Mankell Henning - When the Snow Fell

“What has Joel done now?” he asked in horror when he opened the door and saw who it was.

“Is he in?” asked Miss Nederström.

“He’s asleep,” said Samuel. “He must have come home pretty late last night. He spends too much time gallivanting about when he should be in bed. I keep telling him. But it’s beyond me, what he was doing out in that storm.”

Miss Nederström had come into the kitchen.

“So you haven’t yet spoken to your son, Mr. Gustafson?”

“I’ll wake him up right away,” said Samuel, trying to appear angry with Joel.

She put her hand on his shoulder.

“Don’t wake him up. He needs to sleep. I think I can fill you in on what happened.”

They sat down at the kitchen table. Miss Nederström accepted the offer of a cup of coffee.

Then she told Samuel what had happened the previous day. How Joel had dragged Simon Windstorm a couple of miles through the raging storm. And how he had then gone to fetch help.

“Mr. Windstorm is seriously ill,” said Miss Nederström. “But for Joel, he’d have been dead.”

Samuel had listened in astonishment to what she had said. He wasn’t sure that he understood everything, but it was clear that for once, Joel hadn’t been stirring up trouble.

“Maybe I ought to wake him up,” Samuel said.

“No, let him sleep. He must be absolutely exhausted.”

They both peeped cautiously round the door to Joel’s room. He was lying with his eyes closed and the quilt up to his chin.

They tiptoed quietly back to the kitchen table.

What they hadn’t noticed was that Joel was awake. He had screwed up his eyes and seen them as two blurred shadows in the doorway. He had realized that it was Miss Nederström and Samuel. When they went back to the kitchen he sneaked up to the door and listened. He gathered she had come to ask how he was. Not to tell Samuel how difficult he was being at school, when he was there.

“Joel learns things so easily,” she said. “But he’s careless. And he has so many other things buzzing round in his head.”

“It’s not always so easy for me to take proper care of him when I’m on my own,” said Samuel. “But I do the best I can.”

Miss Nederström left shortly afterwards. Joel had managed to hasten back to bed.

He heard her walking down the stairs.

Samuel came to Joel’s room. He pretended to be asleep again, but he couldn’t fool Samuel.

“I heard you standing behind the door, listening,” he said.

He sat down on the edge of Joel’s bed.

“What’s all this that I ought to know about?” he said. “I want to hear it from you now. How are you feeling?”

“Fine.”

“You must be tired out?”

“Not any longer.”

Then Joel told his dad what had happened. Samuel listened without saying a word.

“Simon was heavy,” said Joel to finish off with. “I didn’t think it was possible for a person to weigh as much as that.”

Samuel stroked him lightly over the forehead.

“It was as if you’d saved a shipwrecked sailor,” he said. “A man overboard, but in the snow. There were enormous breakers in the sea of snow. The gale was howling. But you managed to get him to the shore. Alive.”

Joel understood what Samuel meant. Even though he had never rescued anybody from the real sea.

“It was like swallowing a lot of freezing cold water,” he said. “All that snow blowing into my face.”

Samuel sat looking at him for ages. Joel liked being looked at by his father.

“Come and lie down in my bed,” said Samuel eventually. “We can read a bit of Mutiny on the Bounty.”

Joel jumped eagerly out of bed. He was aching all over. But it was a long time since he and Samuel had read a book together. Far too long.

Samuel pulled the quilt up to both their chins. Joel felt as if he were hibernating together with a grizzly bear.

“I stood waiting for you outside the shoe shop,” Samuel said. “I don’t mind telling you I got pretty angry.”

“Maybe we can buy the boots next Saturday instead,” said Joel.

“You can buy them yourself,” Samuel said. “I’ll give you the money. It occurs to me that you don’t need me with you when you’re buying new shoes. Unless I’m much mistaken, you’re starting to be grown up.”

“I’ve been grown up for ages,” said Joel. “It’s just that you haven’t noticed until now.”

Samuel nodded.

“Maybe I haven’t wanted to notice,” he said. “You see, if you grow older, so do I. And I don’t want to. I think I’m old enough as it is.”

Joel suspected that Samuel disliked talking about growing old. Samuel took hold of the book.

“Shall we start at the beginning?” he asked.

“You can choose,” said Joel.

“Then we’ll read the end first,” said Samuel. “That’s the best bit.”

Then he read about the mysterious island that had suddenly appeared on the horizon. When the mutineers had started mutinying against one another. When Fletcher had hardly been able to control them any longer. The island rose out of the water like a gigantic rock. They had beached the Bounty in the shallows and gone ashore.

It was like entering paradise.

And they were still there now. After many hundreds of years.

Samuel closed the book and dropped it onto his stomach.

Both of them lay there in silence.

The wind was howling outside the window, but Joel could hear that the storm was beginning to ease off.

The walls of the house were creaking and crackling. It was like being on board ship. As if they were tossing about on the sea somewhere, in the captain’s cabin.

“I’d like to go there,” said Joel. “To Pitcairn Island.”

“So would I,” said Samuel. “To Pitcairn Island.” That was all they said. Joel dozed off and slept for another hour.

Late in the afternoon Joel went to the hospital to visit Simon. Samuel went with him. Joel had promised to show Samuel afterwards where he had found Simon. It had also occurred to Samuel that somebody ought to feed Simon’s dogs.

“He keeps hens as well,” said Joel. “And a cock that lives in his truck. And perches on the steering wheel.”

The snowstorm was over now. Snowplows were still driving round in the streets. The snowdrifts were deep.

When they came to the hospital they were told that they couldn’t see Simon. He was still asleep. And he was very ill. They waited until a doctor came out to speak to them. Joel recognized him immediately. He was the one who had looked after Joel when he’d almost been killed by that bus. But the doctor didn’t recognize Joel.

“So you were the one who found him, were you?” he said, ruffling Joel’s hair.

Joel didn’t like his hair being ruffled. Not even by a doctor.

“That was very well done,” he said. “A heroic feat.”

Then he turned serious.

“But I’m afraid it’s not clear what the outcome will be,” he said. “He’s had a cerebral hemorrhage. And Windstorm is an old man. It’s too soon to say if he’s going to make it.”

Joel was quiet when they left the hospital. Samuel noticed.

“He might pull through,” he said. “Let’s hope so, at any rate.”

“It wouldn’t be fair if he were to die,” said Joel.

“Death is never fair, I suppose,” said Samuel. “And no matter when death comes, it always makes a mess of everything.”

They continued to Simon’s house in the trees. The dogs were waiting outside the house. They whimpered when Samuel fed them. Then Joel and Samuel tracked down the four terrified hens and the cockerel. They were huddled together at the very back of the woodshed.

Then Joel and his dad set off into the forest. Joel wasn’t absolutely sure where he’d found Simon, but he found the right spot in the end.