Ice (13 page)

I dreamed of her whether I was asleep or awake. I heard her cry: 'One day I'll go . . . you won't see me again. . . .' She had gone from me already. She had escaped. She hurried along a street in an unknown town. She looked different, less anxious, more confident. She knew exactly where she was going, she did not hesitate once. In a huge official building she made straight for a room so crowded she could hardly open the door. Only her extreme slimness enabled her to slip between the many tall silent figures, unnaturally silent, fantastically tall, whose faces were all averted from her. Her anxiety started to come back when she saw them towering over her, surrounding her like dark trees. She felt small and lost among them, quickly became afraid. Her confidence had vanished; it had never been real. Now she only wanted to escape from that place: her eyes darted from side to side, saw no door, no way out. She was trapped. The faceless black tree- forms pressed closer, extended arm-branches, imprisoning her. She looked down, but was still imprisoned. Filled trouser-legs, solid treetrunks, stood all around. The floor had become dark earth, full of roots and boles. Quickly looking up at the window, she saw only white weaving meshes of snow, shutting out the world. The known world excluded, reality blotted out, she was alone with threatening nightmare shapes of trees or phantoms, tall as firs growing in snow.

Global conditions were worsening. There was no sign of destruction coming to a halt, and its inexorable progress induced general demoralization. It was more impossible than ever to find out what was really happening, impossible to know what to believe. No reliable source of information existed. Very little news of any description came from abroad; none whatsoever from once-prominent states which had simply dropped out of existence. More than any other single factor, it was the implacable spread of these unnerving areas of total silence that undermined public morale.

In certain countries civil unrest had resulted in the army taking command. A world-wide swing towards militarism had taken place during recent months, with deplorable and brutalizing effects. Frequent clashes occurred between civilians and the armed forces. The killing of police and soldiers, with retributory executions, had become commonplace.

As was to be expected, in the absence of any genuine news, fantastic rumours kept circulating. Monstrous epidemics, appalling famines, were said to have broken out in remote districts, fearsome deviations to have occurred from the genetic norm. Stocks of thermo-nuclear weapons, previously supposed to have been destroyed, were periodically reported to be in the possession of this or that power. Persistent rumours concerned the existence of a self-detonating cobalt bomb, timed, at a pre-set, unknown moment, to destroy all life, while leaving inanimate objects intact. Spying and counter-spying went on everywhere. There were growing acute shortages in all countries, food riots followed as a matter of course. The lawless element in the population was much in evidence, decent people were terrorized. The death penalty imposed for looting had little or no effect as a deterrent.

I got news of the girl indirectly. She was alive, in a certain town, in another country. I was almost sure the place was in the area of immediate danger, though there was no means of checking the point, since all reference to the advancing ice was forbidden. By intense persistence and extensive bribery, I managed to board a ship travelling in that direction. The captain wanted to make money fast, and for a large sum agreed to put in at the port I named.

We arrived. It was early morning, unbelievably cold, dark when it should have been light. No sky, no clouds, they were hidden by falling snow. It was not a morning like other mornings, but what it was: an unnatural freezing of day into darkness, spring into arctic winter. I went to say goodbye to the captain, who asked if I had changed my mind about going ashore. I said I had not. 'Then for God's sake get going. Don't keep us hanging about.' He was angry, antagonistic. We parted without more words.

I went on deck with the first officer. The air stung like acid. It was the breath of ice, of the polar regions, almost unbreathable. It scarified the skin, seared the lungs; but the body quickly adjusted itself to this stringency. The density of the snow created a curious foglike gloom in the upper air. Every thing was obscured by the small flakes falling ceaselessly out of the shrouded sky. The cold scalded my hands when I collided with iced-up parts of the ship's superstructure, which only became visible when it was too late to avoid them. In the silence I noticed a rhythmic vibration below, and spoke to my escort: 'The engines; they haven't stopped.' For some reason it seemed surprising. 'You bet they haven't. The skipper can't wait to turn the ship round. He's been cursing you for days for making us put in here.' The man showed the same antagonism as the captain, plus a disagreeable curiosity which came out now. 'Why the devil
have
you come, anyhow? 'That's my business.' In unfriendly silence we reached the rail. It was cased in thick ice, a rope ladder dangling from it towards the sound of a motor running below. Before I had time to look down, he swung his leg over. 'Harbour's frozen. We've got to put you ashore by launch.' While he quickly descended with practised ease, I followed more awkwardly, clinging
on
with both hands, blinded by the snow. I did not see who pulled me into the rocking launch, or who pushed me towards a seat as it immediately shot forward. Travelling at full speed, it plunged and reared continually like a bucking horse, sheet of spray flew over the roof of the little cabin. There was too much noise for voices to be audible; but I could feel the almost murderous hostility of those on board, all hating me for keeping them here in danger when they might have been on the way to safety. To them my behaviour must have seemed perverse and utterly senseless. I began to wonder myself whether it made any sense, sitting huddled up in my coat, in the brutal paralyzing cold.

A sudden long-drawn-out yell startled me; it was really more of a howl. The officer jumped up, shouted back through a megaphone, then resumed his seat with the words: 'One way traffic.' Seeing that I did not understand, he added, 'Plenty going the other way,' and pointed ahead.

A confused indistinct commotion revealed itself as a ship, motionless in the midst of the feverish activity of small boats seething round it. In frantic competition, they fought to get near enough for their occupants to climb aboard. There was not room for all. Spectators crowded the rails of the ship as if at a race course, watching the collisions and capsizings below. Those in the boats had probably lived easily and been unaccustomed to danger, for they battled clumsily for their lives, with a sort of headlong terror, wasting their strength in useless jostling and surging. One boat floated upside down, surrounded by frenzied hands and arms struggling out of the water. The people in the next boat swarmed over it, hit out, kicked, stamped on the clinging hands, beat off the drowning. Even the most powerful swimmer could not survive long in that freezing sea. Several of the overcrowded unskillfully handled boats turned over and sank. Some broke up after colliding. In those that remained afloat, the passengers crushed and trampled each other in senseless panic, drove off clutching swimmers with oars. People already dying were battered and beaten. The muffled uproar of screams, thuds, splashes, continued long after the scene was hidden behind the snow. I recalled polite voices announcing over the air that people were desperate, fighting to get away from the threatened countries to safer regions.

The frozen harbour was a grey-white expanse, dotted with black abandoned hulks, embedded immovably in the ice. Banks of solid ice edged the narrow channel of blackish water, fringed with grinning icicle-teeth. I jumped ashore, snow blew out in great fans, the launch disappeared from sight. There were no goodbyes.

TEN

It could have been any town, in any country. I recognized nothing. Snow covered all landmarks with the same white padding. Buildings were changed into anonymous white cliffs.

A confused disturbance, shouts, the noise of wood splintering and glass breaking came from one of the streets where looting was going on. A crowd had broken into the shops. They had no leader, no fixed objective. They were just a disorderly mob surging about in search of excitement and booty, frightened, hungry, hysterical, violent. They kept fighting among themselves, picking up anything that could be used as a weapon, snatching each other's spoils, taking possession of all they could lay hands on, even the most useless objects, then dropping them and running after some other plunder. What they could not take away they destroyed. They had a senseless mania for destruction, for tearing to shreds, smashing to smithereens, trampling underfoot.

A senior army officer appeared in the street and blew a whistle to summon the police. Striding towards the looters, he shouted orders in a fierce military voice, blew repeated blasts on the whistle. His face was dark with rage, framed by the astrakan collar of his fine overcoat. The main mass of the crowd fled at the sight of him. But some, bolder than the rest, stayed skulking among the wreckage. Furious, he strode towards them, threatened them with his cane, shouted to them to clear off, swore at them. They took no notice at first; then formed a rough circle, rushed at him from several points simultaneously, in groups of three or four together. He pulled out his revolver, fired it over their heads. A mistake: he should have fired at them. They swarmed round him, trying to snatch the weapon. The police were a long time coming. There was a scuffle. In the course of it, either by accident or intention, the gun was dropped through a grating. Its owner was a man in the late fifties, tall, vigorous. But I could see him panting. They were young toughs with faces of a sinister blankness. They attacked cunningly, with bits of metal and broken glass, pieces of smashed furniture, whatever came to hand. He fended them off with his cane, keeping his back to a wall. Their numbers and their persistence were gradually wearing him down; his movements were getting slower. A stone was thrown. Then a shower of stones. One of them knocked his cap off. The sight of his hairless skull produced ribald shouting, and for a second he seemed disconcerted. They took advantage of this, closed in, set on him like a pack of wolves. Blood trickling down his face, back to the wall, he still managed to fight them off. Then I saw something flash: someone had used a knife. Others followed suit. He clutched his chest, blindly staggered forward. The moment he left the wall he was done for, they were on him from every side. They knocked him down, sprang on top of him, tore his coat off, beat his head on the frozen ground, stamped on him, kicked him, slashed his face with chains. Finally he lay still on the snow. He had had absolutely no chance. It was murder.

It was not my affair, but I could not see it and stand there doing nothing. They were society's dregs, they would never have dared come near him in normal times, far less touch him. A little jeering fellow had draped himself in the fine overcoat and was dancing about, tripping over the trailing hem. I was disgusted, furious. In uncontrollable fury I charged at him. stripped off the coat, twisted his arms, punched and pummeled him, slung him across the pavement, heard a satisfactory crunch when his screaming face hit the wall. Turning, I confronted a man twice his size, half saw a boot flick out. Acute pain in my leg made me stumble: I recovered just in time to see his arm swing up in a practiced curve, and reacted as I had been trained. A textbook fall; flat on my back, one foot locking his ankle, I caught the glint of the falling knife, as my other leg bashed the trapped kneecap until it cracked. In a moment I would have the entire crew swarming all over me. I had no more chance than the officer against the lot of them with their knives; but I meant to do some damage before they finished me off. Suddenly there were shots, shouts, the sound of running feet: the police had arrived at last. I watched them chase the looters round a corner into another street; then limped over to the man on the ground.

He lay on his back, bleeding from many wounds. Not much past the prime of life, he had looked impressive, a tall, vital, imposing man, still desirable physically. Now his nose had been flattened, his mouth slit at the corners, one eye was half out of its socket, his whole face and head discoloured with blood and dirt, the shapes lost and distorted. Blood was everywhere. They had almost torn off his right arm. He did not move, I could not see his breathing. I knelt down, opened his tunic, his shirt, put my hand on his chest. The heart was not to be felt, and my hand came out sticky with blood. I wiped it on my handkerchief, then went for his coat, spread it over him, hiding the mess. I wanted to leave him some dignity. He was a stranger to whom I had never spoken; but he was my sort of man; we were not like that rabble. It was an outrage that they should have killed him. They must have cringed before him in his strength and power. This was how they treated him when they caught him alone, no longer young, and at a disadvantage. It was disgusting. I regretted not having inflicted more punishment on them.

I remembered the revolver, stooped over the grating. There was just room for my fingers between the bars, and I pulled it up, put it into my pocket, moved on. I was still limping badly, my leg was painful. Suddenly someone shouted, a shot zipped past. I stopped, waited until the police overtook me.

'Who are you? What are you doing here? Why did you touch the body? It's not allowed.' Before I could answer, there was a rasping noise and a ground floor window burst open, dislodging masses of snow from the sill, a woman's head stuck out just beside me. 'This man's brave. He deserves a medal. I saw what happened. He rushed in and tackled the lot of them singlehanded, although they had knives and he was unarmed. I saw everything from this window.' A policeman wrote down her name and address in his notebook.

Their attitude became more friendly; but they insisted that I should go to the station and make a report. One of them took my arm. 'It's only in the next street. You look as if you could do with some first aid.' I had to go in. It was unfortunate: I did not want to give an account of myself and my movements and motives. Besides, the revolver would make things awkward if it was noticed; they were bound to recognize the service pattern. When I took off my coat, I arranged it carefully so that the bulge did not show. They patched me up, strapped my leg with plaster. I had a wash, drank some strong coffee with rum in it. The chief interviewed me alone. He glanced at my papers, but gave the impression of being preoccupied with something else: it was not possible to ask if he had any precise information about the advancing ice. We exchanged cigarettes, discussed the food problem. He said rations were short, and distributed according to the value to the community of each individual's work: 'No work, no food.' His face showed signs of strain while he was talking; the crisis must be nearer than I had supposed. Planning my questions deliberately, I asked about refugees. Gangs of starving fugitives from the ice were a problem in all the surviving countries. 'If they're able to work we let them stay. We need all the workers we can get.' I said: 'Doesn't that create difficulties? How do you manage to house them all?' 'There are camps for the men. We put the women in hostels.' I had been leading up to this point. Pretending to take a professional interest, I inquired: 'Would I be allowed to look over one of these places?' 'Why not?' His smile was tired. I could not tell whether he was exceptionally civilized or merely indifferent. Before I left he gave me an address. Things had turned out very much better than I had expected. I had got the information I wanted, and a good army revolver.