Brief sharp crackling sound! We pause. Different from the static Again! Next to us, up close: the columnar trunk of a great pine. Crack! In the wood. Yes, again! The subtle biting voice of wood freezing. We hesitate, expectant, straining to hear it again— but our attention is suddenly shaken, captured by a new sound, an irregular crumpling smashing noise that repeats itself four or five times, stops, then sounds again — yes, of course! the squeaky splashing padded unmistakable crash of snow being crushed underfoot! A motion! Now we see him—there! White past white, but distinct. Rabbit! Crush crush crush crush crush. Stop. Crush crush crush. Stop. Listens. Nervous twitch of wide-nostriled nose. Gone! Diminishing crush crush beat. Stop. Then again, louder now. Stop. Ah! behind that pine! Then away again, crush crush crush crush. Finally: silence. Sudden astonishing close-up of dog’s head, small black glittering eyes, long black nose flicking swinging sniffing over the white earth, sharp triangular ears alert, and now we see the whole dog, lean, light-coated, of noble origin, taut-bodied. Nose down, the dog slips soundlessly through the muted forest, through the soft snow’s weightless fall.
We reach, forgetting the dog, what appears to be a small open space, nearly flat, die familiar chiaroscuro configurations unbroken by upspearing forms. Here we pause. Our gaze drifts upward, through the diminishing snow, past the arch of reaching branches, toward the sky, up where the treetops lean inward as though possessed by, drawn toward some omnipotent vanishing point. We cannot see the vanishing point, or even the sky: the snow that tumbles down and away upon us obliterates all but the static black outlines of the trees. When we look back down, we see that this open area is really a park, with lamp posts standing rigid and inscrutable, wide snow-pillowed benches sprawling in the deep snow at their feet, a small weathered sign poking up, its paint all but weathered away. We can barely discern, and then at extremely close range, the word men on it, but there is ho arrow to tell us where they might be found. The lamps are not lit: it is the bright part of day.
A road passes through the park, barely visible in the untrammeled snow, seen as a slightly recessed plane about ten feet wide and stretching into the indefinite distance. In fact, we are standing in the middle of it, and as our gaze traces its course toward the horizon — an horizon by no means defined, by the way, but muddled by the converging forest — we see a sleigh approaching, drawn by two dark horses. Noiselessly, rapidly, it comes, the horses’ hooves kicking up the dry snow in a swirl of seething clouds, pounding toward us, but in silence. Fine the horses, with flying manes and tight lithe bodies, shoulders sweating, muscles rippling, mouths afroth. And then suddenly the roar of sleighbells breaks in on us, and the thunder of hooves, as the sleigh races by us, over us, in a turbulence of blinding snow!
The noise breaks off as suddenly as it began. For a moment, all is blurred. Then, as the fine powder of cold snow settles about us, we see a man left in the sleigh’s wake. He is afoot, smiling, waving at the sleigh as though in recognition of it; now he follows it, walking with firm measured tread along one of the two narrow tracks left by the sleigh’s runners.
The man’s face is familiar, someone we know, or have at least seen before, or much like someone we have seen before, a rugged masculine outdoor kind of face his, with craglike brow above a bold once-broken nose, thin brows knotted, narrow pale eyes squinting against the glare, forehead lined by, it would seem, alternating casts of astonished perplexity and sustained anger, crowfeet searing deep into the temples, strong jaw thrust forward, coarse sunblanched hair blown askew. His eyes are fixed on some distant point, perhaps on the sleigh shrinking noiselessly into the horizon behind us, or maybe merely and resolutely on the horizon itself. The man continues to smile, the smile creasing his weathered cheeks with humorous deep-cut grooves. The sun’s dazzling radiance is constant. The man’s cheeks bear the stubble of a day’s beard, small wiry hairs that poke out from their dark pockets like a plague of indefatigable parasites. A large irregular mole, the size of a black ant’s head, interrupts the dense growth of stubble near one of the vertical creases presently deepened by the smile. The smile gradually fades, though not entirely, and the frown deepens, but—we are quick to note—it is the pleasing virile frown of resolve. One peculiarity: his thin lips appear uncommonly dark, almost black, and his eyelashes are strangely prominent A mere defect in certain skills, no doubt; we overlook it as we might ignore a misplaced word, an unwanted tear, a broken-backed shoe, static. The man wears an open leather jacket, short, over his chest and strong shoulders, swings his broad leathery hands in wide rhythmic arcs, strides vigorously through the snow, his legs wrapped tightly in coarse gray leggings. His boots tramp willfully into the drifts, but the glaze off the snow is so blinding that these boots appear no more than black shoe-shaped stumps: only rarely do we catch a glimpse of an individual lace or a buttonhook — no, for the most part, it is just a furry tunneling of black in and out of an unstable white.
From a distance, we watch the man marching toward us, his jaw jutting forward in a strange complex of anger and bewilderment He is alone, utterly alone, in a vast white desolation. It is no longer snowing. The sky is clear. There are no trees, no shadows, even the sleigh tracks have disappeared — there is only this slender leather-jacketed man with wind-tossed hair striding furiously across a barren expanse of shadowless slopes. The man breaks stride now from time to time. He seems troubled, glances about uneasily, is lost perhaps. He stops. Then: three nervous disorganized steps. He stops again. Looks about We have drawn nearer. He puts one broad hand to his brow to shade his eyes, leans out slightly from the waist, searches the horizon in a complete circle. He drops his hand, hitches his trousers, appears to sigh, frowns. He draws a pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket, a crumpled packet containing only one cigarette. He pulls it out, tamps it against the back of one hand, clamps it defiantly in his mouth. He crushes the empty packet in a quick practiced gesture, flings it several feet away into the snow. Now, from the same pocket: a book of matches. He tears one out, strikes it, holds it to the end of the cigarette, his hands cupped massively around it Smoke issues from his nose. He tosses the match away, draws deeply on the cigarette. His face is set, tense, with a purposeful rigidity; he exhales slowly, his lips pressed, eyes trained on the distances. Absently, he flicks the cigarette away, glances hurriedly about, and, thrusting his head forward, sets off again.
He has not taken more than three or four steps when, once more, he stops. He gazes about. Licks his lips. The butt of his right hand presses down against his groin. Once more he warily and now somewhat gracelessly peers around him in a full circle, left hand shielding his dark-lashed eyes. Apparently satisfied that he is alone, he unbuttons his fly and prepares to urinate.