Ice Trilogy (77 page)

The old man yawned and began to snore immediately.

“That’s it,” said Dina, standing at the door; she went over to the old man and straightened his blanket.

He snored very loud, his mouth wide open. His head shook on his pillow. The dog locked upstairs whined louder on hearing his snore.

Olga put the Dictaphone away and stood up. Bjorn, who didn’t understand any Russian, also stood.

“Tell me, Dina, did any of the two thousand survive?”

“Yes.” Dina took the empty cups from the guests. “In Israel he met two of them. About fifteen years ago. But where they are now, I don’t know.”

“But did he try to find out — what this was all about? Why they were put in those two barracks, taken away in the train, and then let go?”

“Yes, yes,” Dina muttered, “of course he trie
d...
Excuse me, I have to take the dog out.”

She opened the door and ran up a narrow wooden staircase. Somewhere up above a door opened and a young female voice said angrily in Yiddish: “Your egoism knows no bounds!
”

“Don’t you see we have guests?” Dina answered in Hebrew, unlocking the door. “Let’s go, Fifer.”

The dog turned out to be a huge silky black mastiff. Dina led him downstairs by a thick leash. Olga and Bjorn also went downstairs.

“And what did your father find out?” Olga asked, lifting her bag.

“He found out — ” Dina opened the door and the dog, pulling on the leash, literally jerked her out of the foyer onto the street.

“Stay! Heel!” Dina shouted in Hebrew, struggling with the dog.

Olga and Bjorn went out into the street with their things. The sun was scorching.

“And what did he find out?” Olga, squinting from the blinding sun, set her purse down on the white, hot sidewalk.

“That blue-eyed Jews were chosen on personal orders from the camp director.”

“What for?”

“There was no written explanation.” The dog pulled Dina farther down the street. “It seems it was just some kind of German madnes
s..
.”

“Did anyone write about it?”

“What?”

The small window in the attic opened; a girl with curly hair stuck her head out and shouted loudly in Hebrew: “My mother is an egotist!”

And she slammed the window shut.

“Did anyone write about this? In the newspapers? Or anywhere?” Olga shouted to Dina.

“What?”

“Was this written about?”

“Yes, but no one understoo
d...
akh, yo
u..
.”

“What?”

“No one ever understood — what it wa
s...
an
d...
an
d...
Heel! Heel! And why it was done!” Dina shouted, balancing, and then disappeared around a corner.

Olga looked back at the house. The old man’s loud snoring could even be heard on the street.

“What did she say?” asked Bjorn.

Olga sighed and put on her dark glasses.

“What did she say?” Bjorn asked again.

“That life can’t be turned back,” Olga muttered in Russian, as she noticed a taxi up ahead. “All right, then, let’s go to the hotel.”

In the car, Olga felt cold from the air conditioner; Bjorn kept asking questions, she kept sighing, muttering, “Later, everything later.”

The hotel Prima Astor that Olga had reserved over the Internet was located about a hundred meters from the sea. Olga noticed that the sea was smooth and calm. They were put on the same floor, in small one-person rooms. After taking a shower and changing into a linen blouse and striped shorts, Olga invited Bjorn into her room, sat him down in the sole chair, settled herself on the bed, and translated the old man’s monologue for him from the Dictaphone recording. The Swede listened to it, silent and tense, his hands on his knees. Then he moved his large legs and long arms, stuck out his lower lip, and said thoughtfully, “It sounds like the truth. We should think about it very seriously.”

“That’s a profound observation!” Olga nodded ironically, taking a cigarette out of a pack and lighting it.

“You think that I’m too — ” the Swede began, but Olga interrupted him.

“I don’t think anything,” she said rubbing the bridge of her nose. “You know, Bjorn, first of all, I don’t like the heat, and second, I have jet lag.”

“I have tablets. I already took some.”

“Great. Then you can go to your room and think seriously for an hour and a half or so. And I’ll take a nap. Okay?”

“Okay.” He stood, smiled guiltily, and left.

Olga finished her cigarette, lowered the green blind, pulled back the covers, undressed completely, and lay down, covering herself with the sheet. The air conditioner rumbled quietly over the door.

“Sleeping sickness,” Olga thought, running her palm over the cool, fresh sheet. “Well, it’s certainly better than insomni
a..
.”

Her hand touched her stomach. Her body was tired from the last few days.

“Two barracks. Two barrack
s..
.” Her fingers touched her navel and climbed higher. “Two barracks in an open fiel
d...
no hope and no grie
f...
Lord, why did I come her
e..
.”

Her fingers felt the scar on her chest, the small dent in her breastbone.

“A piece of paper. For wrapping herring. That’s good. I should get one of those. And straighten it out for the nigh
t...
Life crumples yo
u..
.”

She fell asleep. She dreamed about Todd Belieu, the top manager of the elite kitchen department, naked and incredibly thin. He was walking around the room with an iron stick, muttering something in Hebrew, and banging on the kitchen sets to test their durability.

Olga woke up when the phone rang. She opened her eyes. Evening twilight filled the room. The phone on the table by the bed was ringing. She picked up the receiver.

“Yes.”

“It’s Bjorn. Olga, it’s already 20:07.”

“Oh my Go
d...
Okay, I’m getting up.”

She took a shower and got ready. And knocked at Bjorn’s door five minutes later. Soon they were sitting in a small restaurant not far from the hotel. Bjorn ordered the local beer and lamb chops. Olga ordered chicken on toast, water, and coffee. She wasn’t very hungry.

“So have you thought about it seriously?” she asked, putting out her cigarette in a clay ashtray.

“Yes. Yes. I think it’s the same people who kidnapped us and our families.”

“So they existed before the war as well?”

“Yes.”

“And who are these emaciated old people?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps it was their leaders.” He took a large swallow of beer.

Olga looked at the strip of foam remaining on his upper lip. He noticed, and wiped it off with a napkin.

“It was probably related somehow to Fascism.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. But those people back then, and us now — we’ve all got blue eyes and light-colored hair. And the Fascists had that idea of a Nordic race.”

“The fair-haired devil?”

“Yes. The fair-haired devil.”

“But there were Jews in the barracks. The Fascists hated us, destroyed us. And I’m a Jew. And my parents were also Jews.”

Bjorn sighed. “It’s strange. But all the same, Olga, I think that it’s connected to Fascism in some way.”

Olga lit another cigarette.

“I don’t kno
w...
My parents and I were kidnapped by three blue-eyed guys. One was a blond, that’s definite, and two of them, I think, had dyed hair. Then, when they beat me with that ice hammer, they kept on saying the same thing: ‘Speak with the heart.’ Until I fainted. What does Fascism have to do with that?”

“I don’t know. It’s just my intuition.”

Olga laughed.

“It sounds funny, I understand,” said Bjorn, “but so far intuition is all we have. There’s nothing else.”

“Intuition!” Olga scoffed angrily. “In broad daylight some sort of monsters kidnap people, beat them to death. They disappear. No one knows who they are! The police give annual numbers of people who’ve disappeared. Statistics! Is that normal?”

“It isn’t normal. When I told everything to the police, they didn’t believe me for a long time. A hammer made of ice! ‘Speak with the hear
t..
.’ They looked at each other for a long time and thought I was nuts.”

“They didn’t believe me, either. Then they did an expert analysis of the wounds. Mine and my,” she stammered, “my papa’s and mama’s. Their breastbones were completely smashed. But all I had was a broken rib and some cracked bone. There was a puddle where they found me.”

“The ice they beat us with had melted,” Bjorn said. “I first thought that it was glass. He didn’t hit me very hard the first time. Then, when the hammer cracked, I realized that it was ice. And there was a puddle, too. Not only of water.”

He looked at his huge hand, clenched it in to a fist, and opened it. “There wasn’t only water. Blood came out of my brother’s throat. Bloo
d...
a lot of blood. And mine too.”

They fell silent.

At that moment a plump waiter brought them a large dish with grilled lamb and placed it in front of Bjorn. Olga glanced at the sizzling, juicy meat. She raised her eyes to the waiter.

“Do you have Russian vodka?”

“Of course!” The waiter smiled. “Two orders?”

“Bring me” — Olga thought a minute — “a bottle.”

The waiter nodded without surprise and returned with a sweating bottle of Stolichnaya and two glasses. Olga silently poured the vodka into the glasses. Bjorn stretched out his fingers and a glass disappeared in his palm.

Olga squinted at the neighboring table. Three dark-skinned elderly Jews sat there, eating slowly.

“Only four months have passed, and
I...
can’t believe it,” Olga said. “It’s al
l...
some kind of dream. Very disturbing. Ver
y...
ver
y...
I hate it!”

And she downed the vodka in one gulp.

Bjorn sighed. “I’ve come to believe already. When my brother was buried, I went into his room. There was a diary there, I’d never read it. I broke the lock and opened the diary. On that day he wrote: ‘Today in Göteborg there’s my favorite sky, the color of blue corundum. That means it will be a lucky day.’ After that I believed that Tomas was no longer, that my younger brother was gone.”

He sighed again and drank his vodka.

“Blue corundu
m...
what is that? A stone?”

“Yes. My brother studied geology. He knew stones very well. He said that my eyes resembled alexandrite and his resembled aquamarine.”

“My mother told me that my eyes were the color of Prussian blue plus a little bit of emerald green.”

“Was she an artist?”

“No, just a restorer. But a long time ago. Before emigrating.”

Olga filled the glasses. She looked at Bjorn’s awkward hands and smiled for the first time that evening.

“You’re really big. Was your brother like that too?”

“An inch taller. And he played basketball better than I did too. On the street they called us ‘lampposts.’”

Olga looked at him with a smile. “How is it said in Swedish?”

“Lamppost?
Lyktstolpen
.”

“
Lyktstolpen
.”

Vodka on an empty stomach quickly inebriated Olga.

“Let’s drink to them. Fo
r...
ours. Only we mustn’t clink glasses.”

They drank. But Olga drank faster.

“Do all Russian girls drink so fast?” asked Bjorn, stopping to take a breath.

“Not all of them. Only the chosen. Eat while it’s hot.”

She took a lamb chop from his plate and bit into the juicy meat.

“How come you haven’t asked me about my theory?”

“What is your theory?”

“I think that the ICE Corporation knows who beat us with the hammer.”

“It doesn’t know.”

“Have you seen their device, Bjorn, have you tried it?”

“Of course I have. Who hasn’t tried i
t..
.”

“But there’s ice there too! There’s an ice tip that hits you in the chest. And you feel some sort of sadness, then a group of people appears, and you feel really good with them.”

“It’s just a computer game for the new generation. There’s no doubt that the ICE Corporation invented the sensor device, and spread the myth of the Tungus ice which supposedly elicits unusual sensations when it strikes people in the chest. They claim they went to great trouble to get this ice, transported it from the tundra, all the tips are made only from this ic
e...
But that’s a myth. Ice is ice. Whether falling out of the sky or freezing on the ground — it’s the same. No matter what their ‘experts’ say, the myth of the Tungus meteorite ice is only a pretext so they can sell their product at a higher price. So much has been written about this. Serious scientists have ridiculed them. It’s not even worth talking about. ICE has made billions on its device. Why would they need to kidnap people and clobber them with ice hammers?”

“Well, someone is using their idea!” Olga shouted so loud that the people sitting at the neighboring table looked over at them.

“Maybe it was the other way around.”

“What do you mean, the other way around?”

“Maybe ICE is using someone else’s methods?”

“Banging on people’s chests until they die?”

“Yes.”

“And what kind of method is that?”

“I don’t know yet. Something from the ancient cults. Maybe the Celts, for example, or maybe the Yakuts had a rite like that. Maybe shamans did it, although I didn’t find any ritual like that on the Internet or in our university library.”

“Then who is it? Satanists?”

“Doesn’t look like them. More likely — Fascists.”

“And how is this connected to Fascism?”

“It’s connected somehow. I’m certain. The German Fascists used ancient mythology. For that matter, they had their own theory of the universe. I found it on the Internet. As they saw it, the entire universe surrounding us consisted of ice. And only the hot willpower of human beings could melt space for life in the ice.”

“Then why the hell are they whacking people on the chest with this ice?”

“I don’t know. Maybe in order to test man’s will? Whether he is capable of melting the ice?”