Ice Trilogy (74 page)
“I’ll restrain it. And I’ll keep the Brotherhood together.”
He turned away and walked down the stone path.
“
Keep it well
,” said Khram’s old lips.
The toaster
beeped and two pieces of toast jumped out. Filling half of a large glass of pineapple juice with ice, Olga went over to the toaster.
“Papa and Mama,” she thought to herself instinctively, taking a sip from the glass and putting the toast on a plate.
But in a loud voice she immediately forbade herself to think those thoughts. With an English
imperative
she dismissed them: “Begone!”
The psychologist had been right: “A sword, slicing off a difficult past.” At first Olga didn’t believe in it. But six months after
that
day
the “sword” began to work and help. It chopped off the ghosts of her parents that arose in virtual space in any pair of things or beings — in a pair of shoes, in cooing pigeons, in stone figures next to corporate gates, in Adam and Eve, in the president’s two lifted fingers, in a pair of gold earrings, in the number 69, in a two-volume edition of Edgar Allan Poe, in copulating flies, and finally in the three-year absence of the twin towers, which had been standing
then
and had been visible to all
three
of them from the south window of the loft. Now Olga looked out of her sixth-floor Manhattan apartment alone. Not at the place where the World Trade Center towers had stood three years ago, but at the funny water towers on the roofs of the neighboring buildings, which always reminded her of Martians from the cover of Welles’s
War of the
Worlds
. A novel that her father had loved. And she had never rea
d...
“Olechka’s a gooooood girl!” said the parrot in the cage next to the window.
She remembered him, old Fima, walked over and poured some food into his cage, added water to his bottle, cut off a piece of apple and wedged it between the bars. Fima began to peck at the apple with his terrifying beak, while squinting at Olga.
“He remembers too,” she thought.
And she immediately swung her invisible sword, cutting it all off: “Begone!”
Fima chewed away, showing his thick tongue, and said, “Don’t worry!”
“Be happy!” Olga nodded and laughed.
It was time to begin the day.
Olga spread salty goat cheese on a piece of toast, put three circles of sliced cucumber on it, and covered them with two lettuce leaves. She slapped down a piece of turkey on the lettuce, circles of tomatoes on the turkey, then added another piece of toast to make a fat sandwich before biting into it. And then, grabbing her glass, she sat down at the computer. Washing down a piece of sandwich with the icy juice, she hit a key on the keyboard. The monitor came to life and a deep male singsong voice greeted her: “Hi, O-ol-g-a-a!”
“
Privet saliut
,” she answered in Russian.
She glanced at her e-mail: four messages. One from work (a reminder that after vacation, on the sixteenth, Olga had to be in Philadelphia with a contract for the delivery of marble). Another was from Liza in Chicago (for the sixth time she swore that she would come “to eat, drink, and shoot the bull in Russian”). The third was from Peter, a colleague of her father’s (he invited her to a barbecue this weekend).
“He always wants to introduce me to someone, the old geezer.” Olga grinned, remembering openhearted, fat Peter, a fancier of German beer, free jazz, and picnics. “No, Peter, I’ll already be far from here on Saturda
y..
.”
But the fourt
h...
“Yes!” Olga joyfully stamped the floor with her bare foot.
Hello, Olga.
Yesterday I sat on the site almost all night. There’s some news. First of all, I finally wrote to the elusive Michael Laird. And he answered me! He has in fact been the coordinator of the Society for the last two years. I sent him your letter, with the story of your abduction, with photographs of you and your deceased parents. Now you and I are in the database of the site. Soon we’ll have a lot of friends. The headquarters of the Society is located in Guangzhou (southern China). Michael advised us to fly over for a more substantive conversation, since he doesn’t really trust e-mail. And he has something to show us in Guangzhou. The Society will help with visas, they have a standard invitation with a hotel as well. The invitee only has to buy the ticket. In connection with this I was thinking — why not combine our journey to Israel with a visit to Guangzhou? After all, China is closer to Israel than Göteborg and New York! That’s for starters. Secondly, we’ll kill two birds with one stone and save time. And honestly, I’m sick of all these months of living on conjecture and guesswork. I feel like getting a move on, doing something.
I await your reply eagerly,
Yours, Bjorn Vassberg
Olga gleefully clapped and, forgetting about her sandwich, began clattering on the keyboard.
Bjorn Vassberg, greetings!
Your idea is wonderful and I like it a lot. I’m sure that the information that we’ll get in Tel Aviv will be very important and explain a lot in our story. After that we can fly to China and meet with Laird. That would be fabulous! Especially since I’m on vacation at the moment. I await the invitation from you and then I’ll go straight to the Chinese embassy. As far as Tel Aviv is concerned, everything is in order, I reserved two rooms in our names at the Prima Astor hotel. It’s right on the seashore, I’ve stayed there before. As soon as you get your visa and buy a ticket, let me know. I would like to meet in the airport. My password for meeting is:
Odin v pole voin
. I await yours!
Till we meet!
Olga
That evening, when Olga returned from a bicycle ride in the park, Bjorn’s answer was waiting for her. It included the invitation to Guangzhou and the password: “
Kräftskivan
.”
“Something in Swedis
h..
.” Olga laughed and rushed to look up the address of the Chinese consulate in New York.
“Tomorrow, tomorrow!” she thought as she printed out the invitation, found two photographs, and placed it all in her dark-blue American passport.
She made herself a large coffee with milk, sat down at the computer, and typed in the address: www.icehammervictims.org. A picture emerged on the monitor: a girl and a boy naked to the waist were pressing their palms to the wound in the center of each others’ chests. Above the picture were the words “Official Site of the Society of Ice Hammer Victims.” Below were the usual links: History of the Society, News, People, Photo Gallery, Personal Stories, Publications, Conjectures, Join Us! Olga clicked on Personal Stories. She skimmed over well-known text — she’d already read all of them a long time ago. At the end she found three new ones.
Stephanie Treglown, fourteen years old, Newcastle, Australia
A week before Christmas holiday two women came to our school, assistants to a director who said that they were looking for girls to play extras in a remake of Peter Weir’s well-known film
Picnic at Hanging Rock
. Everyone in Australia knows this film — my parents always watched it, even when I was little, we have a VHS cassette and a DVD of it. My parents and I visited the cliffs of Massedon where those tragic events of February 14, 1900, took place, when the senior class of the Abelard Girls’ School set off on St. Valentine’s day for that very cliff to have a picnic, and three girls disappeared without a trace. All the girls in our class really wanted to be in the film. These director’s assistants, Debora and Ellen, said that the director of the remake would be David Lynch, that the casting was taking place now, and that Lynch was choosing completely unknown schoolgirls for the parts of the girls, so that it was quite possible that one of us might get to play a real role in the film, with lines. They chose three girls from our class, including me, and another seven from the school. We were all blue-eyed and light-haired. I was so thrilled when they chose me! I especially liked one of the girls in Weir’s film — Miranda. She’s so pretty and gentle, like an angel! She has incredible blue eyes and lovely blond hair. And it was quite a shame that she didn’t really become a Hollywood star, that she acted again only in
Mad Max
, and that was it. Ellen and Debora said that after Christmas we would have to go to Sidney where everyone chosen would get together, and Lynch himself would make the final choice among us. They would pay our way. And Mrs. Halle, Suzy Halle’s mother, went with us. We arrived in Sidney around noon and went to the opera on the shore. It’s an enormous building, I was there twice when I was a little girl — for the opera
Peer Gynt
, and the ballet
Giselle
. We were taken into one of the auditoriums, and the entire room, with 1,500 seats, was filled with schoolgirls! And all of them were blue-eyed and light-haired! I had never seen anything like it! And among them were lots that looked like Miranda. Of course I immediately realized that there was no way they would ever choose me — there were so many beautiful girls in the hall! We waited for Lynch. But instead of him, three people got up onstage — a kind of plump guy, an old woman, and a thin, bald man, very serious. The old woman told us that Lynch was very busy, and therefore his assistants would do the choosing. The woman introduced herself as the author of the film script. And these three sat in armchairs in front of the stage and asked the girls to come up to them in pairs, in turns. The girls began to do this. The three looked attentively at each pair, and then asked them to come over and the old woman placed her hand on each girl’s chest. Right where your neck begins. It continued like that for almost four hours. And during this time, out of 1,500 only 36 were chosen. I was one of them. Then they wrote down my phone number and address and said they’d be in touch with me by e-mail. And I went home, terribly happy. I was in seventh heaven! Out of our entire school I was the only one chosen! I began to wait for news. But day after day passed and no one wrote to me. I had to wait. My parents and school friends tried to reassure me — films aren’t made that fast, just wait. And so I waited. But a terrible accident prevented me from becoming an actress. When I was coming back from school and crossing Main Street, a car stopped and a woman sitting in the driver’s seat asked about the road to Sesnok. I said to go straight and turn right at the light. She laughed, and pointed to her ears: “I can’t hear!” I went over to her and repeated it. The last thing I remember was that the woman was holding a broach shaped like a little musketeer’s gun. When I came to, I was already in the hospital. My neck and chest hurt terribly. My chest was bandaged up, I was wounded. Later they told me that I had been found on the highway. A car hit me when I was talking to that woman. And the woman had disappeared.
“That’s right Stephanie, you didn’t become an actress.” Olga smiled sadly. “And David Lynch is unlikely to film that remake.”
“Fimochka’s a go-o-oo-d boy,” the parrot cried.
“The best of all.” Olga nodded.
And she began reading the second story.
Dzhamilya Sabitova, thirty-eight years old, Temirtau, Kazakhstan
I have been working at our municipal market for four years. My husband, Taimuraz Sabitov, and I had our own stand, Beshbarmak. We cooked hot meals for the traders at the market. We made beshbarmak, pilaf, baursaki, and lagman. The merchants were always pleased because my husband and I are good cooks. And the management of the market was happy with us. On April 4, 2005, I was working at the stand with my sister Tamara, since my husband had gone to Karaganda to buy kitchen supplies. Tamara is seven years younger than me and has always helped me when my husband is busy. That day, as usual, we cooked everything in the morning, and at about 1:00 p.m. we opened the stand and began serving. Merchants came to us, took the food, and went back to their places with it. Everyone really loved us at the market because Tamara and I are very pretty. Our mama is Russian, and our papa is Kazakh. Mama’s blond and her eyes are dark blue, very beautiful. And the main thing is Tamara and I have the same eyes and the same light hair. From Papa we got our nose, lips, and black eyebrows. And everyone always joked that we were Mama’s girls. In Kazakhstan there aren’t many people with blue eyes, and there’s not many blondes, either. Because of that the men always flirted with us when they bought their food, they’d say all sorts of silly things. That day a man came over to the stand. He wasn’t local, I’d never seen him before. He was a tall, well-built blond with blue eyes, handsome and well dressed — you could tell he was rich. He asked if our pilaf was tasty or not. We said — try it, everyone says it’s good. He took a cup of rice and tried a little. Then he said — it’s delicious, probably because you two are so pretty. And he began talking about how we were such beauties and all. I asked what he bought at the market. He said he just came to take a look at his friend Tofik Khalilov’s market. That was the owner of the market, a very rich man. And the man said that he liked the market, especially if beauties like us worked there. He was just having fun, joking around with us. Tamara asked what he did and he said he had a business in Alma-Ata, two restaurants, and that he came to Karaganda on business and dropped by Temirtau to visit his old friend Tofik. And he asked — what were we doing that evening? We answered that we were washing and putting away the dishes, and going home to our husbands and children. Then he asked us to go with him to Tofik’s for pilaf. We turned him down, we said that our husbands wouldn’t let us go out at night, and that we were really busy. Then he offered to take us to a restaurant right now. And he was in good spirits, joking around with us in a cheery sort of way. He made Tamara and me laugh, he was so funny. He said that sometimes you have to take a break from wives and husbands, so you’ll love them even more. And he kept on trying to talk us into going with him. So we said — all right, but only for an hour. He said — all right, you choose the restaurant. Tamara says — Zhuldyz. That’s the most expensive restaurant in Temirtau. He says — no problem. So we locked up the stand and went with him. And when we left the market, he walked over to his car, a really expensive one, brand new and gorgeous, and he opened the back door — have a seat, ladies. We sat down, he drove, and turned on the music. And then suddenly a partition went up, and we were behind glas
s...
and there was something sour in the air, and I fainted. I came to on the ground. I raised my head — it was the middle of the night, my head was in the sand, and a dog was barking somewhere. As soon as I tried to sit up — my chest began to hurt terribly, like someone had hit me really hard. I looked around — I was somewhere in a wasteland outside of town. And I saw Tamara lying next to me. I touched her, but she didn’t move. She was dead. So I sat next to her all night. I cried and sat. I didn’t have the strength to go anywhere. In the morning some workers were driving along the highway from Sarani and noticed us, picked us up. They called my husband and took us to the hospital — my whole chest was beaten up, one big bruise. But on Tamara it was even worse — everything was broken, her breastbone was broken, her ribs were broken and stuck out through the skin, I couldn’t look at the wound. I spent a month in the hospital while my chest healed. Then the police said — it was a maniac.