Upstairs all the soft lamps were on in the same way and all the rooms were warm and tidy and all the doors were standing open. Only one door was closed. Inside is was cold and dark. It was the box room. The other family’s belongings were lying there in packing-cases and trunks and there were mothproof bags hanging in long rows with a little snow on top of them.
Now I could hear the snow. It was falling all the time, whispering and rustling to itself and in one corner it had crept onto the floor.
The other family was everywhere in there, so I shut the door and wend down again and said I wanted to go to bed. Actually I didn’t want to go to bed at all, but I thought it would be best. Then I wouldn’t have to say anything. The bed was as wide and desolate as the landscape. outside. The eiderdown was like a hand, too. You sand and sank right to the bottom of the earth under a big soft hand. Nothing was like it was at home, or like anywhere else.
In the morning it was still snowing in just the same way. Mummy had already got started with her work and was very cheerful. She didn’t have to light fires or get meals ready and didn’t have to be worried about anybody. I said nothing.
I went to the furthest room and watched the snow. I had a great responsibility and had to see what the snow was doing. It had risen since yesterday. A thousand tons of wet snow had slithered down the window-panes, and I had to climb onto a chair to see the long grey landscape. The snow had risen out there, too. The trees were thinner and more timid and the horizon had moved further away. I looked at everything until I knew that soon we would be done for. This snow had decided to go on falling until everything was a single, vast wet snowdrift, and nobody would remember what had been underneath it. All the trees would sink into the earth and all the houses. No roads and no tracks – just snow falling and falling and falling.
I went to the boxroom and listened to it falling, I heard how it got stuck fast and grew. I couldn’t think of anything but the snow.
Mummy went on drawing.
I was building with cushions on the sofa and sometimes I looked at her through a peephole between them. She felt me looking and asked: “Are you alright?” While she went on drawing. And I answered: “Of course”. Then I crept on hands and knees into the end room and climbed onto a chair and saw how the snow was sinking down over me. Now the whole horizon had crept below the edge of the world. The fringe of forest couldn’t be seen any longer; it had slid over. The world had capsized and it was turning over quietly, a little bit every day.