When the Snow Fell Read Online Free

he had just one hour left in which to do it.
    New Year’s resolutions were not things to be taken lightly. It seemed to Joel that a New Year’s resolution unkept might turn out to be a New Year’s threat. Time was up at midnight. The sands of time had run out. Just as in that hourglass Samuel had bought years ago in some foreign port or other, in a dimly lit little shop smelling of spices.
    Joel had kept putting off carrying out this resolution for a whole year. That was something typical of him that he didn’t much like. He could promise too much.Promise himself, and others as well. He had promised the man in the bicycle shop to call in and pay for a puncture repair the same afternoon it had happened. But he’d forgotten. He’d promised Samuel to collect something from the ironmonger’s, and he’d forgotten that as well. And it was something Samuel needed for his work in the forest.
    Another thing about this resolution was that he regretted having made it. He’d been too hasty. But it seemed to him that New Year’s resolutions simply could not be ignored. You had a whole year in which to do what you’d promised yourself to do. But no more. And now there was only one hour left.
    He hurried through the silent little town without making a sound.
    There was no traffic, no noise at all. Everything was different at night. Shadows and streetlamps. The white snow.
    And Joel running through the streets like a man possessed. Now he had come to the Grand Hotel. He turned off to the left, and then to the right. The clock in the church tower was lit up. A quarter past eleven. He passed over the big forecourt in front of the bank and forced his way through the broken fence at the back of the hardware store. Then it was just a question of continuing straight ahead, towards the red-painted, timber-built fire station with the tall tower where the hoses were hung up.
    He was taking the same route he took every morning.
    He was going to school in the middle of the night.
    When he entered the playground he suddenly thought he could hear the bell ringing. There were voices on all sides. Just like it always sounded during the breaks. He even thought he could hear his own voice. That was something he’d rather not listen to. He’d once heard his own voice on Mr. Waltin’s tape recorder. Waltin was the editor of the local newspaper, and Joel used to work as a newspaper delivery boy. If Mr. Waltin was in a good mood and you were lucky, he would record your voice and let you listen to it. Joel had been lucky. But he didn’t like the sound of his own voice. He spoke through his nose. And his voice was shrill.
    But needless to say, he was only imagining all those voices on the playground. He was the only one there. And he was in a hurry.
    The worst thing was that he was frightened of what he was going to do. If he was caught breaking into school in the middle of the night, he hoped the earth would open and swallow him up. He would be in trouble for the rest of his life. He preferred not even to think about how Samuel would react.
    How on earth could he have made that idiotic New Year’s resolution? How could he have been so stupid?
    He had been a little kid then. This year such a thought would never have entered his head.
    But there was nothing he could do about it. New Year’s resolutions could think. They kept track of who had promised what.
    He crouched up against the wall of the school and listened. He could hear a car in the far distance. But it didn’t come any closer. Soon everything was just as still as before.
    Joel had made preparations earlier in the day. At the end of the last lesson, he’d stayed behind in the classroom and when everybody had left, he’d carefully released the catch on one of the windows. He’d jammed a piece of folded paper in the crack at the bottom of the window, so that it wouldn’t blow open if a wind got up. He hoped the caretaker hadn’t noticed anything. If he had, Joel was in deep