The Ice Cream Man (23 page)

If you’re Milena, then I’m Petr.

Then there’s only one real
Petr
.

Yes, the foreign girl knows who the real Petr is. Petr would not need to ring the doorbell, because Petr would know that the key was in the gap between the wall and the top of the door frame. Petr would use that key to get in, and if the room was empty, he would sit on the bed and wait as long as he could. But if the foreign girl was in the room, he would take one look at her and ask where Milena was. It would be a long journey from there to an empty stomach, the next morning and Petr’s words:
“Why wouldn’t you have understood?”

The other ones ring the doorbell and don’t ask the girl’s name, because only the boy’s name is important. Hello, my name’s Petr. And as soon as they say the right name, they undo their shiny buttons.

There is one red star with whom the girl hesitated a second longer than with the others. It was a Bohemian guy who had borrowed a Russian uniform as a prank.

The occupier had told the Bohemian guy in Russian, “You have those mermaids swimming about along the coasts of Bohemia. They have the head of a fish and the legs of a woman.”

“Better that than your wooden dolls,” the Bohemian guy retorted. “You can only poke them when they’ve decomposed enough.”

“Let’s swap. Give me your jacket and trousers, and I’ll try with those.”

“You can’t say
Petr
, no matter how hard you try. It comes out as
Pyotr
.”

“Does she have perfect pitch or something?”

“She doesn’t have ears at all. But she does have a perfect heart.”

“And what if we smashed all you Petrs on the floor of your outhouse?”

“What good would that do? You should smash that girl.”

“Well, eventually somebody will come along and smash her.”

The girl opens her door. The boy is wearing the uniform.

“Do you remember me?” the boy asks.

“Yes. You’re Martin. You were with those two fake Petrs.”

The girl makes some tea for Martin.

“You make good tea, by the way, but it’s too hot. Before it has a chance to cool down enough, it’s time to leave.”

“Do you have to leave?”

“I have until morning.”

“There’s no problem in the morning; it’s the night before that matters.”

“And the morning after that night is so long, it doesn’t turn into a day at all.”

Martin asks, “Do you know there’s a plastic bag under the stairs to the attic?”

“No.”

“Have you looked at what’s inside it?”

“I’d have to have seen the bag first. I can’t see straight inside it.”

“There’s a uniform inside.”

The girl thinks for a moment and says that once there was a soldier under the stairs to the attic, but he had his uniform on the whole time. There was only one place he undid it.

“Were you there as well?”

“And before he left, he buttoned that place back up.”

It was carefully chosen, the uniform in that plastic bag. First it occurred to them that they should get a size medium so it would fit most of them. But the one in the bag was a little bigger, so even more of them could fit into it, though it wasn’t a good fit for anyone.

Martin’s uniform fits him well. One might think it didn’t belong to the state but to Martin himself. It doesn’t hang badly at all. The seams are not tight. The sleeves and trouser legs are the right length. But that is no use to Martin or anyone else.

“Don’t you ever wash these sheets? Sleeping on those is a bit much to ask.”

“It hasn’t bothered the others.”

“Sure, but they don’t come here to sleep.”

The landlady opens the door. Her cataracts are so big and black that there is no vision in her eyes at all, just two holes pointing in the direction of the voices.

“So that Petr is here again. How is it he’s always on leave? And what do you suddenly need another mattress for? Hasn’t that one been good enough until now?”

The landlady comes back and shoves a mattress tied up into a roll through the door.

That night, Martin wakes up when he notices the girl has stopped breathing. Martin stands next to the girl’s bed for a long time. The girl is lying on her back, her lower half bare. Her belly is moving silently and drowsily like a medusa jellyfish, a jellyfish with a moist, black mouth between the girl’s legs.

“What’s your name?”

“Martin.”

“What’s your name?”

“Martin.”

“What’s your name?”

“Martin.”

“Liar,” replies the medusa.

The doorbell rings. Martin opens the door. A guy in a uniform stands there. The plastic bag under the stairs to the attic is empty.

“Who are you?” asks the guy. “Petr, is it?”

“That’s who you are, anyway.”

“How did you guess? Where’s the girl?”

“Who?”

“The foreign girl that lives here.”

“She’s not available right now.”

“Are you two still in the middle of things, then?”

“Yes, we are.”

“I’ll stick around and wait.”

“Won’t be finished for a while yet.”

“Oh. How about I ask her myself, then?”

“What would you ask her? Her name?”

“No, I’d ask whether she’s that slow. Or is it you who can’t get anything going?”

“I’ll ask. She might even answer.”

“Oh, so she belongs to you now, does she?”

“No, I belong to her.”

“You’re the only one we need to smash, then.”

“Go ahead and smash me. And the red stars will smash the girl. Then you two can fool around.”

The girl comes to the door and stands behind Martin.

“Who are you?”

“My name’s Petr.”

“Come in.”

Martin sits at the table drinking tea and burns his tongue as he watches how much the girl loves Petr. When Petr has finished, he stays inside the girl for a while, not because of her, but because of Martin. In the doorway, he has something else to say to Martin.

“Let’s see how many Petrs she can manage at once.”

“She can only manage one at a time.”

“I don’t think so. Nothing’s enough for her.”

The next day, there are two fake Petrs at the door. The ones who know Martin.

“Nobody should miss out on this.”

“Why don’t you tell her your name is Petr?”

“Or are you mad, too?”

Martin goes up to the top floor. The plastic bag under the stairs to the attic is empty, and there is a moss-green uniform and a peaked cap with a red star next to it. Martin picks up the cap and stands by the door. The door is shut, but voices can be heard from inside.

“What is it now? My name is Petr.”

“You’re pronouncing it in a strange way.”

“I think I know how to say my own name.”

“Say it again.”

“Petr.”

“I don’t really know. Maybe you should leave.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“Don’t hurt me.”

“I won’t hurt you if you don’t resist.”

Martin opens the door and goes into the room.

“Go home, Pyotr. Natasha is waiting for you.”

“So you think she’s still waiting?”

“She’s never stopped waiting.”

“If she’s been waiting this long, she must be pretty old.”

“Time split in two when you left.”

“Oh, am I that important a person?”

Martin hands Pyotr his cap. Pyotr puts it on and walks over to the door. Before he leaves, Pyotr looks back at them and says, “My name is Lev Nikolayevich.”

Martin puts the plastic bag on the table and sits down.

“I brought us some bread and cheese.”

“How did you get in?”

“I’ll make us some breakfast.”

“How did you get in the door?”

“The door?”

“You didn’t ring the bell.”

“It was open.”

After a moment, Martin adds, “It was left open.”

The girl gets up from the bed, goes over to the cooker, and turns on the gas. Martin hears the clicking of the cooker and says nothing. A garrison’s worth of potential life trickles down the girl’s thighs.

“Is it shut now?”

“Yes.”

“Good. So nobody else will be let in.”

The girl opens the cupboard and takes a box of matches from the top shelf.

“If this were being shot for a film, the film would be quite dark when people watched it afterward.”

“Why?”

“Because this is a night scene that’s being shot during the day.”

“Is that how they do it?”

“I don’t know how they do it. But that’s what they do, Petr.”

The director is sitting on a bench looking at a house on the opposite side of the river. A window on the top floor has been replaced, and the wall around the window has been painted, but even so, they did not match the previous color: there is a clear boundary between the new paint and the old. It worries the director a little, but that worry makes him happy. He is already having warm thoughts tinged with pity about all the half-crazy people who are prepared to inquire into painting houses, mixing colors day and night to get just the right shade.

The heavy trees along the river are shedding their yellowed leaves into the flowing water. The smell of decomposition rises from the ground. Autumn has come; he will have to be patient and wait through the winter and spring, because the girl was here for only one summer, and once the summer was over, nothing was left of the girl that could be taken away from the room. This is the only way to be certain of being there if the boy ever comes back. And the boy will come back; it’s just a matter of time. They will get down to work right away next summer. Everything is in the director’s head; the way he taps and massages his forehead, his friends as well as his enemies urge him to write everything down, and this time he does write—after all, no one knows how much time is left.

The director gets up and goes for a walk in the park before returning to the hotel. He leaves the gravel path for the damp grass and stands beneath an old tree with his back toward the passersby. In his hotel room, he finds a blank sheet of paper in the drawer of the bedside table. He sits down, and, to be on the safe side, having understood the supremacy of the trees and the river and his own urgency, starts from the last scene.

He needs to start looking for the girl immediately. Despite taking a sleeping pill, the director cannot get to sleep at all that night. In his head, he makes phone calls around the country and calls young actresses everywhere, from amateur dramatic societies to drama academies, to audition for
the Final Scene
. He plans to grow a beard so that no one will recognize him as he sits in the back row, casting a beady eye in search of the right girl.

I
X

THE FINAL SCENE

The room in Olomouc. Morning. The boy wakes up to a racket, sits up in bed, sees the girl standing in front of the cooker. The camera is on the boy’s face all the time. Only the girl’s voice.

Milena: Morning.

Petr: Morning.

Milena: Guess what I dreamed last night.

Petr: Well, what?

Milena: We were sitting at that table talking all evening.

Petr: What were we talking about?

Milena: I don’t remember. But I understood every single word.

Petr: Why wouldn’t you have understood?

Milena: Because you were speaking Czech.

Petr: That makes no sense.

Milena: No, not at all.

The cooker, the girl’s hands. Turning on the gas.

Milena: As if I’d learned it all—in a single night.

Petr: Come here.

Milena: Let’s make breakfast first.

Camera always on the girl’s hands. Opening the cupboard, finding the box of matches. Cooker, hands, box of matches.

Pause.

The girl’s hands, the boy’s voice:
Now come here.

The girl’s hands, putting down the box of
matches
, getting out of the shot. The cooker, all the time. Sounds: the city, tram, footsteps, doors closing. Time passing. Sounds: quiet laughter. Four hands, the cooker. The boy’s arms, the girl’s. The girl’s hands, opening the box of matches. Sounds: time. The girl’s hands, lighting a match. Fire, everywhere.

Konec

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

PHOTO © STEVE LIPSON

KATRI LIPSON
was born in Helsinki and grew up in Vantaa, Finland, where she dreamed of becoming a writer and a physician—in that order. She finished medical school in Sweden in 1993, realizing a childhood dream when she went to Africa to work as a doctor. Her first novel,
Kosmonautti
(
Cosmonaut
), was published in 2008 and won the Helsingin Sanomat Literary Prize.
Jäätelökauppias
(
The Ice Cream Man
) is her second novel and won the European Union Prize for Literature in 2013. She is a specialist in occupational medicine and lives in Vantaa with her family.