Alvaro Enrigue - Hypothermia

That exchange, on the other hand, he chose not to share with his father because it wasn’t his habit to complain. He kept writing, explaining how, with just twenty minutes remaining until midnight, he got up for the third time. He knew that he wasn’t going to have another smoke until just before going to bed because of what was coming up — they would wait for the clock on TV to strike midnight, followed by a very awkward round of embraces, then share a bottle of champagne so slowly that the glasses got warm while watching the stars on this or that TV special.

As he came back into the room, his wife asked him if the opossum was still stuck on the fence. He said yes. Partly out of genuine curiosity — all recurrent history is always noteworthy — partly because the slow, pleasant moments of letting their meal settle had passed, and partly because the mounting series of commercials at midnight, one after another, made the programming unbearable, the problem now received the whole family’s attention. His wife thought that all the fireworks at midnight were going to give the poor animal a fatal heart attack, and that was reason enough to spur them into action. His father-in-law accompanied him back outside and confirmed that the opossum was still trapped by the height of the fence. He disappeared a moment in the direction of the toolshed and returned carrying a board. He’d put a cap on his head and had some yellow, wool-lined, waterproof overalls covering his clothes. It’s my winter gear, he said, leaning the board up against the wall so he could zip himself up to the neck and put on his gloves. He had another pair in the back pocket of his overalls. He held them out to his son-in-law in case he needed help. Between the two of them they carried the board and propped it up to make a ramp from the top of the fence down to the grass. That’s it, said his father-in-law with satisfaction, it can get down by itself, nobody needs to touch it. They got back in the house with more than enough time to drink their toast and share that hug.

He smoked his last cigarette a little before one o’clock in the morning. The opossum had disappeared, so he removed the board and put it back in the toolshed. Once in bed, his wife looked up for a moment from the pages of the enormous biography of John Adams she was reading and asked him about the animal. He was touched that she thought to ask about the little drama in which he’d played the starring role. It crossed the bridge we set up for it, he responded, and it’s free. She smiled and kissed him. See, you were a hero. She turned back to her book. He’d started to concentrate on the case study about Ecuadoran fishing disputes that he’d brought to read when his wife looked up again. Poor animal, she said, it must be thinking that it made such a great escape.

Meanness and selfishness are the only values that count in a society that prides itself on being composed of immigrants. That’s why, sooner or later, all of us gringos end up going to therapy. In a world like this one, the only way to get someone to listen to you is by paying them to do it.

During Major League postseason playoffs, time all across the country comes to a halt when a game starts. The one that evening wound up in a tie at the top of the ninth inning, and ended up going on until well after midnight. The twelfth inning was so tense that he didn’t even take a sip of the gin and tonic he’d mixed himself to drink while he watched. When the game ended, he added some fresh ice and stayed up a little while longer, enjoying the singular freedom that comes from being awake in a house where everyone else is asleep. There was nothing else worth watching on TV, so he switched off the set and reached for the bookshelf to pick up the video camera he’d bought last winter.

He turned it on, rewound the tape a little, and pressed the play button. On the plasma screen a pure white color appeared, then a blue strip in the upper part of the frame. The vibration of the strip made it clear that the camera was moving, although the big white patch remained static. After a few seconds some vertical bars that he was slow to recognize as trees moved in and out of the frame. At last his own face appeared, talking about the snow and the cold. It was part of a documentary that the girls had filmed on a visit downtown during the record snowfall, which was the very reason for their buying the camera.

Those were unusual, noteworthy days: his wife was out of town, gone to be with her mother in Philadelphia where the latter was recovering from an operation. He was left to contend with their two young daughters and the heavy weather alone.

The snow began falling around noon on a Tuesday already filled with anticipation. He was seated at his desk editing a report, blinds drawn to block the light reflecting off the computer screen, when his boss appeared: It’s already started snowing, he told him, and it’s heavy. I’m gonna stay late because I’ve got a conference call with the consultants in San Francisco, but I can walk home if they close the Metro. You should head home now. You can send me the report by e-mail.

When he found himself alone in his office he opened the blinds wide. What he liked about the beginning of a snowstorm was the fact that the enormous agitation produced by people getting their errands done before all the businesses closed kept the streets completely full. The panorama offered a fleeting illusion: the sky above dissolving into a ferocious whiteness that threatened all the colors of life down below. Getting up, he made sure that his boss had gone back into his office then discreetly closed the door to his own. He called her number on his cell phone; she was just leaving a benefit luncheon nearby. He looked at his watch: it was a few minutes after one o’clock. They arranged to see each other, even though it was just for a short while before he headed back to the suburbs. Then he called his house and told the Argentine woman who looked after the children that he had to attend a business meeting, but that he would be home early.

It snowed heavily without stopping all through the night — all of Wednesday, and half of Thursday. The snowflakes were the size of walnuts, at times. The temperature stayed well below freezing, so that the snow piled up steadily without slowing down.

What was at first celebrated as a blessing — in Washington, D.C., schools, banks, and the federal government all shut down at the slightest threat of inclement weather — became, after the first twelve hours, a cause for concern: the first morning he had to climb out of the house through the windows to shovel away the snow that didn’t stop falling, and then keep clearing it away every little while to keep open their only exit. He dug an exhausting system of tunnels out from the front door so that they could reach the trash cans — the kitchen door remained blocked — and to get to the toolshed, where he kept the sleds and other snow toys. The car, which they never parked in the garage, was completely buried, and the whole street was a snowdrift that reached up to his chest and was well over his older daughter’s head.

On Wednesday, starting early in the morning, they had a fantastic time, sledding down the hills in the park. The forced break brought on by the snow put the whole neighborhood into a mood unlike any he’d seen before. All his neighbors gathered on the slopes, in such a way that the upper part of the hill looked like a beach: dozens of adults and their dogs watching children sliding down deep into a white sea. In the afternoon, back at the house, they raised an igloo and built a giant snowman, then glutted themselves on hot chocolate. After putting the girls to bed he spoke on the phone with his wife: he was getting worried that the county workers had not yet begun plowing the streets.