Suddenly I see him move toward me, is a tall, skinny with long hair and a smile on your face kind. It's a winter evening and behind the windows of the bus stop the sky is dark and the wind blows glass.
- What was your trip?
difficult it is to focus on family gatherings while I accept the presence of my husband's uncle who has come to me with all his gentleness and kindness. But I want to be somewhere else, alone.
- Good, but not so cold waiting for me. I had forgotten about the climate of this country.
- You know, Paul says in his eyes at me with tenderness, this is not a country, as the poet says, but this is winter.
many years ago that I no longer live in this harsh country stations in this country of great loneliness and sad space. When I arrived in Spain, after having lived here for 30 years, I had the strange impression that once again my blood ran in his veins. I tell Paul how hard it is to live in a Nordic country. I say it's all a matter of habit. And acceptance.
- But the cold, cold here is almost inhuman, I say. How to accept what is beyond the human?
The cold here is like a carapaza that builds up inside you. And just a helpless prisoner of her in a dungeon ice.
So, after three decades, I went. And now I'm back for the funeral of my husband's mother. We gather in a large restaurant, I hope sitting in the entrance, I have no hunger and let me pass by relatives, people that basically do not know, that almost never seen. Here, as in all Nordic countries, the distances are immense, almost immeasurable. There is hardly an intimate relationship between members of one family. Only baptisms or funerals together, re-establish contact, return to be part of a tribe. I lit a cigarette and drink in small sips a gin and tonic I've gone to look for before the bar. Why I remember why so hard? One time when he approached me with their good and gentle smile, and his words:
- Miss, do you remember me? How is he?
I looked at him and in his eyes I saw a great excitement, recognition, complicity. Who was he? Something, yes ... absolutely charming shyness that of a teenager who has grown too fast and does not know how to ride, how to approach, how to talk. But he is not shy, almost no longer is he, I perceive, already facing a barrier of uncertainty, and is stronger, more courageous, so he has come and me questioned.
- I'm Jean, said. The Class 220. Remember? We passed the course thanks to you.
My husband has come to see as I am, if I feel okay, if I need anything, if I'm right. My husband is very kind, always has been and always will be. Is a gentle, caring, sensitive. However sometimes kill him. I think that all women, at any given time, we have this terrible desire to kill our husbands, no matter how good they are and especially if they are good. And we want to go, fly away, far, far away from them. Why do not we? Is it so hard to break links? More difficult to leave a country after having lived there 30 years?
remember, yeah, well now I remember as a great surge of satisfaction and more than that, of reconciliation. I felt at that moment, against Jean. And again I feel now as I watch my husband go into the room with his two brothers. The group 220, which had assigned me to learn to use my strong hand, as a teacher, for some students with serious learning difficulties. And it was the opposite: it was my best group, youth friendly and simple did not know quite what to make of their knowledge, their bodies, their ideas. Was the group that gave me encouragement, while others, who were supposedly normal were just killing me. Yes, the group 220 which however failed to make me continue on the faculty. All this I told the director, I remember with some discomfort under his eyes of steel. And she told me that these students did not count. And much as I would have given this group, the door opened for me is to say that I cast out of school for not being able to control the students 'normal'.
The boy, Jean, looks at me with great candor. I would even say with a certain purity. I look in your eyes, without fear. Suddenly I forgot this dark cold of a winter evening then people would call "the winter ice storm." We just him and me in the midst of all of complicity and affection. I said that others in the group are well, including his friends Pierre, and François Benoit. But he did not work, Jean also remembers that I was forced to take the exam. It was agreed that I'd put my hand on my shoulder and asked him to come and be examined.
Soon I'll have to get out of this chair so comfortable, I have to do a good job, smile, nod. I have to pretend. Why did I took many years to realize this simple truth? What counts are the small accomplishments, and nothing else. The return to this country of snow and ice I will then return a certainty. Suddenly
Jean says:
- I have to go, my bus has just arrived. I wish you good evening. Goodbye.
leaves. Long and happy, all of it, undulating, flexible, soft. Like an angel is gone, like an angel who had other appointments on your calendar. And I got up to go meet my husband's family.
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