Caryl Phillips - In the Falling Snow

She continues to stare at him.

‘Look, I’m not weird or anything, I’m just concerned. I care.’

‘Why should you care? Who are you to care?’

He puts his hand gently on to her shoulder, but she pulls her body away from him so that his hand now hovers foolishly in midair.

‘I know you’ve got your classes so why don’t I just see you back here at four o’clock. We can talk then, when we’ve both finished what we’ve got to do.’ He smiles in a manner that he hopes will put her at ease. ‘Okay?’

At four o’clock he hands her the travel-size umbrella, which is immediately blown inside out by the powerful gale. She lowers it and begins to struggle with the contraption, so he takes it from her and pushes it back into shape.

‘You can hang on to it like this and stop it from popping up on you.’

He places her hand in the right position, then folds his own hand around hers to make sure that she has the correct grip before quickly releasing both her hand and the umbrella.

‘Bloody hell, I can’t believe that it’s raining again.’

Rain is now trickling down her angular face, and her damp, unclipped, hair hangs limp.

‘You’re going to catch your death of cold in those clothes.’

‘I should go home. Tonight I must work.’

‘But I’m just down the road. At least come by and get dry before you go to work. You can wear some of my clothes while we put yours in the tumble dryer. Then you can get a minicab to work. I’ve got to go out tonight anyhow so I’ll just take the cab on.’

He stands in the darkness, his back against the trunk of a tall oak tree. He doesn’t know anything about flowers and plants, but many years ago an overly keen young supply teacher once tormented his class for a whole afternoon with silhouette shapes of various trees until they became imprinted on the pupils’ minds. The windows of the office building are illuminated like square portholes on the side of a ship. Occasionally a figure drifts into view, then retreats into the room and out of sight, but as yet he has not seen her. The security guard sits only twenty feet away in his small hut staring intently at a tabloid newspaper. The man is perusing the sports section, and so far he has turned only one page. Clearly the rest of the newspaper holds no interest for him. He guesses that this heavy-set man with a peaked cap set at a jubilant angle, and a blue blazer that appears to be bursting at the seams, is probably only a few years younger than him. He seems to have settled contentedly into his life as a watchman who does not watch, and the man probably has no ambitions beyond his weekly wage packet and his food being on the table when he gets home early in the morning. But who is he to feel superior? He envies the man who has organised his life so that he has no desire to elevate himself. The overweight guard is a Buddha of tranquillity in his heated shack, with a newspaper for company and silence all about him.

And then he sees her. She has a cloth duster in her hand and she is running it along the windowsill, first to the right, and then to the left, and then she disappears as quickly as she appeared. Once again the lighted box is empty. He cranes his neck, sure that she is going to appear in another window, but all sixteen are empty and for a moment he imagines that the building has in some way swallowed her whole. Perhaps she is in danger, but he cannot leave the safety of the tree’s shadow and show himself. Suddenly, in a window on the floor above, he sees a tall blond boy, and she joins the boy in the window and says something to him, and then as quickly as she appeared she is gone again leaving the blond boy by himself. And then he too is gone.

He is sure that this is the same boy that he saw her with the day before yesterday on the steps of the language school. In fact, the same boy he had asked her about only a few hours earlier when she came back to his flat to dry her clothes.

‘Your roommate is called Rolf?’

‘Is there something the matter with his name? Perhaps it is a popular name in Latvia?’

He didn’t know how to explain that to most people in England, Rolf is a strange Australian man with a beard and glasses who draws cartoons and sings kids’ songs very badly. He is a figure of fun from down under, a man who bears absolutely no physical resemblance to a tall young Latvian.

‘Rolf is harmless, but he has an interest.’ She paused as though expecting a response. Realising that none was forthcoming she continued. ‘In me.’

‘And do you have an interest in him?’

She looked momentarily startled and then she began to laugh, and although he understood that she was to some extent laughing at him he felt relieved that he had finally connected with her. He wondered if there were other buttons he might push that would encourage her to relax and perhaps believe that as a couple they were actually quite good together. But maybe he was the one who needed to unwind and take things easy. Obviously, to some extent, she trusted him. She had come back to his flat and accepted a large towel and gone into the bathroom and removed her clothes. She emerged with the towel wrapped tightly around her, and in her arms she cradled a damp pile of garments like a newborn child. He took them from her and tossed each article separately into the dryer.

‘Because a man is interested in me, this does not mean that I have any interest in the man. Are you interested in every woman who is interested in you?’

He wanted to keep the conversation alive, but suddenly he was aware of the loud hum of the dryer as the cylinder lumbered its slow way around the fixed circle. Once the buzzer signalled the fact that her clothes were dry she would no doubt leave, unless they were deeply involved in this, or some other, conversation.

‘Of course not. But you said that he had an interest and so I thought things might be difficult for you. But obviously they’re not, which is good.’

‘And why is it good?’

He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I don’t know.’

‘You don’t know? Then you should maybe say nothing. I am happy with silence. Unlike you English, I do not have to talk to fill in the silence.’

‘I see.’

He watched as she reached into her rucksack and pulled out a book whose title was in Polish. She began to read and he understood that, at least for the moment, this peculiar young woman had nothing further to say. He stared at her collarbone, which was unusually prominent beneath the thin layer of skin, and which curved left and right like the bow of an archer, and then she looked up from her book and he quickly averted his gaze.

Half an hour later, she emerged from his bedroom in her warm clothes and handed him the neatly folded towel, which he placed on the arm of the sofa. He stared at her petite and perfectly formed feet which, unlike her nicotine-stained and somewhat scrawny hands, appeared to be so smooth they might be waxed. Her toenails were cut short and not painted, and for a moment he understood why, in some cultures, women are encouraged to walk delicately on the bodies of men. But presumably not in Poland. He stood and offered her a glass of wine, which she refused by simply looking at her girl’s watch and insisting that she could not afford to be late. She informed him that Rolf would be upset if he had to make up an excuse on her behalf, and this is how he discovered that Rolf was not only her roommate, but they also worked together as cleaners. She asked him to please call the minicab, and so he eased by her and passed into the kitchen where he had left his mobile. ‘Two minutes, mate.’ It was then that he heard Danuta close the door to the bathroom and then immediately flush the toilet. A few moments later she tiptoed back into the living room and he watched as she clumsily pushed her feet into her scuffed shoes, seemingly oblivious to the fact that she was breaking down their heels. They both heard the doorbell.