In a foreign city two friends walked on a bright cold day. No snow remained on the trees. It was not too cold, just cold enough so that the snow was beginning to thaw.
They walked into the city park and admired the people waiting for still-distant spring. Old couples sat on park benches praising the sun, young ones walked arm in arm, and parents supervised their children, who sledded on sheets of plastic down the steep hill to the right of the paved walk.
The hill was meant for sledding: about a hundred feet long with a tapering base that led to the banks of a large pond close enough to inspire fear in the hearts of the youngest children, and distant enough to urge the intrepid older ones to take a running start, to see if their slide could make it all the way to the banks—or even, to move into the legendary realm of those that had crested the pond’s surface, where they might tempt fate on the thin-crusted ice.
The two friends talked about life and its worthlessness, or rather, how they wanted to give it meaning, which subconsciously they were doing by being there, observing the winter day in its glory as they watched an older brother prepare for a slide by dragging his brother to the top of the hill. The shorter of the two friends recalled how he had been like the older brother who, aware of his younger brother’s fear, prepared the plastic saucer for its descent. The older brother, a boy not yet ten, snuck a sharp-eyed glance at the shorter of the two friends with a mischievous smile, conscious of being watched by strangers while his parents talked distractedly, perched on the stone wall that barricaded the path from the snowy slope.
At the top of the hill, the older brother, with a shout of glee pushed the boy a few running steps before he jumped onto the saucer behind him and coasted down the hill to its base, where they spun and stopped a good twenty feet before the edge of the pond.
The shorter friend urged his friend on, now that they had watched the spectacle, and the two admired the happy people that passed them on their way around the opposite end of the park. They walked until they came to a temple where guards stood in uniform. They descended the stairs of the state monument, in front of which an eternal fire burned. Puddles had formed on the wide granite steps leading to the snow-covered grassy mall below. Snow remained at the edges of the staircase, where pedestrians had not strayed. The taller friend reflected how horrible it seemed to be a servant of the state, to have to stand at attention like the soldiers in uniform in front of the monument. The shorter friend agreed.
They walked together along the side of the mall, admiring the beautiful girls who were younger than they, and who had removed their coats in the joys of the afternoon warmth, and ran flirtatiously from each other to attract the friends’ attention.
They reached the end of the mall, which was also the park exit. A huge building loomed in the distance, beyond a busy turnabout lined with cafes. They considered what to do next. In the time it had taken for them to cross the park the afternoon had passed and now the sun was clearly sinking; the shadows were purple and the orange light of early dusk extended behind them as the melted snow crystallized into a thin ice. They crossed the busy turnabout and decided they were too poor to satisfy their hunger in a cafe, and that they were better off returning to their rooms, on the other side of town.
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