The Ice Palace (14 page)

‘Is that you, Siss?’ he said, and she thought he brightened. ‘I must say I’m glad to get on to the main road at last. I’ve been wading up that slope and the drifts there are knee deep. It’s like walking in wet sand up to your knees.’

Siss smiled at him.

‘Have you been far?’

‘I’ll say! But everywhere else is free of snow. I’ve been to the river,’ he said.

‘Did you go right to the river?’

‘Yes, the ice is breaking up now.’

So she knew for certain: someone was still searching. She loved him from top to toe. She asked, ‘Is the big piece of ice still standing?’

‘Yes,’ said the boy curtly, as if he had stopped short in the middle of something and did not wish to go further. Siss did.

‘Does it look just the same?’

‘Yes, just the same.’

‘It won’t stand there much longer, will it?’

‘Oh no, the river’s very high, and I expect it’ll rise even higher.’

She was full of affection for him, on account of the exhausting walk. She must have shown it. A curious prickling.

‘You can hear the roar from far away,’ he explained gratuitously, dropping the curt tone he had used as soon as Siss began asking questions. ‘And you can see the ice from a great distance.’

‘Can you?’ she said.

‘Yes, from a hill quite close to here – if you want to see it, too.’

‘No, I don’t want to.’

There was a pause. They were well aware that they were talking about the missing girl.

‘I say, Siss,’ he said abruptly, in a friendly tone of voice.

What is it now? she thought.

‘I’ve thought of saying something to you, if I happened to run into you,’ he began but was hesitant about going on, and it came out uncertainly. ‘There’s nothing more to be done about it, Siss.’

So he managed to say it. It was plain speaking. Siss did not reply.

‘You must think about that now,’ he said.

Yes, it was plain speaking, right enough. Right into the tenseness and exhaustion – but the strange thing was that the effect was different from before; there was no defiance or revolt. On the contrary, it was good to hear it.

She almost whispered, ‘I don’t see how you can know either.’

‘You must excuse me,’ he said.

‘You with the dimples,’ he added.

Her face was tilted upwards and wet with the drizzle.
Raindrops trickled down her cheeks and wandered into her dimples. She looked away quickly. Best not to show how red she was. How glad she was.

‘Bye,’ he said. ‘I must go home and change.’

‘Bye,’ said Siss.

He was going in the opposite direction, so she did not have to accompany him. He had his own circle somewhere far away from hers. He was a big fellow, almost grown-up.

Just because he had said that about her dimples. Could it make such a difference?

Oh yes. She knew that it did really.

And so there was still someone walking along the river, searching, coming home again tired. Walking there alone. After Auntie had left and everything. A search that was almost meaningless.

It had been a time of snow and a time of death and of closed bedrooms – and she had arrived bang on the other side of it, her eyes dimming for joy because a boy had said, ‘You with the dimples.’

Woodwind players are walking at the sides of the road. You walk as fast as you can and wish at the same time that the road would never end.

The road did come to an end, and she got home too soon: it was still obvious that something had happened.

‘Is it fine out of doors?’ asked her mother.

‘Fine? It’s windy and raining.’

‘It can be fine all the same, can’t it?’

Siss looked at her mother furtively. She never questioned her more than was necessary.

Nor did she.

Ice-cold lightning flashes emerge from all the rents in the palace, out into the desolate landscape and out into space. The course of the day alters their form and direction, but still the whole palace flashes from within and
out
towards the sun. The bird whose flight is bound fast to the place still makes slashes of steel right across it. He comes no nearer than he did the first time.

The ice palace is not searching for anything; it merely sends out light from its disintegrating chambers. This is a spectacle observed by no one. People do not pass this way.

The palace sends out flashes of lightning, and the bird has not yet slashed himself to death.

A spectacle observed by no one.

It will not last much longer now. The palace will fall. What the bird will do, nobody knows. The bird will rise like a speck into the sky, wild with fear, when the palace is shattered and falls.

The sun climbs quickly, and gets warmer. Then the level of the river begins to rise, too. The black, gliding water acquires yellow and white eddies, it licks more boldly at the lacework edging the banks – and when it finally pours over the shelf and down into the foundations of the palace it does so in a cloud of spray with a gruff voice. Within the palace the first quiver of doom is felt.

The sunshine is stronger every day. The slope beside the ice becomes free of snow. The ice walls still stand in the
sunshine, no longer part of the scene; abandoned by the snow they are helplessly out of keeping.

Slowly the palace changes colour. The shining green ice whitens in the warmth of the sun. The transparent chambers and domes grow dim as if filled with steam, veiling all they may possess, drawing a cover over themselves and concealing it. The whole palace draws the white colour over itself and starts to dissolve on the surface. Inside it is still ringing hard. The ice no longer sends out lightning among the fields, but shines, whiter than before, shines quietly. The huge ice palace is a single white mass in a brown and fallow spring landscape; it has drawn a covering over itself and shut itself in against its fall.

Siss seemed to be standing on melting ice. There were grey floes and drift ice all around her. A black rent ran across the big lake one night – in the morning the water breathed long and deeply through it, and at once a small bird sat dipping its beak and drinking at the edge. Soon there were several more openings, and huge ice floes began to move without being able to advance. The outlet was not yet open.

Siss thought about the palace in the waterfall. What had happened on her last visit took on a different complexion after her conversation with Auntie. It must have been a hallucination. She had been so much on edge just then that she could have imagined a good deal.

The palace, too, was different since her shy conversation with the boy. It had in fact aroused a new desire to go there. Her conversation with the boy was recorded in her mind in lasting script. She would certainly not get to know him any better than she did now, and yet …

The boy had made the palace different – it was as it had been when the men stood there in the night. Once again it was for the sake of those men in the night.

The river is in spate, the boy had said. The palace is white. It will soon fall.

The ice palace stood quivering in a surging stream. It would be crushed. It fascinated her. She felt she ought to go there.

Meanwhile she watched rent after rent appear in the thick greying ice on the lake. The water lay grey in a naked, fallow
landscape. No greening yet. In the mountains the mass of snow was great; an even greater spate of floodwater was approaching. Then the palace would fall. There was something sadly fascinating in the thought: on a day with a fresh smell and a touch of mist – then it will shake the earth.

At school no approach was made. But it seemed to be in the air: soon there would be an opening. It had to come from Siss, but she still kept her distance. Then one day, since she did not summon up her courage, a note was lying on her desk. ‘Aren’t things going to be as they used to be soon, Siss?’

She would not look around to try to find out who had written it; instead she ducked farther down in her desk. Had they perhaps stolen a march on her?

Siss was under tacit observation. But she was approached openly, too. The boy with the boot stood in front of her one morning, alone. Perhaps he had been sent, perhaps he was there on his own account.

‘Siss –’

She was not unfriendly. ‘Is anything the matter?’ she asked.

‘Yes. Things aren’t the same as they used to be yet,’ he replied, looking her straight in the eyes.

She felt a desire to touch him or, rather, that he would do something of the sort. Neither made any move.

‘No, it’s not the same as it used to be,’ said Siss, more unwillingly than her expression warranted. ‘And you surely know why.’

‘It
can
be as it used to be,’ he said obstinately.

‘Are you so sure?’

‘No, but it can be as it used to be just the same.’

She was glad he had said it, and yet … Her dimples appeared, but she stopped short and behaved as usual.

‘Has anyone sent you?’ she asked stupidly, without thinking. Did the rest of them tell you to say this? she should have said.

‘No!’ he replied, offended.

‘No, of course not.’

‘I can do things like this on my own.’

‘Yes, I know that.’

But he was really angry, and would say no more but turned abruptly away.

This was the small event that gave her the push. She had to do something at once now, take this step, overcome this feeling of shame she had towards them – even though it was curious that it should feel like shame. In any case she had cut herself off from them. It was a comfort to have Auntie’s advice behind her now that it had to happen.

The palace in the waterfall gave her the chance to show them clearly how she felt. She would bring up the forbidden subject herself. The ice was ready to be crushed, the boy had said, and she wanted to see it before the river swept it away.

On the Saturday Siss made her appearance in the school-yard in a new way and said to the expectant circle, ‘Look, I have an idea. Shall we go to the ice palace tomorrow? It’ll fall down soon, so I’ve heard.’

‘Do
you
want to go?’ said someone softly in amazement but was nudged.

They were all amazed and stood looking at each other. And then to the ice palace of all places, the very centre of this dangerous thing that they had been forbidden to mention? What has happened to Siss? was written all over them.

‘What shall we do there?’ asked someone.

Siss replied calmly and with assurance now that she had started. ‘Only that it might be fun to see it once more before it topples down. It can topple any day now, said someone who had seen it. I believe it looks even more strange now,’ she concluded.

The group had one or two leaders now. Two to be spokesmen in just such a situation. Siss was surprised to see that one of them was the boy with the boot who had once seemed to pop up out of nowhere, and shown her goodwill. Now it appeared that he had become a leader. The other was the girl who had taken over after Siss. It was she who took the initiative.

‘Are you making fun of us, Siss?’ she asked. ‘This is such a lot, all of a sudden.’ ‘Of course I’m not.’

‘We hadn’t expected you to say something like that, you see,’ said the boy, to show his position.

‘I know.’

‘We can’t be sure all at once if you’re with us again,’ said the girl, ‘but since you say so, then …’

They had Siss in the middle of them when they all went home. There was no noise. They walked along, keeping her in the middle. She did not dislike it either, she realized. It was funny how excited you could be over such a quiet homecoming.

At home they asked casually what was going on? She told them about it at once; the flush of her homecoming made her frank. During the evening she noticed that she was sitting with Mother and Father on either side of her. Father
began by saying, ‘We’ve been waiting for the day when you would come home happy.’

Mother said: ‘We knew the day would come. It wouldn’t have been easy to live through this winter otherwise.’

Siss winced. But they said no more.

We know you’ve won through, they might have said, and made it embarrassing.

Of course she had made them unhappy this winter. But she knew it all too well, and needed no reminder. There was joy in the house now, but it was just as awkward to be in their company.

One is not freed by mere words. It was late on Saturday evening – and it had diminished, the feeling that had buoyed her up when she walked home with the group.

Siss lay in bed trying to prepare herself for the morning and was so excited about it that she could neither prepare herself nor sleep. Tension, happiness and anxiety alternated. She lay with wide-open eyes in the lamplight.

She was facing the window; a thin white curtain was drawn across it. All of a sudden she saw one of the casements swing open. Swing out into the darkness. What was it? Nothing more happened. A slight movement of the curtain in the draught, just as when you draw in your stomach, then everything was still. No wind. But it must have been the wind! The hook could not have been on – but she seemed to remember having seen it so. And her room was on the first floor of the house.

A window that opens by itself on to the night like that – you think to yourself that it doesn’t do it for fun or for no reason at all.

Siss was immediately gripped by fear, and she was on the point of calling through the wall. She stopped herself. Let them enjoy their happiness in peace. They can do nothing about this.

The night air streamed in through the aperture like a cold cataract. She stared, paralysed, at the black opening that could be seen through the curtain. What would come in? Nobody. It’s not like that. Nobody comes in through openings like this. They only open.

She braced herself and said, This is nonsense, and you know it perfectly well. Of course it didn’t open of its own accord. It’s my imagination. There can’t have been a hook on it, and it must have been a gust of wind I didn’t notice.