The Ice Cream Man (19 page)

“Just close your eyes first.”

“So here I am, sitting with my eyes shut and a stone in my hand. Is something supposed to happen?”

“The stone has a question for you.”

“Has it?”

“Yes.”

After a moment, Kerstin asks, “Am I somehow supposed to know what it’s asking?”

“You know what it’s asking.”

“Do you know?”

“Yes.”

“How can you tell? Shouldn’t it be private?”

“We all heard what you said about Jan.”

“What’s that, exactly?”

“About being able to get there only when you think of Jan.”

An amused smile appears at the corners of Kerstin’s mouth.

“What was unclear about that?”

“Do you think about Jan as a person or a man, or just . . . a cock that happens to be Jan’s?”

“I’m not telling.”

“Why not?”

“Because of Jan.”

“It’s precisely because of him that you should say.”

“I’ll tell you if he leaves.”

“No, Jan should hear it, because it’s about him.”

Kerstin turns her head toward me, but her eyes remain closed. “Jan?”

“What?”

“Why aren’t you saying anything?”

“What am I supposed to say?”

Kerstin opens her eyes and looks at me. Then she closes them again and says, “Well, you have only yourselves to blame.”

“Nobody’s to blame.”

Kerstin assumes a blank expression. She hasn’t finished yet.

“Jan is dead.”

“What?”

“Dead. As dead as this stone.”

Eva glances at Kerstin’s hand as if she were worried for the stone. Maybe it is too light, after all.

“Jan has just died, but he is still lying there, warm and soft, as if he’d just gone to sleep.”

“What?”

“In one version, Jan is already cold and pale and his lips have turned blue.”

“And then . . . then you . . . but what does it actually mean? Why does Jan need to be dead?”

“Of course he doesn’t need to be. But that’s when I feel it the most.”

“Are you serious?”

“Are you?”

“Are you putting me on? Give me back the sorrow stone, Kerstin.”

“It obviously doesn’t work. At least not when you hold it in your hand. Are you sure it’s not a Ben Wa ball?”

“I can only imagine how much Jan had to put up with when he was with you.”

“You just go right on imagining that, my dear Eva, because your little complexes are just as imaginary as those dried-up, shriveled, teeny-tiny little peas your teeny-tiny little ass feels through twenty princess mattresses.”

“It’s your daughter I feel most sorry for.”

“What do you know about our daughter?”

“That she ran away. Somewhere in Europe.”

“Gunilla’s a big girl now, so she doesn’t need to run away. But what would you know about children, when they run away as soon as they hit your womb?”

“How do you know about my miscarriages?”

“Didn’t they teach you in your stewardess training that the air pressure’s the same in business class as in economy?”

“You’re vile. You were being serious: you don’t feel anything unless somebody drops dead.”

Stefan’s jovial head appears around the bedroom door.

“Hey, Jan, what’s going on here? Have the women dragged you into the bedroom?”

“Where have you been?” Eva asks in an accusing tone.

“I was on the john for a good half hour. That junk they served on the plane must have been full of salmonella.”

“That’s not it. The atmosphere here has been so toxic that I feel ill, too.”

“What’s up with you, Eva?”

“Could you ask Kerstin to leave, please?”

“What’s she done?”

“Kerstin should go now.”

“I’ll call your sister.”

“No, you don’t need to. Just take her away.”

“You shouldn’t stay here on your own. You look like you’re in a lot of distress.”

“I’m going,” says Kerstin. “Thank you, Eva. Say hello to your therapist for me.”

I get up as well, but Eva grabs my hand, explaining that we still need to have the dessert she prepared especially. Her therapist advised her that it should be something she’d never attempted before and that could easily go wrong. Kerstin gives me a look of schadenfreude before she disappears through the door.

In the kitchen, Eva’s tears are dripping on the cream puffs. Stefan cannot find Eva’s sister’s number because Eva has hidden the phone book.

“How dare you tell Kerstin about my miscarriages!”

“Not now, Eva, sweetheart. I most certainly didn’t tell her.”

“Oh, yes, you did, don’t give me that. I just don’t understand why you told her, or when—when you got it into your head that you should tell her, of all people.”

“I swear I didn’t tell her a thing. I guess you’ve just seen what Kerstin’s really like. She says whatever comes into her head and slashes away like a barber’s razor.”

“How did she just happen to think of my miscarriages, then?”

“Maybe she guessed, since we were together for seven years and nothing happened. And you’re the one who brought Kerstin and Jan’s daughter into it.”

Eva grabs the bowl of cream puffs with both hands, plonks the cream puffs on a platter, and remains there hunched over, wracked with sobs. “I can’t believe you went and told that bitch about my miscarriages!”

“Eva, I’m calling your sister now.”

“Go to hell! Nobody’s going to come and sort out your mess!”

I try to thank her for the evening and start to back away into the hall, but Eva pulls me back into the kitchen. “Wait, I promised you dessert!”

“It doesn’t matter now.”

“Yes, it does! I baked at least ten trays of these damned cream puffs before they turned out right.”

“Did you open the oven too soon?” I ask, instantly regretting it, but Eva looks at me in surprise and rubs her cheek. “Yes, I did. Wait, I’ll give you some to take home with you. I’ll wrap them in plastic wrap. How many do you want?”

Once I am outside, I take a deep breath of cool air. Only then do I realize I haven’t called a taxi. There is one waiting in the street. Its back door opens.

“What took you so long?” Kerstin asks in an irritated voice.

“Stefan stayed behind to call her sister. I’m sure he’ll be along soon.”

“Hop in,” Kerstin says. “We’ll go past your place.”

When we reach the neighborhood of terraced houses where the lawns, trimmed to a uniform height, lie asleep in the summer night, Kerstin gets out of the taxi after me and sends it on its way.

“Don’t glare at me like that. I want to see how you live.”

“It’s none of your business.”

“Let me into your hall so I can phone for a taxi.”

“I don’t have a phone in the hall.”

“Where is it, then?”

“That’s none of your business either.”

Her posture takes on a slight stoop. “Then I can wait in the hall until you call a taxi for me.”

“Why did you send that one away?”

“Oh, don’t nag. What on earth are you carrying?”

“Eva gave me some cream puffs.”

In the hall, she kicks off her shoes and starts wandering around, switching on the lights in every room.

“Not all that big, but you get a sense of space in the living room from that big window. Don’t you have any curtains?”

“There’s a roller blind.”

Kerstin goes over to the window, finds the cord, and lowers the blind.

“Now put those disgusting slime balls in the trash. Or are you planning to eat them?”

“Yes.”

“Go ahead.”

Kerstin looks for something to drink. She finds nothing. She has always despised men who start drinking once they are on their own, so at least I do not appear to be one of them. But what does she know? Maybe the cupboards are bare precisely because I drink everything immediately, though even that she would notice. Her eyes rest on me for a moment. It’s not a problem for her either. Even if at some point it occurred to her that she should start drinking simply so she didn’t need to be in control of everything, it would be something stronger that took the reins.

“I’ll call that taxi for you.”

“You do that.”

While I am on hold with the taxi dispatcher, I hear her come into the bedroom, creeping up behind me.

“You have one can of tuna in the fridge, Jan.”

I turn my back, but her hand pushes down on my shoulder and she disconnects the call.

“Did you hear what I said?”

I try to dial the number again.

“Why do you keep canned food in the fridge, Jan?”

“It’s open.”

“Jan, dear, you shouldn’t leave food in open cans. All sorts of poisons start to leak into the tuna from the metal as soon as it comes in contact with oxygen.”

I listen to the hold message. She takes the receiver out of my hand and puts it down.

“Haven’t you learned anything in twenty years?”

“Sure I have. You taught me.”

“You didn’t laugh all evening, Jan. You smiled at Eva a couple of times out of politeness. When was the last time you laughed?”

I pick up the receiver again. She gives me a pitying look.

“Do you have a washing machine?”

“No.”

“How do you wash your clothes?”

“I go to the launderette.”

“Do you even have a laundry basket? Doesn’t it bother you at all that there are dirty shirts and trousers all over your floors and chairs?”

“Since when has that ever bothered you? Didn’t they lie around on the floors we used to share?”

“Do you have anyone?”

“None of your business.”

“Have you? Don’t you think you should have some fun? It’s so dreary here.”

“Do I have to throw you out? Is that what you want?”

“You only need to say something so nasty I’ll be forced to leave.”

“Are you suggesting that something I might say would still have any effect on you?”

She puts her hand on my thigh and gives it a slow squeeze.

“I’ve never cheated on anyone else with you. Do you understand what that means?”

“No.”

“I’ve only ever cheated on you with all the others. Do you get it now?”

I shake my head and stand up, tell her to call a taxi herself, then go into the kitchen. I open the fridge and look at the opened can of tuna in the dim blue light. I hear Kerstin’s voice in the bedroom, and a moment later she comes into the kitchen.

“Well?”

“It’s on its way.”

“They come pretty fast. You’d better go out into the garden and wait.”

“Are you going to see me out?”

She has no intention of going anywhere that night. As we stand by the hawthorn hedge and the taxi’s headlights appear at the end of the street, she briefly puts her hot, wriggly tongue in my mouth before walking back toward the door. I send the taxi on its way.

When I come inside, Kerstin is standing in the living room by the black leather armchair. She asks, “Do you remember, Jan? That man who interrogated you. There at Bílá Labut.”

So it’s that bastard Kerstin wants. That head of security who sat in the black leather chair. Kerstin wants to sit on that bastard and cram the whole political and ideological system between her thighs. Kerstin finds a lever on the leather chair that lowers the backrest beneath the bastard to an angle of negative 45 degrees, then she shows how to slide down a hill in Sweden in the wintertime. The bastard is familiar with the slipperiness of the ice and the speed from his uninhibited winter holidays in the Tatra Mountains, but when Kerstin shows him how your tongue sticks to metal railings when the temperature gets below negative 45 degrees Celsius, the stickiness of the ice is a wholly new experience for the bastard, and when he tries to get his tongue loose from the railing, his taste buds are torn off and stick to Kerstin, and after that nothing but Kerstin tastes of anything.

She has already fallen asleep when the telephone rings. I hesitate. She buries her head under the pillow.

“Who the hell’s calling you at this time of night?”

“What if it’s Stefan?”

“I don’t think Stefan has your number.”

“We’ll see. What do I say if it is Stefan?”

“Tell him how much fun you’re having.”

“Aren’t you bothered at all? Should I tell him you’re here?”

“Of course not!”

“Well, what?”

“Answer it! Or else unplug the phone!”

“What should I say?”

“You’re pathetic! Just tell him you don’t know where I am!”

“He won’t believe that.”

“Don’t think too much of yourself.”

I pick up the receiver.

“Jan Vorszda.”

“Hello?”

“Who’s that?”

“It’s me, Dad.”

“Gunilla?”

I feel Kerstin quickly sit up behind me. Gunilla’s voice makes me angry, as if she were still five years old and had run out into the road, and instead of embracing her, I want to shake some sense into her.

“Yes, I know where you are.”

“Where else could I be? This is exactly where I should be.”

“What are you babbling about? Are you drunk?”

“So you’re not going to listen to me at all if I drink a little beer? Dad, do you remember what Czech beer tastes like? Do you remember how good it is?”

“It can stay there.”

“How can you say that?”

“That’s something you can’t understand.”

“It’s your fault. It’s because of you I don’t understand anything. I don’t even know how to buy food in a shop. What does
děkuji
mean? One guy said
děkuji
to me just now.”

“What did he say that for?”

“What do you mean, what for?”

“What did he say that to you for at this time of night?”

“Tell me what it means first.”

“Is Monika there?”

“Annika is not here.”

“Well, where is she?”

“I guess she’s in Italy.”

“Shouldn’t you two be traveling together?”

“Maybe, I dunno.”

“Did you two have an argument?”

“No.”

“If I knew you’d be gallivanting around on your own, I wouldn’t have let you go in the first place.”

“How would you have stopped me?”

Kerstin starts tugging the receiver out of my hand. “Let me talk to her.”