Ice Trilogy

by Vladimir Sorokin

  The hotel’s glass doors slid open silently and a blond man of medium height entered briskly. He was wearing light shorts and a light shirt with palm trees on it. Hanging on his back was a broad Panama hat.

  “Bjorn Vassberg?” asked the blond, as he approached. “I’m Michael Laird. How are you?”

  “Hello, Mr. Laird. Bjorn. And this is Olga Drobot.”

  “Hi, Michael.” Olga held out her hand to the blond man first.

  He seemed to be about forty, although quite youthful looking. His narrow face with its pointy chin, sunken cheeks, and slightly hooked nose was friendly and resolute. His dark-blue, almost black eyes were intelligent and open.

  “You’re just off the bus, are you? Tired? How do you handle humidity?” he asked quickly.

  “July in New York isn’t much better,” Olga answered.

  “You’re American?”

  “For the last fifteen years.”

  “Lovely. I’ve only been to America once. Quite a long time ago.”

  “Me too,” Bjorn interjected.

  “Comrades in misfortune.” Olga summed up.

  They laughed.

  “Are you hungry?” asked Michael.

  “I am!” said Olga, patting her stomach.

  “Great. I know a marvelous restaurant,” said Michael, putting on his hat. “Shall we go?”

  They left the hotel and grabbed a taxi. Michael quickly gave the address in Chinese. And the very young, short-haired, nicely dressed taxi driver, separated from the passengers by a nickel-plated grate, drove them through the oppressively sun-drenched streets of Guangzhou.

  “You know Chinese?” asked Olga.

  “Conversational, a little. You can learn enough to get by in three months. But the characters are considerably more difficult,” Michael answered.

  The taxi passed a group of Chinese on beat-up mopeds and motorcycles who were racing away from some police cars. They were all wearing motorcycle helmets, faded overalls, and flip-flops. The taxi driver said a few sharp words and clicked his tongue. The moped riders accelerated and swerved into a side street, the police at their heels.

  “What was that?” asked Olga.

  “It happens all the time here.” Michael glanced out the grimy window. “Private gypsy cabs. Competition for the taxis. It’s forbidden, and they regularly set up raids.”

  “Is it cheaper?”

  “Of course,” Michael chuckled. “A funny thing happened with an English girl I know. She’s studying Chinese at the local university. Late one night, after carousing with other students, she got on one of those motos, told the guy the address, and negotiated a price. And suddenly — boom, the police: ‘Aha, a private taxi.’ Well, this girl decided to help the moto: ‘This isn’t a private driver,’ she said, ‘he’s my Chinese boyfriend. We’re going to Etsizunkhui.’ The policemen roar with laughter. The Chinese boyfriend in the helmet turns his face toward her, and the police shine a flashlight on him: he’s a toothless old peasant!”

  Bjorn and Olga laughed. The corners of Michael’s handsome lips curled in a smile.

  They arrived at the restaurant, Bjorn paid the driver, and they got out of the cab. The huge glass building of the restaurant was decorated with red lanterns and multicolored paper garlands. In front of the entrance eight young women in red dresses stand in two rows. As soon as Olga, Bjorn, and Michael walked over, the young women sang out “Welcome” in Chinese and bowed.

  In the front of the restaurant was a menagerie: in aquariums, nets, and cages, edible creatures wearing a doomed look swam, wriggled, and simply sat. There were fish, turtles, snakes, silkworms, chickens, rats, rabbits, cats of all sorts, and even a sad-looking dog with mangy fur and a frightened look on his face.

  “What is this, it can all be eaten?” Olga asked. “Cats! How horrible!”

  “They have a special dish called ‘The Battle of the Tiger and the Dragon.’ It’s a combination of the fried cat and snake meat,” Michael explained.

  “Disgusting.” Olga frowned. “No, I’m just going to have fish.”

  “I think I will too,” said Bjorn, glancing to the sides.

  A young woman with raspberry-colored lips, wearing a gray jacket, black skirt, white gloves, and holding a notebook, walked up to them. After a brief discussion, Michael ordered lobster sashimi and fried baby bamboo with ginger, wonton soup, and a fillet of carp. The waitress wrote down the order in her notebook and ran off to the kitchen. Her colleague, who had the same raspberry-colored lips, led the guests into the dining hall. It was the hour of the midday meal and the restaurant was full. This was where wealthy Chinese ate. In the center of the hall, surrounded by tall, powerful air conditioners, stood the red-and-gold character that meant “happiness.”

  “We need more privacy,” Michael suggested, and Olga and Bjorn nodded.

  Soon they were sitting in a small, separate room at a round table with a transparent lazy Susan. Two waitresses wiped their hands with warm cloths, then placed ice water, green tea, and little bowls with nuts and vegetable hors d’oeuvres in front of them. When the girls had gone, Michael spoke.

  “Please show your chests.”

  Bjorn and Olga were not surprised by this request, and they pulled up their T-shirts. Michael looked at them, then unbuttoned his palm-tree-decorated silk shirt. In the center of his tanned chest three small purple-white scars showed.

  “They struck you three times?” asked Bjorn.

  “I remember two. Then I lost consciousness,” Michael answered, separating his chopsticks and deftly picking up nuts with them.

  “Where did this happen?” Olga asked.

  “In Edinburgh.”

  “Did they kidnap you?”

  “Yes. After work. Some woman asked me to help her open the trunk of her Jeep. As soon as I opened it, I was pulled inside, and they pressed a mask to my face. When I came to I was in a house, hung up on a wall as if crucified.”

  “Alone?” asked Olga.

  “No, there was another guy and a girl too. Also blonds. They were beaten to death, I think. At least I don’t see how they could have survived those blows.”

  “And then?”

  “Then I work up in the middle of the night in the port. Despite my beaten chest I felt incredibly good. I lay in a puddle near a pub and looked at the stars. I didn’t want anything but those stars...The police picked me up. And they found heroin in my blood. Needless to say my whole story about blue-eyed kidnappers with an ice hammer elicited nothing but a smile from the policemen. Then I felt really sick. The emergency rescue team had to do a bit of work.”

  “Heroin...” Olga picked up a nut distractedly. “They found plain old alcohol in my blood.”

  “My brother and I were simply thrown in the river. But he was already dead by that time,” said Bjorn.

  “You wrote me about that.” Michael sighed.

  The waitress brought them sashimi and soup.

  “That was fast,” Olga said in surprise.

  “The Chinese style.” Michael smiled, and suggested, “Maybe a little bit of cold sake?”

  “They drink sake in China too?” Olga broke apart her chopsticks with a crack.

  “Everything Japanese is fashionable here now. Since we ordered sashimi, we can drink sake.”

  “How do you say ‘sake’ in Chinese?”

  “Tsintsziu.”

  “Tsintsziu,” Olga said.

  “Tsintsziu,” Bjorn repeated.

  “Tsintsziu!” Michael told the waitresses, who nodded and left.

  Olga looked at the tender pink lobster sashimi laid out in thin layers on a large plate, sighed, and tossed her chopsticks on the table.

  “Somehow I can’t eat anything. Listen, Michael, do you know who they are? Who are these monsters? Who hit us with ice? Who killed my parents and Bjorn’s brother?”

  Michael chewed on a nut, put down his chopsticks, wiped his lips with a napkin. And firmly answered, “Yes, I know.”

  “Who?” Olga almost cried out.

/>   Michael sat and locked his hands together in front of him.

  “Olga, we’re dealing with a huge, powerful force.”

  “Does it have any relationship to the ICE Corporation?” Bjorn asked.

  “A very direct one.”

  Olga and Bjorn glanced at each other.

  “Why are they doing this?” Olga asked.

  “They’re looking for ‘theirs.’”

  “What does ‘theirs’ mean?”

  “The Brothers of the Light.”

  “What are the Brothers of the Light?”

  “It’s 23,000 rays of the Primordial Light. They engendered the Universe with all the stars and planets and later they were mistakenly incarnated into living creatures on the planet Earth who eventually developed into human beings. There are 23,000 Brothers of the Light. They are scattered around the world. And they want very much to become rays of the Primordial Light once again. To accomplish this they need to find each other, join in a circle, and speak with their hearts. As soon as this happens, the Earth will disappear and they will again become rays of Light.”

  There was a long pause at the table.

  “So this is just a sect?” Olga asked.

  “You could call it that,” Michael agreed, taking a sip of green tea.

  “What does the ice have to do with it?” asked Bjorn.

  “The ice of the Tungus meteorite awakens the sleeping hearts of the brothers. If they are hit in the chest, the Light, dozing in the heart, awakens.”

  “But...the ICE device works the same way! It also strikes the chest with a small ice tip, and the user experiences a kind of high. And this is the very same ice of the Tungus meteorite, they say in their ads. But they don’t say anything about some Brotherhood and Primordial Light.”

  “The ice used in the device has no connection with the Tungus meteorite. It’s regular frozen water.”

  “But then why the device?”

  “The device that the ICE Corporation developed has several purposes.”

  “What are they?”

  “Well, first of all, there’s a lot of money involved and the opportunity to acquire legal status. Second, if the police come across incidents of blue-eyed blonds being kidnapped and hit with ice hammers, they figure that it’s just the ravings of some abnormal users of the device. The device is a screen for the Brothers of the Light. A lot of things can be hidden behind it.”

  The waiter entered with three pitchers of sake, poured them into three white cups, placed them in from of the diners, and left. Olga and Bjorn sat looking at Michael and trying to understand what they had just heard. Bjorn was the first to break the silence.

  “On your site I became acquainted with about thirty stories of people who had been abducted by these bastards. How could it be that the police and the secret services haven’t taken an interest in this yet? Do they just think we’re all drug addicts or crazy computer-game fanatics?”

  “It’s not only blue-eyed blonds that disappear in the world. People disappearing is a totally normal sort of thing. Are the secret services interested in the ICE Corporation? Of course. But my friends and I are carrying on our own investigation. Now we have the wherewithal. When it happened to me, at first, like you I started banging on every door and searching for the individuals who carried it out. I didn’t find them. But I did find other victims like myself. With the same scars on their chests. And they knew who was doing all of this.”

  “How did they find out?”

  “That’s a long story, Olga. The first private investigations began back in the sixties. Then people with the scars on their chests began to work together. And in tandem you can find out a lot. There are a hundred and eighty-nine of us now.”

  “One hundred eighty-nine!”

  “Counting you.” Michael smiled.

  “And...where are they?”

  “Here.”

  “All of them?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why in Guangzhou?” Bjorn asked.

  “Because this is the Brotherhood’s turf. They are here. And that’s why we have to be here too.” Michael’s face toughened and he pursed his lips sternly. “If we want to win, if we want revenge, we have to be here.”

  He picked up his cup of chilled sake. Silent for a moment, he gritted his teeth, emphasizing his thin, tough cheekbones, and said, “Olga and Bjorn. With your arrival there are more of us.”

  Bjorn picked up his cup. Olga picked up hers, slowly. She obviously liked Michael’s unexpected sternness. He stretched his cup out to them.

  “To us. And against them.”

  Bjorn and Olga clinked glasses. And drank.

  Michael looked at them and placed his full glass back on the table. Olga and Bjorn looked at him questioningly. He gave a sigh of relief and clasped his hands. And said, “Forgive me, I forgot to warn you: the Brothers of the Light don’t use alcohol.”

  Olga looked into his blue-black eyes for a second, then cried out and pushed away from the table and headed for the door. But her legs gave way, her head flopped over helplessly, and her body collapsed on the floor. Bjorn stood up sharply to his full height, but a moment later he too swayed and began to fall. Michael grabbed Bjorn by the belt on his shorts, and to keep him from falling backward, jerked the Swede toward himself. Bjorn collapsed on the table, his face in the soup, his chest on the dish with the sashimi. His huge hand grabbed Michael by the wrist, but in vain — Michael brushed Bjorn’s powerful but now powerless hand from his wrist, and pushed Bjorn in the shoulder. Bjorn slid off the table and onto the floor, smashing dishes along the way.

  Michael took a red napkin off the pile and began cleaning the splashes of soup off his face and shirt.

  The waiter who had brought the sake appeared in the doorway. He glanced at the two bodies lying there and asked Michael, “The usual?”

  “The usual,” answered Michael, taking a nut with his chopsticks.

  Friends of Dead Bitches Society

  Olga opened her eyes. She lay on the lower level of a plastic bunk bed in a two-person room without windows. A matte overhead light on the ceiling burned like daylight. A peephole glimmered in the steel door. Cool air poured through the ribs of an air-conditioning vent over the door.

  Olga moved. Her body felt limp and groggy, almost as if it weren’t hers. She brought a hand to her eyes. Opened and closed her fist. She noticed that she wasn’t wearing her own clothes: instead, she was dressed in striped pants and a jacket of the same material. There were white socks on her feet. Olga sat up on the bunk. Her feet in the new white socks touched a smooth concrete floor. She saw a pair of black slippers next to the bunks. She stood up. She glanced at the upper bunk: no one. She licked her dry lips. She was very, very thirsty. And then she suddenly remembered: Bjorn, the restaurant, lobster sashimi. And those decisive blue-black eyes.

  “Lai...Laird,” she croaked and again licked her lips.

  She shook her heavy, disobedient head.

  “Laird, Michael...the sake.”

  The door opened. A Chinese man wearing a blue uniform and carrying a white stick entered. Moving aside, he made a sign with his head: Go.

  Olga frowned sullenly at him and at the light green hallway behind the door.

  “I’m thirsty,” she said.

  The Chinese man repeated the gesture. And he slapped his stick in his hand. Olga put on the slippers and went out of the cell. And immediately in front of her there was a second Chinese man, a copy of the first.

  “Are they brothers or what?” Olga thought gloomily.

  The door behind Olga was closed and locked with a key. The second man gestured for her to follow him. Olga went, making her rubbery, poorly coordinated legs take step after difficult step. The slippers shuffled across the floor. The hall wasn’t long. It ran into a door with a code lock. The Chinese man punched in a code. The door opened. Olga didn’t have time to take it all in before the twin guards pushed her into the spacious room. The door slammed shut.

  For the first moment
Olga thought that she was in a meat- processing plant: dozens of people in gray coveralls and aprons were working with some sort of small carcasses resembling sheep, taking them off the hooks of a moving conveyor, skinning them, cutting and splitting them. Some were working in gas masks. The space was light, although there were no windows, as in the room. Light music played softly. And despite powerful ventilation, it smelled of dead flesh.

  Olga stepped forward.

  A few people glanced at her. They were all Europeans. All fair-haired. She approached the slowly moving conveyor belt. Dead dogs hung on the steel hooks. Dogs that she’d at first taken for sheep.

  A short, hunched blond man with glasses, a grizzled beard, and ears that stuck straight out, came over to her. His lackluster blue eyes gazed at her calmly through thick round lenses.

  “Are you new?” he asked.

  “Where am I?” asked Olga, noticing a small white number on the shoulder of his gray coveralls: 77.

  Her eyes squinted at her own left shoulder. There was a number there, too. She hadn’t noticed this in the room.

  “One hundred eighty-nine,” read the old man in the glasses, and his gnarled finger pointed toward the far end of the room. “You with that tall fellow over there? Are you American?”

  Olga saw Bjorn removing a dead dog from a hook. He waved to her, his huge hand in a rubber glove, put aside his instrument, and made his way along the line toward her. The short, heavy canvas apron was obviously too small for him. Bjorn looked ridiculous in it. And it was specifically the short apron, tossed about as Bjorn’s enormous knees moved, that woke Olga up for real. Her eyes filled with tears, and she threw herself at Bjorn’s chest, sobbing. Bjorn embraced her awkwardly, trying not to touch her with the rubber gloves, which were covered in dog blood.

  “All right, all right, we’ll talk later.” The man in glasses gently patted Olga’s quivering back and glanced at the large clock on the wall. “It will be lunch soon. Let her stay with you for the time being.”