Ice Dreams

by Grace Wells

  Papa Papadopolos stood beside Ios’ father, Pedros. ‘What’s he saying?’ Papa asked. ‘They’re giving us the ice-factory? Why would they want to do that?’

  Pedros shrugged his large shoulders. Manager Marcos continued talking despite the mixed reaction of his audience.

  ‘You can set yourselves up as a workers’ co-operative. Equal pay for everybody. I, myself shall be leaving at the end of next week.’

  As the ice-workers listened to this last statement, the mood amongst them changed. Suddenly, they sensed something was wrong.

  ‘Now, just a minute,’ Papa Papadopolos yelled from the back of the crowd. ‘You had better explain yourself better.’

  ‘Yes!’ The other workers shouted, ‘Explain yourself better. What’s going on?’

  Manager Marcos began to look uncomfortable, but bravely he stammered, ‘This very day in Athens …’

  Papa Papadopolos felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Why did everybody have to keep on about Athens all the time?

  ‘This very day,’ Manager Marcos said, raising his voice above the heckling crowd, ‘the Blue Line Company is launching a new ship. It is the most modern fishing boat in the whole world. It is capable of catching thousands of tonnes of fish in a day. Not only that, gentlemen, but this wonderful ship has every kind of refrigeration and processing equipment already aboard. Within minutes of those fish being caught, they can be transformed into fish fingers. They can even be packaged in boxes and stamped with price tags. That’s how marvellous this new ship is.’

  ‘Marvellous!’ Someone in the crowd echoed approvingly.

  ‘Marvellous?’ Papa Papadopolos shouted. ‘Don’t you see what this means? Don’t you see what’s going on? It’s a trick. They are giving us the factory because they don’t need it any more. They don’t need the old fish-boat, they don’t need ice and they don’t need ice-workers!’

  Now the crowd understood.

  ‘Gentlemen, calm yourselves,’ Manager Marcos tried. ‘The Blue Line Company always looks after its workers. Tomorrow I shall be giving out one month’s pay to each and every man amongst you. Within a month you will have worked out how to best run the ice-factory and you’ll be able to pay yourselves wages once again.’

  At this Papa Papadopolos went bright red in the face.

  ‘Nonsense!’ he bellowed. ‘We only make ice for the Blue Line Company. They are the only people in the whole Aegean Sea that need ice. Don’t you see, there won’t be any wages in a month, because with this new ship there’ll be nobody left to buy our ice …’ Papa Papadopolos was practically spitting. He could barely get the words out of his mouth. The other workers were equally lost; they looked to one another with blank fearful faces.

  ‘Gentlemen, I’m sure you’ll manage,’ Manager Marcos said nervously. ‘If not, you can always apply for jobs on the new fish-boat.’ He smiled anxiously and hurried from the factory before the ice-workers had time to turn against him.

  9

  Deep-fried Squid

  At home, things were not going well either. Alex, in his excitement over the ice-cream making, had forgotten to tell Mama about the meeting at the factory. Not realising that he would be late home, Mama Papadopolos had spent ages preparing Papa’s favourite dish: deep-fried squid. It was only when Mama triumphantly brought the steaming food to the table, that Alex remembered Manager Marcos’ message.

  Mama was furious! She might ordinarily have forgiven Alex and told them all to get on and eat without Papa, but her nerves were already frayed by Grandfather’s behaviour. He had spent the whole evening sniffing and snuffling about the kitchen like a dog that has forgotten where it buried a bone. He sat now, at the kitchen table, muttering to himself.

  ‘Sniff. Could be a fight of some kind … a feud … sniff … no … it’s softer, darker and oh, it’s bad … it’s a bad smell … it’s rotten …’

  ‘Please Grandpa,’ Mama said gently, ‘could you stop now?’

  Grandfather was too preoccupied; he had not even noticed the arrival of the squid which was rapidly going cold, nor had he noticed Mama’s bad mood. She laid her hand on the old man’s arm.

  ‘Please father, you are frightening the children. Can you talk about something else?’

  The old man looked confused. Mama had plucked him from his dark world back into the kitchen.

  ‘I’m sorry, Eleni,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, but the stench is terrible. I don’t think I can eat anything. My nose is too full.’ With that he excused himself and shuffled sadly to his bedroom.

  The twins were left with their mother and the plate of soggy, cold squid. Mama looked as if she might cry. An awful silence filled the room. Nobody said anything, but at last Alex could not bear the mood for another second.

  ‘Where’s the Statue of Liberty, Nina?’ he burst out.

  ‘New York,’ she hissed quietly, for she was nervous and worried about Mama.

  ‘And the Sydney Opera House?’

  ‘Sydney, of course.’ She glared at her brother.

  ‘Yes, of course. What about the Eiffel tower?’

  ‘That’s in Paris.’

  ‘And the Coliseum?’

  ‘Rome,’ Mama Papadopolos answered despite herself.

  ‘And the Leaning Tower?’

  ‘Pisa!’ Mama and Nina chanted together.

  ‘And the Acropolis?’ Alex asked as the front door swung open and a very pale, white-faced Papa Papadopolos walked in. Too late to even stop themselves, Mama and Nina shouted out the one word that triggered Papa Papadopolos falling to the floor with a terrific crash.

  ‘Athens!’

  10

  Not a Melon

  In his fall Papa Papadopolos had blackened his left eye and broken a small chunk from a front tooth. Now when he said the letters ‘S’ and ‘N’ and ‘X’, a strange whistle escaped through the gap in his teeth.

  Throughout breakfast the next morning, he gradually spoke less and less and when he did so it was mostly to Mama or Grandfather, because he could neither say Nina or Alex without whistling his strange new tune.

  Nobody spoke much. They were all too worried about the news from the ice-factory. Silence hovered above them, turning the room sour.

  ‘We must smile at this, Papa,’ Mama finally broke in. ‘You are always telling the children to smile at life, to welcome whatever comes.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Grandfather, ‘somehow or other we must smile at this as if we were Filipos Velcanos and this disaster were nothing more than a herd of stray goats or a stubborn donkey, or a woman with more children and parcels than she can carry.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Mama said. ‘That’s what you’ve always told the children. We must smile as if this were nothing more than dropped melons or a broken-down tourist …’

  Papa Papadopolos leapt to his feet. He towered over Nina and Alex, looking completely wild.

  ‘Smile?’ he shouted and whistled at the same time. ‘How can I smile? This is not a broken-down donkey or a stray tourist or a stubborn melon. This is not a goat carrying too many children. Don’t you know what this is? This means only one thing. This is Athens!’ He thundered, and the whistle that sprang through his teeth was like an alarm bell ringing through the whole house.

  11

  Discovering Athens

  After that things changed in Moutsouna. Most of the village children carried on swimming in the sea and playing football on the beach as they had always done. Their mothers, along with Mama Papadopolos, gathered together in each other’s kitchens to talk and share their concerns. The fathers, the former ice-workers, filled with despair and overcome with worry for the future, took to their beds and refused to move. Alone, Alex roamed the empty ice-factory, investigating the various machines, which stood still and silent. But the blind grandfather and Nina went to the library in Apiranthos, to find a guidebook about their capital city.

  All through the following days tempers were thin in the Papadopolos household. Alex stayed away as much as he could, spend
ing nearly all his time at the factory. Mama tried to carry on with life as normal, but things were not normal. Papa was still in bed. He said his feet couldn’t move, because they knew if they started walking again they’d only be headed for Athens and they weren’t ready for the journey yet. Mama was furious. In front of the children she’d called Papa a coward and ordered him to get up at once, but Papa either couldn’t or wouldn’t get out of bed.

  Grandfather and Nina sat at the kitchen table reading their guidebook. This irritated Mama to the point of distraction. In a fury she dragged the kitchen table into Papa’s room and sent Grandfather and Nina along with it.

  Grandfather didn’t mind being shunted into the bedroom. He was very disappointed with Papa Papadopolos. He thought Papa ought to be taking steps to protect his family from the impending disaster. So when Papa asked them to go away and read elsewhere the grandfather ignored him, encouraging Nina to read a little louder.

  ‘The beginning bit again, Nina,’ he instructed, pretending he was deaf instead of blind. In a loud, clear voice Nina read:

  ‘Chapter one, “Discovering Athens. Athens lies close to the west coast of the Attic Peninsula, almost in the centre of Greece. It is a big sprawling city, housing over five million people.” That’s a lot of people, isn’t it Grandpa?’

  ‘A bit bigger than Moutsouna.’ The grandfather nodded.

  Nina continued, ‘“It is easy to get to Athens because there are now two airports and Athens’ sprawling suburbs join up with the busy shipping-port of Piraeus. In summer the city is dirty, noisy, hot and covered in an unhealthy cloud of pollution called the Nefos.”’

  ‘Dirty, noisy, hot and covered in the Nefos, eh?’ the grandfather repeated. ‘That’s bad, eh? But there must be beaches. Tell me about the beaches, Nina.’

  Again Nina bent her head into the book.

  ‘It says, “There are no beaches in Athens and none fit to swim from within kilometres of the port of Piraeus because of pollution.” But where will we swim every day?’ Nina asked sadly.

  ‘Hm,’ Grandfather said, ‘you may not be able to go swimming any more. But at least there’s the Acropolis and the Parthenon to look at instead. I bet they’ll be worth seeing.’

  ‘Listen to this, Grandpa,’ Nina said enthusiastically. ‘It says here there’s a Tower of the Winds. “Built in the first century by an astronomer, this octagonal tower is a sundial, weather vane, water clock and compass.”’

  Even Papa Papadopolos sat up in bed, sounding interested. ‘Alex would like an invention like that. A sundial, weather vane, water clock and compass?’ he queried.

  ‘That’s what it says,’ Nina answered.

  ‘Interesting,’ Papa said, brightening for a minute, and then a dark cloud settled back around him and he sank into his pillows.

  ‘Never,’ he muttered. ‘Never.’

  12

  Ice Dreams

  Alex lolled at the end of the bed, trying to get his head comfortable on his father’s legs. Nina lay squashed in between her parents. The twins were aware their mother wasn’t speaking to their father and their father wasn’t talking to their mother. A pair of flies buzzed in circles beneath the ceiling lamp. At last, when Nina could stand the silence no longer, she said, ‘Will we really have to move to Athens?’

  Mama sighed. Papa let out a small groan but neither said anything. Secretly Mama was waiting to see what Papa would say and Papa was waiting for Mama to come up with her answer.

  ‘Of course not,’ Alex shook his head. ‘We’ll think of something.’

  Papa smiled at his son. ‘Dear Alex,’ he said, ‘I wish we could think of something, but what can we do? Without the ice-factory Moutsouna has nothing. A village cannot survive on olive trees and chickens any more. Things are more complicated nowadays.’

  ‘But Papa, we don’t just have olive trees and chickens. We have eggs and milk and cream,’ Alex interrupted.

  ‘And melons and lemons,’ Nina joined in.

  ‘And boats to fish from,’ Alex said.

  ‘Small boats,’ Papa sighed.

  ‘And we still have the ice-factory. We could get it going again,’ Alex said quite crossly.

  ‘Yes, but nobody wants ice any more. The Blue Line Company was our only customer. There’s no point making ice if nobody is going to buy it,’ Papa said, trying to be patient.

  ‘Couldn’t we make something else in the ice factory?’ Nina asked. ‘Couldn’t we turn it into a toy-factory or something?’

  Papa took a deep breath. ‘To run a factory you need two things. You need machinery and materials. If you want to make toys you need machines that make toys and you need a supply of wood or metal or plastic. We can’t get the ice-factory going as some other sort of factory because we only have machines that make ice and we have no materials.’

  ‘We could have fish,’ Nina suggested. ‘If we sent everybody fishing we might catch enough to make fish fingers.’

  ‘Yes, but we could never make them as cheaply as the Blue Line Company. Our fish fingers would be very expensive and nobody wants to buy expensive fish fingers. That’s the other thing you need if you’re going to have a factory. You need a space in the market. You need a certain amount of people who’ll buy what you make at your price. That’s basic economics,’ Papa said, getting flustered.

  ‘Frozen olives?’ Nina suggested.

  Papa gave her a tired look and then he smiled and ruffled her hair.

  ‘My dear daughter, I don’t think anybody wants to eat frozen olives. You store olives in olive oil. Greece is full of olive factories. It doesn’t need another one. No, we must accept our situation is hopeless, totally hopeless.’

  ‘So we shall go to Athens?’ Nina asked.

  Papa hissed and Mama turned over to stare at the cupboard by the bed as if she were thinking of all the things they would have to pack up and take with them. The room filled with a horrible silence.

  Then Alex sat up. He took a deep breath. He said, ‘At the ice factory there are six, big, round machines. In the centre of each are large blades that go round and round.’

  ‘Yes,’ Papa sighed. ‘The crushers. Those were the machines that made tiny ice crystals. The constant freezing, combined with the turning blades meant that the ice could only ever form into small crystals, instead of large blocks.’

  ‘Well,’ Alex said, hurrying his words out, ‘if you cut the blades in half and built a canister of some sort around them, you’d have an ice-cream maker.’

  ‘An electric ice-cream maker?’ Nina shouted. ‘You mean you wouldn’t have to turn the handle all afternoon?’

  ‘An ice-cream maker?’ Papa queried.

  ‘Just like Mama’s, but electric,’ Alex said triumphantly. ‘And we have the materials for ice cream. We have eggs and cream and ice.’

  For a minute Papa smiled.

  ‘Our own ice-cream factory, eh?’ he said.

  ‘And there’s a market. Nobody in the whole island of Naxos makes ice cream. They ship it here on boats from Athens,’ Alex said, standing up and waving his arms happily.

  Nina jumped up and bounced down to the end of the bed beside her brother. ‘See, there is an answer! We’ve got chickens to make eggs and goats for cream …’

  ‘We could make chocolate ice cream,’ Alex sang.

  ‘And lemon ice-pops,’ Nina said, leaping and falling on Papa’s legs.

  ‘And melon lollies,’ Alex laughed.

  ‘Stop!’ Papa shouted ‘Stop! Stop at once!’

  ‘But don’t you think it’s a good idea, Papa?’ Alex asked sadly.

  ‘It’s a good idea, yes, but it’s a ridiculous idea. It’s a dream. We have a handful of eggs and a jug of cream, we don’t have enough …’

  ‘But if all the people of Moutsouna saved their eggs and their cream,’ Alex suggested.

  Mama smiled. ‘Yes, then it would work,’ she said.

  ‘Of course it wouldn’t. Don’t be ridiculous! Don’t raise the children’s hopes! It could never work. Never i
n a million years,’ Papa said very crossly.

  ‘Why not?’ Mama asked defiantly.

  Papa went silent. Of course it couldn’t work. ‘It’s a dream, an ice dream. Don’t be silly. The factory is dead; it’s over.’

  ‘No! The children are right,’ Mama said, her eyes bright with enthusiasm and daring. She jumped out of bed. ‘We have ice. We have cream and eggs and flavours. We have a market. We’ve got everything we need.’

  Suddenly a thought bubbled up in Papa’s mind.

  ‘Sugar! It won’t work because you don’t have any sugar!’

  Mama frowned at him and stamped her foot on the ground. However angry she had been with Papa before, now she was really fuming.

  ‘Sugar is a minor detail and you know it. Come on children, we’ve work to do,’ she said, pulling Alex and Nina out of the room, leaving Papa all alone in his bed.

  13

  Mama Starts Thinking

  Mama took the children to the factory. She made Alex show her the ice-crushers. He explained how they could be altered so as to become exact replicas of the ice-cream maker. Mama looked at them and then she looked at her son and she smiled proudly.

  ‘You’re right Alex, you’re quite right.’

  Then she took a tour of the whole factory, asking Alex to explain everything he knew. At last she led them back out into the bright sun.

  ‘We’ve got to do some thinking. We need to think fast, we haven’t got much time,’ Mama said, leading Alex and Nina over to the quay. They sat down on the edge between the big iron rings that would have held the ropes for the ice-boat when it docked.

  ‘We’ll have to make a list of everything we need,’ Mama said, holding up her fingers, beginning to count as if she was making a shopping-list. Finger by finger she listed aloud the following: eggs, cream, flavouring, sugar, machinery, packaging, transport, workers, goodwill and luck.