Sleet. Stig Dagerman

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      In Grandmother’s House

      It was quiet in Grandmother’s house. The little boy slipped from room to room. He was searching for the quiet. It had to be somewhere. Perhaps it sat rocking in a chair somewhere, reading from a big book. The boy pushed open door after door, and he listened. They were heavy doors. Their thresholds were high and shod with gold. The boy himself was small and very anxious. His heart ticked in his breast like a clock going much too fast. Now he found himself standing on the very last threshold, where he had to shut his eyes. For who could say what quietness looked like? He turned his ear towards the room to see if this was where it lived.

      And then he heard so much. He heard a big boat rolling over the sea as a storm howled and raged. And he heard a little girl who could not be seen, because she was buried under flowers. And she was crying because she was dead. He could even hear grandfather’s boots wandering back and forth over the wide creaking floorboards. But the quiet itself he did not hear. So he opened his eyes and entered the last room.

      The room was small. Just a tiny bedroom really. But in the middle, on the bright floor, was a big square patch of sunlight. The boy stepped into the square and stood there for a long time, listening. It was so quiet in Grandmother’s house. Nothing stirred but his own restless heart. The boat in the picture was still again and the dead girl on the bureau had finished crying. On the stool in the corner, between the tiled stove and the high window, stood Grandfather’s black boots. And they remained silent. Grandfather himself was on the sun now. And when the sun shined, Grandfather was glad and looked down on him with happy eyes. But whenever the clouds came Grandfather was sorrowful, and he would shut himself up in his house. “When it rains,” thought the boy, “it must be hard to be dead.”

      It was now late in the afternoon, and the sun-square was shrinking and shrinking. But the boy did not notice this. Instead, he closed his eyes again, whereupon an odd thing happened. The brightness grew stronger and stronger, until he himself was filled with light. Suddenly he heard a voice whisper: “Now you should do it. Now. Now!” A clock struck. Backwards he crept out of the small radiant strip. When he opened his eyes he was standing there with one of Grandfather’s heavy boots in his arms. He put it down carefully on the floor. And the whole world remained silent.

      For a thousand years the boots had stood together side by side. They were as old as the earth and the sun and a path in the forest. But now, when they were suddenly separated, an inaudible sound arose, a lament, which seemed to shake the whole room. Trembling in every limb, the boy stepped up onto the stool and quickly fulfilled his longest-held dream. With both legs he stepped down into the boot, sinking and sinking into the leg, until he finally touched bottom.

      And so the boy stood in the boot. What more?

      Nothing more.

      He just stood there, and the sun died out. Twilight crept into the chamber as softly as a cat. The boy closed his eyes, and as always when he closed his eyes something peculiar happened. Now the boot began to walk around with the boy crouching down in its leg. It went right through the wall and out to the garden. It went through the garden and across the road. It stepped into the barren fields, out over rocks and moss and marshland until at last it came to the forest. And wherever it stepped all sounds died out. The birds in the trees fell silent. In the meadows moose stood frozen with balls of leaves in their mouths. In the heather snakes stiffened to black sticks.

      “Where are we going?” whispered the boy to the boot.

      And it whispered back, “We’re going to the quiet.”

      Suddenly the black wall of a mountain reared up before them, and the boot whispered to the boy, “This is where we go in.”

      But they never went in, because now the sound of a cry tore the boy’s eyes open. It was Grandmother. In a kind of daze, he looked around the tiny bedroom. He was back, and Grandmother was calling out to him. It was already dusk, and the boot clung to its silence. Grandmother called out again and the boy struggled to get out of the boot. But to his horror, he found he couldn’t. He was stuck. His feet rubbed against each other in the narrow boot leg as it closed itself around his hips like a skin of stone. He wanted to scream. But it was only his feet that screamed from somewhere deep below as they fought like animals against something in the dark. And then, at that moment, a very terrible and unexpected thing happened. The boot leg split and the boy tumbled out on the floor. And while he lay there, sprawling and terror-stricken, Grandmother called out to him for the third time.

      With quiet, frozen movements he freed himself. And then he simply stood there for a while with the torn boot in his arms. He shut his eyes as tight as he could, but nothing happened. On the inside of his eyelids there was only a big quiet darkness. But on the other side the boot was shrieking without a sound. It was quiet in Grandmother’s house, but it was an evil and dangerous quiet. A quiet like a wild and savage animal lurking in the dark. He had to get away. But to do that he would have to commit the final degrading act. And so he bent over and shoved Grandfather’s boot deep into the evil darkness beneath Grandmother’s bed. Then he cautiously opened the door and crept into the other room on feet that moved like paws.

      Grandmother sat reclining in a chair with a high, high back. It was dim and the flowers had no luster. Grandmother hadn’t lit even the tiniest little lamp. The boy stepped lightly over the carpet until he stood by her side. She had not yet noticed that he was even standing there. With curious cruelty he scrutinized her white face. Her eyes were closed and he wondered where she was. Perhaps on her way – on her way into the bedroom! He grabbed hold of her arm. He had to get her away from there. Grandmother cried out, her eyes sprang open, and at once the boy could tell that she had been somewhere else altogether. She shook herself like a dog and smiled at him.

      “What are you doing, my boy?”

      “Grandmother,” said the boy. “Where is quietness?”

      On the little table in front of them lay a white seashell. He had listened to it many, many times. Now Grandmother picked it up. She pressed it against his ear. It was cold and hard and he wanted to run away.

      “What do you hear?” asked Grandmother.

      “The sea,” answered the boy.

      Strange enough, he was lying. In fact, he heard nothing. He didn’t hear even the slightest surge, and he knew that the shell was dead. He himself had killed it. Devastated and defiant, he put the shell back on the table.

      “No,” said Grandmother. “There’s no such thing as quietness. Everything can be heard. That thing that we call silence – it’s not really silence. It’s only our own deafness. If we weren’t so deaf the world wouldn’t be such a wicked place. But lucky for us there are some people who can still hear. They’re the ones who can stand on the plains – do you understand what I’m saying to you?”

      Grandmother came from a place that had plains.

      “Yes,” answered the boy. “Plains – they’re like fields.”

      “There СКАЧАТЬ