The Night Eventually Became Colder

Ramblings—these are the nights—the evenings that I would stay up with friends and we would drink from bottles and talk late into the evenings. Stories would emerge, come out and spy us out. These are some such stories that found me one late evening, music playing securely in the background, but stillness everywhere.

—But you see, that we were German and Norwegian. I remember hearing those stories, stories such as one the I told last night, stories made up with numbers or figures, and if possible, repetitions. Music, if you like.

But I had talked long enough and had had too much to drink. My friend always the quiet one when he seemed he had to be, was in the past days very quiet, and so with nothing to say I did the best thing—I began talking again—but not without pausing to look through the room. The two chairs, the other chair. The ongoing clock. The picture on the far wall. I looked and waited many times, and with the silence impatiently began to speak again.

He staring off for moments, at moments, he began once again, talking exactly like before. I just listened, sitting in the chair.

—But, yes, one of those moments or stories, have you, was of some great, great uncle of mine. Robert Ross, yes, Ross was his last name, similar to my own. Anyway, he was a man envied, and wealthy, living in Virginia, alone and bitter, his wife had died at least fifteen years earlier. But somewhere in his silly, deep-set mind, there stood a profuse impression, a picture that soon became meddlesome. So one day he took up and set out to burn the White House down. I think 1816 was that year. I am not even sure how he did it. It’s not in textbooks or anything like that, but a tale in our family that we joke and laugh about on Easter weekends. You see, the story goes that his only problem was, he only saw the burning of half of it down.

But I had gotten too comfortable in my chair, and to my friend, I asked to go for a walk, and he to join me.

Again looking toward the clock and then for my coat, scarf and cap, we decided to go for a walk. Surprising though, because it was so cold outside.

As we entered the cold air, he began right away again:

—What a beautiful story, eh? Even though it is unlike myself, it is so much a part of me. There is a calm vengefulness in this. Maybe… romantic? Perhaps. I don’t know. But I think so much is needed to do even this little. If not, then comes a part of you that has been lost. There is that piece in you that is gone or simply just missing, but in an altogether different way. Maybe I am not saying one must take campaigns on himself, but you must agree, it is better, it is something, to do something. So maybe he was crazy, so what.

I knew it had been cold out, but the ground underneath, I didn’t expect. It was still cold, ground or not, ground and all. And I knew nothing to say and he expected that much. Me, unwilling to talk about that I did not know. I was careful, with words that is. I was too unsure of them or just using them in different ways. So I continued to walk and continued trying to listen.

We continued on our path and on down through the frozen brush. I began gathering kindling, which was frozen and frozen in the ground, gathering it to build a fire to thaw the wood and the ground and ourselves. My friend stood kicking his foot at the ice at the edge of the river.

And so we did not talk for some time. I stood there looking out on to the water, fidgeting and wondering.

—Yes, yes, my grandfather, I miss him. He’s still living,, but he is rather on in years, rather old. He was a very strange man to say the least—we will say, interesting. He was a very wealthy man in Norway, but because of the wars, he had to make his way here, and he slowly lost everything. First, Denmark, then England for some years, and then boats to Nova Scotia and on into the States. You know he was the first to have a motor car in his village? He was something like a mayor but because the village was so small, they did not really call him such. I guess they considered him as much because he was so well known in town. Maybe just because he got on with the farmers in his province so well. He dealt so well with them, those farmers. He says he spent so much time with them: hunting, drinking, or talking or just idling time away. Anyway, you see in Norway, they have these deep forests, surrounding you might say, and probably those villagers would whisper, talkative. In this forest, there was only one path, dividing the forest in half. That path wasn’t that wide. Say about this wide, and you would go walking through it, and even at midday it had this odd, still darkness surrounding you. At the end of the forest, on the other side of the river and village was this long and narrow field, not a field exactly, more like a marsh, because what grew there was all this peat. I remember that because they would go and gather it, then burn it to warm their homes, creating this smell that fills all your clothes, a smell that the wind took through all the village. At least, that’s what my grandfather said.

Anyway, my grandfather would gather together those farmers in autumn and have my father gather his friends, no older than ten I’d say. These boys and girls would slowly walk on that path for about a kilometer and then they would scatter through the forest–running, screaming, singing songs, whatever came to mind or came out. Scattering would be deer, and boar and all these birds out onto the edge of this field where my grandfather’s friends would be waiting, set up like a grid waiting with their guns. But this is the most important part, for they would have to wait until the children were safely and hopefully lying on the ground inside the forest or at least the edge of it in the tall grass. By this time, most of the flocks had gone backward toward the forest trying to escape the farmer’s fire. My father has told me that if they were fortunate enough, a rabbit or best, a deer would hop right over them. It was pure crazy if you ask me.

And so we talked like this for sometime. By this time though, the fire had grown and as usual, because of the silence I had kept, my friend, waiting for something from me, found me with nothing to say. He was I believe, a bit disappointed by my silence. The fire, like I have said, had grown and as usual, because of the colder night, our backsides had grown colder too, whereas our knees grew hotter and so we talked quicker and more, or my friend talked quicker, trying to dampen the heat, and at the same time, warm the coldness on us.

—I can remember going to my grandfather’s house here sometimes and remembering all the so many guns he had. It took him many years before he would have enough money to collect again, for you see, he lost everything.

When he was still abroad, at the time of the last war, he became frightened that the Germans would break through and use the guns he found so sacred. And even though he himself was partly German, he had these two small lakes (almost ponds) on his property and so he took all the rifles apart and threw them all in the lakes and used the remaining wood for firewood. I am sure that was more painful for him then when he eventually left and came here, more painful than anything he ever lost, especially since he had to leave behind everything when he left Norway.

But now I had nothing left to say. I just stood there thinking of the chairs we had left, the ground as well, and especially my cold backside with the sun coming up from behind it, slowly and surrounding.

But this is about all I remember from that night. I do know the night eventually became somehow more colder and more lit. For some reason, I remember this night. I do not think I remember it because of the few and scattered stories or because of the fire or even because of my own silence. I believe I remember it because it was so cold and getting colder and because so slowly the night became lighter.

THE END