Jensen Beach - Swallowed by the Cold - Stories

He refilled his coffee cup. “We’ll lose a minute or two a day as we get closer to the equinox.”

“I prefer the winter to the summer,” his wife said. “In winter, we’re on the way to better things. Summer is so unhopeful.”

They had been discussing what time the sun would rise. The days were still weighted toward daylight, but he agreed with his wife that there was a dread to moving into the winter that was far greater than the hope of coming out of it. When they’d finished their breakfast, he cleared the table while Agneta finished dressing. He listened to the sounds from the bedroom — the sticky dresser drawer, the rattle of the hangers. By four thirty, he was holding the heavy front door of their building open for his wife.

The walk to Kungsgatan was not long. All traffic in the city had been stopped, so there were no taxis running. He liked the crisp late-summer air and the quiet. To prepare for the change, the traffic authority had installed new signs, painted new lines on the roads, erected new bus and tram stops. All of it was covered with black plastic, and as they walked he watched workers beginning the process of removing this plastic from the new and placing more plastic over the old.

As they got close to Kungsgatan, a crowd began to form, seeping off of small side streets like the headwaters of a river. When they’d turned onto Kungsgatan and passed the first shallow bend in the road, he saw this river of people interrupted by islands of yellow-vested traffic volunteers and police cars. Whistles blew, people shouted, and beneath those noises there was a sturdy hum of conversation from the crowd.

Agneta clutched his arm tight. They found a spot near the Astoria Cinema from which it was possible to see the middle section of the long line of police and military vehicles in the street. The cinema’s sign reached high above them and glowed brightly, illuminating a rough circle of white light on the pavement at their feet. He pulled Agneta close.

At precisely ten minutes to five, a bell sounded. The crowd turned their faces to the still-dark sky. A hiss of static filled the air. The wide mouth of the loudspeaker mounted to the eaves of the building across the street gaped downward. It hissed again. “Now is the time to change over,” a voice announced. The crowd applauded. He felt his wife’s hand drop from his arm as they joined in the applause. People pushed from every side. He smelled them, felt breath on his neck and cheeks. As he pushed forward, he turned to look for Agneta. His glance settled on her hat, the sharp lines of her coat that she had insisted on wearing though it was, he had reminded her that very morning, still calendar summer. The crowd listed forward into the street. Engines started. He stepped awkwardly off the curb, looked down at the street, puddles dark against a dark background. He turned to look for his wife again, put his arm into the air, called her name. But she was gone.

He stopped and stood against the flow of the crowd but the angry looks and bodies pushing into the street forced him away from where she had been standing. The announcement sounded twice more and was followed by another bell, this one higher pitched and steadier.

A whistle stabbed the cold air. Slowly, the cars on the street began to edge forward, the crowd parting. The traffic volunteers waved their arms wildly. They pushed pedestrians out of the way. From the opposite side of the street, he waited for his wife.

The hoary snarl of engines revved too high rose up from the street. It was still dark. The traffic moved slowly from the left lane to the right. Soon another signal sounded and the cars all stopped. The cars in the street directly in front of him now pointed east, toward a suggestion of dawn clawing up the valleys between buildings. His wife was missing. Shadows passed in front of headlights and each shadow did not belong to Agneta. Exhaust steam blossomed from behind each of the cars like a fog from a thawing pond.

At precisely five o’clock, the bell sounded once more. The change was completed and traffic was free to move. Several police officers joined the volunteers in the street. The police signaled at cars, the volunteers at pedestrians. It was over. The traffic diversion was completed, a part of history that could not ever be erased, and he felt, for a moment, angry with his wife for separating herself from him.

Every woman he saw was Agneta, every man himself. She disappeared around a corner, brushed against him as she passed. Her scent, the roughness of her coat, the softness of her hands against his. The city was suggesting her to him but did not offer her up. He searched up and down the street but the faces were indistinguishable from one another. Thousands of the same person, a swarm, surrounded him. He was being swallowed by the cold.

He walked quickly home, concentrated on the grinding of his shoes against the pavement. Straight ahead, less than a block from their building, he saw a woman. She was walking fast. He ran to catch her and as he approached he saw that her coat was all wrong, the shoes the wrong color, her hair not quite right. The woman stepped to one side as he ran past. “Agneta!” he called out.

In the courtyard, he looked up at his building. His own kitchen window was lit. His wife must have already arrived home. A fresh pot of coffee would be waiting, the day’s newspaper, delayed by the traffic diversion, would no doubt be unfolded and waiting for him on the dining table. He felt himself flush with embarrassment as the panic left him. A radio played faintly.

Light bled out from beneath the front door of his apartment. He had been careful to shut the lights off when they had left. He was always careful to shut off lights, lock doors. He disliked wastefulness, positioned as much of his life as he could against theft and danger. Here was more evidence, proof, that Agneta had arrived home before he had.

He took his shoes off in the entryway, hung his coat. “Hello,” he said. He calmed his voice, breathed deep, even breaths. “You got here first,” he said. “Agneta?”

In response, he heard only the radio. They had not been listening to the radio at breakfast. Agneta disliked it during meals and he allowed her this though he preferred the news to conversation. It had hardly been an hour since he had been sitting at the table with Agneta. His diagram of the earth was still there, its rotation frozen. Tomorrow the sun would rise a minute later. The world rushed forward in spite of itself.

“Agneta?” he said again. He checked the bedroom, the guest room. He opened all of the doors. Their bed was made, her toiletries neatly replaced in the bathroom. A coat, not unlike the one she had worn that morning, hung stiffly on the dark cherrywood chair she liked to face the east-facing window. He checked the chair though he could see even from behind that she was not in it.

Agneta was not in the apartment, or if she were she was hiding from him, playing a cruel trick the reason for which he could not recall or perhaps had not ever known. Her absence meant something to him but he did not know what. The radio grew louder with every room he searched and every room that was empty.

In the window opposite the kitchen, he watched the sky lose its color. He walked toward this, into the darkened living room, and stood at the window. The sun reflected brighter and brighter in the windows of the building across the courtyard. Color returned to the sky as if it had been exhaled onto it. Each of the windows lit up sharply, a wall of white glass and yellow stucco. Daylight filled the room around him. He squinted his eyes against the light and saw only shapes. The shapes were unfamiliar, both too large and too small. He turned and moved away from the window, toward the dark opening of what he hoped was a door. A piece of furniture, a couch or the edge of a table, brushed against his leg. He reached out his hands, lurched forward, and felt no evidence of what he knew had once existed behind him.