Christian Guay-Poliquin - The Weight of Snow

The sun has been up for a while now, but the sky clouded up through the morning. The barometer is pointing at the ground. The air is heavy. I can see its weight. The snow has lost its lustre. In the village, smoke issues from the chimneys, climbs, levels off, then settles to the ground. As if it could not lift itself to the sky. Here and there flakes of ash fall to earth and form small black constellations against the infinite whiteness.

Once he has hung the washing above the stove, Matthias inspects the reinforcement posts. They help me move from the bed to the table without crutches, but still the poles get in the way. They cut back on Matthias’s space when he brings in wood, sets the table, and does his exercises.

Are they going to hold up? he asks in a doubtful tone.

They’ll hold up, I tell him. They’re Joseph’s work.

Matthias feeds the stove, opens the cellar door, and takes out a few items. I watch him rub his hands together, satisfied, before starting to cook. I ask him if an animal has been helping itself to our supplies.

No, he answers, I don’t think so. I didn’t see anything.

I heard noise during the night, I pursue.

Impossible. I didn’t hear anything. Not last night or any other night.

He sets the food on the counter and closes the cellar door.

You must have been dreaming, he says sharply. Forget about it, get up, we’re going to do our exercises.

I drop the subject and prepare for battle. I get to my feet, avoiding putting weight on my left leg. We begin. We stretch our arms toward the ceiling and rotate our wrists, and we breathe in. We bend our knees, keeping our spines perfectly straight, and breathe out. In the middle of the session, the church bells begin ringing. The echo returns from the distant mountains. It is the village alarm. Something has happened. I take my spyglass and look toward the village. Through the trees, nothing. The bells keep ringing. Finally they stop, and everything goes back to normal. According to Matthias someone will come and alert us if it’s serious. If not, Joseph will tell us what happened.

A little later we hear the simultaneous growling of several snowmobiles. We rush to the window. There are three of them. One of them is moving through the village, the other is going past the forest, and the third is heading in our direction.

That must be Joseph, Matthias speculates, and takes the spyglass from me.

Unless it’s Jean coming for me, I add.

The sound of the engine grows louder. The door opens. It’s José. With him is a guy and a young woman. All three are armed. Matthias beckons them to sit down at the table, but they don’t bother answering.

Over there, José says, pointing at the door to the other side.

The guy pushes open the door and disappears.

Matthias wants to know why the church bells rang.

We’re looking for Maria, José answers. Have you seen her by any chance?

She hasn’t been here for a while, Matthias says.

There are snowmobile tracks out front, José insists, his voice hostile, and they’re recent.

Joseph stopped by a few days ago.

Was he with Maria? José questions us.

No, why?

Was he with Maria? he turns and asks me.

No. Guaranteed.

Behind him, the young woman is positioned in front of the door, holding her rifle in both hands. The guy comes back from the other side, shaking his head.

You looked everywhere? José wants to know.

Yes.

Everywhere?

Yes. Everywhere.

They’re not there?

No, they’re not there.

Shit, José swears. And in there, what’s in there? he asks, pointing to the trap door to the cellar.

Our supplies, Matthias tells him, tension creeping into his voice. We keep our stuff there so the mice don’t get at it.

José nods, then inspects the ceiling reinforcements.

Sorry to disturb you.

Matthias takes a step in his direction and asks again what this is all about.

Someone sliced off part of his ankle with an axe, he answers, motioning his companions to head for the door. We need Maria, but we can’t find her. She can’t be far. You two are sure you haven’t seen her?

Absolutely, Matthias repeats.

José sighs, then exits with his friends as quickly as they arrived.

I wonder if you can survive an axe in your ankle. And if Maria could have saved that person the way she saved me.

Outside, the snowmobiles have left bluish furrows. The snow has started falling again, covering the tracks with a thin layer of silence.

As I circumnavigate the table several times on my crutches, Matthias pours hot water into a bowl and rubs soap on his cheeks. His movements are slow and precise as he runs the razor over his skin. He rinses his face, wipes it, and looks at himself in the mirror. He might look a few years younger, but his features haven’t changed. The skin of his neck still looks like a snow drift that has withered under the late winter rains.

As I go around the edge of the table, a drop of water hits my forehead. I stop. Another drop falls. I step back and examine the ceiling. Drops are running along a beam toward the middle of the room. They stretch, hang, then let go. One at a time, unhurried, before breaking apart on the floor. I picture the thick sheet of ice that must have formed without us knowing, right above our heads. With the heat of the stove, the snow must have compacted, hardened, and formed a thick block. Now it is preventing the roof from shedding its water normally. The posts can stand up to heavy loads, but water always ends up going where it wants to.

Matthias turns in my direction and I point to the leak. He watches it attentively, then pivots and places a metal bucket on the floor.

There, he says.

The drops tick off every second as if we were prisoners of a water clock. And our days were numbered.

By the end of the day, the bucket is overflowing and a small puddle has formed on the floor. As he kneels down to soak up the water, Matthias cries out softly as if someone had struck him. He leans heavily on his knees and does not move for several minutes. When I try to help him, he raises a hand.

It’ll be all right, he says, bent double. I threw out my back but I’ll be all right. Don’t worry.

He insists on sponging up the rest of the water. His movements are jerky, as if his limbs had rusted. Darkness settles over the room. I stretch out my hand and reach the oil lamp, then hold it in my hands a moment.

Light it, Matthias tells me. No use waiting for a genie to appear.

I slip a match under the glass chimney and adjust the wick. When I get onto my crutches to go to the counter, Matthias moves toward me, bent like an uprooted tree. He blocks me. I tell him to let me past. And rest up while I make something to eat. He screams. No way that’s going to happen. The kitchen is his space, his space alone. My space is the bed and the chair. And that’s that. Even if he can’t lift his eyes from the floor, he waves his arms in the air and orders me to go back and sit down, his voice both harsh and fragile. I retreat, listening to the drops of water beating on my patience with a disturbing sameness.

Matthias mutters to himself as he makes the meal. He is like an old moose, stubborn and grizzled, beating his hooves on the ground at the slightest pretext. I look at him out of the corner of my eye, convinced that this room will soon be too small for the both of us.

Even before I open my eyes, I hear the sound of dishes and the slap of soapy water.

I awake.

And am surprised to see Matthias already up, in tip-top shape, back straight. He is washing and drying the plates and pots he has piled on the counter. Amazingly, he seems to have recovered from his back problems. He is whistling a familiar tune, and he brings me a cup of coffee and toast. I quickly swallow down breakfast, then sip the coffee and watch the leaky ceiling. In the night, when the fire burned down into embers and the cold returned to haunt our dreams, I woke suddenly and noticed the water wasn’t dripping. The drops had called off their parade. But as soon as we heated up the stove, they went back to their procession, just where they had left off.