When the Snow Fell Read Online Free PDF Page A

his. Missing mittens always caused problems.
    Why could nobody invent mittens that never got lost?
    Joel crept in through the front door and tiptoed upstairs. He paused in the kitchen and listened. Samuel was asleep.
    A few minutes later, he was in bed. Heat spread slowly through his body. His alarm clock with the luminous hands was on a stool beside his bed.
    Half past twelve.
    Everything had gone well after all. He would forget about Lars Olson’s gravestone. He had another pair of mittens. They needed darning, but if he did that he could wear them. Anyway, he’d made his New Year’s resolutions.
    The new year had begun.
    He had so much to do. If he was going to be able to do it all, he would have to start as early as the next day.

— FOUR —
    When Joel woke up next morning, he felt ill. He was hot and sweaty. And he had a sore throat. Samuel came to his room and wondered why he was still in bed.
    “I feel awful,” said Joel. “I have a sore throat.”
    Samuel felt his forehead.
    “You seem to have a bit of a temperature,” he said. “I think you ought to stay at home today.”
    That was exactly what Joel had hoped to hear. He was really ill. Many a time he’d woken up and wished he’d been ill. Mornings when the last thing he’d wanted to do was to go to school. But needless to say, he’d been unable to find anything at all wrong with himself, no matter how much he’d squeezed and poked at his body.
    “Will you be all right on your own?” Samuel asked.
    Joel wondered what Samuel would have done if he’dsaid no. Would he have stayed at home and not gone to work? He couldn’t have done that. Samuel didn’t earn much money. They couldn’t afford for him to miss a single day’s work in the forest.
    “I’ll manage OK,” said Joel. “I’m only a little bit ill.”
    “Wrap something warm round your neck,” Samuel said. “And I think we’d better lay the cat fur over your feet.”
    Joel smiled. There was no cat fur. But there was a little Arabian carpet that Samuel had bought ages ago in some Mediterranean port or other. It was no bigger than a door-mat. But when Joel was a little lad, Samuel had told him stories about its magical properties. If you laid it over your feet when you were ill, you would be cured straightaway. In those days Joel had believed it was true. But he didn’t any longer.
    Even so, he was pleased that Samuel went to fetch the little mat and placed it over the bottom of the bed. Even if it didn’t have any magical properties, at least it made your feet warm.
    “Drink plenty of water,” Samuel said. “Do you want me to open the blind?”
    Yes, Joel did. And the roller blind was raised.
    Samuel set off for work.
    Joel lay in his bed, listening to the silence. Nothing could make as much noise as a silent room. There was a creaking in the walls, and a swishing from the water pipes.
    He swallowed several times, as a sort of test. It hurt. But not all that much.
    He thought about what had happened last night. The New Year’s resolutions he’d made, which had been witnessed by all those dead people.
    The fact that he’d dropped his mitten in front of Lars Olson’s gravestone didn’t mean a thing. Even if Lars Olson had died at the age of fourteen, Joel’s name was Joel and not Lars Olson. Joel had made a solemn resolution to the effect that he would toughen himself up and live to be a hundred. The year that would eventually be carved on his gravestone was 2045.
    Joel was aware that lots of people would no doubt think it was a childish resolution. Lots of people who didn’t understand.
    OK, maybe I am childish, Joel thought. But I don’t know what I ought to do in order not to be. To be different.
    He went to the kitchen and poured himself a glass of water. He put it at the side of his alarm clock. It would soon be time for the first lesson to start.
    And then he remembered. The harmonium! He’d forgotten all about it.
    He felt a pain in his stomach. The moment Miss