When the Snow Fell by Henning Mankell Read Free Book Online Page B

windows were lit up. She was at home.
    Joel got his breath back before pulling the leather strap hanging outside the door. A music box started playing inside the hall. That was the signal they had agreed on. Then he heard Gertrud shouting for him to come in.
    Joel didn’t know how many times he’d visited Gertrud’s house, but it was a lot. The first time was that unfortunate night when he and Ture had dug up a frozen anthill and thrown it through her kitchen window. But that was a long time ago. Ture didn’t live here anymore. Gertrud and Joel had become friends. Not all the time. They had fallen out the previous year, when Joel had tried to find a husband for Gertrud. But that was all over now. All done and dusted.
    Gertrud was a remarkable person. It wasn’t simply that she didn’t have a nose. Only a hole in her face that she hid behind a handkerchief. Or a red clown’s nose when she was in the mood. She had lost her nose as a result of an operation that had gone wrong. Now she lived by herself in this house on the other side of the river from Joel. She had turned thirty, and sometimes told Joel she was beginning to feel old.
    Gertrud was like no other person Joel knew. He knew that people used to talk about her behind her back. About her wearing strange clothes that she made herself. About her having a stuffed hare in a birdcage and a toy train in an aquarium. But most of all about her sayingwhatever came into her head, and what she thought about things. Despite the fact that it was usually exactly the opposite of what other people thought.
    But it seemed to Joel that Gertrud was a difficult person. He sometimes thought that whatever she did, she went too far. Joel was always scared of not being like everybody else. What he did and thought when he was on his own was one thing. But when you were with other people you shouldn’t draw attention to yourself.
    Gertrud was the best friend he had.
    He wasn’t really happy about that. He would have preferred to have a different best friend. One who had a nose, at least.
    But that was the way it was. And Gertrud always listened to what he had to say. She didn’t laugh at him—not in a malicious way in any case—when he said something silly. Which he thought he did far too often.
    This evening Joel had decided to tell Gertrud about his New Year’s resolutions.
    But maybe not all three. He was still a bit doubtful as to whether he should tell her about Ehnström’s new shop assistant. The one who had already started dancing inside Joel’s head, wearing nothing but transparent veils. Joel wasn’t really sure how she would react. That was the only thing he and Gertrud had never talked about. Other women.
    Gertrud was sitting curled up on her orange-colored sofa, reading the Bible. Joel had never really understood what itmeant, being religious. All that stuff about God was something he only thought about now and again. Strangely enough, it was usually when he didn’t have any money. As if that were God’s fault. Not having a krona for a cinema ticket.
    But just now his New Year’s resolutions were more important.
    Gertrud put down her Bible. Today she had a checked handkerchief over the hole where her nose had once been. She had rolled it up into a ball and pressed it into the hole.
    “I thought you’d forgotten all about me,” she said. “I haven’t seen you for ages.”
    “There’s so much to do for school,” Joel said.
    Which was nearly true. But not quite. A few weeks had gone by without his giving Gertrud a single thought.
    “But anyway, here you are,” she went on. “And that means, of course, that you have something on your mind. Is that right?”
    Joel nodded. Then he told her about his New Year’s resolutions. She listened, with her head on one side and her chin resting on her hand, as usual.
    For the moment Joel didn’t say anything about Ehnström’s new shop assistant.
    “Is there an age limit?” he asked. “For being a rock idol? Or a