Mankell Henning - When the Snow Fell

“So, now I’ve gotten you back,” he said, standing up.

Her jacket was torn. She was crying as she walked away. Joel thought it was odd that she didn’t run. Now, if ever, was the time when she ought to be running.

He set off for home. But suddenly he stopped dead and started following the Greyhound. Now he was the one running, not her.

He caught up with her at the tumbledown old building used as a warehouse by Thulin the ironmonger’s. She was still crying, but Joel could tell that it was ebbing out. He walked beside her for quite a while without speaking.

In the end he couldn’t keep quiet any longer.

“It served you right,” he said. “But I won’t do it again.”

“Nor will I,” she said. “But it wasn’t my idea.”

Joel stopped dead. What she said couldn’t be true.

“I thought you and I were the only ones who knew about it.”

“Nearly,” she said. “But it wasn’t me who wanted to do it even so.”

“Who was it, then?”

“The others.”

“But you could have told me.”

“I wish I had done.”

Joel gazed down at the ground. Should he believe her or not?

There was only one way of finding out.

“Show me,” he said. “Here and now. How to kiss. Then I’ll believe what you say.”

“Not out here in the street,” she said.

“We can go behind this building. Nobody lives here. There’s only saws and axes and such stuff inside.”

“Another time.”

“In that case, I don’t believe you.”

She looked at him angrily.

“But I’ve been crying! I can’t stand here kissing some body when I’ve been crying! Don’t you understand anything?”

Joel felt unsure.

“I’ll wait, then,” he said.

“I have to go home now,” said the Greyhound. “I’ll be in trouble if I don’t.”

“When shall we do it, then? If I’m going to believe you?”

“Later,” she said. “I promise.”

And now she started running. Joel felt relieved that they hadn’t stopped being friends despite everything. He still felt he couldn’t trust her completely, but he felt better even so. And he’d gotten her back.

Joel went to the railway station. Checked to see if anybody had dropped any small change behind the wooden benches. An old man was sitting with his back resting against the wall, fast asleep. Stationmaster Knif was shouting inside the ticket office, telling somebody off. Joel paused in front of the big timetable pinned to the wall. Somebody had crossed out the name of the little town and written in pencil:

No trains stop here. Only idiots stop in this dump .

Joel giggled. He wondered if Knif had seen that. How would he have reacted, in that case? He must have been raving mad.

The old man asleep by the wall was snoring. It seemed to Joel that he must be a hundred years old. Which would mean he’d been born in 1858. At about the same time as Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday had walked down that deserted street for the showdown with Ike Clanton and his gang.

Joel sat down on a bench and dangled his feet. That was another problem when it came to having parents, he thought. You can’t choose yourself what time you want to live in.

Joel knew of course that this was a silly way of thinking. Childish. But good fun even so.

If he could have chosen, he’d have been one of Fletcher’s right-hand men. The one who would take over from Fletcher eventually. And then he wouldn’t have needed to sit around in a boring railway station with an old man fast asleep.

He’d have been in a totally different world.

In that world the leaves of palm trees rustled in the wind and women walked around in transparent veils.

Now he was back on that subject again! He stood up in annoyance. Stamped his feet hard to see if he could wake up the old man. Not a chance.

He checked his watch. Too late. Ehnström’s had closed. And he couldn’t very well just march up and ring her doorbell. Not when he didn’t have any Christmas magazines to sell, nor any mittens to look for. Besides, that unknown man might be there. The one who’d been holding hands with her at the cinema. It could be risky if he was. He might throw Joel out. Even out of the window. The man might be wild with jealousy. You could never tell in advance.

He started pedaling with his feet. Lumps of slush and dirt dripped off his boots and onto the floor. They looked as if they’d formed a map. An archipelago of islands. He started giving names to the various stains. “Snake Island,” “Doc Holliday’s Skerry,” “Windstorm Rocks.”

But all the time what he was really thinking about was Sonja Mattsson.

He wondered if he would ever see her wearing transparent veils.

Joel looked at the old man. And decided to get some help from fate. If he succeeded in waking the old man up before anybody else came into the waiting room, he would see Sonja Mattsson in transparent veils. He wasn’t allowed to shake the old man. Nor to shout. But everything else was permitted.

If the old man was still asleep the next time the waiting-room door opened, he could forget all about that business of the transparent veils. Fate would have made its decision.

Joel started kicking one of the bench legs, which were made of steel. All the time he was keeping an eye on the ticket office window. It could open at any moment. Knif had ears that could pick up the sound of a train fifty miles away. But the old man didn’t wake up. Joel kicked even harder. The old man snored. Joel was really furious with him by now. Maybe he was dead? Joel stood up and took hold of the backrest of the bench the old man was sitting on. He started shaking it. The old man grunted and rubbed at his nose. But he didn’t wake up. Joel shook so hard that the whole bench started jumping up and down. No effect. He was sure the waiting-room door would open at any moment now. He thought desperately about what he could do. Then he hit on the only possible solution. He ran to the ticket office window, which was closed, and hammered on it as hard as he could. It opened immediately. Stationmaster Knif was staring Joel in the face.

“What do you want, belting on the window like that?” he roared. “Do you want a ticket?”

“I was just checking if you were awake,” said Joel with a grin.

Knif turned red in the face.

“Get out!” he bellowed. “Get out of here!’

It echoed all round the waiting room.

And the old man woke up.

Joel ran off before Knif could come storming into the room — but the old man had woken up! That was the important thing. Knif’s voice could awaken the dead.

So fate had decided. Joel would get to see Sonja Mattsson wearing nothing but transparent veils.

He hurried home as fast as he could. No doubt Samuel would have made dinner and be wondering why Joel hadn’t come home.

Joel could imagine how astonished Samuel would be, if he heard what fate had decided.

One evening very soon I, Joel Gustafson, will visit the flat of Sonja Mattsson, also known as Salome, and see her naked behind transparent veils .

Samuel would doubtless fall down in a faint on the cork floor tiles.

Joel also wondered if Samuel had seen Sara wearing transparent veils. Now that would have been a sight for sore eyes.

But needless to say, when Joel got home he didn’t say anything about what fate had ordained.

And Samuel hadn’t finished making dinner. Typical! He was always messing about and never finished any thing in time.

He had been a sailor. And he was a lumberjack. But Joel didn’t think his father was up to much as a cook.

The next day the Greyhound and Joel wrote a never-ending stream of notes to each other. By the end of the school day Joel’s pocket was full of them. They were friends again, it seemed. None of the others who had been present when Joel sat on that chair and pursed his lips said a word. They didn’t even smirk. Even Otto evidently felt obliged to be nice to Joel. It wasn’t just any old boy who was capable of dragging Simon Windstorm goodness knows how many miles through the snow.