Mankell Henning - When the Snow Fell

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.

“I feel awful,” said Joel. “I have a sore throat.”

Samuel felt his forehead.

“You seem to have a bit of a temperature,” he said. “I think you ought to stay at home today.”

That was exactly what Joel had hoped to hear. He was really ill. Many a time he’d woken up and wished he’d been ill. Mornings when the last thing he’d wanted to do was to go to school. But needless to say, he’d been unable to find anything at all wrong with himself, no matter how much he’d squeezed and poked at his body.

“Will you be all right on your own?” Samuel asked.

Joel wondered what Samuel would have done if he’d said no. Would he have stayed at home and not gone to work? He couldn’t have done that. Samuel didn’t earn much money. They couldn’t afford for him to miss a single day’s work in the forest.

“I’ll manage OK,” said Joel. “I’m only a little bit ill.”

“Wrap something warm round your neck,” Samuel said. “And I think we’d better lay the cat fur over your feet.”

Joel smiled. There was no cat fur. But there was a little Arabian carpet that Samuel had bought ages ago in some Mediterranean port or other. It was no bigger than a door-mat. But when Joel was a little lad, Samuel had told him stories about its magical properties. If you laid it over your feet when you were ill, you would be cured straightaway. In those days Joel had believed it was true. But he didn’t any longer.

Even so, he was pleased that Samuel went to fetch the little mat and placed it over the bottom of the bed. Even if it didn’t have any magical properties, at least it made your feet warm.

“Drink plenty of water,” Samuel said. “Do you want me to open the blind?”

Yes, Joel did. And the roller blind was raised.

Samuel set off for work.

Joel lay in his bed, listening to the silence. Nothing could make as much noise as a silent room. There was a creaking in the walls, and a swishing from the water pipes.

He swallowed several times, as a sort of test. It hurt. But not all that much.

He thought about what had happened last night. The New Year’s resolutions he’d made, which had been witnessed by all those dead people.

The fact that he’d dropped his mitten in front of Lars Olson’s gravestone didn’t mean a thing. Even if Lars Olson had died at the age of fourteen, Joel’s name was Joel and not Lars Olson. Joel had made a solemn resolution to the effect that he would toughen himself up and live to be a hundred. The year that would eventually be carved on his gravestone was 2045.

Joel was aware that lots of people would no doubt think it was a childish resolution. Lots of people who didn’t understand.

OK, maybe I am childish, Joel thought. But I don’t know what I ought to do in order not to be. To be different.

He went to the kitchen and poured himself a glass of water. He put it at the side of his alarm clock. It would soon be time for the first lesson to start.

And then he remembered. The harmonium! He’d forgotten all about it.

He felt a pain in his stomach. The moment Miss Nederström started to pedal and no sound emerged from the organ, she would know that it was Joel who was responsible. Joel Gustafson, who wasn’t sitting at his desk.

Oh, hell! Joel thought. Why did I have to be ill today of all days?

Then he tried to think it through, totally calm. He had left no traces. Nobody could know that he’d been responsible. The bellows could have become disconnected as a result of normal wear and tear.

Joel tried to convince himself that maybe it wasn’t all that bad. He also hoped that he wasn’t the only one to feel ill that morning.

He felt tired. And as Samuel had said, he had a bit of a temperature.

He pulled the covers up to his chin.

He was soon fast asleep.

When he woke up, it was ten o’clock. He swallowed. It still hurt, but he felt better even so. He didn’t feel quite as hot as he had been. Perhaps the mat at the bottom of his bed had helped after all? You could never be certain about things that sailors bought in mysterious shops in foreign ports.

Joel sat up, emptied his glass of water and noted that he didn’t feel hungry. He propped up the cushion behind his back and started thinking. Or maybe he was just dreaming? Very often he wasn’t at all sure what the difference was. Thoughts and dreams came from the same place. From somewhere inside yourself, from an underground cave system deep down in your head. Thinking was harder than dreaming. You had to make an effort in order to think. Dreaming was the opposite. You couldn’t do it if you made an effort. Just now his instinct was to let dreams have the upper hand. If he started to think, he would soon start worrying about whether Miss Nederström had realized that it was Joel who had disconnected the bellows from the pedals. And perhaps, despite everything, he had left some traces behind to prove that he’d been in the classroom in the middle of the night? Perhaps drops of water had dripped from his boots and formed the word Joel on the floor?

So, it was all down to dreaming. Joel chose between the dreams he used to have while he was awake. He couldn’t pick and choose between the dreams he had when he was asleep, but he could when he was awake.

The ship, he thought. The brig Three Lilies . The sister ship of the Celestine , resplendent in its showcase. Captain Gustafson is confined to his cabin, suffering badly from some tropical fever or other. But he hasn’t yet given up the ghost. He’s still in command of his ship...

They hadn’t set eyes on land for more than fifty days. The sails were drooping down round the masts. Supplies of fresh water had almost run out. All they had left to eat was moldy ship’s biscuits. It was becoming difficult to keep the crew under control. They wanted to turn back. Ahead was the abyss: the ship would be hurled over the edge of the world, and sink down to the very bottom of an unknown ocean. Soon there would be no fresh water left to drink. But Captain Gustafson had a map inside his head that revealed itself to him every night. He knew as a result that they would soon strike land. An unknown continent. And they would step ashore in paradise itself .

They were there now. After sixty-four days at sea. A tropical island. Parrots were chattering in the trees .

Captain Gustafson is still ill, and is carried ashore. Somebody comes to greet him. At first he can’t make out who it is. Then he sees that it is a naked woman. He seems to recognize her. Where has he seen her before? And then it dawns on him. The woman walking towards him along the sand, the naked woman, is somebody he’s seen in one of the magazines Otto hands round behind the bicycle sheds during the breaks .