Mankell Henning - When the Snow Fell

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.