When the Snow Fell

Eleven

Joel made some coffee.

He hated everything to do with strong drink, especially the Swedish version of spiced vodka, called brännvin. He had no need to make any New Year’s resolutions concerning brännvin: he would never start drinking it. It was enough to see what it did to Samuel.

Joel used to find bottles hidden away all over the house, labeled “Absolutely pure brännvin.” He found them hidden in the firewood bin, and in the case of apples they had tucked away in the pantry, for eating in the winter. He’d even found a bottle once in the cupboard where they kept sheets and pillowcases.

He’d read somewhere that the great Indian chieftain Geronimo used to call brännvin “firewater,” but Joel knew what it really was.

Spirits turned Samuel into a shipwrecked sailor.

The drink took the boat away from a sailor.

And Samuel was and would always be a sailor, even though he worked in the forests nowadays, chopping down trees.

Joel made the coffee very strong. He knew that would help to sober Samuel up. Meanwhile, Samuel was lolling about at the kitchen table. He must have fallen down in the street somewhere. One of his pants legs was wet and dirty. Joel didn’t want to ask where his dad had been. When Samuel was on a drinking spree he would go to the homes of other men in town who spent all their time being washed up like driftwood on a beach, like shipwrecked sailors.

Joel still had a stomachache, but it felt better now that he’d found Samuel. His biggest fear was always that Samuel would fall into a snowdrift one of these days and doze off to sleep.

Despite the amount of spirits that Samuel had drunk over the years, he had never learnt how to cope with it.

Joel wanted to know what had happened. Why had Samuel started drinking just now? When he’d been keeping off the booze for so long?

But first Samuel must drink his coffee. Joel poured out a cup and put it on the table in front of his father. He’d put three sugar lumps in it.

Samuel’s eyes were very red. Joel sat down at the table opposite him. It was the spirits glowing red in Samuel’s eyes. The firewater had burnt, and all that was left of it was a glow deep down in Samuel’s eyes.

“I’m very sorry about this,” said Samuel.

“So am I,” said Joel testily.

Samuel slurped at his coffee. He was holding the cup in both hands. Joel waited until he’d put it down again.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“Nothing,” said Samuel.

Joel didn’t ask anymore. He knew that Samuel would tell him what had happened sooner or later. It might be soon, or it might take time. But sooner or later, when the spirits had begun to leave his body, he would say what was wrong.

Meanwhile Joel sat at the table, daydreaming. He thought about Sonja Mattsson and the way she sat with her legs tucked underneath her. If he didn’t have Samuel to run around after and take responsibility for, he could move in with her. He would be able to practice there on the guitar he hoped to borrow from Simon Windstorm. Her flat smelled of perfume, not of wet wool.

“It’s Sara,” Samuel said all of a sudden.

“What’s the matter with Sara?”

“She doesn’t want to anymore.”

Joel still didn’t understand what had happened. Samuel raised his head, which seemed to be attached very loosely to his body. Like a leaf clinging to a tree in autumn. A leaf that was about to fall off.

“She met me when I came home from the forest,” said Samuel. “And she said she’d been thinking. And that it was probably best if we stopped seeing each other.”

So she’s broken it off, Joel thought.

That was the explanation. But he still didn’t understand. Samuel had always said how well they got on together. How they laughed a lot. And he spent the night with her once a week.

“Didn’t she explain why?” Joel asked.

Samuel shook his head. He’ll start crying in a minute, Joel thought.

At that very moment Samuel burst out crying. It cut through Joel like a knife. This was the worst and the most difficult thing. Samuel drifting ashore like a shipwrecked sailor was one thing. But when he started crying, it was like having to deal with a drowning man.

What Joel wanted to do more than anything else was to start crying himself. But he didn’t, of course. He stood up and walked round the table. Patted Samuel on the head.

When Samuel cried, it sounded as if he was squeaking. He was trying to say something, but the words jumped out of his mouth in a chaotic jumble. Joel gathered he was trying to explain why Sara wanted to break off the relationship, but he couldn’t understand what his father was saying.

Afterwards everything was very silent.

Samuel sat staring at his coffee cup. It occurred to Joel that Sara had now done the same as Mummy Jenny. She’d deserted Samuel.

“Has she gone away?” Joel asked. “Did she also pack a bag and vanish?”

“She’s still here,” Samuel said. “Why should she want to leave here? It’s only me she doesn’t want to see anymore.”

Joel helped Samuel to go to bed. Took off his shoes and pulled a blanket over him. Then he sat in the kitchen and waited until he was sure that Samuel really had fallen asleep. By this time Joel was so tired that he didn’t bother to get undressed either, but just lay down on top of the bed. Pulled the quilt over his head. Listened to Samuel’s snores rumbling in through the wall.

When Joel woke up next morning he jumped out of bed and went to check if Samuel was still there. To make sure his father hadn’t woken up and sneaked out to find something else to drink. But to Joel’s surprise Samuel was sitting at the kitchen table. He was eating breakfast and had already made up his lunch box.

He looked guiltily at Joel.

“That wasn’t good, what happened yesterday,” he said. “But it won’t happen again.”

Joel knew that might be true, but there again, it might not. Samuel had said the same thing so many times before.

“What’s happened?” Joel asked.

“It’s all over between Sara and me,” said Samuel. “It came as a complete surprise.”

Joel didn’t ask any more. He could see that Samuel would start crying again if he did.

“You’d better get a move on or you’ll be late for school,” Samuel said, getting to his feet.

Joel watched him trudging off towards the forest, shoulders hunched.

Joel had no intention of going to school. He didn’t have the strength.

It was all this business with Sara. What had really happened? One day everything seemed to be fine. The next day Samuel came rolling home with his eyes red from all the firewater.

Joel made up his mind on the spot. He must find out the truth. He got dressed and left the house. There was always a risk that somebody would catch him. Realize that he was playing truant. But he would have to do what he’d made up his mind to do. It was too early for Sara to be at work in Ludde’s bar. She would still be at home.

When he knocked on the door of Sara’s flat, she answered the door almost immediately. She was in her dressing gown and had rollers in her hair.

She smiled in surprise when she saw Joel.

That made him angry. Samuel had sat at the kitchen table, crying. Sara stood there smiling. That wasn’t fair.

“Joel!” she said. “This is a surprise. Aren’t you at school?”

She let him in. Joel purposely didn’t wipe his feet and hoped he would bring in lots of dirt to make a mess of the floor.

He realized now just how much he disliked Sara. He could remember what it had been like right at the beginning, when Sara and Samuel first started seeing each other. That feeling came back now. What he wanted to do more than anything else was to hit her.

They went to her kitchen.

“I assume you’ve come to ask what happened,” she said.

At last she was looking serious.

Joel nodded, but he didn’t say anything.

“I like your dad very much,” she said. “But we don’t really suit each other.”

“It’s you who don’t suit him,” said Joel. “There’s nothing wrong with Samuel.”

“I didn’t say there was.”

“Then why don’t you suit each other?”

“Perhaps we don’t really want the same things.”

The only thing that’s good about Sara, Joel thought, is that she talks to me as if I were grown up.

Joel decided to speak his mind.

“You don’t know what’s best for you,” he said. “You’ll never find anybody better than Samuel.”

She wasn’t angry. She just sat looking at him.

“Did you know that Samuel wanted us to get married?” she asked.

Joel’s heart stopped beating. That couldn’t be true. But that was what she said. And Sara didn’t usually tell lies.

“I gather that you didn’t know,” she said after a while. “But when Samuel popped the question I needed to make up my mind. And I don’t want to get married. If there’s one who wants to get married and another who doesn’t, they can’t very well carry on seeing each other.”

Joel was stumped. Had Samuel really thought about marrying Sara? Without discussing it with him first?

Joel didn’t feel sorry for Samuel anymore. Now he was just angry. And disappointed. Samuel had gone behind his back. Maybe Samuel had even intended to run off with Sara and leave Joel behind.

“What are you thinking about?” Sara asked.

“Nothing,” said Joel. “I’d better be going now.”

“You mustn’t think that I find this easy,” she said as they stood in the hall.

She patted Joel on the cheek. Joel couldn’t make up his mind if he liked that, or if he ought to hit her.

He left. Looked around. No sign of any of the teachers who would see that he was playing truant.

It was cold. He missed the mitten that was hidden in Sonja Mattsson’s flat. He checked the church clock and saw that it was still early. A quarter past eight. He wondered if he ought to call on Gertrud. But he didn’t feel like talking to her either. So there was only one person left.

He started walking up the hill towards the hospital. Past there, beyond the edge of the little town, was Simon Windstorm’s house. As Joel had no intention of going to school, he could go there and ask if he could borrow the guitar.

Joel had met Simon Windstorm when he’d been looking for that remarkable dog that was heading for a distant star. Simon used to drive around at night like a lost soul in his old truck, when he couldn’t sleep.

Simon Windstorm wasn’t all there. Everybody knew that. He was so mad that he’d spent a long time locked away in a mental hospital. But Joel knew he wasn’t really mad. In fact it sometimes seemed to Joel that he was the only person who had realized that Simon was cleverer than anybody else around.

Simon Windstorm had taken Joel to Four Winds Lake. There he’d taught Joel how to listen in a way he’d never been able to do before.

The winds had voices. The breeze had a language of its own.

He thought about that as he passed by the hospital, and soon he’d left the last houses in the town behind him. He was walking fast because he was cold. Then he turned off the main road and followed the path to Simon’s cottage. The truck was parked outside. As usual the courtyard was full of junk, half buried in the snow. A hen that must have been suffering in the cold was wandering around, pecking away. Joel stood still and listened. There was a swishing sound in the trees. Smoke was belching out of the chimney. So Simon was at home. He was probably reading one of the many books he owned, rewriting the closing pages so that it all ended up as he wanted it to do.

Joel went up to the door and knocked. Simon never invited anybody to come in. So Joel opened it and entered. Simon was sitting by the open fire, wrapped up in an old bearskin. Two dogs were lying at his feet. They wagged their tails when they saw Joel. Simon screwed up his ageing eyes.

“I had a dream about you last night,” he said. “Joel Gustafson, the great conqueror. And now, here you are.”

Joel had noticed straightaway that the guitar was hanging on the wall. He went to take a closer look at it. It had four strings; two were missing. But there was no doubt that it could be played.

“I’ve come to ask if I can borrow your guitar,” Joel said. “I promise to look after it well.”

Simon put his book down on his knee.

“Of course you can borrow it,” he said. “Are you going to join the Salvation Army?”

“I’ve decided to become a rock singer.”

“Hm. I don’t really know what that is,” said Simon.

“A rock idol? Like Elvis?”

“I go in for old bearskins myself.”

It was obvious to Joel that Simon had no idea what a rock singer was. No doubt he’d never heard of Elvis either. Simon was old and peculiar. It wasn’t his fault that he didn’t know what was going on in the world.

Joel carefully unhooked the guitar from the wall.

“There’s an old case somewhere,” said Simon thoughtfully. “But I haven’t a clue where.”

“I’ll look for it,” said Joel. “I’ve got all day.”

That was just as well. It took many hours of searching before he found the moth-eaten old guitar case hidden away in one of Simon’s outhouses. When he went back in, he found Simon asleep in his chair. Joel didn’t want to wake him up. He knew that Simon had spent all his life finding it difficult to fall asleep.

The dogs wagged their tails as Joel sneaked out through the front door.

They were standing guard over Simon’s sleep.

Joel spent the rest of the day at home, trying to work out how the guitar functioned. He plucked at the strings and pretended that he could play. But all the time he was thinking about Samuel. And about what Sara had said.

He prepared dinner in good time. He laid the table with a clean cloth, so that Samuel would feel he was eating just as elegantly as he would have done at Sara’s place. Samuel would regret ever having asked her to marry him.

Joel could see that something good might come out of what had happened. Maybe Samuel might start thinking now about his own best interests.

They could leave this godforsaken place. The sea was waiting for them.

Joel stood in the window, looking out for Samuel. It was dark already. He’d appear at any moment. But all the time Joel could feel a worry gnawing away inside him. Had his dad gone out drinking again? You never knew with Samuel.

What Joel really wanted to do was to call on Sonja Mattsson and collect his mitten. When she opened the door today, perhaps she’d be dressed in transparent veils?

Joel sighed. It wasn’t possible.

He’d always been his own mum. Now he would have to be dad to his own father.

He gazed out the window. Waited for Samuel.

Waited and waited.

And the food got cold.