Ice Trilogy (82 page)

“Miss, would you deign to share this modest meal with me?” An old voice with a strange accent sounded next to her.

Olga lowered her eyes and saw an old man sitting alone at a table. All of the tables here were for two, but most of them were pushed together to form national groups. Virtually no loners remained. She hadn’t noticed this old man earlier.

“Believe me, I wouldn’t dare to insist. If you have other preferences, do not hesitate to follow them. But I would be extraordinarily touched even by your brief presence at this miserable little table.”

He spoke perfect, terribly old-fashioned English. But the accent indicated that the old man wasn’t English. Olga placed her tray on his table and sat down across from him.

“Marvelous. I thank you.” The old man stood, his shaking hands raising his napkin to his narrow, colorless lips and wiping them. “Let me introduce myself — Ernst Wolf.”

“Olga Drobot,” she said, reaching over the food to shake his hand.

The old man touched his lips to her hand. His bald head trembled slightly.

“You betrayed us with the Jerries.” The Russian table laughed caustically.

“Are you German?” Olga asked.

“Yes.”

“Why don’t you sit at the German table? There are so many of you here.”

“There are two reasons, my dear Miss Drobot. First, in the course of fifty-eight years of imprisonment, I have come to understand that solitude is a gift from on high. Second, I simply have nothing to talk about with my current compatriots. We have no common themes.”

“And you think that they will emerge with me?” Olga broke off a piece of her roll.

“You reminded me of a certain lady who was very dear to me. A very long time ago.”

“And it was only for this that yo
u..
.” Olga lifted her fork to put a piece of fish in her mouth but suddenly realized exactly what he had told her. “What? Fifty-eight years? You’ve been here fifty-eight years?”

“Well, not exactly here.” He smiled, baring his old dentures. “But with them. With the Brothers of the Light.”

The fork slipped out of Olga’s hand. “Fifty-eight?”

“Fifty-eight, my dear Miss Drobot.”

She stared at him. The old man’s face was calm and otherworldly. His pale-blue eyes were attentive. The whites around them were extremely yellow. Judging by the even features of his wrinkled face, now unhealthily yellow and liver-spotted, in his youth he had been a handsome man.

“When did it happen?”

“In 1946, October 21. At the villa of my father, Sebastian Wolf.”

“They hammered you?”

“Yes. And decided that I was
ein taube Nuss
. An empty nut.”

“And then what?”

“And then I successfully became a slave of the Brotherhood. Although, in fact, I had been one before the hammering as well.”

“They used you before as well? In what way?”

“The most direct. It is quite easy to use children, honorable Miss Drobot.”

“I don’t understand.”

“My father, Sebastian Wolf, was one of the better-known members of the Brotherhood. And we lived with him. One fine day he decided to hammer me. And my sister as well. She perished, and I survived. Before this he had used us as obligatory decorations. And Mama as well. But she died earlier.”

“Bu
t...
how old were you when you were hammered?”

“Seventeen.”

Olga stared at the piece of fish on her fork. She picked it up and lifted it to her mouth. And once again dropped it on her tray. “I don’t feel like eating.”

The old man nodded his yellow head with understanding. “Nor do I. After the final bell everyone has a poor appetite. But then in the morning everyone’s hungry as a horse! The reasons are entirely objective!”

He laughed.

There was a childlike helplessness in his laughter.

“Solitude — is a gift from on hig
h..
.” Olga recalled.

“What happened to your father?” she asked, looking at the old man’s trembling hands.

“The last time I saw my father was when he crushed my ribs. My sister, I admit, had tired him out. And he wasn’t very precise with me: the rib broke in and hit my liver. But I survived. Although since that time my face is yellow, like the Chinese. Believe me, Miss Drobot, in the first days after my arrival here they took me for one of them! I’m friends with the Chinese.”

He pinched off a piece of chicken and put it in his mouth. His dentures clacked softly. He chewed as though performing hard labor. His thin white hair shook on his yellow head.

“Tell me, why didn’t they just kill yo
u...
us? It would have been so simple. Keeping you and hiding you for fifty-eight years! What for? And us as wel
l..
.”

Wolf finished chewing and wiped his lips with the napkin.

“You see, Miss Drobot, when a person is killed and then burned, something of him still remains. The ashes, for example. And not only that. Something more essential than ashes. When he leaves this world against his will, a man forms a kind of hole in it. Because he is torn from this place forcibly, like a tooth. This is the law of life’s metaphysics. And a hole is a noticeable thing, my esteemed Miss Drobot. It’s visible. It takes a long time to heal. And other people feel it. If the man continues to live, he leaves no holes. Thus, to hide a person is much simpler and more advantageous. From the metaphysical point of view, that is.”

Olga grew thoughtful. And understood.

“They killed ‘empties,’ as they call us, only in Russia. Under Stalin, when the Great Terror was on, and later, when the ‘small terror’ took place. The Brotherhood wasn’t worried about metaphysical holes created after the death of individual beings.”

“Why not?”

“Because Russia itself was one large metaphysical hole.”

“Really? When I lived there I didn’t notice it.”

“Thank God!”

“Why?”

“If you had noticed it, Miss Drobot, you would have an entirely different expression on your face. And believe me, I wouldn’t have invited you to sit at my table.”

Olga looked at him attentively. She laughed and clapped her hands. The old man giggled in satisfaction.

“Eat, eat, Miss Drobot. There’s a long night ahead.”

Olga set about eating. The old man took his portion of Jell-O and put it on Olga’s tray.

“And don’t argue with me!”

His hand and the Jell-O trembled in time.

“
Danke
, Herr Wolf,” said Olga.

“
Pazhaluusta
,” the old man said in Russian and laughed, his dentures clacking.

Olga slowly ate half of her dinner. She wiped her lips with a paper napkin and dropped it in her soup.

“I will take the liberty of asking, Miss Drobot, what is your profession?”

“Manager. And you? Oh, that’s righ
t...
forgive me.”

“Your question is utterly appropriate. During my prison affair with the Brotherhood, I have done time in seven places. Four of them had rather good libraries. Thanks to them I managed to master three professions: translator from the English (I translated three of Dickens’s novels for myself), cartography, and — you’ll find it difficult to believe, Miss Drobot — an ocean navigator, that is, a pilot.”

“Cool!”

“Cool! I love that American word.”

The old man also finished his meal.

“Tell me, is there any way they might let us out of here? Sometime?” Olga asked.

“What for?” The old man’s colorless eyebrows arched, and yellow wrinkles ran across his large forehead.

“They won’
t...
let us out?”

“Miss Drobot, you are too young. That’s why you’re asking such questions.”

Dejected, Olga fell silent.

“Stay calm. And stop comforting yourself with illusions. Our life is now divided into two parts: the first and the second. And we can’t get away from that. Therefore we have to try to make the second part more interesting than the first. It is difficult. But it is quite possible. I, to give one example, have managed to do this. And you have to agree that the Brotherhood provides a great deal of help in this regard. Local conditions are incomparable to those in normal prisons. Despite all their ruthlessness, the Brothers of the Light have been extremely humanistic toward us empty shells. They know our weaknesses quite well, and the needs of the meat machines.”

“Meat machines? Who’s that?”

“It’s you and me,” said the old man, rising and picking up his tray. “So keep your chin up, Miss Drobot.”

Smiling, he wandered over to the dish-washing window. The tray shook terribly in his hand. Olga remained at the table. The old man’s words had struck a deep chord in her, making her blood run cold.

“Two lives. Before and after,” Olga thought, turning the empty glass dripping with orange juice. “So what now? Scrape hides forever? And wait for the lights-out bell to ring? Learn to be a pilo
t...
Ridiculous! No, it’s not possible! No way! I’d rather hang myself in the toilet stall. So what then, after the bell? I won’t go to the windows. They murdered my parents, David turned out to be an asshol
e...
What do I have to lose? I couldn’t have children. Twic
e...
What am I living for? For whom? For Fima? Here, or anywhere, what’s holding me back? I have nothing to lose. Pilot, pilot, now what shore should we head fo
r...
‘Baby can you twice find the way to fuckin’ paradise?’ I can’t find it, eithe
r...
I’ll hang myself. Today. Tonight. For sure, as Pyotr say
s..
.”

She closed her eyes.

A large, familiar hand touched her back.

“Bjorn!” she said, without opening her eyes.

“Why do Russians wash and eat so fast?” Bjorn hung over Olga like a bell tower, smelling of cheap shampoo and clean clothes.

“You know, I’m actually Jewish.” Olga opened her eyes.

Bjorn’s face was content. His cheeks were flushed from the shower.

“What a positive personality,” Olga thought enviously as she looked up at him. “A regular walking security complex. Healthy food throughout childhoo
d...
and they have good dairy products in Swede
n..
.”

“I just wanted to eat with you,” he admitted honestly.

“Tell me, do you ever get depressed?” Olga stood, picking up the tray with the remains of her food.

“It happens sometimes,” he said, taking her tray. “But I know how to fight it off.”

“Teach me.”

“There’s no basketball court here. Only a hockey rink!” Smiling at her, Bjorn took a few sweeping steps with her tray.

Olga followed him.

“I wonder, are there rebellions here?”

“You already asked. No, there haven’t been any group ones.”

“You already told me.” She yawned nervously. “Well, so, should we go?”

“I have to eat.”

She clenched and unclenched her fists.

“Do you want to hang out together today?”

“I wouldn’t min
d...
Which corner?”

“We could go to ours, the Swedish table.”

“They invited me over there today, too!”

“We’ve got a tight group.” He set the tray in the return window.

“Let’s tr
y..
.” Olga yawned nervously again, and shivered. “Am I pale?”

He leaned over.

“A little. Do you feel like getting together?”

“No! Not at all.”

“What are you going to do now?”

“I don’t kno
w...
I’ll go and read something.”

“I’ll come to the library.”

“Okay.”

Olga walked out of the cafeteria into the hallway and went into a large, clean bathroom. After urinating into a Japanese toilet with a disgustingly warm seat, she washed her hands, looking at herself in the mirror. Next to her a Romanian girl, a tall, beautiful model, was brushing her teeth.

“The chicken has a strange aftertaste today.” The Romanian spit out water. “They’re obviously mixing something into it for us.”

“I had the fish.” Olga touched and smoothed out the wrinkles around her eyes.

“A sort of metallic aftertaste,” said the Romanian, looking at her teeth. “What is it? Lead? What if it’s mercury? And my teeth are getting discolored. Some kind of meta
l...
Haven’t you felt it?”

“I ate fish,” Olga repeated, and left the restroom.

Walking down the hallway, she reached the living quarters. It was very spacious, and fresh from the air-conditioning. Dim lighting illuminated rows of double bunks, stools, and shelves with personal items. The male and female sections were divided by a small passage with no doors. The walls and ceiling of the male half were a grayish green, while the women’s were pinkish gray. The men’s half was called the Garage; the women’s, the Ham. In the Garage and the Ham, dozens of empty beds awaited new owners.

Olga went over to her bed, took a pack of super-light Chinese cigarettes and a tube of hand cream from her night table, lit up, squeezed out some cream, and, rubbing it in, threw herself on her bed with pleasure.

“Oh my Go
d..
.”

From above, the golden-curled head of the Irish girl Meryl hung down. “Olga, do you have any pads?”

“Yes.”

“I forgot to order them. Would you give me a couple?”

“They’re in the night table.”

“I’m too lazy to get down.” The Irish girl grinned.

“And I’m too lazy to get up,” said Olga, blowing a stream of smoke at her.

Meryl got down, opened the drawer, and took a few.

“I saw you eating with that yellow German guy.”

“That’s right. He asked me to.”

“So he’s got a thing for you.”

“Probabl
y...
He’s an interesting old guy.”

“They say he’s their old stool pigeon.”

“So what? Do we have anything to hide?”

“Well” — Meryl shrugged her shoulders, pulling down her pants and putting on the pad — “a lot of people want to get out of here.”

“Somehow it’s not really noticeable,” said Olga, smoking with pleasure, staring at the plastic bottom of the upper bed where she’d scratched “Fuck off, Ice!” the first night she’d been there.

“You’re new. That’s why you think everyone here is content. Everyone just dreams about waiting for the bell and standing up at the gates.”