The moment I saw
my phone fly out of my hands I knew something had gone wrong. Next thing I
knew, I started to feel my thighs becoming colder and colder. “Fuck! I slipped on the ice. And we’re
almost halfway through February” I said to myself. I had hoped to make it through the winter intact. No chance.
Everybody had warned me though, it was bound to happen; there was no way of
avoiding it. Of course I was wearing my boots! We’re in Montreal for crying out
loud, it’s both steep and icy, that’s the challenge! I started to look around,
trying to figure out whether my butt or my pride hurt more. My pride,
definitely my pride, and that’s not just because the many layers I was wearing
cushioned the fall. Oh, right, I
was texting that joke to my friend. “Shit. Where did my phone land?” I thought.
I scrambled around the sidewalk looking for it. Sim-card, battery, cover, and
snap, the age-old ritual. Funny how my reflexes led me to protect my phone
instead of breaking the fall.
I looked up to the
surprisingly blue sky, as if looking for an answer. Instinctively my brain
raced back to my school years, looking for advice. All I could hear was my
history teacher saying, “Rodrigo, we
can always blame the French”. Yeah,
that’s what a British education does to you. But maybe it
applied here. I’m pretty sure Monsieur de Maisonneuve decided to found this
city in the middle of summer. Though, actually, the Mont-Royal does look beautiful
covered in snow. Or maybe he liked falling. Maybe nobody ever fell down in
France and he came across the ocean to a land where people could fall flat on
their butts in all liberty. If only history had that kind of sense of humour. I
then thought about the sheet of ice that made me slip, “why is it that we don’t
like global warming? Oh right, the polar bears, they need the ice.” I reasoned
quietly. Or something like that, I guess. It’s a shame I don’t remember the
details, but if anybody ever asks I guess I’ll have to blame France. At least my school teachers would be
proud.
The cold was urging
me to stand up, but sitting on the frozen sidewalk made me feel oddly peaceful.
A forced pause. Mother nature reminding me that, in the end, I’m actually her
bitch. For the first time in ages my mind was blank, trying to capture
everything around me. There were no midterms, no homework, no unwashed laundry,
no unanswered texts, no projects, no things I needed to tell someone, no
nothing. I could think about what was around me. Even though I had walked
through that very same block every day for the past six months it was the first
time I realized that the building opposite me had something strange. Once I had
noticed that it had a beautiful polished stone façade, each window framed in the delicate strength of sculpted rock, but only this time I saw
how Victorian sobriety and French elegance were playing with each other like young lovers. Even though the forms and styles were kept ruthlessly equal within one storey, subtle details grew more and more elaborate as the building went up. The two styles flirted and approached
each other stealthily, but then retreated to themselves. Kind of what
happens in the library when someone catches your eye so you spend the rest of
your time trying to catch them looking at you, and when it happens, suddenly
both have to look away, as if those equations had suddenly become
interesting. Neither had I noticed
how the dépanneur* on the ground floor was using the half-moon windows to
display its selections of beer and wine, creating streaks of light that gave the illusion of colourful
stained glass. I wonder how many people had noticed this, or if it just
served its purpose as a clever way of showing students that abundant alcohol
was sold inside.
I saw the bus coming one
block away so I got on my knees and then stood up, brushing the snow off my
jeans. I started to run. I couldn’t afford to miss it. There was so much I needed
to get done!
*In Québec:
Convenience store, corner shop, tienda de barrio
