When the Snow Fell

by Henning Mankell

“How much?” she asked.

  “Enough for two people,” said Joel, his usual response.

  “Just think—the lad lives alone with his dad and does all the housework himself,” said somebody behind his back.

  Joel whipped round. It was a big, fat woman; her face was sweaty. She was the mother of one of the girls in Joel’s class. At that moment he hated both the mother and the daughter. It was his classmate who had blabbed about Joel’s not having a mother, of course. And then, naturally, this fatty stands here sweating and tells the new shop assistant something that has nothing to do with her.

  Joel could feel himself blushing. He always did when he was angry.

  “Isn’t he a little marvel?” said the fat woman.

  Joel hoped she would explode and die on the spot.

  The girl behind the counter smiled. But she made no comment. She served the black pudding. Joel paid. All the time he was afraid the fat woman standing behind him and nudging him in the back with her fat belly would say something else about him.

  But she didn’t.

  When Joel emerged into the street, he was still embarrassed. He didn’t want to go shopping anymore. He didn’t want to be his own mother. But he did want revenge. Needless to say, the fat woman hadn’t dropped dead as he’d hoped. It was as he had always said: grown-ups just didn’t know what was best for them.

  He crossed the street and stood between two lamp-posts where it was murky. His hands were cold because he didn’t have his mittens with him. He stuffed the paper bag containing the black pudding inside his jacket. He should really hurry up now. Dinner ought to be ready by the time Samuel got home. Besides, it was New Year’s Eve. He had a lot to prepare before going out that evening.

  But he couldn’t forget that fat woman who had put him to shame in front of the new shop assistant.

  He wondered who the girl was. Could it be Ehnström’s daughter? When Joel was handed the black pudding and he paid for it, he’d looked surreptitiously at her. She was younger than he’d first thought. About twenty-five, he’d have said. Although he was bad at guessing people’s ages. He sometimes thought that Miss Nederström was ninety, but somebody had told him, to his great surprise, that she wasn’t even fifty.

  There was something else about the new shop assistant that had made him curious. She sounded different when she talked. She wasn’t a local. Although he couldn’t be certain, he thought she probably came from Stockholm. The previous summer, a traveling circus had come to town. As usual, Joel had helped to erect the fence and carry chairs in order to get a free ticket. He’d run an errand for one of the circus workers, and bought some coffee. The worker came from Stockholm, and spoke a very distinctive dialect. The new shop assistant at the grocer’s spoke in a similar way. As far as he could tell.

  His train of thought was broken when the fat woman came out of the shop. Joel gritted his teeth and hoped as hard as he could that she would slip on the steps and kill herself. But she didn’t, of course. It was only innocent people who slipped and got hurt. Really bad criminals never did. Nor did fat women who talked about things that didn’t concern them.

  Joel saw her hang her shopping bag on the handle of a kick sledge. He thought it looked like a Walker on runners. It was painted brown, and there were fancy upturned points at the front of the runners, which was a bit unusual.

  Joel memorized what the sledge looked like. He knew where the woman lived. On one of his evening expeditions through the town, he would pee all over it.

  He watched her disappear round the corner. She still hadn’t burst. Joel hurried home. He felt cold. His hands were white. He thought about the new shop assistant at Ehnström’s.

  He wasn’t quite sure exactly what he thought.

  When he got home he took off his boots, and started his work by peeling the potatoes. Then he snuggled down in his bed and massaged his toes. They felt sore. His boots really were too small for him. He wondered whether he ought to limp when Samuel came home. Or maybe he ought to lie down and drag himself over the floor. As if he’d been crippled by the boots. In which case Samuel couldn’t very well refuse to buy him a new pair.

  He decided to wait until the following day. The boots would still be too small then. He had too many more important things to do tonight.

  While he was waiting for the potatoes to boil, he went to the bathroom and examined his face in his dad’s shaving mirror. He had got into the habit of doing this over the last year. It was a New Year’s resolution he’d made a year ago. He would examine his face in the mirror every afternoon, and see how much he’d changed. But now, after a whole year, he thought he looked exactly the same as before. The shaving mirror couldn’t tell him that he’d grown bigger and taller. Nor could it tell him that his feet had become too big for his boots. He supposed it would have been better to have examined his feet in the mirror every day, but surely nobody did that?

  Joel tested the potatoes with a fork. Five more minutes. While he was waiting he laid the table. Sometimes he would put out a third plate. Just to see what it would look like. If Mummy Jenny had still been there. He wondered where she would have sat. Between him and his dad? Or in his own place, next to the stove? He decided that was it. She would have been the one to collect the food from the stove.

  When everything was ready, the black pudding fried and placed under a lid to keep it warm, and the lingonberry jam fetched from the pantry and put on the table, all he had to do was to wait for Samuel. Joel did what he always did: sat on the window seat and looked down at the street. He’d done that for as long as he could remember. That was the window from which he’d seen that mysterious dog. It was also where he generally sat when he was forced to make a difficult decision. Or when he felt sad.

  You could say that the window seat was Joel’s home. Just as the glass showcase was the home of the Celestine.

  Joel’s showcase was the window seat. That was his house and his castle.

  It was also there that he had realized that something was happening to him. He really was growing bigger. The window seat was starting to feel cramped. There had always been plenty of room, but he had difficulty sitting there now with both his feet up. Especially when he had sore toes.

  He was growing up.

  The Celestine was a model of a ship that would never grow any bigger.

  Her master would never become too big to fit inside the case.

  Joel tried to work out if it was going to start snowing again. The sky was cloudy. And heavy. Like an awning sagging as a result of all the snow that had fallen on it. It was when the awning split that the snow started to fall down to the ground.

  Needless to say, Joel knew that there was no truth in any such thoughts. There was no awning up in the sky. Snow was rain that had frozen and turned into snowflakes.

  Warm rain fell in the summer. Cold rain in the winter.

  But the awning idea was better. Easier to understand.

  Then he saw Samuel approaching. A shadow on the other side of the street.

  A shadow with a hunched back.

  After dinner Joel went to his room and closed the door behind him. He could hear Samuel making coffee, then switching on the wireless to hear the news.

  There was a lot Joel needed to prepare. You couldn’t make your New Year’s resolutions any old way: it had to happen at dead-on midnight.

  As he was going to be up late, he lay down on top of his bed and covered himself with a blanket. It would be best if he could manage to sleep for a couple of hours. To be on the safe side, he set his alarm clock for eleven o’clock and put it underneath the blanket.

  He could hear a munching noise from inside the wall, right next to his ear. He pressed his cheek against the cold wallpaper. He could now hear the mouse very clearly. It was less than an inch away from him. But it had no idea that Joel’s cheek was so close.

  Joel tapped on the wall with the knuckle of his hand. The mouse fell silent. Then it started munching again.

  Joel continued listening. Before l
ong he was fast asleep.

  When the alarm went off, it was some considerable time before Joel came to. When he woke up he remembered his dream: he had been inside the wall, looking for the mouse in a complicated network of caves among the wooden beams and uprights.

  But it was all quiet now. The mouse couldn’t be heard any longer. The only sound penetrating the wall was Samuel’s snoring.

  Joel sat up. He still wasn’t wide awake. When he stood up he had to push hard with both arms. Then he started to doze off again. Just as his eyes closed he gave a start, as if he had burnt his fingers. He went to the window, opened it slightly and scraped up some snow from the windowsill. Then he took a deep breath and rubbed the snow into his face.

  Now he really was awake. He looked out into the night. The sky had become completely clear while he’d been asleep. The stars were twinkling.

  He closed the window carefully, got dressed and tip-toed into the kitchen with his rucksack in his hand. He put on his jacket, his scarf and his wooly hat. He had found his mittens while he was waiting for the potatoes to boil. He put on his rucksack, picked up his Wellingtons and slipped silently out the door.

  Samuel was asleep. His snores came and went in waves. Joel avoided treading on the steps that creaked, the fourth, fifth and twelfth. Then he opened the front door.

  It was cold outside.

  He stepped out and looked up at the starry sky.

  It really was a genuine New Year’s Eve.

  Then he opened the gate and set off for the place he had picked out for his ceremony.

  He would make his New Year’s resolutions in the churchyard.

  — THREE —

  Before Joel went to the churchyard, he had another important task to complete.

  He had made a resolution the year before, but hadn’t carried it out. Now he had just one hour left in which to do it.

  New Year’s resolutions were not things to be taken lightly. It seemed to Joel that a New Year’s resolution unkept might turn out to be a New Year’s threat. Time was up at midnight. The sands of time had run out. Just as in that hourglass Samuel had bought years ago in some foreign port or other, in a dimly lit little shop smelling of spices.

  Joel had kept putting off carrying out this resolution for a whole year. That was something typical of him that he didn’t much like. He could promise too much. Promise himself, and others as well. He had promised the man in the bicycle shop to call in and pay for a puncture repair the same afternoon it had happened. But he’d forgotten. He’d promised Samuel to collect something from the ironmonger’s, and he’d forgotten that as well. And it was something Samuel needed for his work in the forest.

  Another thing about this resolution was that he regretted having made it. He’d been too hasty. But it seemed to him that New Year’s resolutions simply could not be ignored. You had a whole year in which to do what you’d promised yourself to do. But no more. And now there was only one hour left.

  He hurried through the silent little town without making a sound.

  There was no traffic, no noise at all. Everything was different at night. Shadows and streetlamps. The white snow.

  And Joel running through the streets like a man possessed. Now he had come to the Grand Hotel. He turned off to the left, and then to the right. The clock in the church tower was lit up. A quarter past eleven. He passed over the big forecourt in front of the bank and forced his way through the broken fence at the back of the hardware store. Then it was just a question of continuing straight ahead, towards the red-painted, timber-built fire station with the tall tower where the hoses were hung up.

  He was taking the same route he took every morning.

  He was going to school in the middle of the night.

  When he entered the playground he suddenly thought he could hear the bell ringing. There were voices on all sides. Just like it always sounded during the breaks. He even thought he could hear his own voice. That was something he’d rather not listen to. He’d once heard his own voice on Mr. Waltin’s tape recorder. Waltin was the editor of the local newspaper, and Joel used to work as a newspaper delivery boy. If Mr. Waltin was in a good mood and you were lucky, he would record your voice and let you listen to it. Joel had been lucky. But he didn’t like the sound of his own voice. He spoke through his nose. And his voice was shrill.

  But needless to say, he was only imagining all those voices on the playground. He was the only one there. And he was in a hurry.

  The worst thing was that he was frightened of what he was going to do. If he was caught breaking into school in the middle of the night, he hoped the earth would open and swallow him up. He would be in trouble for the rest of his life. He preferred not even to think about how Samuel would react.

  How on earth could he have made that idiotic New Year’s resolution? How could he have been so stupid?

  He had been a little kid then. This year such a thought would never have entered his head.

  But there was nothing he could do about it. New Year’s resolutions could think. They kept track of who had promised what.

  He crouched up against the wall of the school and listened. He could hear a car in the far distance. But it didn’t come any closer. Soon everything was just as still as before.

  Joel had made preparations earlier in the day. At the end of the last lesson, he’d stayed behind in the classroom and when everybody had left, he’d carefully released the catch on one of the windows. He’d jammed a piece of folded paper in the crack at the bottom of the window, so that it wouldn’t blow open if a wind got up. He hoped the caretaker hadn’t noticed anything. If he had, Joel was in deep trouble.

  He ran across the schoolyard to the shedlike building that contained his classroom, took off his mittens and tried the window.

  He could move it. The paper was still there. Nobody had noticed that the catch wasn’t fastened.

  He suddenly gave a start and whipped round. He thought he’d heard something behind him. But there was nothing there. Everything was quiet.

  He opened the window and heaved himself up. He had to strain as hard as he could to get high enough to scramble inside.

  It was a strange feeling, being in his classroom late at night. The light from the streetlamps cast a ghostly glow over the empty desks. There was still a smell of wet clothes. He sat down at his desk. Put his hand up. Then he went up to the teacher’s desk. He tripped over a satchel that somebody had forgotten. The clatter echoed in the silence. He stood still and held his breath. But there was nobody there to hear anything. Everybody was asleep. Apart from the lost soul by the name of Joel Gustafson.

  He sat down at Miss Nederström’s desk, and looked down at all the pupils’ desks in front of him. He looked at his own place.

  “Joel Gustafson hasn’t been listening to what I said, as usual,” he said in an appropriately loud voice.

  He stood up and walked to his own desk. Sat down, then stood up again.

  “Go and sit on the outhouse roof, Miss Nederström, and don’t bother to come down again,” he replied.

  Then he wished he hadn’t. Perhaps there was somebody who could hear him after all? Or a tape recorder hidden somewhere?

  Besides, time was nearly up. It must be at least a quarter to twelve. Now he had only fifteen minutes left. He went to the harmonium to the left of the teacher’s desk, crouched down by the pedals and groped around with his hand until he located the bellows. He unhooked the connection at the back, then pressed the pedals. No air came.

  Tomorrow morning, when Miss Nederström started to play the morning hymn, there wouldn’t be a sound. And she wouldn’t be able to understand for the life of her what had happened. Nobody would understand it. Apart from Joel.

  He clambered out the window again, put the folded piece of paper back in place and closed the window. It squeaked slightly.

  At that very moment the church clock started to strike. Three booms. A quarter to twelve. Fifteen minutes to midnight. It had been a close shave, but he’d made
it.

  The last of last year’s New Year’s resolutions had been kept. Now he could start thinking about this year’s.

  He’d left his rucksack in the shadow of the wall. He put it back on, smoothed down the snow under the window so that his footsteps couldn’t be seen, and hurried away.

  It was five minutes to twelve now. It would soon be New Year’s Day. He could see the illuminated clock face up in the tower. Joel had paused by the black wrought-iron gate leading into the churchyard. He shuddered, and noticed that he had a stomachache.

  He’d never been in the churchyard after dark before. Even though he was often around town on his bike at night.

  But that was where he was going to go now. It was another of his New Year’s resolutions from last year: next time, he would announce his new resolutions in the churchyard at midnight. He would walk in through the gate and prove that doing so wouldn’t make him die of fright.

  He felt cold. Wondered why he had put himself in this position. But there was no going back. He had to go in among all the gravestones lit up by the moonlight.

  You could keep the vampires away with garlic, but there was no known medicine to protect you when you visited a churchyard in the middle of the night.

  To be on the safe side, Joel had packed an onion in his rucksack. Even if it didn’t help, it could hardly do any harm.

  He’d also packed a couple of potatoes. One raw and one boiled. Samuel used to say that there was nothing like potatoes to keep people fit and well. Perhaps that indicated that potatoes had some kind of magical powers?

  He checked the clock. Four minutes to midnight. He couldn’t wait any longer. He took hold of the handle and opened the gate. The squeaking noise made him shudder. Let’s hope it doesn’t wake the dead, he thought nervously.

  But then he realized: dead people don’t wake up. Once you’re dead, you’re dead. Everything else is just imagination.

  He entered the churchyard. One step. Then another. On his left was a gravestone in memory of an old vicar. Died 1783. That was so long ago, it was almost impossible to imagine. But perhaps Samuel was right. There would always be people living here, where the river very nearly formed a circle before continuing its long journey to the sea. And they would eventually die, and be buried in the churchyard.