The second Sunday in Advent: To plant a snowflake
On the other side of the darkness there is light. When I open my eyes I’m lying on the cold, wooden floor in my room. The morning sun is shining straight into my face through the dirty windowpane. Slowly I get up trying to remember how I ended up on the floor. What day was it yesterday? Friday? A glance at my desk – cluttered with course literature and notes – refutes that theory.
The silence around me is complete. Almost as if your ears suddenly feel blocked and you hear everything at a distance, like from the other side of a padded wall.
I sit down on my desk chair. Trying to remember.
And do remember.
***
Outside everything is quiet and still as silent as before. It is like time has stopped. The only thing showing the world not has stopped completely is the big fluffy snowflakes falling around me, getting stuck in my hair and on my coat, and the squeaking under my shoes.
It is like walking around inside a gigantic globe of snow.
I walk towards the center of the city, hoping to find some signs of life. As I am walking along Lilla Fiskargatan, I find all the shops closed as if it was in the middle of the night. It is like nobody yet is awake and have come here to open the shops. Remarkable.
I reach Mårtenstorget. Here the depth of snow is deeper. I sink into it. My pants get wet. I scan the square in front of me, squinting in the sharp sunlight reflected in the snow.
Suddenly she stands there. Standing in the middle of the square in a small crater of snow. A girl, maybe seven or eight years old, her curly hair glistening like snow in the sun. A living creature engraved in light. What is this? An alien-invasion?
”Hello”! I shout.
No, aliens existed in the 1980s. Or when we watched the X-files on TV.
She turns around towards me and I plod closer to her through the snow.
”Hi”, I say, when I’ve reached her. ”I’m sorry but it is so nice to feel that I’m not alone here. Do you know were everybody else is”?
The girl looks at me with a gaze black as night. She studies me, before her whole face bursts into a big smile.
”It’s you”, she says. ”You came, even if you don’t wave anymore”.
”Wave”? Funny. She might not be an alien but she is a mysterious little girl. To my knowledge I’ve never met the girl in my whole life. Is she somebody’s little sister? ”I’m sorry, but…. Do we know each other”?
”My name is Gloria”, the girl says happily. ”And they call me Bo. Of course I know who you are”.
Of course you do. Have I really met her? I decide to play along.
”Where are you from, Gloria? I didn’t see you at first,
She ignores my question.
”Bo, you must help me. I must find it.
”Find what”?
Gloria sighs.
My halo. I took it off when I planted snowflakes in the white fields. But the halo was too heavy and fell down together with the snow.
She gives me an urging glance as if suddenly it’s my task to look for halos that have fallen down with the snow. What is this? Am I still asleep? Is it a dream? A dream? Did I hit my head when I was thrown to the floor?
I check my head for injuries but it is all right.
”Why do you ask me for help”? I finally ask her and at the same time look around me. But the square is still empty. Maybe there is nobody else to ask.
”You used to wave at me in the evenings”, Gloria says, as if that answer was enough. ”Before you got old”.
Old?
”OK”, I say. ”What do you want me to do”?
”Search”, says Gloria and jumps with both feet together from the crater towards me. ”You can find it better down here than I can”.
She takes me by the hand and with an astonishing strength for somebody being that little, she drags me leaping through the snow. She looks so happy and heedless that it is contagious. Soon enough I am leaping too.
***
We stop and search every snowdrift. Kicking the snow as if a glistening halo would hide somewhere in the snowdrift.
It becomes more and more obvious that the whole world has been evacuated and left us both alone.
”What does it look like”? I wonder.
”Like a halo”, says Gloria.
The closest we come to finding anything is a buried bicycle lock outside AF-borgen.
When the sun sets behind the houses we have been searching for hours.
”Let’s eat”, Gloria decides and the next moment I have a ginger bread cookie in one hand and a saffron bun in the other.
Gloria has a bite of her saffron bun.
”I’ve always wanted to try these”, she says, munching loudly.
We sit down in the snow and I notice that I’m not freezing at all.
”What happens if you don’t find it”? I wonder while nibbling on my ginger bread.
”Then I cannot return. I will not get back up without it”.
Her answer doesn’t make me wiser.
”Where is up”?
”The Golden City, of course”, says Gloria and gets on her feet. She carefully collects a hand full of snow and squeezes it in her bare hands. A rascally smile in her face warns me in time for me to duck for the snowball.
Gloria laughs. ”What did you expect”?
Text: Emma Andersson
Translation: Lars Jansson
