When the Snow Fell (3 page)

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.

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.

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.

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.