Mankell Henning - When the Snow Fell

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 long 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.

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.