The Snow Ball (16 page)

A
NNA
hurtled down the stairs. Don Giovanni, following her for his life, felt something sticky detain the sole of his shoe. He tried to kick it off, did not succeed and had to pause for a second because he was afraid it was going to pull his shoe off altogether. It was a small white lump, dirtily grained with black marks. It might have been snow, brought in from the street, soiled by tyres. But it stuck. He peeled it off, noticing that it was a peppermint cream that had been trodden, moved a little further on and then discarded by a hundred other soles; he flung it away; and ran violently after Anna, who said:

‘Don’t try to stop me. I’ve got to go to Anne.’

‘I’m not trying to stop you. I’m only trying to come with you.’

But at the entrance to the ballroom they threw themselves against a hundred backs.

It was obviously impossible to make any
penetration
.

‘It would be more help to Anne if we started a movement for going home.’

‘Yes’, Anna said. ‘I will.’

In the portico, he said:

‘You can’t be so cruel.’

‘Only to myself’, she said.

He followed rather than accompanied her up the little hill out of the cul-de-sac, because she had already cast him off, leaving him to trail behind like an urchin offering services that were not wanted.

A cab came past almost as soon as she turned into the main road, and she stopped it.

Even so, he hung about, as though hoping to pick up something she might fling to him.

‘Go straight ahead’, she said to the driver. ‘I’ll tell you the address in a moment.’

Presently, looking out of the taxi window, she noticed that the snow in the streets was already stained brownish, perhaps melting. She neither hoped nor did not hope that it would survive the day.

The next time she looked out it was because the taxi was taking her along a narrow street she liked: two low brick terraces, grey in this cold light, built as cottages but now expensive.

The taxi turned a corner. Anna saw the driver’s head duck for a second, and her own eyes winced. The sunrise was spread in bars across the sky in front of them: hideous crimson and blood-coloured bars, like the elements of a monstrous electric fire aping the cosiness of coal.

She tipped the driver enough to make him flatter her with the word Miss.

‘Good night, Miss. Or should I say Good morning?’

‘Either way’, Anna said, completely coldly, ‘a hideous time of day.’

He was confounded. Not till she had her key in the lock did he call out:

‘Anyway. Happy new year.’

She let herself in, thinking about death.