The Ice Cream Man (21 page)

The first Christmas after their divorce, Gunilla’s mother sent her father a Christmas card.

To Torch Number Zero. Happy New Year. Remember there are only nineteen days in January.

On the nineteenth of January, Gunilla’s mother called her father, but he did not answer the phone. Her mother went to his apartment, but he did not answer the door. She called the maintenance man, the police, and a locksmith. When they broke the door down, the apartment was empty. The Christmas card had been put up on the fridge door with a magnet. There was a jar of pickled herring in the fridge. Gunilla’s mother swore she would strangle him with her own hands, but she strangled him between her legs, the way she always did. First the malice, then the gut-wrenching loveliness, which is the climax of malice.

July stands in the tram, heavy and ready to burst, like a pregnant woman. Blood flows in the direction of gravity, but the air does not move even the tiniest bit. Men’s shameless smells force their way into women’s nostrils. Gunilla already knows to stay as far away as possible from faded blue work dungarees and dirty green uniforms. She is on her way to a place where the men are dressed in white. Perhaps she will not need to be on her guard as much there. The tram draws closer to the hospital district on its gently ascending rails. Grass and weeds force their way up between the concrete slabs. More people try to get on at every stop, but no one gets off.

Dr. Lederer’s office is incredibly high up, probably right beneath the hospital’s tin roof, which the July sun has heated until it is
searing.
They go up the narrow stairs so quickly that Gunilla’s armpits, belly, and upper lip become moist with sweat. As they sit on the sofa in the office, Gunilla can feel hot steam rising from her shirt collar. She is ashamed that she is so out of breath, and her chest is heaving in time with her breathing. Dr. Lederer wonders what Gunilla is doing in Olomouc, but Gunilla does not wonder at all. The doctor wants her to tell him something about herself, but when she starts to speak, he looks only at her lips. From the damp indentation above her upper lip, he can see that she is ovulating. Dr. Lederer’s eyes have learned to see when a woman is ovulating, and he knows the secret of all seducers: just then, during those few hours, not a single woman would say no.

But nothing happens, not even a spark. The space between them is devoid of oxygen.

Dr. Lederer knows nothing about Milena. And if he did, he would never tell Gunilla. It may be that Dr. Lederer remembers something at the evening get-together for orthopedic surgeons, where secrets are kept though they are the subject of indiscreet laughter. But it suits the doctor just as well that Milena has vanished without a trace, because it is better not to have cleaners that are so young and dripping with honey that the they compete with the nurses for the doctors’ attentions.

“Sweden, Sweden,” the doctor mutters as if trying to recall something. “Isn’t it cold in Sweden?”

“It is in winter. But in the summertime . . .”

“I see. Does it get as hot there as it is here now?”

“It can. Sometimes.”

“And in the autumn? Does it rain a lot?”

“Quite a bit. Sometimes less.”

“And in the spring, everything starts over again?”

Gunilla nods, and the doctor nods as well, the way doctors nod.

“I ought to visit it sometime.”

The conversation limps along, never taking off. The doctor is an old hand at cutting this sort of thing short.

“If Milena gets in touch with us for some reason, then . . .”

A brief, unexpected joy tickles Gunilla’s stomach, blood rushes into vessels where it has not flowed for a long time, perhaps not ever. The doctor’s words weave a thin thread from Gunilla to Milena, so thin that it snaps before the sentence ends, but the doctor does not seem to have a reason to suspect any connection.

The translator’s house looks the same as all the other houses. It stands in a row next to other gray houses in one of the quieter parts of the city. The lawns are dry and trimmed down into prickly needles. The roses are heavy and reddish black against the ground. A cracked stone path leads from the gate to the front steps; foul-smelling smoke rises from the roof. The scent of barbecued meat hangs over the gardens like the spirit in the bottle; rickety folding chairs chirp in competition with the swallows.

The translator’s bookshelves hold only books, not a single photograph of family or friends. There is one picture on the wall of a somewhat tastelessly meandering flower arrangement painted in dirty hues, or perhaps it is just covered in a layer of dust. There aren’t that many books, either, and they all appear to be dictionaries, German, French, Russian, English—as if this woman’s life consisted of nothing but endless lists of words and no stories, not even a snippet of poetry.

“These are letters.”

“Yes.”

“Where are the envelopes?”

“Do you need the envelopes as well?”

“Why aren’t the envelopes with them?”

“I didn’t bring them along.”

“Letters to Milena. Who is Milena?”

“That’s me.”

The translator puts the letters down in her lap.

“You’re Milena?”

“Yes.”

“That’s a Czech name.”

“My father is Czech.”

“But you don’t speak Czech.”

“My father never taught me.”

“Why not?”

“Emotional reasons.”

After a pause, the woman asks, “So why did he give you a Czech name?”

Gunilla thinks for a moment.

“My mom gave it to me.”

“Is your mother from here as well?”

“My mom’s Swedish.”

“Where are your parents?”

“In Sweden.”

“And you?”

“I’m here now.”

The woman glances through the letters.

“Who is Petr?”

“Petr is . . . Petr . . .”

Without looking at Gunilla, the woman says, “I see.”

“Petr wrote these letters to you?”

“Yes.”

“But you can’t read them.”

“Petr’s English isn’t very good.”

“But you don’t know any Czech at all.”

“We agreed to do it this way. He wants to write to me in the language of his heart. When we’re together, he speaks slowly and with difficulty, but that’s no problem. There are other ways . . .”

“I see.”

The woman does not speak for a long time; maybe she’s too old to be moved by those other ways. A small purple blood blister bulges on her lip, begging to be popped with a needle; her gums have receded.

“He says he writes to you almost every day. Do you write to him?”

“Not all that much.”

“He complains that he hasn’t received a single letter from you.”

“Hasn’t he gotten any of them?”

“Don’t you two use the telephone at all?”

“It’s difficult.”

“In what way is it difficult?”

“I have to go to the post office.”

“What’s difficult about that? Isn’t this a lot more difficult?”

“Not if you translate them it’s not.”

“Haven’t you gone to visit him at all?”

“Can people go there and visit?”

As the woman begins to straighten out the letters in her lap, Gunilla hastens to add, “I can pay you in deutsche marks.”

“How did you hear about me?”

“I saw your ad in the newspaper. I didn’t understand anything in the paper besides your ad.”

The translator looks at her again. Gunilla explains, “It was in English.”

The translator puts her hand down on the stack of papers. “All right. Twenty marks for these. But I need to see your papers.”

“What papers?”

“Your identity papers.”

“I don’t have them with me. I didn’t think I’d need them.”

“You always need them,” the woman says drily, handing the letters to Gunilla. “Come back tomorrow with your papers. Until then, I’m not going to do any more.”

Gunilla has sometimes wondered what her voice would sound like, how she would scream if she saw an airplane nose-diving, or a child running out in front of a car, or something sharp and heavy just before it sank into her body. Now she almost screams, even though there is no danger, “Just translate one letter for me! You’ll get twenty deutsche marks just for one letter!”

Milena,

I wait for you in the canteen every Sunday, though visiting hours are only every other Sunday. Sometimes I wait in the courtyard, but it soon becomes too hot there in the sun in this uniform. There isn’t a single tree there where you could sit in the shade, and I wouldn’t want to be all sweaty if you happened to come for a visit.

Petr

Petr describes Milena in his letters. So that both of them remember what Milena’s hair is like, what her mouth is like, what her eyes are like; so that when they are apart, Milena does not vanish from herself or from Petr. Petr’s style is sparse, almost withdrawn, but jealousy sometimes makes it spread out like a fan the poor boy uses to cool his suffocating heart . . .

and of all those little moles, of which you have so many, I know why you chose that particular one in your armpit, why that particular one kept
worrying
you so much that you had to show Dr. Lederer. Why didn’t you show him the biggest one on your belly, wasn’t that the most suspicious one of all? You had that blue dress on and you would have had to lift up your skirt so he could see the dense, dark triangle through the lace of your panties. No, no, I remember you laughing when I looked at your hairy armpits and said you had three bushes, not just one, you remembered that then . . . and you had to show him everything, out of reach and superior, the bushy, salt-smelling darkness under your arms, shut away as if nature itself had locked you inside a chastity belt.

You assured me that he just glanced at it and said it doesn’t look dangerous. He has many years of experience. One glance is enough. And you thanked him, relieved. Didn’t you even curtsy? He heard you hurry down the narrow stairs and shoved the photos of his daughters in his desk drawer.

Gunilla takes a blue dress into the changing room. Milena’s dresses are difficult to imitate because they were made out of old curtains due to her lack of money. But the color scheme is right; perhaps fate is a colorist. Gunilla puts the dress on, checks herself from new angles offered by the mirror. Her bangs are still too short. They grow only a centimeter a month. Once they have grown long enough, past her eyebrows, the glances from passing soldiers in the street will grow longer, too.

The boy is standing in a dark, smoke-filled corner with a couple of other soldiers, who are quite drunk and talking in loud voices. The other two harass the waitress, pound on the table, and keep ordering more and more. The waitress comes by occasionally and says something in a low voice, making them quiet down briefly, but their racket always starts up again. They have an ample supply of coarse jokes, and they are clearly making cracks about other drinkers in the establishment from time to time, pointing at someone the way children are always told not to and laughing at them. But he sits lost in thought, fiddling with the beer coaster under his glass, and when his buddies shake him and slap him on the back as if to wake him up and draw him into their fraternal group, he gives a distracted smile, listens for a short time, then sinks back into his own thoughts, as if he were sitting alone at his own table.

Gunilla ventures a couple of glances in his direction and recognizes him in that trio. The others are too drunk and too loud. Petr would not behave like that. Petr would drink to drown his sorrows, but not to excess; Petr would be lost in thought because he would be thinking of Milena. Now he finishes his beer and looks around, turning to look straight at Gunilla, as if he had suddenly realized that it is Milena sitting right there. After another couple of beers, he comes over and asks her to dance. His eyes are like painted water in which even the slightest breath of wind is clearly visible. On the dance floor, he leans his head in close and asks her something, but Gunilla does not understand Czech. He comes closer and asks again, this time in English, just as clumsily as Petr would ask. And though it makes no difference whatsoever to the boy what the girl’s name is, on hearing it he still pulls back for a moment to look at the girl’s face, as if wondering: but that’s a Czech name.