A Winter That Stayed

For days, the cold had dulled his senses and robbed him of any joy in the taste of food. Today was the first day his nose had stayed clear for more than a few minutes, granting him the full delight of scents once again. The intense, pine‑fresh smell of the fir tree was the first thing he noticed when he stepped into the living area, and it made him linger for a few moments at the foot of the stairs.

Before him lay a Christmas scene. The small Nordmann fir was festively decorated, and the string of lights shone brightly among the green‑blue, silvery needles. This year too, small glittering red and gold baubles hung on the tree, and a few slender strands of tinsel in the same colours rounded off the picture. Here and there, hand‑made wax stars hung between the branches. With each of these unassuming little stars, he remembered exactly which movements had brought it into being.

Smiling, he turned his gaze away from the tree and walked over to the kitchen on his left. The mere thought of a fresh coffee filled him with a nearly uncontainable joy. Carefully, he took his wooden grinder from the cupboard, along with the tin that held the roasted coffee beans. Once he had tipped the beans into the grinder, he began to turn the little handle until they had turned into a fine powder. Even now they were already giving off a strong, spicy aroma. Then he switched on the kettle he had filled beforehand and tapped the last of the grounds from the grinder into the small filter that sat on top of the cup.

Slowly, he poured the hot water into the filter. While he waited for it to drip through, he cleaned the grinder and set it in the small silver dish rack to dry. Then he took his fragrant coffee and went into the conservatory. He placed the cup on the oval glass table in front of the pale blue sofa and walked over to the stove in the corner beside the sliding door to the living area.

With care and the ease of long practice, he stacked the logs one on top of the other, pushed open a small hatch, lit a thin wooden splint and held it to the little ball of crumpled wood shavings. Moments later, flames were licking their way up the wood and slowly catching the thinner sticks inside the stove. A soothing crackle began, and he closed the door. Soon the little stove would fill the conservatory with a gentle warmth, and the pleasant scent of pine would be everywhere.

Wrapped in a warm woollen blanket, he curled up on the sofa and looked out through the wide expanse of windows that opened onto a seemingly endless view across the fields. The fire was now crackling and popping. Flames climbed along the logs and flickered restlessly behind the glass. Outside, the world lay under a cold white cover that, until quite recently, had glittered in the day’s few rays of sun. Now clouds had drawn in front of the light and blocked it out. The soft blue had vanished, and everything was bathed in grey.

He took a sip of his coffee. Full‑bodied yet gentle, the taste filled his palate and drew a relaxed sigh from his lips. In front of the window, thick snowflakes drifted down. In the still air they seemed almost like white rain and slowly hid the view of the fields. The snowfall grew denser and awoke a quiet joy in him.

Memories of his youth rose up. His move to the old farmhouse, long before it had been restored and become entirely his. He had left the big city for the countryside, a change that had been hard for him at first. But for his mother as a painter, it was easier to have her own studio in the country than in the city. The pigsty attached to the main house was the first part to be converted, and became a spacious studio filled with daylight, where she had created many of her best pieces.

After some time he had built up a circle of friends and no longer missed his old home at all. He had come to love the calm he found here, outside the little village, and it was here that he had met his first love. While the snow was driven past the window in wild dances by the rising wind, he remembered a day he had spent with her in the midst of a snowstorm. She lived not far from the farm, in a neighbouring village, and she liked to visit whenever she had time. In his mind he recalled that day as if it were today.

Bundled up warm and snug, they had trudged through the snow that crunched beneath their boots. They had planned to build a snowman in the meadow behind the house and had armed themselves with a few tools from the studio, small instruments used to shape sculptures from clay. Wrapped in thick clothes, they discussed what kind of creations they might coax out of this endlessly available material. The girl had decided she wanted to make a mermaid, while he had set his mind on a dragon. The two of them would surely have settled this difference of opinion long before anything recognisable took shape. Otherwise, they might have ended up building a hybrid creature, a mer‑dragon. When the girl suggested this, he had looked at her in surprise and shaken his head with a laugh. He really could not picture such a thing.

First they gathered the snow and packed down a firm base for their sculpture. Then they began to shape their snow figure out of small heaps of white. He had set to work on the head and body of a dragon, while she formed the lower half of a mermaid. By now neither of them was thinking much about how the two could be joined. The bodies grew together as if by instinct, merging into a single scaled shape. Yet before they could step back and take in the whole of their work, the inevitable happened. A careless step, and the girl stumbled onto the strange snowman, which collapsed beneath her into an unrecognisable mass. Before she could react to the destruction with sadness or anger, his bright laughter rang out, and she joined in at once.

A clatter in the kitchen tore him from his thoughts, and he looked through the glass door that separated the conservatory from the living area. His wife greeted him cheerfully and wiped her grey‑stained hands on a cloth before hurrying over to him with a smile.

“How are you? You were still fast asleep when I got up,” she said in a bright voice and sat down beside him. He returned her smile and, without a word, lifted the now lukewarm cup of coffee. She understood at once what that meant and let out a delighted “Ah.”

“Do you remember the snowman that was never finished?” he grinned, then added at once, without pausing, “I was just thinking about it.”

“So was I,” she replied and went back into the kitchen. When she returned, she was holding a small grey sculpture in her hands: the body and head of a dragon, with the scaly tail of a mermaid.

“When I came downstairs this morning, I thought of that day and felt it might be time we finally gave that creature a proper shape,” she said, while he weighed the figure in his hands and looked at it with a broad grin.

“Exactly as I remember it,” he said.