The Ice Cream Man (3 page)

As far as our artistic work is concerned, 1947 is a problematic year. Worry about forthcoming societal changes means we should discuss our art in mournful tones. And with regard to the array of characters in
The Ice Cream Man
, the problem manifests itself most pointedly in the figure of the one-legged man. The director would like to use the one-legged man far more, but after careful consideration, the man is introduced only near the end of the story, and even then he just puts in a cameo appearance. The man’s physical disability demands that we take a stance. Where did he come from all of a sudden? During the years of the Protectorate, an amputated leg always needs an explanation. But when we finally get that explanation, there is always someone who cannot or does not want to believe it.

There are a couple of soldiers urinating in the hay, but their speech is indistinct, and in the darkness, you can’t even make out their uniforms. When it comes to eroticism, ambiguity is allowed; but the soldiers must be filmed distinctly, showing their colors and military stripes. Under no circumstances should they seem somehow undefined. What would happen then? People would start shooting at random. We’d shoot our comrades; the enemy would shoot each other.

The one-legged man appears on location out of the blue, as though he’s just arrived from the place where his other leg disappeared. He loiters in the background, sits around on the grass next to the water barrel behind Mrs. Němcová’s woodshed. At midday, one of us takes him something to eat, and he doesn’t look the least bit abnormal as he sits on the ground slurping his soup.

“Are you an actor?”

“Yes.”

“But in that case . . . you’ll excuse me . . . you’ll probably always end up performing the same part: the role of the one-legged man.”

“Is that what you think?”

“What else can I think?”

“It’s not always one and the same man, you know. They just all happen to have one leg.”

“Yes. You’re right, really . . . what roles do I ever get to play? Women with two legs!” I start to laugh. “May I take a closer look at it?”

“Right now?”

“Would you find that odd?”

“Not at all.”

“Let’s go to the cellar. Can you get down the steps?”

We take the steps to Mrs. Němcová’s boiler room. I switch on the dim lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. With a sense of routine, the man begins rolling up his trouser leg.

“Can you remove it altogether?”

“The prosthesis?”

“Is it difficult?”

In the half-light, a faint smile appears on the man’s face.

“What’s so amusing?”

“For some reason, men always want to see the prosthesis. Women, on the other hand, want to see the stump.”

“Is that so? How fascinating. Then again, maybe it’s not all that surprising. Men are generally more interested in the technical side of things. Women are . . . how should I put it? Into the organic side? And what about men who are attracted to other men? Do they reveal themselves in some way by asking you to reveal yourself?”

“They don’t make that mistake, because I’m not one of them.”

(At last, a man I can talk to. And if he decides to remain silent, that won’t disturb me either—unlike the silence of people who chatter on about nothing.)

I spin around. “What is this place? It’s horrible somehow. Why are the walls so black? Is it the coal? Or have the walls been smeared on purpose?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never been here before.”

“I get the impression that the crew knows the most about this film; they have to know what to get ahold of, what to organize and when . . . What does the director want from you?”

“I’m only in one scene, as far as I know,” the man answered.

“That’s a shame—if it’s true, that is. You know how he works, don’t you? Never tells actors anything. You might have just one scene. Or you could have ten.”

“I really do have only one.”

“You seem very sure of that. One leg, one scene! Is that the way it goes?”

The man has been sitting on a stool in front of the stove; now he stands up.

“Don’t get up if standing tires you out. I saw when you arrived; you struggled up the hill on crutches.”

“I thought you wanted to see the stump.”

“Sit down. Show me.”

The man sits down on the stool.

“Do you want to help me?”

“Do you need help?”

He smiles and pulls his trouser leg up above the knee, starts to undo the leather straps. Once the straps are loose, he takes hold of his wooden thigh and pulls it free of the stump. The stump is wrapped in a fabric cover, like a sock. He removes that, too.

“Well, what do you think?”

“I don’t know . . . why did we have to come down here to look at it? Out of sight, in secret?”

“Well, why indeed?”

“As if it were a sexual organ.”

“Is that what it looks like to you?”

“It’s not just the shape. There’s something forbidden about it, the way the wound is sewn up. The same roughness and deficiency with which our bodies strive toward beauty.”

“How did it happen?”

“It was during the war.”

“Of course, the war really happened. Imagine, was it really only two years ago? This film, on the other hand, is nothing but make-believe. Will we never achieve anything higher than this?”

“This had nothing to do with the war. It was an everyday accident.”

“And? Does that mean you had better luck?”

“Stand up. Can you manage? Lean against the wall.”

He obeys me. I press my hand against his thigh. One of them is thick and powerful from bearing the full weight of his body. The other is thin and shriveled, though he clearly tries to exercise, to keep in shape.

“Will you have crutches in your scene?”

“Yes.”

“Of course you will. Do you know why?”

“Because otherwise I won’t be able to stand up.”

“Quite. They’ve brought you back into an upright human position, helped you learn everything from the beginning again. Now I understand why you’re involved.”

“The scene is very simple.”

“No, it’s not simple at all.”

“You mustn’t speak to Martin Jelínek like this.”

“Have you tried?”

“He’s an invalid.”

“What’s wrong with him?”

“Nothing. It’s terrible, being an invalid whom nobody pities, an invalid whom everybody envies. Have you ever met a person who doesn’t deserve pity?”

He laughs, but his laugh is so short and sharp that it sounds like a dog’s yelp. “Many, many times . . .”

“I know what you mean. Some people say it isn’t possible. Though you could always say that they haven’t met all people. How can anyone claim that such a person doesn’t exist? And when you’ve met one, that’s evidence enough. Is there any sense in it? Is it fair?”

I follow Martin, the director, and the cameraman into the spruce forest. They don’t notice me. I want to see what Esther doesn’t see Tomáš doing.

The director hands Martin a spade.

“You’re to start digging a pit.”

“How big? How deep?”

“Just dig a pit. Camera! Off you go.”

Perhaps Martin feels a genuine sense of panic, because acting a sense of panic never comes to much. Beneath the carpet of spruce needles is nothing but dry earth. The spade is blunt, unable to cut through the thick roots tangled deep in the ground. He wipes the sweat from his brow; sweat drips down his chest beneath his shirt. He digs a small hole, small but deep. The director looks at it and says that the shape isn’t right. Martin’s face turns the color of the undergrowth, the kind that thrives beneath the trees without sunlight.

When I was walking in the forest with Martin, he clearly didn’t want to see the hole he’d dug. At first, he resisted when I asked him to accompany me deeper into the woods, but I pulled him along by the hand. We almost fell into the hole. I pretended I didn’t know anything about it. What was it doing in the middle of the woods? Perhaps someone had dug it during the war. But why? I spoke about it as I would have about a real hole. I felt genuinely horrified by it. He couldn’t say a word. I flew into a rage, demanded that he say something.

“Maybe an animal dug it.”

“An animal? What kind of animal would dig something like that? A monkey, maybe, just about. If you gave it a spade. Where have you been all this time? What have you been doing?”

“Nothing.”

“You did nothing then, either. Where were you during the war?”

“They sent me to Bavaria. I was working in agriculture.”

“And then what? Couldn’t you have done anything there?”

Mrs. Němcová’s house. The room in which Esther and Tomáš have been staying.

The director explains to me, “In the middle of the night, Tomáš is going to wrench you out of bed. It’ll be pitch dark in the room. He’ll pull away the blankets and switch on a flashlight, shine it in your eyes and start interrogating you.”

“Why?”

“He’s testing you.”

“How will I do?”

“Badly. He’ll have slipped you some codeine.”

“Won’t Mrs. Němcová wake up with all the noise?”

“Mrs. Němcová will be away that night. That’s why Tomáš has chosen that night.”

I try to get everything I can out of the scene. Regardless of the supposed drowsiness I should be feeling from the codeine, I struggle ferociously so that Martin really has to use his strength. I grab the iron bars at the end of the bed, kick the blanket from across my thighs. Martin is out of breath and sustains a few vicious kicks to the chest from Esther’s knees. The director follows the struggle and allows it to continue, like a security guard who’s been bribed with a few crowns. Martin has superior strength, but he has only two hands. With one hand, he holds onto Esther, who’s writhing and kicking; with the other he holds the flashlight, its beam flickering back and forth through the room, periodically illuminating Esther’s features. Tomáš yells at her defiantly, “Name! Date of birth!” But Esther simply hollers back at him, “Who’s asking? Who are you asking?”

Finally, the director shakes his head.
Cut!
But I always win. I know to fool around in the right order: first by disregarding my instructions, then by following them. I go to the other extreme and force Martin back to work, this time with what might be considered a woman’s most tactless and cunning strategy. I slump back on the bed like a dead weight, ready to be hauled, shaken, carried, as if I’d lost consciousness.

“Name! Date of birth!”

No answer.

“Name! Date of birth!”

“Name!” (Martin is panting, his neck red with exertion, and finally I catch the smell of sweat on him.) “Date of birth!”

Eventually, Esther’s eyes open slightly. “Who are you?”

This is the right question, because she knows neither of them: neither her nocturnal interrogator nor Tomáš himself, who is supposed to be her husband. She might have known Martin, but knowing him is impossible.

II

THE ICE CREAM MAN OF TEREZíN

After the war, the widow Němcová’s set of porcelain was in shards.
B
ut it would have been far worse if it had been preserved intact.

A black car drives along the bottom of the valley. The road rises and falls beneath the tires as if the ground were breathing. The car windows are open; there is a woman sitting in the backseat, her forehead itching with sweat-caked powder. She has a hat firmly fixed on her head, but a wisp of hair underneath it bobs in the strong breeze. It has not become clear during the journey how the woman’s previous life might carry on, or whether it is over entirely. The woman by the name of Esther Vorszda is just a piece of paper in the handbag of the woman sitting in the car. For the time being, Esther Vorszda’s involvement in her life has been as
straightforward
as an overcoat taken by mistake from a coat rack in a restaurant, so similar in appearance to her own that she scarcely realized it belonged to someone else. And why should this be difficult? Esther’s life began with a puff of breath at the age of twenty-one in a rural Moravian panorama. Esther has had no need to bawl, to learn to walk, speak, read, or count the way everyone else has.

The events preceding this car journey have been significant and historic. The more historic the events, the harder it has become to avoid them. People are bouncing around in fear, as if events might ricochet into their path at any moment like stray bullets. That would still be bearable, but events have now reached the stage where a wound is the best they can hope for. If the woman managed to remain unwounded after witnessing these events, then any wound acquired later would be meaningless.

The fields undulate, electric white with young, supple grain. The Habsburg heat lies thick over the landscape. The heat and the winding road make the woman feel sick. It is the first shared physical sensation for the woman and Esther Vorszda. The man driving the car brakes sharply at the bends in the road, then accelerates too quickly after each bend. The stick shift doesn’t get a moment’s rest. Perhaps he is a bad driver, or more likely inexperienced. And the other man, whom the woman has to address as Tomáš, sits next to the driver and observes the landscape carefully. The landscape is open to interpretation; there are plenty of signs for those who wish to see them.

The terrain begins to wind its way higher. Among the fields, dark patches of forest appear, broadleaf trees interspersed with pines. As the car emerges from the trees into the sun-bleached valley, the man in the passenger seat suddenly ducks his head to peer up at the hill. Eventually, a house comes into view. The man glances at his watch.

“Sure, we’ll make it,” says the driver. “It’s only a few more kilometers.”

“What time is it?” asks the woman.

The men look surprised that she has opened her mouth. Perhaps they were trying to forget she was there.

The car travels across the valley, turns right, and disappears behind a grass-covered hill. The final stretch leads directly toward a village that looks like a string of light-colored houses along the road. The train station is a hut painted dark green with a clock hanging beneath its eaves. The car comes to a stop by the train station on a cobbled area edged with mature linden trees.

“Quiet here, isn’t it?” the driver remarks.

“The train should arrive in half an hour,” says the man in the passenger seat. “I’ll go and buy our tickets.”

When the woman is alone with the driver, she asks, “Do you know him?”

“Who?”

“That fellow who’s just gone in to buy the tickets.”

“No.”

“The train’s not coming,” the man says as he comes back.

“Is it running late?”

“A train bridge has been blown to smithereens somewhere near Olomouc.”

“When did that happen?”

“In the early hours.”

“What are we going to do now? Drive back?”

“Not on your life.”

“Shall we carry on then?”

The man thinks for a moment, not even looking at the woman; she might be there in theory, but not right now. She was yesterday, perhaps, or not until tomorrow.

“You wait here. I’ll be back shortly.”

This time, the man is gone longer. The driver does not seem to want to get involved in a conversation with the woman; instead he gets out of the car, lights a cigarette, and stands beneath the linden trees to smoke it. The woman is happy to sit on her own for a moment, but the heat inside the car quickly becomes unbearable as the air hangs utterly motionless.

“Esther and I are staying here.”

“Is there anywhere to stay around here?” the woman wonders.

“There’s a Mrs. Němcová who’s got some spare rooms. She’s rented them out before. We drove past her house. It was that house on the hillside.”

“I’ll drive you both up there, then.”

“No, we can walk.”

“I’m not walking anywhere. Not in this heat.”

The man and the driver take the suitcases out of the trunk.

“That should be it,” says the driver. The man nods and looks over at the train station.

“They’re pretty heavy. I could still drive you a bit closer.”

“No, it’s better this way . . .”

The woman is still sitting in the car. The man glances at her through the rear window, at her wavy, shoulder-length fair hair and mousy-colored hat embellished with some sort of starched ornaments. The man taps the window, but the woman fails to react. The men look around. Neither wants to stand in the open for long.

“Better go, then,” says the driver.

“Yes, of course.”

“Is she getting out?”

The man goes over to the car door and bends down. The woman turns her head away, though her face is already
half-hidden
under her hat. Even after several hours in the car, her lipstick is still flawless—just like in a film, as if it had been touched up after every take.

“Let’s go, Esther. Can you hand me my jacket?”

The woman picks up the carefully folded blazer next to her and drops it on the front seat, past the man’s hand. The driver closes the trunk with a thud. The trunk door is burning hot from the sun. The man picks up his blazer, opens up one of the suitcases, and places the blazer inside.

The woman is still sitting in her seat. With the amount of fat she has stored around her hips, a woman of her appearance probably makes her views known in this way. But there is no anger in her at all; there are no longer any such trivial emotions in her, and she turns a blind eye to even greater emotions, as if a storm were passing over and leaving her untouched while grinding everything else into dust as far as the eye can see.

The man returns to the car door and, instead of bending down, extends his hand. The woman looks at it, seeing it close up for the first time: it, too, is young, but she would not have imagined it so smooth. It looks like a hand that is not difficult to touch, but as she grasps it she senses how unkindly it squeezes her fingers and crushes her bones. The hand pulls her out into the dazzling sunlight. Her petticoat has stuck to her thighs, forming a damp film smelling of her sex.

“I’m going to be sick . . .”

“That’s hardly surprising,” says the driver as he sits down, relieved to be behind the steering wheel again. “Four hours in this furnace, on such winding roads.”

“Go over there and sit in the shade,” the man urges.

The woman walks over to the lindens growing along the edge of the square. She turns her back to the men as they exchange a few words, then the car drives off. Everything is quiet. The windows of the houses lining the square stare at them like black ovens. The man looks off in the other direction. They have a sweaty journey ahead of them, back the way they came, then uphill to the house on the hillside where Mrs. Němcová will soon receive two
uninvited
visitors. The man carries the suitcases toward the woman; first two, then the third one.

“You’ll have to carry one of them. I’ve only got two hands.”

“And what if Mrs. Němcová doesn’t want to put us up?”

“Leave that to me.”

“What do you intend to do? Put a spell on her?”

“I intend to pay her very well.”

“For one night? Won’t that look suspicious?”

The man does not reply.

“When will we be able to carry on with our journey?”

They look at each other for a moment, alone for the first time. The sunlight filtering through the lindens dapples their faces like a camouflage of ever-changing patterns. The woman shrugs her shoulders, grabs one of the suitcases, and fails to budge it an inch.

“How can this be so heavy?”

“It’s mine.”

“What have you brought with you?”

“Books.”

“Books! Are you mad? Why?”

“Take this one; it weighs the least.”

“Then it should be mine.”

“Do you still feel ill?”

The woman presses her lips together now that the nausea has begun to subside; before apathy has a chance to set in, there is a brief moment of ease, as always happens when something unpleasant in her body has been persuaded to loosen its grip.

“Is it travel sickness?” the man continues.

“It’s more from the driver.”

“I’ve got some biscuits in my case. Maybe eating something will help.”

“Eating? Do you think I’m pregnant?”

The man’s expression doesn’t change.

“You said you’re not.”

“Yes, I did, though I’m under no obligation to tell you anything.”

They set off walking along the dusty gravel road that winds among the village houses to the undulating fields. After ten minutes, they hear a car approaching from behind. Neither of them turns to look, but their footsteps become strangely stiff, seeking their way along the edge of the road. The man walks in front, with the woman behind him.

“If only you’d taken off that hat . . .” the man says severely over his shoulder.

The woman purses her lips. The car passes them indifferently, stirring up a hot cloud of clay dust from the road. The sound of the engine resonates with their fear and begins to clatter like a truck full of soldiers.

“And it’s all because of my hat . . .”

After the car has passed, they walk in silence. The man has rolled up the sleeves of his bright white shirt and loosened his tie; sweat trickles down his neck from his black hair, and his back is covered in salty droplets. His hands grip the suitcase handles. Human skin versus pigskin is not an evenly matched struggle. Blood swells the veins in the man’s arms. The woman observes his arms and thinks without feeling, numbed by the heat and the dust, that they are to lie next to one another tonight.

Mrs. Němcová was widowed seven years ago and now lives alone in a big house. Two years ago, there were still rabbits in the backyard, but when the hutch deteriorated to the point where a gale blew it over, the rabbits all ran away. Since then, she has been on her own. The vegetable plot is overgrown with weeds, the fruit trees and berry bushes untrimmed. When the man knocks at the door, it takes a long time before one of the windows opens. Mrs. Němcová stares at them, bewildered and slightly puffy-eyed as if she has just been woken up from a nap, and they have to explain several times that they have come to ask about overnight accommodations because their travel plans have taken a surprising turn. The lady of the house does not have enough patience to listen to their explanations, saying, “Well, you young people are here now.” She tells them to leave their suitcases on the veranda and to rinse the sweat and sand off themselves with the rainwater she has collected in the barrel next to the woodshed. Everything is going well: Mrs. Němcová seats them on the veranda and serves them some tart red-currant juice. They admire the views, and Esther remembers her own name and the man’s name, where and when they were married, and why they are so grateful to Mrs. Němcová. She addresses the man by his first name and their hostess by her title and surname. They sit on the veranda for a long time, as if the landlady were inspecting them thoroughly from head to toe before opening the door to her home. She laments the current state of affairs: historical events that do not merely alter people’s travel plans but force entire destinies in unexpected directions. The man negotiates payment far more awkwardly than the woman had expected, but in the end, Mrs. Němcová seems pleased; perhaps she has already calculated in her head how long it will take to repair the train bridge.

“Well, would you like to see the room? The bed’s not made up because I wasn’t expecting anyone.”

As they enter the room, the woman glances furtively from one corner to another, from the large double bed to the sofa positioned rather strangely in the center of the room, its back facing the door. The woman does not glance at the man, but she senses that at precisely that moment, for the first time, they are thinking the same thought. She is relieved—but what about the man? She doesn’t know the man at all, but she does know men. The landlady then leads them out, shows them the woodshed, the tumbledown rabbit hutch, and the spruce forest growing on the hillside behind the house. The rose bushes teem with aphids, the soil is rich with humus, the bees are buzzing, the sun is shining, and the scent of wildflowers and young grain hangs in the imperceptibly moving air. This tour is needlessly extravagant for guests staying only one night; presumably the landlady has gone too long without anyone to talk to.