Ice Dreams

by Grace Wells

  ‘Ah, it is Ios,’ Grandfather said. ‘You have your mother’s eyes and your father’s forehead, but those ears, those ears go back a long way in time. Those ears belong to the goat-herders of the Gap of the Winds.’

  A sudden hush came over the adults.

  ‘The goat-herders of the Gap of the Winds,’ Grandfather repeated, shaking his head sadly.

  Ios shook a little and the small children’s eyes grew round.

  ‘Boy,’ Grandfather said, grabbing Ios by the arm, ‘are you brave enough to hear what happened to the goat-herders of the Gap of the Winds?’

  ‘Yes,’ Ios whispered and a little thrill of terror went around the porch.

  4

  The Goat-herders of the Gap of the Winds

  ‘When I was a child,’ Grandfather began, ‘we gathered here in the evenings, just as we all are now, but back then we watched candles and oil lights flickering in the windows. There were more windows then. Across the bay.’ He pointed above the children’s heads out towards Dhenousa. ‘There were lights on that island once. And up there, behind us, in the mountains were the little lights of the Windmill village, where the flour was milled. To the south were the lights of Falifico, where they made the pots and jugs and so on. All gone,’ he said in a deep voice that stilled the sounds of the night. Even the small waves lapping on the beach and the crickets busy in the ditches seemed to hush at the grandfather’s words.

  ‘Up there, right between the two high peaks is the valley known as the Gap of the Winds. You wouldn’t even know it was there now, would you?’ the grandfather asked, staring in the direction of the black mountains.

  ‘There must have been nine or ten goat-herding families living there once upon a time. They were famous people, hardy and strong, and you knew them by their ears, for it was said that the wind always blew through that valley, and with it blew the secrets of Moutsouna and Apiranthos, Falifico and Naxos Town, even the secrets of Athens itself. And anybody’s ears would stick out if they had to listen to the secrets of a whole city.’

  The grandfather fell silent. At last he whispered, ‘All gone. Changes came. Progress. Progress suddenly brought factories. Everything we islanders had done by hand for hundreds of years was now being done by machines. All over the mainland, factories were spitting out pots and flour and clothes and cheese made by machines.’

  He paused for a moment to allow the children think what this might mean.

  ‘In the beginning all those machine-made things could be bought quite cheaply. And buy them the people did. For who would want to spend days carrying water to grow wheat, and spend hours milling it, when you could buy a packet of flour in the shop? Who wanted to sit for a week weaving and sewing, when you could buy some ready-made clothes? Who, in their right mind, would chase goats over mountains, or spend days making a good cheese, when you could eat a bad one from a packet?’

  ‘The old ways were cast aside. Before you could swap cheese and butter with your neighbour for flour or eggs, but now everybody wanted money. Before, people had grown what they ate. They’d made what they needed. Not any more. And the fact was they had no money in the islands. To get money our people sold things. First they sold their grandmother’s lace or the furniture their fathers had made. But when that was all gone they started to sell their land and their homes and they began to move away to Naxos Town, or to Athens itself.’

  The children were silent. They knew these stories; all their lives they had heard such things. Even the smallest of them had ideas of how the islands had once been full of people who had all had to move away.

  ‘The goat-herders of the Gap of the Winds were hit the hardest of all, for their land was too high up and too windy, and the people had got too lazy for that kind of land. No one would buy it. In the end the goat-herders had to leave with nothing. They walked to Naxos Town with only the clothes on their backs and their memories in their hearts. They stowed themselves away on a ferry to Athens. But they had no money and a city is never kind to a person with no money. Athens chewed up the goat-herders of the Gap of the Winds. It chewed them up and spat them out and left them begging on the streets, and I fear Ios, you are all that is left of them.’

  ‘And how is it that I am left at all?’ Ios asked.

  ‘Only this,’ Grandfather answered. ‘Only that, long ago, your great-grandmother came down from the Gap to barter cheese every week. In that way, she met your great-grandfather. In time, she married him and came to live here in the village and that saved her, for the rest of them are gone.’

  Grandfather paused; the words seemed to hover around his lips, but his voice was gone. Then quietly, in a whisper, he said, ‘drop by drop, one by one, through my life I’ve seen the people leave. I’ve seen the lights of the island extinguished. And with every light go the goats and the melons and the children. And when the children go, the future of a place goes and there is nothing left.’ The grandfather finished sorrowfully and the waves that rolled up onto the shore echoed with a soft sound like crying.

  Alex jumped up from Papa’s lap. He stepped across the dark porch to reach his grandfather’s hand. ‘We’re still here, Grandfather. The lights of Moutsouna will never go out,’ he said bravely.

  ‘It’s only the ice-factory that keeps us here,’ the grandfather said sadly. ‘If anything happens to that factory we’ll be on the first ferry to Athens.’

  The adults all sighed. Mama Papadopolos looked over their troubled faces. She knew Grandfather was right; the village depended on that factory. Even though she had her job as a teacher, it only existed as long as there were children to teach. She knew if there were no Moutsouna children, the school in Apiranthos would have to close. Then the Apiranthos children would have to take buses all the way across the island to Naxos Town to go to school. But nobody wanted their children to sit on buses for four hours a day! Before long, Apiranthos would be in danger too.

  ‘Enough!’ Papa Papadopolos suddenly roared, and they all nearly jumped out of their skins with fright as he stood up and waved clenched fists in the air.

  ‘Enough!’ he roared. ‘All my life I have heard these stories. Athens! Athens! Athens! That’s all I ever hear. No more now! We are never going to leave Moutsouna. My people have lived here for hundreds of years. They will carry on living here for hundreds of years!’ He slammed his fist down on the table, and in one movement all the visiting children jumped up and ran away into the night screaming.

  Papa glowered in the darkness. ‘They’ll be no more talk of Athens. If anybody … anybody ever mentions Athens … I’ll … I’ll …’

  ‘Bedtime!’ Mama said quickly, her eyes wide and definite.

  The adults nodded and began to leave their seats. Nina and Alex stood up and went into the house. They were used to their Papa shouting about things from time to time, but tonight he had been at his most dramatic. They cleaned their teeth and got into bed, but every time they thought of the moment when Papa Papadopolos had slammed his fist on the table, making the children run off into the night, it made them laugh. They lay in their beds trying to be quiet, but they were too excited to sleep. After a while, Alex whispered, ‘what’s the capital city of France, Nina?’

  ‘Paris,’ she whispered.

  ‘The capital city of England?’ he said a bit louder.

  ‘London,’ she answered.

  ‘And Italy?’ he questioned.

  ‘Rome,’ Nina answered sleepily.

  ‘And of Greece?’

  ‘Athens,’ Nina said, and then, realising she had fallen straight into his trap, she threw her pillow at Alex’s laughing head.

  ‘Quiet in there!’ Papa Papadopolos roared, and the twins giggled beneath their sheets.

  5

  The Song of the Afternoon

  To celebrate the weekend, Mama Papadopolos liked to make ice cream on Fridays. She saved an egg a day all through the week, especially for the purpose of making the ice-cream custard. This Friday was no exception. When school ended and Mama had rested, she and
Nina set about cracking and beating the eggs for the ice-cream custard. Alex was sent on his bicycle with the pull-along-cart attached, to fetch back a bag of ice-crystals from the factory. When the custard thickened, Mama put it in the fridge and said, ‘now that’s ready, all we need is your brother and the ice.’

  Nina went outside. She walked down to the low wall at the end of their yard. It was still very hot even though it was late in the day. She stared out at the sea. It lay still and quiet. Across its wide surface tiny, silver ripples ran playfully after one another. Far away on the horizon Nina could see the small dot of the Blue Line fish-boat. It steamed towards Moutsouna, to make its daily collection of ice, before heading on for Athens. Nina kicked her feet in the dust and wondered about Athens. Should she write something about it in her book? She frowned. She had never been to Athens. What was the city really like? Could it really chew people up and spit them out, like Grandfather had said? She began to sing a song to comfort herself, a made-up song about the heat and the sea and making ice cream. A small lizard crawled up the wall beside her and she sang him into her song too.

  Grandfather emerged from the house and shuffled to join her where she sat.

  ‘Here comes the fish-boat,’ he said and Nina looked up at him admiringly.

  ‘Can you see it, Grandpa?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ he smiled. ‘It’s nearly four o’clock. It always comes about now. But this afternoon I can smell it.’

  ‘Can you smell the fish?’ Nina wanted to know.

  ‘I can smell a lot of things today,’ Grandfather said. ‘I can smell a memory of the old days when the harbour was a flurry of boats all day long.’

  ‘What sort of boats were they?’ Nina asked her grandfather.

  ‘All sorts, large and small. Every fisherman in the Aegean needed our ice in those days. There were crab boats from Crete and lobster boats from Lesbos. There were the eel men and the squid men. We made so much ice the whole harbour was cool. You could have worked right through the siesta if you’d wanted.’

  ‘But now there’s only the Blue Line fish-boat, only one boat that gets ice,’ Nina said and she looked up to see it slowly steaming into the harbour.

  ‘Progress,’ the grandfather muttered crossly in a hoarse whisper. ‘The biggest boat of all that one. Thirty years ago the Blue Line Company said it was the best thing to happen to fishing. Maybe so for them, but it put all the little boats out of business.’

  ‘What else can you smell?’ Nina asked quietly, taking her grandfather by the hand.

  He sniffed the air and said nothing for a moment. Nina listened to the song of the afternoon, the sound of crickets and the small waves dancing on the beach.

  At last the grandfather spoke.

  ‘I smell something coming,’ he said. ‘There’s a strong smell from the north.’

  He sniffed again.

  ‘It’s a bad, bad smell,’ he said finally and he stood up to go indoors.

  6

  Ice

  Alex waited in the harbour beside his bicycle. He watched the great flock of white seagulls circling in the blue sky. Like him, they were waiting for the fish-boat. At length, practically on the dot of four o’clock, the great old fish-boat steamed into the little harbour. Like the ice-factory, the fish-boat was painted red with a blue stripe all around it, to signify the Blue Line Company which owned them both. As soon as the boat docked, the factory doors opened and the workers, led by Manager Marcos, spilled out.

  Alex stood well back. He knew better than to get in Manager Marcos’ way, but he watched him with round, curious eyes. Alex wondered what it was like to run a whole factory. Manager Marcos never seemed to be enjoying himself. He reminded Alex of Smelly Dimitri, the bad-tempered bus driver. Perhaps owning a factory made you grumpy, Alex thought, but he knew that Manager Marcos didn’t actually own the ice-factory himself. He only ran it for the Blue Line Company. He had been sent especially from Athens and he lived alone in a small flat at the back of the factory. He had no children, no goats, no chickens and no olive trees. Alex wondered if that was why Manager Marcos didn’t smile very often.

  The huge boat docked and large ropes were thrown down and tied along the quay. The seagulls stopped circling to dive down in sharp arrows over the boat. Fishermen on board laughed at their antics and tossed unwanted fish heads and tails at them. The birds swooped down, shrieking joyfully as they caught food in mid-air or splashed into the harbour water to feast.

  Manager Marcos blew a whistle and six massive ice-blocks were wheeled out of the factory onto the quay. It took four men to manoeuvre each one. Then the great clawed crane arm swung over and back, lifting the huge transparent blocks into the dark hold of the fish-boat.

  When all the blocks had been loaded, a large shoot was swung out from the upstairs floor of the factory. It hovered over the massive fish-trays that lined the deck of the boat. At Manager Marcos’ signal, sprays of tiny ice crystals cascaded from the shoot and in those moments when ice rained out of the sky, the harbour was filled with diamonds of light glinting with rainbows.

  As soon as the ice-shoot was pulled back towards the factory, Alex cycled forward with his cart. Manager Marcos was used to Alex coming on a Friday. He knew the boy wanted ice and he knew it was to make ice cream with. Something that was nearly a smile came over his face. He held up his hand and signalled to the shoot operator, who swung the shoot over the quay until it hovered near Alex’s bicycle. The man pulled a lever and a small cascade of crystals fell exactly into the pull-along-cart.

  ‘Thank you!’ Alex yelled, leaping onto his bicycle and turning to pedal away.

  ‘Hey, wait a minute!’ Manager Marcos shouted. ‘Tell your mother, your father will be late home this evening. I’ve called a meeting of all the workers. I have something to tell them.’

  ‘I will.’ Alex nodded and he pedalled away as fast as he could, so as to get home before the ice melted.

  7

  The Ice-cream Makers

  Nina was thinking about her book when Alex appeared around the corner shouting, ‘Here I am, here’s the ice!’

  She was thinking about the ice-cream maker. She had decided it belonged in her book somewhere. The trouble was how to explain it to a person who had never seen such a thing. It was a very difficult task. Although the ice-cream maker was a very simple invention, actually telling someone how it worked might require a long explanation and she didn’t want long explanations in her book.

  ‘Wake up and help me, Nina!’ Alex called as he parked by the porch and jumped from his bicycle. Together they began to scoop the ice into the ice compartment of the ice-cream maker. Mama came and poured the cream and the thick custard into the ice-cream compartment. Then they each measured in one spoon of chocolate powder.

  They were about to put on the lid and begin the turning of the handle when a loud shout came from the scrubby bushes next door. The three of them turned around in time to see a flash of brown, goaty leg and Ios disappearing into the bushes.

  Nina shook her head.

  ‘That is the stubbornest goat in Greece.’

  ‘The most stubborn goat in the whole world,’ Alex said.

  Mama laughed. The bushes waved and Ios shouted at Kalimara. The goat bleated and ran away. Ios puffed after her through the scrubby field.

  ‘Come back here and be milked!’ he yelled.

  Alex and Mama and Nina turned away. It was the same thing every day. Only when Ios had been pulled through enough bushes and shouted enough times, would he finally give up and throw his bucket to the ground. Only then would Kalimara come bleating behind him and allow herself be milked. A person had to give up and admit total defeat before that goat let you get on with things.

  Alex screwed on the lid of the ice-cream maker tight and began to turn the handle of the machine. He turned and he turned and he turned. He turned the handle until his arm was hot and sore and he couldn’t turn it another turn. Then Nina set to and had a go, but she didn’t last very long. She was still
thinking hard about how to explain the workings of the ice-cream machine and that meant she couldn’t concentrate properly on the mixing. Mama Papadopolos rescued them both. Her strong brown arms could turn the handle for longer than either of the twins put together. She had been making ice cream her whole life long. She could remember making it with her mother and her grandmother before that, for the ice-cream maker had been in Mama’s family for generations. Nobody, not even the blind grandfather, knew where it came from, but everybody in the village knew of it and wished that it were theirs.

  Alex loved the ice-cream maker with all his heart. It was so simple. Of all the ways in the whole world of making ice cream, it surely was the easiest. All you needed was custard made from eggs, sugar and goat’s milk, goat’s cream and some sort of flavouring. You didn’t need electricity, or a deep freeze. You only needed ice, and they had a whole factory of that, just down the road.

  8

  The Meeting

  ‘Gentlemen I have good news,’ Manager Marcos said, holding up his hands to silence the crowd of assembled ice-workers. ‘Today is indeed an important day for the Blue Line Company. Thirty years ago we bought this ice-factory from the previous owner. For thirty years the good people of Moutsouna have been making ice for the Blue Line Company. In recognition of your hard work, the Blue Line is today giving this very factory to the good people of Moutsouna.’

  A strange buzz of confusion went through the small crowd.