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Night falls early, as far north as we are, in this, the darkest month. By four o’clock, the moon rises over the Liffey, the last of the oranges and greys fade beneath the horizon, and the city lights up from within rather than from above. The city loves Christmas, as it loved Yule, as it loved the older feasts that had names lost to time, decking itself with color and warmth to keep us leaning out of our homes and towards each other.
In a perfect world, of course. More often I’ve found myself walking under the fairy lights and twinkling snowflakes feeling somehow disconnected from all of it. The distance from what remains of my family, the long loneliness of my studies and my writing with no end in sight, and the lack of someone with whom to share these burdens doesn’t incline me to surrender to the glitter, the glow, the warmth. Once in a great while I push myself into the chapel, or dig in my pockets for some coins for one of the beggars on the bridge. But just as often I get from one end of the day to another without speaking to anyone except one of the taciturn librarians or the barista making the latte I treat myself to once a week. I wish for the magic that the lights and the songs and the brightly wrapped boxes promise, but I only ruin my favorite boots in a puddle that’s all too real and log on to pay the bills that don’t mysteriously vanish with a few special words.
And this afternoon, with less than a week to go until Christmas, doesn’t feel any different, even with my favorite busker playing “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)” on the triangle across from campus. I smile a little in spite of myself, though, as I cross the road. I might be fooling myself, but I think he recognizes me and smiles a little in return. He’s a nice-looking lad, a bit of a sloppy hipster with the good bones and the height to get away with a lot. We’ve never said much beyond “hi” or “thanks,” but I’ve seen him often enough in the past few months, and throw some change in his guitar case more often than not.
I duck into the coffee shop. “What’ll it be?” asks the girl behind the counter.
“A small latte, please,” I say, then add, “Actually, could you make that two, please?”
“Sure.”
I stack one cup on top of the other and hold them gingerly, grateful for the warmth radiating from them as I make my way back to the triangle beneath the streetlights, darting across the road as the traffic pauses. He’s finishing up the song; a small knot of folks nods and claps appreciatively, notes and coins falling into his case— he’s good. He catches my eye and says, “Thanks, folks, just going to take a quick break. Come back soon.”
I force myself to not look away from him. “I— thought you might be cold,” I say, offering him one of the lattes.
“Oh, that’s lovely,” he says, his own smile sweet and not at all awkward. “How kind of you. I should offer you a song, if you like?”
“Oh, it was no bother,” I murmur, already abashed.
“Well, it’s no bother for me. I’m here either way.”
“Truly, I’m— happy to hear you sing anything,” I hear myself say, and then I feel my face flush.
“As you like. But let me know if you change your mind. I owe you one.” He takes a sip of the latte; he’s wearing fuzzy blue fingerless gloves, and his fingers wrapped lightly around the cup are long and— gentle? Is that possible? How am I thinking this way about some lad who plays the guitar sometimes, one step above a perfect stranger? Christ, but I’m lonely. “Have you had enough Christmas music, or can you stand one more, do you think?”
“I— could stand one more.” I take a drink from my own cup, just to give myself something to do.
He strums his guitar idly for a moment, just a random chord or two. “Are you in the college, then?” he asks.
“In the graduate program. Literature. It’s dull.”
“Not to you, I hope.” He smiles up from the neck of the guitar.
“Well, no, it’s just— a bit tiring. A lot of work.”
“It’ll all be worth it soon enough, right?”
“I really hope so.”
“Literature.” He strums another chord. “Think I’ve got something for you, and the shoppers and the tourists alike. Sound good?”
“Sounds great.”
He scratches his head a bit through a thick wool beanie, which he removes for a moment to reveal a thatch of unruly brown curls gathered hastily into a sloppy bun. He pushes back a stray lock or two before snuggling the beanie in place again. “I’m going to change it up a bit, yeah? From a little rock and roll to...not.”
I nod. “Okay.”
The delicate melody he starts to play begins to draw a fresh small crowd, another handful of folks hanging shopping bags and purses from their wrists as they shove their hands deep in their pockets for warmth against a sudden chill wind. The melody is slow without plodding, with just a hint of jazz to the tempo, and when he starts to sing, tears spring to my eyes:
In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow
In the bleak midwinter, long ago…
He knew I’d recognize the Rossetti poem, and maybe even knew somehow that my heart has been standing as hard as the Earth of which Rossetti had written. All of my reading, all of my unbelief falls silent under his soft, sweet voice, tapping into a truth that runs under the winter fairy tales, the mythology of a birth that would have happened in a snowless desert thousands of miles from pagan Hibernia and Anglia. He pulls away not just the cheap cheer of the lights and the bows, but my own resistance and exhaustion. The rest of the listeners seem to feel something, too; a hand rises to a heart, a lip is bitten. But, still, I feel like he’s singing straight to me. And in the midst of the bustle of the city, just in this cluster that’s gathered around the busker, a hush falls, punctuated only by a few small sighs, a few icy puffs of breath that follow them.
He smiles his way through another verse, and when he’s not looking at his guitar with a gaze I can only describe as tender, he’s looking— uncomfortably, kindly, penetratingly— at me:
What can I give him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
If I were a wise man, I would play my part;
Yet, what I can I give him— Give my heart.
He sees me. I know that he does.
Applause ripples across the cluster of folks; coins and notes flutter and clatter into the guitar case, people go on their respective ways. But I can’t move. Their shopping bags shuffle, they hurry to get to the next thing, but I am here. Amidst it all, surrounded by the cold, I can only wait.
“How was that, then?” he asks.
“That was beautiful,” I manage.
“It’s a nice one. Haven’t sung it in a while.”
“Well, you’d never know. I’ve never heard it the way you did it, like— like Billie Holiday would have sung it or something.”
“Quite a compliment I’m not sure I deserve,” he says with a chuckle. “But thanks very much.”
“How did you know?”
“Oh, just a lucky guess. Figured with your background, you’d probably know it.”
“Come on. It was more than that.”
He raises his eyebrows, but kindly. “Was it?”
“Wasn’t it?”
He smiles. “I think I’m ready to finish up for the day,” he says. “Would you like to walk with me for a bit?”
If I had had anything planned for the next little while of the evening, I’ve forgotten it. “Sure,” I say. “Are you— heading home, or…”
He shrugs. “Eventually. I’m in no rush.” He scoops the money out of the guitar case and stuffs it in the pocket of his motorcycle jacket, lays the guitar in the case and closes it carefully with those fingers, and picks it up, along with the latte in the cup. His loping pace allows me to keep up with him despite his long legs, heading east towards where the river will meet the sea. “Do you have any plans for the holidays, then?”
I try to keep my tone light. “Just a thing or two with friends, maybe,” I say. “You know. We’ll see.”
He nods. “And is that all right?”
I take a deep breath. “I don’t know,” I say. “My family is far off and I couldn’t get the money together to get home, and— I don’t know, if it was that no one could help me get home or no one— thought to, or if I just didn’t have the heart to ask...but it’s happened somehow that I’m here, and on my own, and…”
I start to cry. I don’t know how it’s happened. I haven’t cried in months.
He nods. “It’s hard,” he says. “Hold on to this a minute for me, would you?” He hands me his cup.
I take it, sniffling back my tears.
He pulls a package of tissues from his coat pocket, along with what looks like all of the money he made today. He hands me the tissues, then drops the money in the cup of a man wrapped in a blanket sitting alongside the fence. The man nods his thanks and says, “Merry Christmas.”
“That was all your money,” I say anyway, though he clearly must know.
He shrugs. “I don’t really need it. I’m going home soon enough. Just playing out here for fun more than anything.”
I wipe my eyes. “Why, then? It’s— cold, it’s noisy… if you don’t need the money, and you’re so— you’re good, you know,” I add, awkwardly.
He laughs. “Good enough, I suppose.”
“Why, then?”
He takes the cup back from me and finishes the drink. “It’s a dark time,” he says. “It’s not merry and bright for everyone. Sure, there’s lots of folks out playing Christmas songs, making a bit of extra money. But I hope I can give something a little extra, maybe just...seeing where it’s all a bit much for some folks. Something a little different.”
“But— what do you get?”
He grins. “Satisfaction of a job well done.”
I laugh in spite of myself. “That’s all?”
“A bit of pocket money.”
“Which you give away.”
“Free coffee?” he offers before popping the cup in a waste bin on the corner.
“It’s something, I suppose.”
“It was kind of you. And before I go home, I’d like to leave you with something.”
“Oh, you don’t have to do that, I’ll be all right. The song was lovely.” I pause. “Where’s home, anyway?”
“Thattaway.” He leans his head towards the east before reaching through the iron fence to fiddle with the branches of a rose bush.
“That’s pretty far east. What, in some posh condo out by all the bank buildings?”
He smiles. “Sure. Don’t believe me?”
“Not really.”
“That’s smart.” He breaks off the end of a branch. “I’ll see you again before long, I imagine, but might I give you a good night kiss? For the holiday?”
Even in the cold I feel my cheeks blush. “I— um, all right.”
He smiles, bends down from his height, and touches my lips with his, just long enough to be felt, smoothing a piece of hair behind my ear before he pulls away. It’s sweet, and warm, and somehow tastes like snow all the same.
“I— thanks,” I say, like an utter fool.
“Good night,” he says, hoisting his guitar case over his shoulder. And I realize why his kiss tasted like snow: it’s snowing, lightly, the flakes delicate and icy. “See you soon. The light is coming.”
“Get home safely,” I reply, and in the blink of an eye he’s gone, melting into the crowd.
I shake my head, drying my eyes one last time, catching a snowflake in the tissue, which brushes against something at the edge of my face. I reach up to find the end of the branch he plucked from the rose bush, ending in a small, deep red bud, its fragrance heady and warm like honeyed cinnamon in the cold.