He had been gone for so long that even the cold had begun to feel welcome. At the crossing that marked the centre of the town, he was so overcome by the feeling of returning that he motioned to the driver to drop him off there and then. The man had obliged, without a word. It would have been unkind to direct him further in these parts. Besides, the long walk would do him good after the journey.

He stretched aching thighs by the crossing, bracing against the flaking paint of the streetlamp, as he had seen travellers do in his youth. In his time, it was here that they often asked for directions, or were welcomed by their waiting hosts. Yet no one had saw him arrive. The crossing stood as unlit as it had been since he left. He reeled, involuntarily: there was the steeple of the church, the mayor's clock, the stone arches of the old market gate. Memories with no shape or form other than that of brick and stone. Memories still, nonetheless. He was surprised that recalled the road home with little difficulty at all, and he found himself heading down the deserted street, boots treading familiar paths in the snow.

There had been a flurry in the morning, it seemed. The snow was hanging half-frozen off the rafters, blanketing the low, sloping roofs that had been so popular a hundred years ago, though over the years it continued to lend the place a homely charm. Despite the hour, the sun still hung low in the horizon, defiant, suspending the street in its pale light. It would take a while before it set, this time of the year.

The streets were empty and the shops were shuttered, for it was long past six, and people retired early in his country. Here, where the old baker had his stand, the street forked to the right. He took it, half-remembering where it led. He passed the merchanthouses, the red-brick facades left to crumble since the war. At a fountain, he went about it thrice, clockwise, though he knew not why; the water still ran, though the bottom had been scraped for coins. The familiar motion set loose memories of a tune, sang in a low, deep, voice across a fireplace: If on a night a winter's traveller shall...

He could not complete the words. Again, that uncanny dizziness filled his mind: the image of the waiting traveller hung at the end of the song, their action began, but not consummated. The next line laid stubbornly on the tip of his tongue. Shall who, shall what? There was no decisiveness or finality to it. Nor might there have been one in the original, he thought. It was the kind to be sung in a round, passed between one drunken voice and another, until the wine stopped flowing and the last coals died. Were feasts like those common still? Fathers hosted them for homecoming sons, though his own had died many years ago. Regardless, there were not many fathers left alive to give them. It seemed as though the festivities had grown more and more unwarranted, over the years, until even the letters stopped coming at special occasions.

He wondered when the town had been left to rot. It had been too long since he had heard from his friends, many who had left years ago, chasing the dreams of that heady period when the borders had opened up. What remained was the town that continued with itself. At times, hearing from his mother, it had felt as if the town was being compelled to carry on, as if bound to some instruction in its deepest brick and stones. Yet children were born, church bells were rung, and lives were tolerably led. Perhaps it was too much to ask, for the past to cease in its path. More favourable to the principles of inertia, and more merciful , to let the old ways drift on, until they had forgotten that they had been bound to the present at all.

The nausea jolted him from his thoughts. Ahead of him the road turned. Keeping right, he would reach the cul-de-sac he played in as a child. Proceeding further, he would reach the gate of his house. But his mind was arrested, for he thought he had heard a cry. Was it woman or child -- or animal? There was nothing else behind it, no rush of footsteps, not even the wind.

A few steps before the turning he faltered again, though there was no streetlamp to hold on to this time, and he tripped over himself, stumbling. The sun still hung low, casting its faint shadows: was it still not yet time to set? As he fell in the strange light, he could hear the song humming, this time entirely and involuntarily without words at all, for it did not need words to continue or lips from which to sing it. It sang into the darkness with him, unassailed, unbothered by the past, which remained steadfastly out of reach, blanketed by the pale of the snow.