Reminiscences of A Winter Night

As he knelt on the ice to help her put on her skates, Mai felt anxious. She hadn’t come to the lake for many years,  and she didn’t know whether she remembered how to skate.

Gaston squeezed the skates around Mai’s ankles. Tightening the laces, he asked, “Can you wiggle your toes?”

“Uh huh,” Mai got up from the bench and made a few steps forward, her arms spreading out for balance.

“You’ll be fine. You don’t forget skating once you’ve learned it.” He held her hands, gliding backward slowly and guiding her to the middle of the lake, where the ice was smoother. They were alone; the children who were here earlier playing hockey had gone home. The air was crisp, with a hint of pine scent.

Mai had stopped skating since before she met Gaston. She had always associated skating with Jeremy, who had introduced her to it and taught her this winter activity on Lac des Castors in Montreal when they were at McGill University. She thought she was too old then to learn the skill that many Canadian children acquired before they could ride a bicycle, but to her surprise and delight, after just one season she could master the basic movements, going forward and backward, doing figure eights, gliding on one skate. When they moved to this village in the Eastern Townships, they would take their skates to the lake every evening in the winter, after Jeremy had come home from work and she had closed her bookstore. It was her happiest time, living in an idyllic village, doing what she loved with the person she loved most. The memories of those times hit her like a wave and knocked her off balance.

Her right skate snagged on the ice, her hand slipped from Gaston’s and she stumbled. Gaston swirled around and caught her before she hit the ice. Now standing behind her, his hands firmly on her waist, he said, “Relax. Go with more speed. Don’t resist.” Mai inhaled, then pushed side to side.

From above, in the blue velvet sky, the moon, almost full, poured down a translucent light, glistening the ice. The stars shone brightly, twinkling.

A barely audible tune wafted in like a soft breeze. Mai stopped and listened. Now the music rose to a crescendo. Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliet.” She made a crossover step, then glided across the ice. Now finding her cadence, her arms reached up and her skates moved with the concerto, in a sequence of circular and serpentine patterns. She floated weightlessly until the music faded out. Only then was Mai aware that Gaston had stood on the side to watch.

“I didn’t know you could dance on ice,” he said.

“I can’t. I just…”

“But you just did. Quite beautiful!”

“Wasn’t that marvelous, the music?” Mai whispered.

“What music?”

“Didn’t you hear Prokofiev playing?”

“Pro… what? There’s no music out here.”

How didn’t he hear “Romeo and Juliet?” Mai opened her mouth to ask, but she closed it again. Gaston was not a classical music lover. Sensing his irritation, she said, “Let’s go home to sit by the fire with a hot chocolate.”
Gaston helped her take off the skates. Holding hands, they walked back to her house behind the bookstore in silence.

While Gaston was heating milk to make hot chocolate in the kitchen, Mai went into the family room. The fire was already crackling in the fireplace. A familiar scent, sandalwood, faint but distinctive, floated in the air. Jeremy’s after shave. She looked up. She thought she saw an old man sitting in the green leather chair which belonged to Jeremy. She sat down on her chair opposite to have a good look. It was Jeremy but he was much older with white hair. He raised a tumbler of liqueur which reflected the fire and gave off sparkles of amber light. He smiled and, winking at her, recited Rumi:

“We are the night ocean filled with glints of light.
We are the space between the fish and the moon while we sit here together”.

Gaston came in with two steaming mugs of chocolate. “Thanks for starting the fire,” he said, sitting down on the floor next to her chair, leaning on her legs, watching the fire dance.

Mai blinked. The old man, the old man’s version of Jeremy, had vanished. She couldn’t remember whether she had started the fire. On the side table next to the green leather chair, a half-empty crystal glass sat next to a cognac bottle.