Day 30: Candles at the Turn of the Year

"How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world," says Portia in one of Shakespeare's comedies, as she comes home at night and sees a light burning in her own hall.

In his day "naughty" meant wicked. Tonight the world did not look wicked to me, only weary, and very dark.

Dear Grandmother,

It is the last night of the year, and the lake town is full of candles. I did not know about this until this afternoon, when Mrs Varga stopped me outside the shop and asked whether I had one for my window. I said I had a lamp. She looked at me as if I had said I would cook a goose in a kettle. "A candle," she said. "One in every window that faces the lake. Your grandmother put one in hers. She was the first teacher who ever did."

So I bought two, white ones, plain, and Kostya carried them home for me in his coat, with great care, as if they were eggs.

Mrs Varga told me the custom is older than anyone in town. When the lake froze and the ferry could not run, people crossed on foot along the line of spruce trees, and on the last night of the year every house on the shore put a candle in the window, so that anyone still out on the ice could see where the houses were. Nobody crosses at night now. The candles stayed anyway. She said that in the year you were here, the school had been dark at the turn of the year for as long as anyone remembered, because the teachers always went home for the holidays. You did not. You stayed, and you put a candle in the classroom window and another in the kitchen of this house, and the whole shore saw the school lit up for the first time.

I asked her why you stayed. She said she did not know. She said she was only a child then and noticed nothing but the light.

At dusk I went round with Greta, who knows which windows face the water and which do not. We put a candle in the classroom window, on the sill above the stove, and one here on the kitchen sill, under the pencil marks on the door frame. Then we walked down to the jetty to look back. The whole shore was dotted with small gold lights, like the holes in a colander held up to a lamp. The school was one of them. I stood there until my feet were cold.

I wanted the candles to last until midnight, so I did what Dora told me. Before lighting a candle, trim the wick short, to about the width of your smallest fingernail. A long wick makes a tall, smoky flame that eats the wax. A short one burns small and steady and slow. And stand it in a saucer of sand or salt, away from the curtain, so that if it leans, it leans into something that will not burn. It sounds like nothing. But my candles are still burning now, at eleven, while the ones I lit last year in the city were gone by ten.

I read that for most of history, people burned tallow, which is animal fat. Tallow candles smoked, spat, smelled of the kitchen, and needed their wicks snipped every few minutes. Beeswax burned clean and sweet, but it was dear, kept for churches and rich houses. So a candle in a poor window was a real gift. Someone gave up a little light inside, so that a stranger outside could have it.

At six Emil rang the bell, as always. Afterwards I saw a candle in the ferry house window too, small and steady, facing the water. Up the road, at the workshop, there was another one, and a smaller one beside it that I think Mila must have chosen.

Shakespeare's Portia saw one little candle and thought of a good deed in a dark world. I think you knew that, Grandmother, at twenty-two, when you stayed in an empty school at the turn of the year and lit it for the whole shore. Mrs Varga still remembers the light. She does not remember your face very well, she says, or your voice. But she remembers that the school was dark, and then it was not.

My two candles are still burning. I will let them burn until midnight, and then I will put them out with a wet finger, the way you taught my mother, so the smoke does not fill the room.

Happy new year, Grandmother.

Your Vera

Day 31: A Walk on the Ice

Pushkin began a winter poem with a plain line: frost and sun, a wonderful day.

I had that line in my head all morning, and the day kept its promise.

Dear Grandmother,

It was Saturday, and the cold had held for two weeks. Emil says the lake does not freeze all at once. It sets from the edges inward, the way custard sets from the sides of the dish, and the middle stays soft longest. So nobody here walks out to the middle. Near the shore, by the old jetty, the ice is thick and grey-blue and the children slide on it every winter.

Tomas had been there early. He had drilled a small hole by the jetty and measured with his folding rule. The ice was thicker than his hand is long. He showed me the number on the rule as if it were a receipt, and I liked him for it. Mila was already on her skates, going round and round on the swept patch a little way from the jetty, with her scarf flying out behind her.

We walked along the shore line, never further out than a stone's throw. The snow on top squeaked under our boots. Where the wind had swept it clean, the ice was dark and you could see white threads of frozen bubbles inside it, like the air in a loaf that has risen well. Tomas walked a little ahead, tapping with a long pole, which he says his father did and his grandfather before him. Kostya came down with his sledge, and then Ari, who is well again and very proud of it, and for a while there was a lot of shouting. Ari wanted to go out to see the middle. Tomas only pointed at the dark line far out where the ice turns thin and grey, and said, "That part is for the fish." Ari accepted this at once. Children will take a rule if it comes with a reason they can see.

Here is a small aside, because I looked it up that night. Clear ice, the dark kind, is much stronger than white ice. White ice forms when snow or slush freezes on top, and it is full of air, so people who know ice count it as worth only about half as much. That is why Tomas measured the clear ice under the white layer, and not the whole thing. He says a careful person checks again after a thaw, after heavy snow, and near reeds and jetty posts, where the ice is often weaker.

Then the children went up to Mrs Varga's for cocoa, and Tomas and I were alone by the jetty. The sun was low already. Everything had that pink-gold colour a pan of butter gets just before it browns. We stood there and did not say much. I said my nose had gone numb. He said mine looked fine. Then he kissed me, or I kissed him, I honestly cannot tell you which, and it was short and cold and very kind. Afterwards he laughed, because his glove had frozen to the pole, and I laughed too, and we walked back along the shore holding hands, keeping to the thick ice where the children's tracks were.

I wanted to keep that minute, so I tried something you could try too. Before we left the jetty, I named five things to myself, one for each sense. The squeak of snow. The smell of wood smoke from the ferry house chimney. The pink light on the reeds. The taste of cold air, a bit like iron. His wool glove, rough against my hand. I have read that a memory held through all the senses at once is easier to find again. I do not know if that is true. I only know I can find this one.

At six the ferry bell rang across the ice, and the sound came to us clear and long, as if the lake were holding it up. Emil was at the end of his jetty, by the bell post. He raised one hand to us and walked back to his house, and I think he saw everything and said nothing, which is his way.

Did you ever stand on that jetty with him in the cold, Grandmother? I think you did. I think you knew the same place to stand, where the ice is safe and the light is good.

Pushkin's line is about a winter morning, a sleeping girl and a sledge waiting at the door. Mine was a winter afternoon, a carpenter with a folding rule, and a child on skates. Frost and sun, a wonderful day. He was right about that, and so was I.

Your Vera