An afternoon in town with my best friend, the future looked us straight in the eye with some strange , intense cheerfulness - no idea why - and for a moment it seemed like everything was just fine; i did notice that we were being followed by a man.
I have been followed by a man more times in my life. Those were not the most pleasant moments.
As now. I watched him through the shop windows, trying to convince Zeslie that we were being followed and that we should shake him off.
“Why are we being followed then? What kind of nonsense are you spouting now, Mulder?” but i kept on nagging relentlessly about an escape route. The best we could go to the most crowded place in the city center, but that was much too far, and what could go wrong in that time.
"Let's find a pub, Zes, and we'll see how or what."
She misheard me because of the tram that just passed and as I went into the pub she walked on, which i didn't realize until i looked back, and my way back out was blocked by two men, who looked fearfully like the man who had been following us. What was this, the Matrix?
The bar seemed the safest place to go to, so i semi-casually ordered a beer. The men sat down at a table by the window. What was i supposed to do? Why did they follow me? My last book was rather brushed off on national TV because of possible anti-Russian sentiment, i was frequently threatened on social media; were these some kind of newfound KGB agents, or Snaudet's accomplices?
Call, i had to call someone! I dialed 112, but got the non-existent number tone. Then i thought: my savior, i must call my savior. Under what name did i put him in my phone? In growing panic i scrolled through my phone, yes: Clouvis, that's it. Immediately he picked up, and i quickly explained the situation to him.
Meanwhile, the KGB men had also gathered at the bar, drinking whisky as if they knew what they were talking about, while looking at me with amusement.
“We are not KGB, we are publishers and we are looking for new talent.” I didn't understand it at all. What was this about?
Within 5 minutes a large, pale yellow American pulled up at the door. The engine roared on as Clouvis sailed in to help me out. Out of what, was completely unclear, but with his unconditional love for me, he pulled me out of everything.
Zeslie was already at the car when we came out.
On the way we met Guillaume, who was waiting at a traffic light with a bulging plastic bag from the bookstore. He came with us too.
Clouvis' wife was at home, she was nice but very composed, which for some vague reason always irritated me. I was very happy to be with Clouvis; we had some sort of relationship at some point, actually i was still a little bit in love with him.
He hugged me and said he could make snow by now. I didn't believe it. How is that possible?
But he really meant it:
“Once the objects can intersect, I can make snow.”
Guillaume and Zeslie were fooling around the house. Clouvis asked Zeslie to help him with dinner, and Guillaume dragged me outside, distracting me from what Clouvis had just said.
The house was strangely put together, everywhere corridors, stairs, half-hidden rooms and so many doors. It was also a wonderful structure from the outside, with all kinds of nooks and crannies, and some parts luxuriantly overgrown with ivy and laburnum.
We sat down on a bench in front of the house, took off our shoes, tired from walking all day. He showed me the books he had bought until my eye fell on a small box next to the bench. The little books in the box seemed to intersect. How… how can objects both intersect without being really cut?
Was that what Clouvis was talking about?
He said: if things intersect, I can make snow. What was this strange, magical world i had stumbled into? Was this fiction? Had i ended up in my own, yet to be written, book? Was i dreaming?
Guillaume and i looked at each other. When we turned to the house, we saw that snow was being squeezed from every nook and corner of the house.
Soon great jets of snowflakes came out with enormous force, and the garden turned into one big snowfield. Neighbor children came running and started throwing snowballs, as if it were the most normal thing in the world, snow in midsummer.
When i woke up, there was a letter next to my pillow. I picked it up, surprised at how it must have ended up there, with me living alone. I really hadn't let anyone into my house that night.
My hand reached through the air. The letter disappeared before my eyes, like snow in the sun, indeed. Immediately i remembered the snow and…
When i woke up, the first thing i saw was the gray sky, and i heard such a muffled silence and then i saw it: the snowflakes blowing past the window. Softly at first, then more and more and faster, a layer of snow piled up against the window frame.
I looked for a letter. No.
Such a shame. I’d really have liked to know who it came from and what it’d said.
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