The Council's Snowbound Deliberation

• Chapter 1 The Morning Gavel and the Falling Flakes
• Chapter 2 Agenda Item Number Four
• Chapter 3 Swatches on the Pine Table
• Chapter 4 The Case for Edelweiss White
• Chapter 5 Drifts Against the Frostbitten Glass
• Chapter 6 The First Sputter of the Diesel Engine
• Chapter 7 Crimson Velvet and Ancient Feuds
• Chapter 8 A Murmur from the Boiler Room
• Chapter 9 The Schoolmaster’s Motion for Forest Green
• Chapter 10 The Flurry Outside the Sashes
• Chapter 11 Flickering Filaments Overhead
• Chapter 12 Point of Order, Point of Pride
• Chapter 13 The Mayor’s Waning Patience
• Chapter 14 The Breath in the Drafty Chamber
• Chapter 15 A Sudden Plummet of Mercury
• Chapter 16 An Impassioned Defense of Saffron
• Chapter 17 The Belt Snaps in the Cellar
• Chapter 18 Whispers in the Dimming Light
• Chapter 19 Voting by the Strike of a Match
• Chapter 20 Cold Seeps Through the Floorboards
• Chapter 21 The Unyielding Burgomeister
• Chapter 22 Shadows Across the Damask
• Chapter 23 The Exhaustion of the Final Candle
• Chapter 24 A Truce Bound in Midnight Blue
• Chapter 25 Silence in the Engine Room
• Chapter 26 Adjournment in the Darkening Frost

The brass pendulum of the wall clock in the council chamber swung with a heavy, deliberate clack that seemed altogether indifferent to the weather outside. Outside, the world was vanishing. By eight in the morning, the village of Sankt Jude had lost its lower meadows to a wall of solid white, and the jagged teeth of the church spires were little more than grey smudges against the sky. A northeast wind, whistling down from the high col where the smugglers usually plied their winter mules, had spent the night scouring the slate roofs of the upper square, banking drifts against the east-facing walls until the stable doors were sealed to their lintels.

Inside the town hall, the air smelled of floor wax, wet wool, and the peculiar, cabbage-tinged warmth that rises from aged radiators whenever their pipes are introduced to sudden pressure. Mayor Josef Trimmel stood at the head of the long pine table, his knuckles resting on the green baize blotter. He was a man constructed entirely of right angles—square shoulders, a square jaw, and iron-grey spectacles with flat, square lenses that made him look as though he were permanently peering through a surveyor’s transit. He checked his pocket watch, a gold-plated record of his thirty years with the valley timber guild, and cleared his throat.

"Eight o'clock precisely," Trimmel announced to the room, though the only other occupants at that moment were Frau Martha Lindt, the council secretary, and Herr Anton Geller, who ran the cooperative creamery and always arrived early in hopes of finding the room warmer than his own parlor.

"The pass is blocked," Geller said without looking up from his mittens, which he had laid out neatly across the cast-iron radiator beneath the window. "Lukas tried to take the six o’clock postal wagon down toward the lower valley. He did not even reach the second switchback before the drift took the front axle. He had to unhitch the gelding and lead it back by its halter. The beast has icicles hanging from its nostrils as thick as sausages."

"The postal service is a cantonal responsibility," Trimmel said, lifting his gavel. It was turned from mountain ash, pale and heavy, a gift from the alpine forester’s association upon his first re-election in 1948. "Our concern this morning is the business of the commune. The calendar was set in October. The third Thursday of November is the budgetary and civic reconciliation session. We have a quorum of three, technically, if we count the chair, but I expect the others will be through the door before the opening prayer has ended."

Frau Lindt dipped her steel nib into the black inkwell. Her fingers were short, red, and stiffened by early winter chilblains, but her penmanship was legendary throughout the district for its pitiless regularity. "Shall I record the weather in the margin, Herr Mayor? It has been the practice since the great frost of '29."

"Note that precipitation is active and visibility is restricted," Trimmel said, striking the wooden block once. The sharp crack echoed up into the dark timber vaulting of the ceiling, where two electric bulbs, suspended by frayed cords of twisted brown silk, swung slightly in the draft from the stairwell. "The meeting of the Sankt Jude Municipal Council is called to order. Let us observe three seconds of silent reflection for the prosperity of the Confederation and the health of the cattle."

The door at the back of the chamber did not open so much as it yielded to a violent shove from without. A gust of white powder billowed across the scrubbed fir planks of the floor, followed immediately by Master Carpenter Heinrich Vane, who looked like a chimney sweep who had tumbled into a flour barrel. He was wrapped in a horse-blanket coat pinned at the throat with an iron skewer, and his beaver-fur cap was frosted so heavily that his eyebrows seemed to have merged with the brim.

"God’s teeth," Vane barked, kicking the heavy oak leaf shut behind him with the heel of his hobnailed boot. He threw his weight against the latch until the iron dropped home with a thud. "You can’t see the pump-handle from the tavern porch. The snow is already to the second rail of the fountain. If anyone expects the mail bus from Landeck today, they had better send for the parish hearse to dig it out."

"Take your seat, Heinrich," the Mayor said without looking up from his leather-bound binder. "We have observed the reflection. You are late by two minutes, but as the drift across the churchyard is known to be treacherous, the fine of fifty centimes is waived by executive discretion. Please remove your overshoes in the vestibule next time; you are melting across the ledger floor."

"The snow doesn't care about your ledger, Josef," Vane muttered, though he obediently peeled off his wool-lined mittens and stuffed them into his coat pockets before shuffling toward his customary chair at the south end of the table. "And the vestibule smells like dead mice. The draft coming through that outer door would freeze soup in the bowl."

"The ventilation is adequate," Trimmel replied. "The building has stood since 1740. It will survive the morning. Frau Lindt, note Master Vane’s presence at eight-zero-three."

A second clatter on the stairs announced the arrival of the schoolmaster, Herr Alois Brant. Unlike Vane, who brought half the mountainside in upon his shoulders, Brant entered with a frantic, bird-like precision, holding an oilcloth briefcase tucked securely beneath his armpit while he used both hands to brush every speck of snow from his sleeves before crossing the threshold. Brant was forty, unmarried, and possessed that peculiar grey complexion common to men who spend nine months of the year breathing the dust of dried chalk and the sour steam of wet slate.

"A blizzard of the fourth category," Brant declared, his voice thin and high, vibrating with the satisfaction of a man whose meteorological instruments have performed exactly as predicted. "The mercury on my north veranda stood at minus nine at six o'clock. By seven-thirty it had fallen to minus eleven and a half. The barometric pressure is falling with a velocity I have not recorded since the second week of January '44. We are in for forty-eight hours of continuous accumulation, Josef. I took the liberty of dismissing the third-form boys early so they could assist their fathers with the hay-sledges."

"The school schedule is your affair until nine o'clock, Alois," Trimmel said, his tone dry as kiln shavings. "After nine, it is the school board's. At present, you are here as the commissioner for public works and recreation. Take your place. We are waiting on Frau Hirt and the butcher."

"The butcher won't come," Geller remarked, turning his mittens over on the radiator. A faint hiss rose from the damp wool as the cast iron grew marginally hotter. "He was out at dawn trying to salt the carcass of the pig he stuck yesterday. He says if the cold gets into the meat before the brine does, the whole side will turn black by Sunday. A man must look to his pork before he looks to the commune."

"The butcher will be fined three francs if he is absent without an apothecary's certificate," said Trimmel. "The regulations are printed on the reverse of the summons. Even so, four members constitute a voting majority for non-extraordinary expenditures. We can proceed."

"Non-extraordinary?" Vane snorted, leaning back until his chair groaned against its dowels. "Have you seen the estimate from the glazing firm in Chur for the community hall? If that isn't extraordinary, my mother was an archduchess. Three hundred francs for the big south-facing panes alone. And now we have the furnishings to settle."

"We will come to the furnishings in their proper turn," Trimmel said, his voice dropping into the flat, administrative cadence that had worn down three decades of village opposition. "First is the approval of the minutes of the thirty-first of October. Second is the report on the salt reserve in the lower depot. Third is the petition from the innkeeper regarding the snow-clearing easement behind the 'Golden Eagle.' And fourth is the final specification for the interior fittings of the new community center, including the draperies for the main assembly hall."

At the mention of the draperies, a small, subtle shift occurred in the atmosphere of the room. It was not unlike the change in air pressure Brant had just described, though considerably more dangerous. Herr Brant sat up straighter, his fingers drumming lightly against the grain of his briefcase. Master Vane scowled into his beard and reached into his waistcoat for his pipe, remembered the Mayor’s prohibition against tobacco before the third order of business, and shoved it back into his pocket with a grunt.

Outside, the wind gave the heavy double windows a violent rattle. A fine spray of dry snow, granular as salt, sifted through the seam where the two casements met, settling in a delicate white ridge along the inner sill. The light in the room was strange—a flat, shadowless milkiness that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. Through the leaded glass, the great peak of the Schwarzhorn was completely gone; the world ended forty yards away at the wooden palings of the parish orchard, where the bare apple boughs were already bowed like old women under their growing burdens of white.

"The salt reserve," Trimmel began, picking up a single sheet of foolscap, "is down seven hundredweights on this time last year. The railway depot at the junction was unable to ship the final consignment before the gravel siding at the tunnel mouth was blocked by the slide on Tuesday."

"It doesn't matter," Geller said gloomily. "Salt won't do anything in this. When the cold comes down off the glacier like this, salt only makes the slush freeze into grease. What we need is gravel. But the gravel pit is under four feet of drift behind the quarry."

"We have sixteen bags of coarse river sand in the church basement," Brant noted. "Though Father Thomas claims six of them are consecrated for the renovation of the ossuary."

"Sand doesn't need a blessing to give a horse a footing," Vane said. "Take the sand. The dead can wait until April; they aren't going anywhere in this weather."

"We will not touch the church property without a written release from the parish vestry," the Mayor ruled, making a tiny, decisive pencil stroke in the margin of his paper. "I will speak to Father Thomas after the session if the path across the square is still navigable. If not, the municipal road will remain un-sanded until the wind drops. The public has been warned by the church bells. Anyone who takes a cart out in this deserves to break an axle."

A thump sounded from the bottom of the outer stair, followed by the heavy, rhythmic scrape of an iron shovel clearing the stone steps one by one. A moment later, the door latch clattered again, and Frau Hirt struggled into the chamber. She was the widow of the village surveyor, a woman of sixty with an immense bosom that served her as a sort of portable fortress, behind which she carried her household accounts, her handkerchiefs, and an unshakeable conviction that the village had been in moral and aesthetic decline since the death of the old Emperor.

"Do not look at my boots," she announced to the room at large, though every eye had naturally dropped to them. She wore two enormous felt overshoes secured with lengths of parcel twine. "The snow in the lane is up to my thighs. Josef, you must send the town boys with their scrapers down the Gasse at once. The widow Kohl's porch is about to give way under the drift from the bakery roof. It is a disgrace that an elderly woman cannot reach her woodshed without risking suffocation."

"The boys are dismissed from school, Frau Hirt," Trimmel said without looking up. "They are at their fathers' disposal. Sit down, please. We are already at the second item."

"They are not at their fathers' disposal; they are throwing snowballs at the weathercock on the firehouse," she retorted, untying a thick knitted shawl of mustard-colored wool that left her grey hair standing out in wild, static tufts around her ears. "I had to threaten young Peter with my umbrella to get past the well. If this village had a proper constable instead of that lazy cousin of yours who spends all winter behind the stove at the 'Eagle,' we would have cleared paths by eight o'clock."

"My cousin is currently inspecting the culvert at the lower mill," the Mayor said with immense dignity. "A duty of the first importance if the ice is not to dam the millrace and flood the smithy. Sit down, Frau Hirt. We have passed the salt reserve. We are now considering the snow-clearing easement for the inn."

Frau Hirt took her place opposite Anton Geller, eyeing his damp mittens on the radiator with profound distaste. "The innkeeper has no right to push his snow into the public lane. He has forty meters of garden behind the taproom where he could pile it until Kingdom come. He only wants it cleared so the beer wagon from the valley can turn around without the driver having to put on chains."

"The beer wagon," Vane observed, "is currently fifteen miles away in the valley depot, sitting behind a four-meter drift at the avalanche gallery. It won't be here today, nor tomorrow either. We could turn the lane into a skating rink and it wouldn't make three groschen of difference to the beer."

"The principle remains," Frau Hirt said, setting her reticule on the table with a firm, leather-on-wood snap. "The public lanes belong to the commune. If Herr Weyler wants his yard cleared, he has two grown sons who do nothing all day but polish the beer taps and play cards behind the pantry."

"The innkeeper pays twenty-four francs more in commercial tax than any other householder in the upper tier," Brant offered, adjusting his spectacles. "A certain latitude has traditionally been extended regarding the winter turnabout. In '36, if I recall the records correctly, the council permitted—"

"In '36 we had an honest council that didn't take its morning cider in Weyler's back parlor," Frau Hirt said.

"That will do," Mayor Trimmel interrupted, bringing the gavel down with a sharp, flat tock. "The easement is granted on the condition that the snow is piled against the stone wall of the tithe barn and not against the bakery fence. Frau Lindt, enter the resolution. The innkeeper will pay a fee of two francs for the season to the road maintenance fund."

"He won't pay it," Vane said.

"He will pay it or I will have the constable impound his copper brew-kettle," said the Mayor. "Now. We have arrived at item four."

The chamber grew perceptibly quieter, save for the dull, heavy roar of the wind as it crested the church roof across the square. The iron stove in the corner of the room, fueled by chunks of dry larch from the communal forest, gave a sudden, hollow woof as a downdraft hit the chimney, sending a faint puff of aromatic blue smoke through the seams of the pipe.

Trimmel laid down his pencil. He reached beside his chair and lifted a heavy pasteboard folder, swollen to the thickness of an encyclopedia, and placed it square in the center of the baize blotter. From within its depths, he extracted four rectangular slips of wool and silk, each pinned to a small card bearing a handwritten number and a seal of the manufacturing firm in St. Gallen.

"The new community hall," Trimmel began, his voice taking on the sonorous, measured gravity he usually reserved for the annual Swiss National Day address, "is near completion. Master Vane has assured us that the spruce flooring will be laid before the feast of Saint Nicholas, provided the glue does not freeze during the application."

"It won't freeze if the stove is kept going," Vane said. "Though where I am to find another half-cord of split birch if this storm lasts until Sunday is something the council had better consider."

"The wood will be found," the Mayor said waving the objection aside with a flat hand. "The plasterers have finished their work. The stage has been constructed according to the cantonal safety regulations for theatrical and choral performances. The brass lamps have arrived from Zurich. What remains—what must be settled today so the order may be telegraphed to the weaver the moment the line is restored—is the drapery for the six tall windows and the proscenium arch."

"The telegraph line is down," Brant mentioned, pointing a thin finger toward the window. "I observed the wire sagging near the post office as I came by. It was coated in an inch of rime. When the wind took that large branch off the pastor’s pear tree at seven, the line went with it."

"The line will be repaired by the line-crew from the lower valley as soon as the road is cleared," Trimmel replied, unimpressed. "And when the line-crew arrives, our order must be ready to precede all others. The weaver in St. Gallen has informed me that after the first of December, his looms are committed entirely to the winter production of hotel linens for the resorts in Saint Moritz. If our commission is not in his hands by Friday morning, our hall will open on New Year's Day with bare glass and the drafts blowing through the sashes like a cattle shed."

"Bare glass is better than three hundred francs spent on foolishness," Frau Hirt said, folding her hands tightly over her reticule. "The women’s auxiliary has already said that plain grey homespun would be more than sufficient. It is durable, it does not show the soot from the lamps, and it reminds the young people that the commune was founded on thrift, not on the vanity of the valley towns."

"Grey homespun," Brant said, his voice rising in horror, "would make our community center look like the washhouse of an insane asylum. This is a hall for culture, Frau Hirt. For the cultivation of the arts. For the annual concert of the choral society! One cannot sing the Rütlilied behind grey homespun. It requires dignity. It requires elevation. It requires a tone that reflects the majestic nature of our alpine surroundings."

"It requires something that doesn't cost four francs a meter," Anton Geller muttered, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees. "The milk check from the dairy was down twelve percent this month because the lower road was closed twice already. The farmers won't look kindly on their taxes going into silk ribbons for Alois Brant's school choir."

"These are not ribbons, Herr Geller," Trimmel said, his fingers lightly touching the four swatches of cloth. "These are heavy, double-milled, fire-retardant wool damasks, suitable for a municipal building that will stand for a century. The samples have been submitted by the official supplier to the federal administration. There are four choices before us. Four choices which represent the dignity, the tradition, and the practical economy of Sankt Jude."

A heavy thud shook the ceiling overhead—the sound of an enormous mass of snow sliding from the high pitch of the roof down onto the lower lead flats of the belfry. The two electric bulbs swung in their sockets, their filaments glowing with an unstable, yellow orange light that dimmed for a second, then flared, then settled back into their dull, mustard-colored hum.

Trimmel did not so much as glance upward. He picked up the first card with the solemnity of a priest elevating the host.

"We will proceed methodically," he said. "We will hear the arguments for each color in turn. There will be no interruptions, no irrelevant commentary concerning the weather, and no personal remarks regarding the members' private expenditures. Master Vane, put that pipe away; the third item has passed, but the debate has not yet begun."

Outside, the snow fell thicker still, no longer in distinct flakes, but in a vast, grey, smothering curtain that blotted out the town hall steps, the fountain, and the world beyond the pass.

The grandfather clock in the corner struck half-past eight with six wheezing strokes, its internal weights rattling within the walnut case like dried marrow in an old bone. Josef Trimmel adjusted his spectacles, squaring them against the bridge of his nose until the world once again aligned into hard right angles and plumb lines. He drew the municipal ledger an inch closer, his forefinger resting firmly upon the fourth handwritten line of the morning’s program.

"Agenda Item Number Four," Trimmel read, projecting his voice over the steady rasp of sleet against the east-facing panes. "Concerning the procurement, chromatic designation, and administrative sanction of decorative textiles for the windows and stage embrasures of the new municipal assembly hall. Frau Lindt, let it be recorded that the council is now entering the phase of formal deliberation."

"It is recorded," the secretary said without looking up, the tip of her steel nib scratching dryly across the vellum. Her breath formed a tiny, ghostly plume over the desk before drifting into the cold space beneath the table. The radiator hissed once, spat a drop of rusty water onto the linoleum, and lapsed back into a stubborn, tepid sulk.

Across the perimeter of the pine table, the members adjusted themselves like soldiers preparing for an artillery barrage. Anton Geller pulled his wool waistcoat tighter across his barrel chest, his fingers hooked into the horn buttons. He cast a baleful look at the four swatches of fabric resting upon the Mayor’s green baize blotter. To Geller, the pieces of cloth were not potential draperies; they were several tons of road salt, or forty sacks of cracked corn for the winter cattle, foolishly transmuted into thread and ribbon.

"Before we hear from the factions," Trimmel said, leveling a pale gaze at Brant and then at Frau Hirt, "the chair will lay down the procedural boundaries. We have twenty-two meters of frontage to clothe, encompassing six arched casements and the main proscenium arch. The ceiling height is four meters forty. By cantonal decree, any hanging textile in a hall intended for civic assembly must be chemically treated against ignition, woven of double-ply thread, and dyed with agents that will not release noxious fumes in the event of an open flame."

"The schoolboys' coats smell noxious enough when they get wet," Master Vane grunted, leaning his chin onto his thick, calloused palms. "You don't need a cantonal decree to tell you that wool stinks when it burns. A pine bench burns faster than any curtain, and nobody asks the lumber to be dipped in vinegar first."

"The law is clear, Heinrich," Trimmel answered with the placid indifference of a stone retaining wall. "We are not building an alpine barn. We are completing an administrative and cultural edifice. The four swatches submitted by the firm of Meyer & Sons, St. Gallen, have all received the federal stamp of compliance. They represent the four approved pigments: number one, Alpine Edelweiss; number two, Imperial Crimson; number three, Forest Green; and number four, Meadow Saffron. Each has been costed by the square meter, including hems, brass eyelets, and weighted lead tapes along the bottom edges to prevent flapping during seasonal gales."

"Lead tapes," Frau Hirt remarked, her voice sharp as an ungreased axle. "We are putting lead into the curtains now. Next we will be plating the door handles with silver. What is wrong with simple pewter weights, Josef? My late husband—God preserve his soul—always said that when a commune starts putting lead into its window curtains, it is only three winters away from needing an audit from the prefect."

"The lead is cantonal standard, Frau Hirt," Trimmel said, entirely unmoved. "It ensures a uniform hang. If the drapery does not hang plumb, it allows drafts around the sashes, which increases the consumption of birch logs in the iron stove. The lead pays for itself in firewood within four fiscal years. It is an investment in civic equilibrium."

"Civic equilibrium won't keep the frost out of the milk room," Geller broke in, tapping a heavy fingernail on the tabletop. "I had to salt the valve on the separator this morning before I could get a drop through it. If we are spending the reserve on twenty-two meters of St. Gallen cloth, I want to know who is clearing the road to the lower siding. If the milk can't move by noon, it turns sour in the vats, and when the milk turns sour, the cooperative doesn't pay its quarterly dividend. And when the cooperative doesn't pay, the commune doesn't collect its tax."

"The snow is outside our jurisdiction until the cantonal plough reaches the marker at kilometer fourteen," Trimmel reminded him, lifting his ash-wood gavel an inch and letting it drop with a light clatter. "We are here to deliberate the agenda as set. We cannot vote on a snowplough that belongs to the district, but we can vote on the cloth. The weaver requires four weeks for delivery. If we miss the afternoon post—assuming the road opens—we miss the deadline for the New Year's festival."

Alois Brant raised a slender, pale hand, his fingers stained around the cuticles with purple hectograph ink. "Herr Mayor. If I may speak to the pedagogical and spiritual aspect of Item Four."

"You may speak to the administrative aspect, Herr Brant," Trimmel said. "The spiritual aspect is reserved for the pastor, and Father Thomas declined to attend on account of the drifts around the rectory."

"The two are inextricably linked," Brant insisted, leaning forward so that his wire-rimmed spectacles caught the pale, watery light filtering through the snow-caked windows. "A community center is not merely a box of stone to keep the rain off our heads during the annual auditing of the fire brigade. It is the vessel of our collective aspiration! For twenty years, since the old hall burned during the lightning storm of '32, this village has lacked a central sanctuary for the higher sentiments. The young people have nowhere to gather except the skittle alley at the 'Golden Eagle,' where they are exposed to coarse language, cheap beer, and political pamphlets from the lowlands."

"The skittle alley has a very good stove," Master Vane noted. "And Weyler doesn't charge twenty centimes for the oil lamps. If you put a boy into a cold hall with four meters of green cloth, he won't think about his collective aspiration. He'll think about his frostbitten toes."

"Culture requires sacrifice, Heinrich," Brant retorted with a flick of his wrist. "When the children perform the Schiller plays, the environment must possess a certain solemnity. The curtains frame the human drama. They are the threshold between the mundane toil of the potato harvest and the timeless realm of poetry. We cannot hang grey sackcloth and expect the boys to recite the Oath of the Rütli with appropriate gravitas. They will sound like carters arguing over the price of hay."

"They are carters," Frau Hirt said, adjusting the fringe of her mustard shawl. "Young Peter Weyler won't ever be anything else, no matter what color you put behind him. His father can barely read the bills of lading from the brewery. If you think five meters of crimson velvet will make that boy into a scholar, Alois, you had better spend your winter reading the lives of the saints instead of school circulars."

"I am not proposing crimson velvet at this stage," Brant said defensively, though his eye strayed toward the red swatch on the table with unmistakable longing. "I am merely establishing the necessity of treating this item with the gravity it warrants. This is not a matter of mere domestic economy. It is the face we present to the wider valley. When the cantonal inspector visits in the spring, he will judge Sankt Jude by the quality of its municipal hall."

"The inspector will judge us by the condition of the culverts," Geller said. "He won't give a damn about the curtains if the culvert at the bridge washes out again like it did in '48. We had to fish two pigs out of the millpond, and the inspector spent four hours in the tavern writing fines into his leather book. He didn't ask whether the taproom curtains were red or green. He asked why the commune hadn't cleared the gravel from the pipes before the spring melt."

Mayor Trimmel cleared his throat. It was not a cough, but a dry, rattling mechanical sound that instantly restored order to the room. He picked up his wooden ruler, measured the space between the ledger and the blotter, and placed the implement down again with mathematical precision.

"We are wandering from the procedure," the Mayor said. "The necessity of curtains was decided at the September extraordinary meeting. The funds were voted—four hundred and twenty francs from the communal timber surplus of 1952. The expenditure is authorized. The question before the council this morning is solely one of selection. Meyer & Sons have offered these four specific options at identical cost per running meter. Therefore, our concern is neither the culverts, nor the beer taps, nor the general moral decline of the third-form boys."

Trimmel picked up the first sample, holding it by its cardboard mount. It was a square of thick, densely woven wool, its surface sheared flat and smooth, showing a pale, chalky ivory that seemed almost grey against the glare of the blizzard outside.

"Swatch Number One," Trimmel announced. "Designation: Alpine Edelweiss. It is a double-milled twill, four hundred and eighty grams per square meter. The manufacturer notes that it reflects the maximum amount of daylight, thereby reducing the consumption of kerosene and electrical current during late afternoon assemblies. Herr Brant, you have five minutes to introduce the arguments for this selection, after which the floor will be opened for rebuttals."

Outside, a violent gust rattled the upper sashes with such sudden fury that Frau Lindt dropped her pen, leaving a round, black spider of ink beside the margin of the minutes. The snow fell faster now, a dense, swirling chaos that hid the church steeple completely, reducing the universe to the four walls of the chamber, the dying radiator, and the four small squares of cloth on the pine table.