Sleet: Selected Stories

But just then we heard something out in the hall, the clatter of someone’s shoes echoing between the walls. Then it fell silent. Whoever it was out there was now standing right outside the door to our homeroom, even taking hold of the door knob. A key slid into the lock with a swiftness that was almost unimaginable and then suddenly there stood Mr. Lind in the doorway blinking at us. I looked right back at him. I hadn’t done anything wrong. There was nothing wrong with playing chess during a free period. In any case, he moved slowly toward us and raised his hand a bit to signal we should stay seated. Then he stopped right beside our desks and looked down at us with an oddly unfamiliar expression.

“What are you doing here?” he asked us in a low tone.

That may have been the first direct question Mr. Lind had asked me that entire term, and it actually caught me a bit off guard, so Ekman answered before I had a chance.

“We — we weren’t doing anything!” he stammered.

“We’re playing chess,” I said.

“Chess?” said Mr. Lind.

And I really couldn’t understand why he sounded so surprised. And I couldn’t grasp why he wasn’t looking at us now. Instead, his eyes settled on our desktops with a kind of perplexed and wounded look.

I felt compelled to look there myself.

The chess set was gone. Ekman must have stashed it away in his pocket before Lind stepped into the room. Suddenly Mr. Lind was gone too, now standing at the window with his back to us. Cutting us off.

“It’s not good for you to sit inside like this,” he said. “It’s better for you to go outside.” And then, after a moment, he thought twice in his Lindian way: “Though it is snowing.”

Then he turned again and passed right by us, leaving without a word, without even a look. Quietly we pulled the desks apart, went down the stairs, pushed open the doors with our shoulders and stepped out into the swirling snow. In the lee of the wood stacks, we continued our game. Just before two o’clock, I brought the game to check and mate with my knights and queen. The snow whistled around us and there in the midst of it we were alone. Something occurred to me then, something I wanted to ask Ekman. But again he got there ahead of me. Standing back further in the lee of the wood stack than me, he suddenly looked frightened again, so he leaned in closer toward me and asked:

“Do you think he saw the chess set?”

“No,” I said. “I don’t think so.”

“OK, then,” he said and breathed out with an obvious look of relief.

Later that evening he called me at home and asked me the same thing again.

There was as much snow the next morning. Cars were knee-deep in it, and balcony doors were impossible to open. The streets were barely recognizable. Otherwise the day began as just another ordinary morning with Lind leading us in prayers. And when he came in to our first class — this time to lecture us on Christianity — everything followed the same fairly typical routine as he meandered through the room and talked to us. At his usual intervals he paused, speaking to each of us in turn, and in a moment or two it would be my turn. My desk was closest to the window, so I was always the last one Mr. Lind would address before Ekman. Today I was looking forward to it because I knew my psalms cold, and I had even made an extra effort to be well prepared. I kind of felt like I had a debt to repay. And Ekman must have felt the same.

So when Lind turned around at the door and slowly walked back along the row of desks, I was already smiling in anticipation of my turn. But I smiled too soon, because then something happened that caught me completely off guard. Lind went right on by me without stopping, and then he paused at the window and stood there for an interminable moment with his back to us — or, rather, with his back to me. Mystified, I turned to Ekman, but he hadn’t even noticed, probably because he was too preoccupied thinking about how it would be his turn next.

But his turn never came either. Mr. Lind went up to his desk and sat down, and that was it. We were asked to open our books and began to talk about the next lesson. I mean the others began to talk about it. Ekman and I didn’t exist. And when that fact dawned on him, Ekman turned as white as I’d ever seen him. As if it had a mind of its own, his hand delved into his pocket and shoved the chess set down as deep as it could possibly go.

It was worse for me. I had nothing to hide. And nothing to hide behind. Not even a pocket chess set to clutch in my hand. I could feel my face flushing red, and my skin seemed to prickle with guilt. There was nothing I could do to stop it. I grew warm and sweaty, and the bell just wouldn’t ring. I kept hoping for a word from Mr. Lind, or even a quick glance in my direction, but neither came. And when the bell finally did ring, I wished that it hadn’t. I didn’t want things to end this way. I don’t think either of us did, because Lind would not be walking past us again today.

And now he was gone.