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Carl was born on a day in late winter - a very different, colder winter. The night before he
was born was hard and chill and in the morning there were puddles of ice in the tracks that
crossed the Mission Square as his father, the Shopkeeper walked in circles, his thick coat
drawn tightly, blowing on his hands, causing drops of moisture to condense in his beard
so that his chin grew damp and cold and eventually he stopped blowing and thrust his
hands deep into his pockets. Even so his fingers did not warm up: he always had delicate
fingers. It was a working morning and the Shopkeeper, even though he had assistants, should have been in his shop. The fact that he wasn't meant that the shop was effectively closed since he insisted on approving all transactions there. This insistence, grew from insecurity: he had held his position for only a short time, having inherited it when the former Shopkeeper, his father's brother, died with his only son in an accident. He was entitled to the position: his father had been the Shopkeeper at one time and he was his eldest son, but his father had died when he was too young and the mantle had passed on to his brother. Thus, he been trained as an assistant and had not expected to become Shopkeeper which accounted for his over zealousness. Whatever the reason, the business of the town had virtually ceased while the official anxiously paced in the square awaiting the emergence of his heir. People were persistent, however, and a steady stream of suitors came into the square to intercept him. He was brusque and rude with most of these, dismissing them curtly, which was by no means his usual manner, but the winter had proved very difficult so far. He was not an uncaring man and he hated to encounter people for whom he felt he could do so little. People like old Mrs. Cullen, for instance, whose husband had died the year before leaving her with five children: 'Sir! Sir! I must speak to you for a moment. Please stop. I have important business to arrange!' 'Come to the shop tomorrow. I can't do anything for you now, woman.' He shrugged Mrs. Cullen away roughly. She had nothing that anyone would want. Stupid old woman, he told himself. Should have learned to manage her affairs better. A hard winter is a good teacher. If people must starve, well, then they must! The time when a few bricks gathered in the forest could be traded for a small sack of grain were gone. Now the farmers preferred to hoard their food and not even a knife or a strand of wire could buy you much! Or old Peter, a metal worker with a brown, leathery face and a pure white stubble on his chin, already close to death. Just think! If he had the food he could buy the metal he needed to make a plow at one tenth the normal rate! 'Sorry old man, I've nothing for you here!' Thinking to himself: why waste food? You could not blame the Shopkeeper for his attitude. He did not make the rules, nor did he make excess profits though he always had enough to live on and maintain his position. In his life too was potential death: of the young wife he adored in the throes of labor unrelieved by anesthetics; of his young son emerging from her womb. The death was only potential but he could not be expected to know that. Though many in this town had arrived successfully into the world on the floor of a shack or in the middle of a field, the Shopkeeper knew the statistics. But his wife and son had the privilege of their rank: they lay in a bed in the rustic hospital inside the Mission and were tended to by the lay Sisters there. Thus were the middle classes bought and sold. |
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