Snow Hunters: A Novel (5 page)

The girl tucked her hair behind her ears. He could smell them, their clothes, their hair, and their breaths. They smelled of paint and the shore.

When they were finished they wiped their hands on their shirts and moved past him. They reached for a low
limb in the tree. The boy raised a calloused foot. The girl hung in the air, swinging. Then they began to climb. Their bodies circled the tree like planets as they went higher, blocking the afternoon light.

In the middle of the tree they each took a branch and rested, dangling their legs above him. The boy faced the sea and the girl the farmlands and the distant mountains. They sat hidden among the branches; patches of their clothes were visible, the girl’s long hair, an ankle and a foot. One of them coughed and then they were quiet.

Now there was just the sound of the leaves. The boy lay down against a branch and Yohan, below them, extended his legs and leaned against the tree. He shut his eyes.

He heard the girl say, —Do you still have it?

She spoke in Portuguese, that language he was still learning. He hesitated, repeating her question in his mind.

Then, without looking at her, he nodded.

From the tree he heard laughter. Her quiet delight. He smiled. He used to think that he had dreamed them on that first day, the sailor pointing up toward the deck of a ship and handing him an umbrella.

It stood in the corner of his room, its fabric long dry from the last time it had rained.

He heard her sigh, the boy shift and settle.

Then she said his name. She said it slowly, taking her time with the syllables. She said it once. He kept his eyes closed. Her voice as he remembered it, that kite of sound settling into him. Then nothing more was said and they stayed for a while longer on that hill.

•  •  •

In those years they slipped in and out of his life.

He did not know where the children came from, whether they had been born here or had arrived from somewhere else. He knew only that some days they appeared and that there were also days when he did not see them at all. Sometimes they stayed in the town for a full year. Other times they stayed for a month or a season and no one knew when, or if, they would ever come back. But they always did.

He was unaware of where they went. And he wondered whether there were others in the far towns who knew them and had grown accustomed to them, even expected them, just as he began to.

At one time he thought that they were siblings or perhaps cousins. He did not know why he thought this except they were always together and moved through the
town in a way that seemed as if they had been in each other’s life for a very long time.

In the town they were known as the beggar children, as all of them were, the young ones here who made their homes in the alleyways or in the settlement not far from the plantation house.

Most of the townspeople ignored them. The children preferred it this way. It was something they understood, and had been shaped by, their world entirely different from the communities already established in this town, in the docks, in the neighborhoods, the shops.

The girl was named Bia.

The boy was called Santi by those who knew him because he had been found at the church and spent his first years there, raised by Peixe. The groundskeeper would wrap the boy in a blanket, strap him onto his back, and work in the garden.

Even when Santi was older and no longer living there, he visited. And the two of them spent the night outdoors, Peixe setting out an extra plate for him, still cutting his food, and Santi allowing it.

He was small for his age. He wanted to be a sailor, though he had never learned to swim. Still, on most
mornings and evenings he could be seen on the coast, watching the boats leave and return.

Santi was probably eight years old. Bia was perhaps seven years older. They were unsure of their age but seemed unbothered by it.

Some days Yohan met them by chance in the alleyways. At first they fled into the shadows or stood there caught in nervousness. But soon they grew used to him and he helped them search the trash bins, sifting through the bags to find objects they could keep or use to trade with the others: a comb, a picture frame, a pair of leather shoes Santi tried on, grinning, too large for him but clean and stylish.

Bia wrapped a handkerchief around him and he pretended it was a necktie. He wore the handkerchief and the shoes for days, walking along the beaches toward the settlement, pleased with himself and humming a song he had heard on the radio station.

The next time Yohan saw them they appeared with bruises on their faces and their arms. The boy was barefoot, the shoes and the handkerchief gone. They refused to meet Yohan’s eyes, both of them unwilling to speak of it. Buttons were missing on both of their shirts. Bia gathered
her hair in her hands so that Kiyoshi could clean a scratch on her neck. They spent the afternoon in the alley beside the shop, avoiding the stares of the passersby while the tailor mended their clothes.

They did not visit the shop often. When they did, it was when it was empty and Kiyoshi would clap his hands, hurry across the room, and welcome them. He brought them food and offered them clean shirts and men’s trousers, which they rolled up to their shins, these spare clothes he had made or clothes that were abandoned by customers who had left the town years ago.

On a high shelf the tailor kept a cigar box where Santi stored the things he collected. Sometimes the boy sat in front of the shop and opened the box and revisited the objects—costume jewelry, a guitar pick, a stone—while Bia circled the narrow street on Kiyoshi’s bicycle. On the sidewalk lay some food the tailor had left for them, wrapped in newspaper. The boy would chase her around the street, carrying the foil wrapper of a chocolate bar, which held the sunlight as though his fingertips were on fire.

One time, in the afternoon, Santi came and stood in front of the tailor’s dummy. Yohan had been making tea. He parted the curtain. A moment before, Kiyoshi had gone to the market and the boy was alone in the shop.

Santi mouthed some words. He bit his lip. He formed his hands into fists and began to move his feet. Then he struck the dummy in the chest. It creaked and swayed on its pedestal. The noise of it and the dust from its skin filled the room. Then he struck it again. And again. Each time the dummy swayed farther, its shadow swinging across the floor. That heavy sound and the body spitting dust toward the ceiling.

Afterward, in exhaustion, he fell asleep under the dummy, fitting his body into the space and using a roll of fabric as a pillow until Bia came looking for him.

He began to fight with the other boys. They fought in the fields or in the alleyways or on the coast. Fought over food or the things they found. Cuts and scratches appeared on his hands and his face. Bia would grab the boy’s arm and yell at him, but on his face was a calm, as if he were not listening to the girl at all but was far away somewhere beyond the hill town.

Yohan did not know why Santi fought and whether or not he started it. He never asked.

Kiyoshi had known them almost all their lives. Around them he moved with eagerness and smiled often.

Years before Yohan came, Kiyoshi was resting in the
meadow one afternoon. When he woke, a child stood above him.

—Hi, the child said. Are you my father?

Kiyoshi, still in a dream, could not speak.

The boy said, —That’s okay. Now we’re friends.

And he kneeled to hold the tailor’s hand for a moment before he left.

Santi used to approach the people of the town, asking them if they were his mother or father, the men and women looking down at him in either confusion or amusement or sadness as he lifted his hand for them to shake. In the port he followed the sailors around while Peixe looked for him in the town.

Once, he and another child had attempted to scale the church spire. The other one fell. Kiyoshi witnessed it. It was early evening. The forms of two children appeared in the sky. The first stars beside them. Then a sound, an exhalation and the clawing of fingernails against stone, and one of them falling. He thought they were ghosts.

He pushed through the crowd that had gathered around the fallen boy. The streetlamps had turned on. The boy was trying to move and Kiyoshi saw between the shadows of those standing that he could not, saw the effort manifested in the child’s blinking eyes.

Kiyoshi held him as a doctor cut his trousers. He leaned forward, smoothed the boy’s hair. He covered the boy’s ears. His eyes now quiet. His snot dripped onto Kiyoshi’s wrists. He had fixed his gaze on the knot of the tailor’s tie as if he had found something there.

Kiyoshi felt a hand on his back. He turned to find Santi hiding behind him, trembling. He had cut his palm while descending the spire and it stained the tailor’s shirt.

The boy lived but did not stay, leaving the town not long after. Kiyoshi would watch as Santi wandered the roads, his hand wrapped in a bandage, asking whether anyone had seen him.

The girl Yohan knew less of. She first appeared at the church looking for food. She helped Peixe with the chores, digging in the garden or cleaning the stained-glass windows or mopping the floors. She helped take care of Santi.

In the end he went with her. And Peixe, not wanting to fight with them, leaned against his cane and followed their departure as the two children headed toward the coastal road, this seed of restlessness they shared growing through the years.

She often rode Kiyoshi’s bicycle. And Yohan saw flashes of her, the length of her bright hair and the bicycle
wheels between buildings, a reflection caught in a window. If there was music playing in the town, she searched for it, staying on the periphery of a crowd. Other times, in passing, he saw her sitting in an alley beside the narrow window of a basement music club. She leaned against the wall with her legs crossed. She hummed along with the musicians as she shut her eyes and swayed.

There were days when she would cling to Santi, her small hands wrapped around him as she pressed him against her. Sometimes she slept under the tree in the late afternoons, curled against the trunk as though she had arrived from a very long journey, a line of sweat following the curve of her spine.

Her skin was the color of the tiled rooftops.

He liked the way she said his name. In the town he did not hear it often. It sounded different from the way Kiyoshi said it or even the way he had heard it over the years. She said it with patience, taking her time, briefly holding each syllable before letting go.

—Yohan, she called from across the market or as she passed the shop, her hand in the air and a few people turning to look.

T
hey became a part of his days, Santi and Bia, just as their coming and going did. During some months he did not see them for weeks. Then they suddenly appeared in the town as if they had never left.

Yohan kept busy at the shop, measuring the men for their new suits, making alterations and adjustments. He now knew who wore what. When they came for their clothes he was able to hand them over before they spoke. He knew most of the neighborhoods now, knew the names of the streets, and he continued to make deliveries.

He grew more familiar with the language. He began
to converse with the market vendors, asking them about the fish and the fruit they sold. He ran errands for Kiyoshi, stepping out to the pharmacy to purchase soap or to a Japanese restaurant to pick up dinner.

Every few weeks he and Kiyoshi went to an Italian barber whom the tailor had known for years. Kiyoshi would never get a haircut. Instead he sat in the corner and exchanged town gossip with the man while Yohan’s hair was trimmed and he was given a shave.

They spoke in Portuguese and he listened as they discussed the ongoing love affair between a waitress and a dockworker. There was also the woman with a pet bird who had a habit of talking to her dead husband when she believed no one could hear. A boardinghouse near the port was in fact a brothel.

Later, taking a walk, he asked Kiyoshi about the words he had not understood, and the tailor translated them for him in Japanese, grinning.

In the winter of 1956, a week of cold weather began. They kept their windows closed, Yohan’s body no longer used to it. He and Kiyoshi wore sweaters. He had not worn one since the war. It took him a day to grow accustomed to the weight on his shoulders and his arms.
Neighbors brought in coats they had long ago placed in storage, asking for a new lining, a new button.

One afternoon it took effort for Kiyoshi to rise from his chair. All that morning he had paused in his work and stared at his hands.

He retired early and remained in his room. That evening when Yohan brought him tea he saw the man lying there with his arms raised toward the ceiling. He continued to stare at his hands. It was as though they were not his at all, as though he no longer recognized them.

—It’s all right, the old man said. It’s just a cold. I’ll sleep for a little while.

Yohan called the doctor. He was young and dressed in one of Kiyoshi’s suits. Through the space in the curtains Yohan could see him sitting beside Kiyoshi’s bed, a stethoscope placed against the tailor’s chest.

—There’s nothing wrong with him, he told Yohan later, the two of them standing in the shop.

After he left, Kiyoshi sat down at his table and began to work. Then he paused and lifted his head, staring at the wall in front of him.

He said, —You didn’t need to do that, and returned to the shirt he was mending.

Whatever it was gradually left him, day by day, though there were remnants: he slept more, waking up later. It was Yohan who opened the shop now. And although the old man continued to care for his customers and measure them without delay, it took him longer to complete an article of clothing.

On a Sunday when the shop was closed, Yohan spent an afternoon at the harbor. It was quieter than the other days. There was the occasional whistle of a machine. The sound of bottles and ice being spread over fish. He passed stacks of empty crates. He looked up at the vessels in the sunlight, scanning the names on the bows in all the various languages until he arrived at the last pier to the south.