The Ice-Cream Makers (31 page)

‘Let her sleep, will you,' my father said. But I walked right past them and up the stairs. When I had gone up to impregnate Sophia they hadn't said a word, but now they looked at me like I was a criminal.

In the row ahead of me on the plane there had been a young mother with a baby, a three-month-old girl with dark eyes and hardly any hair on her head. The mother had walked up and down the aisle with her, trying to rock her to sleep, but she had looked at all the passengers. Me included.

I saw babies everywhere on my journey home — in Barcelona, in the queue for the check-in desk, at Schiphol — and I very briefly entertained the hope that Sophia would be in the arrival hall with Giuseppe in her arms, among the people with roses and balloons. I had never been met by anyone in the Netherlands.

Giuseppe was absolutely tiny, his onesie far too big. He was sleeping on his side, arms stretched out, little fists clenched. There he was. I wanted to pick him up and hold him tight.

Sophia opened her eyes. ‘I didn't know you were coming today,' she whispered, not yet fully awake. She was lying on the bed in her knickers, the sheets pushed back. It was boiling hot in the attic. She didn't cover up. She didn't mind.

‘I wanted to see him.'

She looked at Giuseppe with a smile on her face. We both looked at him, at his flat little ears, his soft head.

‘Isn't he gorgeous?'

I felt tears in my eyes and was unable to stop them. They rolled down my cheeks.

‘I think he's going to wake up soon,' Sophia said. ‘He's been asleep for two hours.'

He was a miracle to behold. The little boy who had brought the ice-cream machines to a standstill in the middle of spring, with his small hands and rosy arms.

Leaning over him, I studied his face. His eyebrows looked as if they had been applied with a delicate paintbrush. Briefly, very briefly, his hand moved, and then his fist opened, but he remained fast asleep.
A soft, feathery breath
, as Ida Gerhardt wrote in her poem. In and out. Very gently, almost imperceptibly.

Sophia rolled over on her side too, turning her body to her child. ‘I'm going to try and get some more rest,' she said.

‘Would you like me to leave?'

She shook her head.

‘In that case, I'll stay.'

She murmured her assent.

It was only then that I picked up the scent Ida Gerhardt describes in her short poem.
Scent of honey / and fresh milk, / of a nestling / fast asleep.

Sophia's nipples had grown bigger and darker. Her breasts were huge. She looked strong, stunning. And not just her. They looked beautiful together, a union of mother and child. Her nakedness was natural; it protected them.

Luca was at work downstairs and wouldn't come up until late in the evening. I didn't really belong here, either.

Sophia's eyes were closed. She appeared to be asleep, one leg crossed over the other. I planted a careful kiss on Giuseppe's head and inhaled his scent.
The scent of what has happened: / birth, / secret.
He seemed unaware of the kiss. My first touch had passed him by. I had seen him. He hadn't seen me, but I was fine with that.

Not long after Giuseppe's birth, I travelled to the Sha'ar International Poetry Festival in Tel Aviv for the first time. I had been in Rotterdam for a week, if that, but I had held Giuseppe and he had stared at my face with a furrow in his forehead, as though he couldn't quite comprehend it — the gleaming teeth conjured up by my smile, the profuse stubble of my three-day beard. I had pressed my nose against his nose.

Every morning and evening Luca would work in the kitchen, preparing thirty different ice-cream flavours. In the afternoon, he helped my mother behind the counter. He was curt, to the point of not even greeting the regulars. That week I never once saw him with Giuseppe in his arms. Sophia, meanwhile, spent every waking hour with her child. If I happened to spot her sitting outside from my office, I would rush downstairs. Most of the time he was asleep, one hand on his mother's breast.

Sophia told me that babies tend to get a bit lighter straight after birth, but then gain a little weight every day. The health nurse reckoned Giuseppe was doing really well. But in the seven days I spent in Rotterdam, I didn't detect any changes. Giuseppe was still tiny and his onesies were far too big. Maybe his hair grew a bit lighter, but such minimal differences slip through the filter of memory.

The changes were more obvious in Luca. His eyes were small, and the circles underneath them seemed to be getting darker by the day.

‘Your son is keeping me awake,' he said one afternoon. It was a joke, but he failed to crack a smile.

Maybe that's what Giuseppe saw when I held him and the furrows appeared in his forehead. Two faces that looked alike, but one with smooth cheeks and the other with a smile. One with a frown, the other with a suntan.

In Tel Aviv they had flown in an interpreter from Brussels for me. The poets read in their native tongue, but were also translated into Modern Hebrew. I had requested English translations, and so it happened that I was followed around the festival by a small man with a cravat. He worked for the European Parliament and had no affinity with poetry whatsoever. Wherever I sat down, he would sit down behind me and bring his mouth to my ear. He translated the poetry literally and simultaneously, while also providing a running commentary. ‘Not a fucking rose again. No, not again! Fuck the rose, fuck the rose.' He wasn't too keen on imagery.

One of the programme strands featured Israeli and Palestinian poets translating one another's work. All the poetry dealt with the conflict, so in order to translate the work the poets had to understand their colleagues' view of the hostilities, get inside one another's heads. It created the necessary debate; the interpreter in my right ear sounded like a match reporter. The poets seldom agreed, but at least they heard the other side of the story.

Back in Rotterdam, I was swallowed up by preparations for the World Poetry Festival, which would take place mid-June. I had preliminary talks with interviewers, corrected English translations, and conferred with the other editors about the schedule. On some days I was in the office until ten o'clock at night. The hours were long, but never as long as in the ice-cream parlour. Luca lugged metal containers and carried cones and milkshakes to boys and girls sitting outside. His back ached — you could tell by the way he walked across the cobbles. He had acquired our father's gait.

Sophia was blossoming. She took the pram for long walks along the Nieuwe Maas. Sometimes she would sit on a bench by the river, watching the ships heading for the hinterland while breastfeeding Giuseppe. He giggled whenever she caressed his upper lip with her index finger.

It wasn't long before she had regained her slender figure and was back in her summer dresses.

She was a sight for sore eyes. Her svelte shape, her amazing bosom. I bumped into her by accident on Parklaan, where I'd had a meeting with a festival sponsor. It was the time of year when the poplars were losing their catkins. There were places around town where it seemed to be snowing softly, with innumerable little seeds floating through the air.

‘Giovanni!'

I turned round and saw her walking through the June snow. She came towards me with the pram, white catkins in her hair.

Giuseppe was wide awake. He was lying on his back, watching our faces with a twinkle in his eyes. Everything was wondrous. He was flapping his little arms about and producing happy sounds.

Something got caught in the filter of memory. I noticed that his cheeks had become fuller, a little chubbier. This was the first time I noticed a difference, saw that he had grown a little.

‘Are you in love yet?' Sophia asked.

‘Yes.'

I
was
in love, like I had been in love with her.

Giuseppe kicked his little legs, and when Sophia tickled his belly he began to crow with pleasure.

‘How are the nights?' I asked.

‘Luca wakes up at every little sound.'

‘Does he cry a lot?'

‘Oh, you know, when he's hungry.'

She reflected a moment.

‘Luca says Giuseppe kicks him all night long.'

‘Is he that lively?'

‘He's a restless little fellow, and he usually sleeps between the two of us. I don't want him to fall out of bed.'

She looked at the whirling catkins. It was like the snow of yesteryear, the snow in which we saw her for the first time, her head tilted back and her mouth wide open. Except everything was different.

‘You can catch these with your tongue, too,' Sophia said, ‘but they don't taste of anything and they're really dusty.'

We walked to the ice-cream parlour together without saying very much. Occasionally we heard some noise from the pram and would both look at Giuseppe, the way young parents do. His dark eyes kept darting happily about.

Two days before the World Poetry Festival, I found Sophia sitting outside Venezia. It was a chilly morning, but the sun was out. She wore a poppy-red dress.

‘Will you have an espresso with me?'

‘I really ought to work.'

‘One espresso.'

I gave in and sat down opposite her.

‘Have you got a lot more to do?' she asked.

‘The first poets are arriving today.'

I noticed goosebumps on her arms. Like her mother in the mountains, she simply ignored the cold.

‘Are you going to Schiphol?'

‘Yes, this afternoon and then back again in the evening.'

Beppi came out and reached for his grandchild. ‘You'll only get coffee in exchange for this sweet little fellow,' he said to us.

‘Gently,' Sophia said. ‘He's just been fed.'

Giuseppe crowed with delight in the arms of his namesake.

‘Shall we pinch each other's noses again?' my father asked and proudly carried him inside. He was more fun as a granddad than as an ice-cream maker.

For a while we watched the people go by. Shop assistants on their way to work, their heels tapping out a regular rhythm.

‘My breasts are driving me insane,' Sophia said. ‘They've been rock-hard for a couple of days now. They feel like they're about to explode.'

I couldn't not look, and I wondered if this might be one of those images I would keep seeing with my eyes closed, that would stay with me forever. Her breasts full of milk in a red dress. I hoped the image would fall through the filter, but I feared the worst.

My father returned with two cups of espresso. Giuseppe was now in my mother's arms. She was looking at the colours of the ice-cream with him — the pale green of the pistachio, the yellow of the mango-lemon, the amazing shade of the pomegranate-beetroot. A little later Luca was standing beside them. He planted a kiss on the small head and then waved at us.

Sophia waved back. ‘Will you join us?' she shouted.

‘Just a minute,' Luca said when he came out with Giuseppe and sat down. ‘I've got so much more to do.'

Giuseppe sat on his lap, clumsily sucking a finger. Drool dribbled out of his mouth.

‘It's going to be hot,' Luca said. ‘I'm curious to see if you'll get as many people as the ice-cream parlour.'

He was referring to the festival. We attracted an average of five hundred visitors a day, but far fewer on tropical days. The summer heat was the festival's Achilles heel. The ice-cream parlour, on the other hand, would have dozens of people queuing at any one time, a long line snaking down the street. They had never counted their customers. They didn't get the chance.

Luca smiled. He had won this competition. Perhaps he had won everything. At the age of eighteen I had made a choice, not an ill-considered one, but I could never have foreseen that the implications would be so big, and would only get bigger.

Giuseppe fidgeted. Unable to find his finger, he began to cry. Luca tried to console him by stroking his head, but to little effect.

I saw the anguish in my brother's eyes, a young, inexperienced father with a baby in his arms, and at that precise moment I lifted Giuseppe off his lap and held him to my chest.

Luca looked mightily pissed off.

As I rocked Giuseppe and gently patted him on his bottom, the crying briefly let up and he calmed down in my arms. But then he began jerking his head, and he was back to screaming at the top of his lungs.

Sophia took Giuseppe from me. ‘I reckon he's still hungry,' she said and slipped her dress strap off her left shoulder. She bared her white breast and pressed Giuseppe against it. He sucked and drank and became intoxicated.

His fathers got up and went to work.

That evening I went to Schiphol for the second time that day to pick up a poet. This one had come all the way from Zimbabwe and had been recommended to us by the programmer of an African festival. He wrote that the poet lived in a small village, where he was a pastor as well as a dynamite specialist in the mines. In the evening, by the fire, he would read his self-penned poems. The poetry was unpretentious, his life sober. One of the poems we were sent told the story of a man who crouched down at a junction at the busiest time of day. He waited for a car to lose a hubcap, and then another one, and another, until at long last he had five. Five plates to eat from.