, but never farther. This is our great adventure, and if we like it, we can do it again. If we don’t? Well, we’ll have amazing memories, and we’ll do something else next time. Besides, you only ever get married once, right?”

  “I sure hope so.” Nilas smiled and gave Casper a kiss on the cheek.

  Next to him, a little boy looked at them with big eyes and said to his mom, “Mom, that man just kissed another man! Did you see?”

  The mother blushed and smiled apologetically. “That’s okay,” she told her son. “That’s what people do when they’re in love.”

  The boy was unconvinced. “Can two boys love each other?”

  The mother was now blushing a crimson red, and began to pull her son away. “Yes, they can, and so can two girls. Now please stop staring at them.”

  Nilas chuckled. “It’s okay, ma’am. Kids should be curious and ask questions.”

  ***

  Hours later—many hours later—their flight landed on the island airport just off the capital of Malé in the Maldives. The doors opened, and people began to leave the plane. Nilas and Casper had been sitting almost in the back of the pla
ne, and were quick to leave the plane through the rear exit.

  “Wow, babe, look at this. It’s amazing…”

  “What? It’s just tarmac and an old terminal building.” Casper laughed.

  “No, the ocean. Did you see when we landed. The wings were stretching out over open water, or so it seemed. This is an island!” Nilas was greatly impressed by the engineering prowess of whoever had built this artificial island.

  “I know it’s an island.” Casper was purposely misunderstanding Nilas, making fun of him. “The entire country is made up of islands and atolls.”

  They walked the short distance to the terminal building, where they quickly proceeded through passport control and customs to wait for their luggage. Once they left the terminal building, they found a man standing with a sign “Mr. & Mrs. Jonsson.”

  Nilas pointed at the sign and chuckled. “Babe, who’s the woman these two weeks?”

  Casper was less impressed. He’d been adamant with the travel agency to make sure everything was perfect for their honeymoon, but then again, why would anyone in the Maldives assume that newlyweds were anything but bride and groom?

  The man looked positively distressed when Casper tried to explain to him, that they were Mr. and Mr. Jonsson, and that there would be no Mrs., not now, not ever. And while the man eventually accepted the fact that indeed, these two were his guests, after carefully reviewing their reservation papers, he was unable to reconcile the instructions of the hotel management, to be expecting newlyweds with the two men who had arrived.

  He didn’t ask any questions, but Nilas could just imagine how the cogs were turning heavily inside his head. Brothers? Cousins? Friends? It wasn’t the first time people were unable to connect the dots, and it probably wouldn’t be the last time. Yet they looked too different from each other to be brothers: Nilas with his dark hair and almond-shaped brown eyes; Casper with his rye-colored hair and his beautiful green eyes. Nilas’s face was square with a broadly set jaw and broader nose compared to Casper’s oval face and slightly upturned nose.

  Clearly, if they had been brothers, one would have had to be adopted. But friends? With the same name? Unlikely. Cousins, yes. Cousins made sense, other than Casper being a full head taller than Nilas. Most people eventually arrived at the conclusion that they had to be cousins. Nobody ever assumed them to be a couple, much less married. Certainly not in a Muslim country where the population had literally no contact with the outside world, by their government’s deliberate design.

  Their bungalow was a simple round design with two single beds, which the hotel scrambled to pull apart. “We are very sorry. We were expecting newlyweds,” the young male clerk at the check-in explained. He didn’t even acknowledge Casper’s almost whispered “but we are newlyweds.” The concept was so alien it wouldn’t have registered even if he’d heard it.

  Nilas found all this strangely entertaining, and he took a step back to take in the scene before him. Having known Casper for so many years, just looking at him from behind, he could sense, even see, how uncomfortable Casper was. His carefully planned honeymoon was coming apart in front of his eyes as their marriage—the bond they’d come here to celebrate—was reduced to a friendship at best, by a culture in which openly lived homosexual relationships were more alien than any arrival from outer space would have been.

  Once they were left alone, Nilas approached his husband from behind, hugged him, and kissed him on the neck. “It’s okay, babe. It’s okay. We’re here, and we’ll just push the beds together again.”

  “And they’ll separate them again in the morning, I’ll bet you.”

  “We’ll see. We’re here for two weeks. I’m sure they’ll get the picture eventually, and even if they don’t, we’re not here to make a political statement. We’re here to relax, enjoy ourselves.” He added after a deep sigh, “And to learn how to scuba dive.”

  “Yes, that I’m really looking forward to. But first, I need to go and check out the lagoon. I’m sure the water is amazing and warm. It certainly looked inviting from the plane. That azure color… Come on, let’s unpack and check it out.”

  ***

  A couple of days later, they were ready to take their first real dive and followed the dive instructor out into the lagoon, into the open water. The islands on the Maldives were small parts of reefs that had grown to the surface, where they had been broken down by receding waters over time. The corals had disintegrated into sand, and the wind had deposited seeds from faraway shores, or they had been washed ashore by ocean currents.

  These islands—which were no taller than five or six feet at their highest points—had slowly built up over the eons, harboring not only plant life but also birds, insects, and large bats. The edge of the island’s lagoon dropped off to almost one hundred feet, and each island’s lagoon was surrounded by a ring of corals, making for some pretty astonishing diving. The more advanced divers would take a boat to the outer ring of the atoll, where the tides would create strong currents in an out, attracting big ocean fish to prey on the plankton-rich waters pouring out from the atoll.

  There, they might have seen manta rays, large hammerhead sharks, or even the occasional whale shark, their instructor told them. But here, around the island, they would not see such creatures. Instead, they might encounter small reef sharks, a whitetip or blacktip, groupers, moray eels, smaller ray fish, and the plethora of small but colorful fish that inhabited the different corals.

  Until that day, the instructor had only let them test and train their skills inside the lagoon, where the water was never deeper than ten feet, and the floor was covered in sand. They’d seen the occasional school of small snappers or trumpetfish, their mostly gray color concealing them well from predators.

  Nilas and Casper swam along behind the instructor. They had agreed to snorkel along the surface to the edge of the lagoon, using one of the canals to make sure they wouldn’t damage any corals. Once they had arrived at the edge, the instructor gave them the hand signal to descend; they emptied their flotation vests, exhaled, and slowly followed their instructor down, beneath the surface. They’d planned their dive carefully, always beginning at the lowest point, and then slowly making their way back up toward the surface. As this was their first real dive, they wouldn’t go all the way down to the seabed at roughly one hundred feet, but only to about thirty feet or so.

  Nilas was nervous, but exhilarated, as he descended the way he’d been taught. Casper was right next to him as they followed the instructor down into the depths. To their right, they could see the reef, and if Nilas looked to the left, he saw the seemingly never-ending blue vastness of the ocean. The waters were very clear, and he could see quite a distance, probably forty or fifty feet away. Around him, there was nothing but calmness. He could hear his own breathing through the mask, which was attached to the air tank. Bubbles escaped his mouthpiece, rushing quickly toward the surface.

  The instructor waited for them to catch up. He floated mid-water, with his arms crossed in front of him, and lifted up his legs into a mock lotus position. He looked more like a yoga teacher than a diving instructor, but Nilas got the message. Relax, remember your breathing, calmly and slowly. During his first dive, Nilas had managed to empty the tank in just twenty minutes; he’d been so nervous he’d been breathing far too quickly.

  The instructor looked at them and made the okay sign, bringing together thumb and index finger to make the “o.” They signaled the same sign back. The instructor pointed to the reef and made a mouthing sign with his hand, then pointed to a formation of brownish brain corals.

  Nilas swam closer, and after looking at the corals for a while, he noticed a big spotted moray eel protruding a few inches from its cave, mouth open as a signal of threat before it retreated. It was beautiful to watch. The instructor had told them before the dive not to get too close to any corals, never to touch any of them, nor the fish, and certainly not to point any extremities at them. Moray eels would viciously defend their territory and could inflic
t serious wounds if they attacked.

  They continued their dive with the reef to their right, having planned to circle the reef in the hour they supposedly would have air for. One of the things that had surprised Nilas the most was the sounds he heard underwater. It was never still, not just because of the sound of his own breathing, but there were other sounds as well, a very faint grinding, as if he could hear the water grind over the sandy bottom. Closer to the reef, he could hear faint tapping noises, which he’d soon discovered were the thousands and thousands of reef fish, particularly parrot fish, eating away at the corals.

  Suddenly, the instructor stopped in front of them. Nilas quickly noticed why. A shark was swimming toward them. It looked amazingly large, and for a moment, Nilas thought of a great white shark, although he knew they didn’t swim in these warm waters. It seemed so big, yet as it calmly and elegantly swam directly toward them, the smaller it appeared to be, and as it passed within inches of the three divers, Nilas realized it was no longer than maybe four feet—an ordinary blacktip reef shark, typical for these waters, patrolling its territory. Nilas had finally seen his first shark, and he was excited, breathing faster than he was supposed to.

  They continued their dive and saw clownfish, several balloonfish, a barracuda, and the instructor even managed to find a lionfish to show them, one of the deadliest fish in these waters. But after forty-five minutes, Nilas was down to his reserve, and he signaled to Casper and the instructor, who signaled them to slowly ascend to ten feet, a safety precaution to avoid diver’s disease. From there, they calmly swam at that level for a few minutes before ascending back to the surface.