Sleet: Selected Stories

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.”