The cold wind stopped and let the first snow of the year settle on the ground. This first snowfall was thin and shallow, snow that would melt in your hand before you could make a snowball, but it was the first one so we have to count it.
The evening came and a second downfall doubled the first. The children began to gather it up from atop the cold cars, concrete fences and sidewalks. This was now enough to make the first snowballs of that winter. As usual the noisy kids threw the snowballs at the quiet kids and soon enough a merry good time contaminated all the youngsters in the neighborhood.
Later, after the last parents arrived home, a dutiful girl named Bianca dressed her self up in a red jacket and went outside to play. Most of the children were going back inside this late in the evening, but she didn't care, enough snow had fallen for what she really wanted ... a snowman.
Bianca had chosen the place carefully, a garden between two apartment buildings that stood back-to-back. A knee-high fence and a rust-welded gate separated the garden from the rest of the world. This place received the barest of lights from a tired sodium lamp post in the corner of the street. The place was secluded from prying eyes on the ground, but occasionally curious eyes still flowed down from the two tenements.
Bianca inspected the ground. There was plenty of space and lots of room for self-expression. Protected from the sun and the wind, the snowman would have a good life here. The girl carefully gathered the first snowball trying to make it perfectly round. From this snowball a small globe was born and then a sphere of snow that moved around and gathered up mass like a magnet.
Sticky flakes were still falling from the sky when Bianca sat down wearily next to the half-finished snowman and spoke:
"If it's going to keep snowing, tomorrow I'll get your head done. After that you'll need your eyes, your arms and a heart."
The next day, Bianca once again walked out quite late and quickly jumped the fence into the garden to complete the snowman. She stood in the shimmering glow of the street lamp shaping the snow.
She finished the snowman and almost flew back home, where she sneaked in like a mouse, making sure her parents didn't hear her. She pulled out two dried up walnut branches from behind the coat-rack in the entrance hallway, then took two shiny black stones from a pair-less shoe thrown in the back of the shoe cupboard. She put her hand on the knob of the kitchen door and gently opened it making sure it didn't do its usual crick. She entered searching for the last piece of the snowman.
With her hands full of gifts she returned to the snowman. She placed his walnut hands, fixed his eyes and with her frozen hands, caressed what looked like blue glass. Bianca opened the snowman's chest and transplanted the icy heart inside. She pressed the snow back in his chest and whispered.
"You're alive now."
On the third day coming from school, the girl glanced between the tenements. The snowman stood with a hand raised to heaven as if saying "hey". Bianca smiled, and continued running home, where she eagerly waited for her parents to come home. Once they got home Bianca headed back out to her secret garden, where the snowman greeted her once again with a trembling hand in the wind.
"How are you, I've missed you so much," said the girl, hugging him.
The snowman didn't answer.
"Why aren't you talking to me? don't be angry ... I brought you back as soon as I could, and just look at this place, the wind and the sun will never hit you".
The snowman did not look very impressed.
"Should I tell you what's been happening since we've last seen each other? I came 2nd in my class, that was last summer, then I left with mom and dad to the sea side. I made sand castles there. It's beautiful there, waves of green water, seagulls and boats float everywhere on the sea.
A faint wind carried a few words to the girl's ears.
"Well ... you did promise me some sand."
"You came back, I knew you would." Bianca hugged him, and the snowman, in turn, hugged the girl squeezing her red jacket.
"Where have you been?"
"I was taking a nap. You've grown so big," he said.
"See this is the jacket from last year, it barely fits anymore."
"Where are the others, I haven't seen any kids here."
"I didn't make you at the playground, the kids are mean there."
"What do you mean?" the snowman asked surprised.
"They have snowball fights."
"Well, what's wrong with that?"
"They pinned me down and rubbed snow on my face, I don't want to play with them anymore."
"Bianca you shouldn't hide from your friends."
"They're not my friends anymore, I'll stay here with you and we'll play together."
"I liked it when other kids were around with their snowmen. Do you remember d'Artagnan? he had that sword carved from a fir tree and we used to fight every night."
"I don't want to play with them."
"Come on Bianca it's just snow," he tried to improve her mood, then took a handful of snow and poured it on his head.
"It's not the same, you wouldn't have liked it either."
The snowman drew a circle in the snow.
"When you were little, Bianca, you could play for hours in a circle as big as this, but now you've grown up, you shouldn't just sit around here when you can go and play all over."
Bianca began to add petals to the circle turning it into a big flower.
"You should try to get along with them," tested the snowman again.
"Boys are stupid. I'm not playing with them anymore."
"What about the girls?"
"They moved... just Anna is left and she can't come out this late."
The snowman looked around and took a piece of tinsel hanging from a tree in the garden.
"Bianca you need to make new friends, you can't just sit around and talk to a snowman until you're an old lady. You have to promise this is the last time you bring me back."
"What do you mean, you don't want to come back anymore?
"Bianca, big girls don't play with snowmen. I don't want to see you hiding from other kids.
"But I like it this way."
"No Bianca, promise me this is the last time. When spring comes you'll take the heart and you'll bury it."
"Why?" asked the girl indignant.
"You have to make real friends."
The snowman took the tinsel and placed it over her head.
"That look's good on you, if only d'Artagnan could see you now he would laugh and laugh."
Bianca took the tinsel pouting, she put it on the snowman.
"Well, ok, I promise," she said.
The snowman hugged her again.
"Now let's see what you've learned at school since I last saw you. Tell me, quickly, three cold capitals."
"Ottawa, Moscow and Helsinki. Now you tell me three small seas," she countered.
"The Black Sea, the Dead Sea and the Marmara Sea, you have three seconds to tell me three active volcanoes," continued the snowman.
"Etna, Vesuvius and ... pass. Three colors starting with the letter - r ?"
"Red, rose and rainbow. I can't believe you haven't learned three volcanoes. Tell me three high mountains."
"The Himalayas, Kilimanjaro and the Pyrenees, but rainbow isn't a color. Three precious stones?"
"Diamond, ruby and ... you know it's getting late, you better run back home."
"You don't know?" giggled the girl.
"I'll let you know tomorrow," mustered the snowman.
"Okay, but I warn you, I'll ask again."
And with that Bianca said goodbye to the snowman and went back home, tired but happy.
The next day Bianca came back holding something behind her back.
"I have a surprise for you," she said.
"What do you have there?"
"Close your eyes."
"I can't close them, I don't have any eyelids, how about I put my hands over my eyes."
"All right, but don't cheat."
"Ok ok no cheating."
The snowman heard something being poured beside him, and Bianca let him look. The snowman saw a bucket of sand overturned in the middle of the alley.
"Sand from the beach?" he asked.
"Yeah, go ahead."
"Didn't you tell me it was hot as lava, and it would melt me if I rolled over it?"
"That's in the summer, but it's winter now ... Go on!"
And the snowman jumped on the sand.
"Oh, look at that, it's sticky," he said excitedly.
"Mom always make's me wash it off."
The snowman began to make a small sand castle.
"Let's make some towers," said the snowman.
"You do it, I'll look for twigs for a gate," she said.
"Let's have a dry leaf at the entrance, we're going to raise it so strangers can't come in."
"Dig a trench while I'm looking for all that," she said.
Bianca and the snowman continued to play, adorning the sand castle, and at the end the snowman drew a few animals beside so it stood defended from bad children.
Some old timers living in the tenements with windows towards the inner courtyard sometimes watched Bianca play in the snow. They never noticed the snowman, the snowman didn't seem all that interesting so they paid no attention to him.
Days and weeks passed and after storms, Bianca came and dug out the snow man and the sand castle. For Christmas Bianca brought the snowman a plastic beard and for the New Year's Eve, the highest point of the sand castle, received a single sparkler.
The girl was laying on her back making snow angels when she saw the particularly black and clear sky dotted with lots of bright pearls. Some smaller, some bigger they all seemed to be making a necklace in the sky.
"See how the stars came out tonight?", asked the girl.
"Yes," said the snowman, "the lady of the sky is wearing them tonight."
"You think somebody's up there?"
"Yeah, she's taking care of everything up there, she wears her stars on serene nights, and spins around showing them off."
"How do you know that?"
"Well, she's been there since the earth began to have winters, and I think she is gonna be there long after we're all gone. I don't really get to see her so festively dressed, she is usually wearing thick clouds in the winter but now I see she dropped them behind and went out for a dance. Spring might be coming."
"That's not good, it's going to get warm," replied the girl worriedly.
"She's just tired of the cold and the snow. How long could you stay dressed up all in white? not to mention we have to think of the others, the trees and the bears are all sleeping, they have to wake up too.
The snowman was surrounded by snowdrops, and shortly thereafter the last snowfall of the winter fell. As the spring came, the snowman got dirty, and grass began to grow in the courtyard of the castle.
One day the snowman felt the end coming and decided to say goodbye to the little girl. He took one of the buttons on his chest and placed it in her hands.
"My time has come Bianca."
"No, you can't leave, I won't let you. I'll put your heart in the freezer and we'll see each other next year."
"Bianca, you promised me, you're a big girl now, you can't take care of me anymore, you have to grow up."
"I don't want to, why should I grow up?"
"Bianca I want you to listen, it'll be fine, you'll see, you'll grow up, you'll make friends and forget me..."
"How can I forget you, I don't want to."
"It's all right Bianca, that's how it has to be. It's gonna be fine, you'll see.
The snowman smiled warmly, and the girl burst into tears and fled home. The snowman cried out after her:
"Bye and be happy ... Bianca, if it's not too hot I'll see you again tomorrow." said the snowman considering the weather.
The next day, Bianca found the snowman with a fallen eye and a missing hand.
"Where's your hand, who took it? Please talk to me, I'm sorry I left yesterday."
Bianca put the eye back, but the snowman was too far gone to respond. Bianca opened the soft snow around his heart. The blue diamond that had given life to the snowman was transparent in the daylight.
She pulled it out, wiped it clean, and watched it for a long time, letting it melt in her hands. She held it until the feeling in her fingers started to fade.
"I don't want to leave you," she whispered.
Then she dug a hole in the middle of the sand castle with her numb fingers and buried the last shard of the snowman's heart.
"I'll play with you again, you'll see, I'll make snowmen with other kids, and we'll play together."
No comments :
Post a Comment