Ice

FIVE

My window overlooked an empty landscape where nothing ever moved. No houses were visible, only the debris of the collapsed wall, a bleak stretch of snow, the fjord, the fir forest, the mountains. No colour, only monotonous shades of grey from black to the ultimate dead white of the snow. The water lifeless in its dead calm, the ranks of black trees marching everywhere in uniform gloom. Suddenly there was a movement, a shout of red and blue in that silent grey monotone. I seized my overcoat, struggled into it as I rushed to the door; changed my mind and went back to the window, which was stuck fast. I managed to heave it up, stepped out on to piles of rubble, then pulled it shut behind me with the tips of my fingers. Slithering on the frozen grass, I ran down the slope; it was the quickest way; and I had eluded the woman of the house, whom I suspected of keeping watch on my movements. There was no one on the narrow path skirting the fjord, but the person I was chasing could not be far off. The path plunged into the forest. At once it got colder and darker under the trees, which grew close together, their black branches meeting in dense entanglements overhead, intertwining with the undergrowth lower down. Twenty invisible people could have been near me, but I saw the ghostly grey coat flicker among the firs, and occasionally caught a glimpse of its checked lining.

The wearer’s head was uncovered: her bright hair shimmered like silver fire, an ignis fatuus glimmering in the forest. She hurried on as fast as she could, anxious to get out of the trees. She was nervous in the forest, which always seemed full of menace. The crowding trees unnerved her, transformed themselves into black walls, shutting her in. It was late, after sunset; she had come too far and must hurry back. She looked about for the fjord, failed to see it, lost her bearings, and at once became really frightened, terrified of being overtaken by night in the dark forest. Fear was the climate she lived in; if she had ever known kindness it would have been different. The trees seemed to obstruct her with deliberate malice. All her life she had thought of herself as a foredoomed victim, and now the forest had become the malign force that would destroy her. In desperation she tried to run, but a hidden root tripped her, she almost fell. Branches caught in her hair, tugged her back, lashed out viciously when they were disentangled. The silver hairs torn from her head glittered among black needles; they were the clues her pursuers would follow, leading them to their victim. She escaped from the forest at length only to see the fjord waiting for her. An evil effluence rose from the water, something primitive, savage, demanding victims, hungry for a human victim.

For a second she stood still, appalled by the absolute silence and loneliness all around. A new ferocity pervaded the landscape now that night was approaching. She saw the massed armies of forest trees encamped on all sides, the mountain wall above bristling with trees like guns. Below, the fjord was an impossible icy volcano erupting the baleful fire of the swallowed sun.

In the deepening dusk every horror could be expected. She was afraid to look, tried not to see the spectral shapes rising from the water, but felt them come gliding towards her and fled in panic. One overtook her, wound her in soft, clammy, adhesive bands like ectoplasm. Wildly choking a scream, she fought herself free, raced on blindly, frantic and gasping. Her brain was locked in nightmare, she did not think. The last light fading, she stumbled against unseen rocks, bruising knees and elbows. Thorns lacerated her hands, scratched her face. Her flying leaps shattered the thin ice at the fjord’s edge and she was deluged in freezing water. Each breath was painful, a sharp knife repeatedly stabbing her chest. She dared not stop or slacken speed for an instant, terrified by the loud thud of pursuing steps close behind her, not recognizing her own agonized heartbeats. Suddenly she slipped on the edge of a snowdrift, could not stop herself, fell face down in a deep snow-grave. There was snow in her mouth, she was done for, finished, she would never get up again, could not run any further. Cruelly straining muscles relentlessly forced her up, she had to struggle on, pulled by the irresistible magnet of doom. Systematic bullying when she was most vulnerable had distorted the structure of her personality, made a victim of her, to be destroyed, either by things or by human beings, people or fjords and forests; it made no difference, in any case she could not escape. The irreparable damage inflicted had long ago rendered her fate inevitable.

A pitch black mass of rock loomed ahead, a hill, a mountain, an unlighted fortress, buttressed by regiments of black firs. Her weak hands were shaking too much to manipulate a door, but the waiting forces of doom dragged her inside.

Stretched out on her bed, she could feel the hostile, alien, freezing dark pressed to the wall like the ear of a listening enemy. In the utter silence and solitude, she lay watching the mirror, waiting for her fate to arrive. It would not be long now. She knew that something fearful was going to happen in the sound-proof room, where nobody could or would come to her rescue. The room was antagonistic as it always had been. She was aware of the walls refusing protection, of the frigid hostility in the air. There was nothing she could do, no one to whom she could appeal. Abandoned, helpless, she could only wait for the end.

A woman came in without knocking and stood in the doorway, handsome, forbidding, dressed all in black, tall and menacing as a tree, followed by other indistinct shapes, which kept to the shadows behind her. The girl at once recognized her executioner, whose enmity she had always felt without understanding it, too innocent or too preoccupied with her own dream world to guess the obvious cause. Now, cold bright pitiless eyes swam in the glassy depths of the mirror, darted towards their victim. Her eyes were widely dilated and black with dread, two deep pits of terror, of intuitive nightmare foreknowledge. Then a sense of fatality overcame her; she experienced a regression, became a submissive, terrorized child, cowed by persistent ill-treatment. Intimidated, obedient to the woman’s commanding voice, she got up and with faltering steps left the platform, her white face blank as paper. When her arms were seized she cried out, struggled feebly. A hand was clamped over her mouth. Several figures towered above her. She was gripped from all sides, roughly handled, hustled out of the room, her hands tied behind her back.

Under the trees it got darker and darker, I kept losing sight of the path. In the end I lost it entirely and came out at a different place. I was close to the wall. It was impressive, intact, no break in it anywhere; I saw the black shapes of sentries posted along the top. Two of them were approaching each other and would cross quite near me. I stood still in the shadow of the black trees where I should not be seen. Their steps were loud, the hard frost magnified every sound. They met, stamped their feet, exchanged passwords, separated again.

I walked on when the footsteps grew fainter. I had a curious feeling that I was living on several planes simultaneously; the overlapping of these planes was confusing. Huge rounded boulders as big as houses, resembling the heads of decapitated giants, were lying near, where they had fallen long ago from the mountainside. Suddenly I heard voices, looked everywhere, but could see no one. The sound seemed to come from among the boulders, so I went to investigate. A light flowered yellow in the blue dusk: I was looking at a cottage, not a mass of rock. People were talking inside it.

I heard yells, crashes, the frightened neighing of horses, all the noises of battle. Arrows flew in clouds. War clubs thumped. There was loud clashing of steel. Strangely dressed men came at the wall in waves, swarming up it, using their feet as well as their hands, holding cutlasses in their teeth. Agile as gorillas, they came in their thousands; however many were thrown back, a new wave always came on. Finally all the defenders of the wall were exterminated, the second line defences forced back. Invaders already inside opened the gates, and the rest burst in like a tidal wave. People barricaded themselves in their houses. In the town there was utter chaos. Hand to hand fighting in the narrow streets; savage meaningless cries like the cries of wild animals resounding between the walls. The strangers raced through the town like madmen, pouring wine down their throats, slaughtering all they met, every man, woman, child, animal. The wine streamed down their faces mingled with sweat and blood so that they looked like demons. A little snow fell: this seemed to excite them to frenzy, they laughed insanely, tried to catch the falling flakes in their mouths. The horsemen carried long lances with pennants or feathers attached. Hacked-off heads were impaled on these lances, sometimes infants or dogs. Huge fires blazed everywhere, it was as bright as day. The air was full of the reek of burning, of charred wood and old dust. As people were smoked out of their homes they were massacred by the enemy. Many preferred to die in the flames.

I had no weapon, and searched for something with which to defend myself. I was in a street where dead horses had been piled up to form a barricade, among them a man who had been killed with his mount. He had not had time even to draw his sword, which was still in the scabbard, engraved with intricate patterns, a beautiful piece of work. I tugged at the projecting hilt, but in falling the blade had jammed and I could not move it. The dead beasts had been heaped up in such frantic haste that my persistent efforts were shaking the whole construction; carcasses worked loose, rolled down, forming a breech. Before I could repair the damage, a troop of horsemen galloped along the street with a fearful clattering din, waving their lances, yelling their senseless cries. I threw myself flat on the ground, hoping they had not seen me, expecting the worst. As they came up, one of them jabbed his long lance ahead of him into the dead rider, dislodging the body so violently that it fell on top of me, probably saving my life. I kept perfectly still while the whole troop went careering past, rolling their bloodshot, demented, animalic eyes.

When they had gone, I pushed the corpse aside and got up to go and search for the girl. I had not much hope of finding her; I knew the fate of girls in sacked towns. The sword was loose now, I pulled it out easily. I had never used such a weapon and tried slashing at some of the bodies I passed. The thing was heavy and hard to handle, but I discovered the balance and began to get the feel of it as I walked, thus gaining some much-needed confidence. As it happened, I was not attacked. Most of the fighting was going on in the lower streets, round the harbour forts, which appeared to be holding out. When I saw anyone I took cover, and in the general con- fusion escaped observation. The High House was almost burnt out already, only the shell still standing. Smoke and flames spouted towards the sky, the whole interior was incandescent. I approached as close as I could, but was driven back by the smoke and the intense heat. It was quite impossible to get inside. In any case, nobody could have survived in such an inferno. My face was scorched, sparks were smouldering in my hair, I crushed them out with my hands.

I came upon her by chance, not far away, lying face down on the stones. A little blood had trickled out of her mouth. Her neck had an unnatural twist; a living girl could not have turned her head at that angle: the neck was broken. She had been dragged by the hair, hands which had twisted it into a sort of rope had dulled its silvery brightness. On her back blood was still fresh in places, wet and bright red; in other places it had caked black on the white flesh. I looked particularly at one arm, on which the circular marks of teeth stood out clearly. The bones of the forearm were broken, the sharp pointed ends of bone projected at the wrist through the torn tissue. I felt I had been defrauded: I alone should have done the breaking with tender love; I was the only person entitled to inflict wounds. I leaned forward and touched her cold skin.

I went to look in at the cottage window, taking care not to go near enough to be seen from inside. A lot of people were crowded into a small smoky room, firelight flickering red on their faces, reminding me of a medieval picture of hell. At first I could not make out any words; they were all talking at once. I recognized one woman, unusually tall, handsome in a forbidding way; I had seen her at the High House. Now she was with a man she called father who sat just inside the window. Because he was so close to me, his was the first voice I understood. He was relating the legend of the fjord, how every year at the winter solstice a beautiful girl had to be sacrificed to the dragon that lived in its depths. The other voices gradually became silent when he began describing the rite itself. ‘We untie her as soon as we get her up there on the rock. She must struggle a bit, otherwise the dragon might think we’d palmed off a dead girl on him. The water foams down below. The monster’s great scaly coils appear. Then we hurl her down. The whole fjord becomes a maelstrom, blood and foam flying in all directions.’

A lively discussion of the sacrifice followed, different people speaking in turn. They might have been talking about a football match between their team and a rival town. Somebody said: ‘We haven’t so many good-looking girls to spare. Why should we give one of them to the dragon? Why not sacrifice a stranger, some foreign girl who means nothing to any of us?’ The tone of voice suggested that the speaker referred to a special person, whose identity was known to all present. The father started raising objections, but was silenced by his daughter, who called out her agreement, launching into a vicious tirade of which I only caught isolated phrases. ‘Pale girls who look as pure as if they were made of glass … smash them to smithereens…. And I will smash this one….’ The end was shouted. ‘I’ll hurl her down off the rock myself, if none of you have the guts to do it!’

I walked away in disgust. These people were worse than savages. My hands and face were numb, I felt half frozen, and could not think why I had stood there so long listening to their preposterous rigmarole. I had a vague feeling that something was wrong with me, though I could not decide what it was. For a moment this was disturbing; then I forgot it. A small, cold, bright moon shone high in the sky, showed the landscape distinctly. I recognized the fjord but not the scene. Tall perpendicular rocks rose straight out of the water, supporting a flat horizontal rock like a high-diving platform. Some people appeared, dragging the girl between them, her hands tied. As she passed me, I caught a glimpse of her pitiful white face of a child-victim, terrified and betrayed. I sprang forward, tried to reach her, to cut her bonds. Somebody went for me. I threw him off, tried again to get near her, she was dragged away. I rushed after the group, shouting: ‘Murderers!’ Before I could overtake them, they were hauling her up the rock.

I was close to her on the platform high above the fjord. We were alone there, although a mixture of vague sounds behind me indicated the presence of numerous on-lookers. They did not concern me. I was completely concentrated on the trembling figure, half kneeling, half crouching, at the extremity of the rock, overhanging the dark water. Her hair glittered as if with diamond dust under the moon. She was not looking at me, but I could see her face, which was always pale, but now drained of colour right to the bone. I observed her extreme slenderness, felt I could enclose the whole of her with my two hands, even the rib-cage containing her heart. Her skin was like white satin, shadowless in the brilliant moonlight. The circular marks the cords had left on her wrists would have been red in daylight, but now looked black. I could imagine how it would feel to take hold of her wrists and to snap the fragile bones with my hands.

Leaning forward, I touched her cold skin, the shallow hollow in her thigh. Snow had fallen between her breasts.

Armed men came up, pushed me back, seized her by her frail shoulders. Big tears fell from her eyes like icicles, like diamonds, but I was unmoved. They did not seem to me like real tears. She herself did not seem quite real. She was pale and almost transparent, the victim I used for my own enjoyment in dreams. People behind me muttered, impatient at the delay. The men did not wait any longer but hurled her down, her last pathetic scream trailing after her. The night exploded then like a paper bag. Huge jets of water sprang up; waves dashing wildly against the rocks burst in cascades of spray. I hardly noticed the freezing showerbath, but peered over the edge of the platform, and saw a circle of scaly coils emerge from the seething water, in which something white struggled frantically for an instant before the crunch of armour-plated jaws.

I was in a hurry to get back to my lodging. My feet and fingers were numb, my face stiff, my head starting to ache with the cold. As soon as I had thawed out a little in my warm room, I began to write. My main topic, of course, was the Indris, but I still kept up the pretence I had started by writing down anything that seemed of interest about the town. I did not think the security people would bother to read my notes, although they could easily do so while I was out of the room. The childishly simple form of scrambling I used, mixing up sentences about the lemurs with others on local affairs, would at least defeat the woman of the house, who pried into everything.

I derived great satisfaction from describing the gentle mysterious singing creatures, and seemed to grow more deeply involved with them as I wrote. With their enchanting other- world voices, their gay, affectionate, innocent ways, they had become for me symbols of life as it could be on earth, if man’s destructiveness, violence and cruelty were eliminated. I enjoyed writing as a rule, the sentences came to me without effort, as if they formed in my head of their own accord. But now it was quite different, I could not find the right words: I knew I was not expressing myself lucidly, or remembering accurately, and after some minutes put down my pen. Immediately I saw a mental picture of many people crowded into a smoky room, and felt I ought to inform the warden of what I had overheard. At the same time, there was a curious unreality about the memory of that scene, as if I could have dreamt it. And when it occurred to me that the girl might be in real danger I did not quite believe this. I got up, all the same, to go to the telephone. Then, restrained by the peculiar uncertainty as to what was real more than the thought of the woman who would be listening to every word, I decided not to ring up until I got to the café.

My sense of unreality became overwhelming as I left the house. A strong colourless light was making everything outside as clear as day, though I was quite unable to see where it came from. My amazement increased when I observed that this extraordinary light revealed details not normally visible to the naked eye. It was snowing slightly, and the complex structure of each individual snowflake appeared in crystalline clearness, the delicate starlike, flowerlike forms perfectly distinct and as bright as jewels. I looked round for the familiar ruins, but they were no longer there. I was used to the sight of destruction, but this was different. Nothing whatever was left of the ruined town; its structures had disintegrated, the remains were flattened, spread as though a giant steam roller had passed over them. The one or two vertical fragments seemed to have been left intentionally, with the deliberate object of emphasizing the general levelling. With a dreamlike feeling, I walked on, seeing no one, either alive or dead. The air was full of a sweetish smell, not unpleasant, which I could smell on my own hands and clothes, and presumed had been left by some gas. The absence of fires surprised me; nothing seemed to be burning, I saw no smoke. I only now noticed thin trickles of a white milky fluid moving among the debris, collecting in pools here and there. These white pools continually widened as the liquid eroded their edges, eating away whatever came in contact with it; it was only a question of time before the entire mass of wreckage would be disposed of in this way. I stood still for a moment to watch the process, fascinated by such a practical, thorough method of clearance.

I remembered that I had to find the girl, searched for her desperately through the endless rubble. I thought I saw her a long way off in the distance, shouted, ran; she changed, disappeared. Like a mirage I saw her still further away; then she vanished again. A girl’s arm protruded from a heap of detritus; I took hold of the wrist, pulled gently; it came away in my hand. All at once I heard sounds and movements behind me, quickly swung round, caught sight of living objects which moved with a gliding motion, made warbling noises. Their shapes were queer, only partially human, reminding me of mutants in science fiction stories. They took no notice of me, ignored my existence completely, and I hurried on without going any closer.

When I came to a place where bodies were lying about, I stopped to examine them in case one was hers. I went up to the nearest corpse and looked at it carefully. It was not recognizable, the skeleton and what was left of the flesh had become phosphorescent. To look at the others would only be wasting time, so I left them alone.