The Ice Cream Man
Authors: Katri Lipson
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2012 Katri Lipson
Translation copyright © 2014 Ellen Hockerill
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Previously published by Tammi Publishers in 2012 in Finland as
Jäätelökauppias
. Translated by Ellen Hockerill and first published in English by AmazonCrossing in 2014. This work has been published with the financial assistance of FILI – Finnish Literature Exchange.
Published by AmazonCrossing, Seattle
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and AmazonCrossing are trademarks of
Amazon.com
, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781477825723
ISBN-10: 147782572X
Cover design by Marc Cohen
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014940236
First edition
I
THE DEPI
CTION OF LIFE
“I did not see one dead person in Poland, not one soldier, not one civilian.”
—Leni Riefenstahl
I demanded to see the manuscript. The director pointed to his head: it’s in here. I didn’t give in. He took out a pen and paper, scribbled a few lines in such deliberately unintelligible
handwriting
that I could make out nothing but an ellipsis rounding off the final sentence.
I said, without hesitation, “So, they fall in love.”
“How so?” He took back the paper, furrowed his brow. “Well, look at that. Three dots . . .”
What do we need a script for? I finally realize this as I lie beneath him on a sofa at the Hotel Full Moon. From a decorative painting along the border of the ceiling, one can see that there is no mystery to it at all; everything is awkward and transparent, so much so that God should be ashamed, and we all should be pitied.
Everybody was angry with me yesterday. The fire trucks arrived, sirens wailing. A terrible commotion.
“Where’s the fire?” “There is no fire.” “This is the third time.” “What’s going on here?” “Ms. Zachovalová set off the alarm before we could stop her.” “We’ve got better things to do than run back and forth for no reason at all.”
I tried in vain to defend myself. “There’s a burning smell in the air. Can’t anyone else smell it?”
And they didn’t even check the electric cables. I gazed at their helmets. They had dents dating back to the Crimean War. They were already on their way out. I demanded that they give the place a thorough check. The director said, “Let’s all calm down, shall we?” To which the fire chief responded, “I’m sure Ms. Zachovalová understands that if this happens too often, no one will bother coming out here when there’s a real fire . . .”
Then go to hell! There’s plenty of fire there, I can assure you!
Someone is teasing me. Someone knows that there are only two things in this world that I fear: fire and mediocrity. And there’s nothing mediocre about being afraid of fire! When I walked into the changing room, I knew someone had been striking matches in there. A whole box of them, most likely. On purpose. Who does something like that? The director assured me that nobody would do that. I checked in the trash can; it was empty. You might well burn matches, but they don’t disappear altogether; they just char. So why weren’t they in the trash can? Or on the floor? Nowhere at all. Surely nobody would put them back in their pocket? Unless they wanted to goad me by not leaving any evidence behind. The director tried to explain things: “Perhaps someone came down here for a cigarette.” But it wasn’t the smell of tobacco. I know it was the smell of matches.
Today, it was me and Martin Jelínek. For the first time. A full hour of nonsense, first from a script, then without:
“Name.”
“Esther Vorszda.”
“Date of birth.”
“May 1, 1922.”
“Place of birth.”
“Olomouc.”
“Nationality.”
“Czech.”
“Marital status.”
“Married.”
“Spouse.”
“Tomáš Vorszda.”
“Spouse’s date of birth.”
“July 10, 1921.”
“Spouse’s place of birth.”
“Plzeň.”
“Spouse’s nationality.”
“Czech.”
At times, Martin lost his cool. He was a little nervous. It was our first time. He has heard about me. But I’ve heard even more about him.
“Spouse’s nationality.”
“Czech.”
“Spouse’s nationality.”
“As I said. Czech.”
Then we started again from the beginning. After the fifth repetition, there was a small variation.
“Name.”
“Tomáš, please, not again . . .”
“Name!”
“I can’t bear it anymore.”
“If you can’t bear it with me, how will you bear it with them?”
We continued by asking about the children.
“Do you have children?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“My husband doesn’t want any.”
“Accidents can always happen.”
“They haven’t.”
“Would you like children?”
“They never talk to us like that, Tomáš. They’d never even talk to rats like that. They’re polite to rats.”
“Answer the question. Would you?”
“Yes.”
“For the last time: Who is your husband?”
“You are.”
Martin stared at the director’s notes in silence. “It says here your husband is one Tomáš Vorszda.”
“Where?”
“Doesn’t it say so in your notes?”
“Yes.”
“Then shouldn’t you reply ‘Tomáš Vorszda’?”
He was looking at the director, not at me. All of a sudden, the director said, “In fact, I think Ms. Zachovalová’s idea is much better.”
He snatched the documents from our hands, drew some quick lines, scratched things out. “Right. From the top!”
“For the last time: Who is your husband?”
“You are.”
“Is that how you respond to your interrogator?”
“That’s how I respond to you.”
Pause. It was too long a pause, but Martin could do nothing other than wait because the next line was mine.
“So what now?”
“You’re just trying to remember.”
“And what of it? Where are we going?”
“Away from here.”
“Where did we meet?”
Silence. A third voice in the same room: “You certainly didn’t meet here.”
Esther and Tomáš Vorszda escape. I am Esther. Martin is Tomáš. There is another man with us, too, but his only function is to drive the car in which we are making our escape. We’re driving between the fields in the middle of the afternoon; it’s baking hot. The landscape becomes hillier, lots of spruce trees, bends in the road. Nobody has any lines. We arrive at a small village with a train station. Now for the first lines. We’re supposed to continue on our way, but something has happened. Esther isn’t feeling well, Tomáš is in doubt, and the driver simply wants us to make a quick decision.
After this, Esther and Tomáš decide to continue by themselves. They walk along a dirt track, dragging luggage behind them. Tomáš’s suitcases are extremely heavy; Esther’s are light. I am Esther. Martin is Tomáš. Esther is walking behind Tomáš. The director hollers instructions at me: “Look at Tomáš!” I look at Tomáš, but the director shouts again, “Look at Tomáš!” They’re filming my face so that everyone can see the way Esther looks at Tomáš. Martin is Tomáš, but all I can see is Martin. I see Martin from behind: the back of his white shirt, his dark trousers, the neck, his hair. The only thought in my head: How has his shirt remained so white?
At the end of the scene, an assistant takes the suitcases back to the car. Martin has blisters on his palms. I ask the assistant what was in the heavier suitcase. It was filled with every heavy object they could find. The director doesn’t want us to know what Tomáš is carrying in his suitcase.
Filming progresses in chronological order. The director has to work like this so we never know what will happen next. I’ve been watching him ever since we arrived at the shoot. I write everything down. The director “wanders around” in and about the house, “sits around” for a long time by the woodshed, “stands around” next to the barrel collecting rainwater, “accompanies” Martin into the shed. They come out of the shed; Martin is holding a saw. The director looks at the saw contentedly, though it’s covered in rust. Once we’re standing in front of Mrs. Němcová’s house, admiring the beautiful uplands, I comment quite deliberately, “Thank goodness for the mountains. They’ve been jutting up there for thousands of years. Thank goodness we can’t do anything about them . . .” The director simply nods his head as if this doesn’t affect him in the least.
I went to examine the shed. The dank smell of mold. Nothing but rusty tools. Martin peered inside. I don’t know what came over me. I said to him, “Tomáš, please, not again . . .”
Martin responded immediately, “If you can’t bear it with me, how will you bear it with them?”
Like a knife in the stomach, the words pierced through me, right down to my thighs. He gave a brief smile and disappeared back into the shaft of light beaming in through the chink in the door.
Swelteringly hot. Dirty, sweaty flakes of my skin come off when I rub it. Hotel Full Moon. First we bathe long and hard. I go into the director’s room. It’s only because Martin had said he was going to sleep. Martin had been sitting near the restaurant door at the opposite end of the table; he’d eaten and disappeared. The women prowl around him every evening in vain. Martin’s room is upstairs, next to the director’s. The walls are made of cardboard. The director’s cigarette burns next to an open window.
“So you think they fall in love?”
He asks me to lie down on the sofa on my back. I close my eyes.
“Like this?”
“Esther is wearing boots.”
“Why?”
“She’s been in the woods.”
“What about Tomáš?”
He places himself lengthways on top of me.
“Can you breathe?”
“Somewhat.”
“Martin doesn’t weigh as much as I do. Martin weighs as much as Tomáš. Esther should weigh less if she’s supposed to have been through the worst of the war, but Esther weighs more than she should. She weighs just as much as you.”
He’s breathing by my neck, his mouth open. After a moment, he says, “Still, this isn’t an erotic scene.”
“Isn’t it?”
“No.”
“What is it then?”
“You’ll work it out.”
“Does Martin know about this yet?”
No. Martin most certainly does not know about it. He’s sleeping heavily and weightlessly on the other side of that cardboard wall. Is he really asleep? We woke him all the same. How disgusting. I only went so far because Martin’s sofa was right against the wall. Then I picked up the receiver and informed the reception desk that I could smell smoke in Room 48. The director gave a sigh, raised his backside . . . no, raised his backside first, then gave a sigh.
Someone appeared from reception and started banging on Martin’s door. It took awhile for him to answer. “What’s the matter?” “You called down to say there was smoke in the room.” “Who did?” “A woman called from your room.” “There are no women here.” “But she called from Room 48.” “In that case, she gave you the wrong number.” “She very clearly said Room 48.” “There are no women here.” “That’s that then. Can you smell smoke?” “No.” “Can we check?” “Don’t you believe me?” “The rooms here are our responsibility; we have to check them every time someone raises concern.”
The director stepped into the corridor. “Let’s all calm down, shall we?” “Do you know who called us?” “It was Ms. Zachovalová.” “And where is Ms. Zachovalová now?” “She’s in my room.” “Can you smell smoke in your room?”
Everyone was angry with me. Everyone except Martin. Martin believed me. Why would I have done something like that on purpose?
And today, once again, “Look at Tomáš!” I’m standing alone in the bedroom, pulling back the curtain so I can see better. Tomáš is chopping firewood in the yard. I freeze on the spot, can’t relax the muscles in my face. Mrs. Němcová places a hand on my shoulder. “Just look at him. Everything he does is for your benefit.”
Esther has to kill a rabbit. It must be done without Tomáš’s knowing because she’s going to cook him a surprise meal, but because Esther can’t keep anything from Tomáš, he agrees to kill the rabbit for her without Mrs. Němcová’s knowing. But Esther doesn’t agree to this—of course, Esther will kill it herself because she wants to show Tomáš how easy it is and wants Mrs. Němcová to know what she’s really made of. When the director tells us all this, the rabbit that’s been sentenced to death has already been killed. The scene also requires a live rabbit, and prospective candidates are competing for the role in the hutch in Mrs. Němcová’s backyard.
I demand to kill the rabbit in front of the camera. The director eventually loses his patience. He was denied actual penetration on the sofa at the Hotel Full Moon (capitulation to the man), and now the torture of an innocent animal was to make up for the deficiencies in that same woman’s acting skills (capitulation to the director). I point out that I’ve made love so many times that portraying it on screen is a piece of cake, but I’ve never killed before; all violence makes me sick. Esther walks over to the rabbit hutch in her knee-high boots—we’ve been waiting for rain for a whole week just to film this scene. When the rain finally comes, and Esther’s hair is dripping wet and sludge is oozing from beneath the hutch, my first blow of the ax only severs a paw; the second finally decapitates the animal. From then on, everything goes so smoothly that Tomáš and Mrs. Němcová agree to eat the meal Esther prepares. In the kitchen, I drain the blood, skin the animal, and throw it in a pot. I cut the guts and innards into small pieces, add some chopped onion, salt, and pepper, and fry them in fat in a cast-iron pan. Never before have I completed the whole process from beginning to end.