The Ice Palace

by Tarjei Vesaas

  ‘Go and take a bath and wash off all that sweat,’ said Mother. ‘Then we can talk about it later.’

  ‘What should we talk about later?’

  ‘Off you go. The water’s hot.’

  Her mother’s usual advice when she came home after some tussle or other: into the bathtub. Go and take a bath.

  She lay in the warm water but saw the face among flashing ice roses and glinting light. It was ever-present. The fatigue and well-being after such a trip were waiting over in the corner but were unable to approach. Here were walls of ice with a face inside them four times too big.

  Something enormous that she had to bear alone, that had to be hidden among her innermost thoughts, among the thoughts she never dared let pass her lips.

  It said: Siss.

  No no, it said nothing.

  But the face was just behind the warm steam.

  Siss? it said. Panic lay in wait, in spite of the bath. It had lain in wait all the way home, now it seized her. There were ice walls, eyes -

  ‘Mother!’ she shouted.

  Mother was there in a trice as if she had been expecting it. Siss was small. But she did not forget to keep silent about what had happened.

  15

  A Test

  What about the promise now?

  What is this that is about me? A nudging wind, playing affectionately with my hair. A gentle wind – as if unpractised.

  Unn will never come back to meet me, as the promise said. What of it, then, now that Unn is dead?

  Siss stood by herself again at school the next day, and went home alone. She had to shut herself in when she got there. The vision in the ice palace had been so powerful that she had to guard against talking about it all the time and wherever she might be. If she let it loose in front of others the panic would seize her.

  She was forced to stay in her bedroom and read, or wander about alone out of doors. It was too dangerous to have her parents’ eyes on her: they might breach the dam; it might spill over. They were expecting something, she knew very well. But she could not approach them. They could remark quite calmly: ‘We see scarcely anything of you, Siss.’

  ‘No,’ she replied.

  They said no more, though they had her cornered. It made her feel insecure.

  Why did I see Unn?

  So that I should not forget her?

  Of course.

  It seemed to her that Unn was forgotten. Nobody talked about her; she never heard the name mentioned. Not at home, not at school. As if Unn had never existed, thought Siss, outraged. I’m the only one who remembers. And her Auntie, I expect she remembers. And she hasn’t sold her house and gone away.

  Who else thinks about Unn?

  The question was urgent. It was so important that Siss had to test it. She tested it one morning in the classroom just before a lesson. Everybody was there except the teacher. She did not want him mixed up in this. She had to brace herself to do it.

  She made her stand, plucked up courage, and spoke at the room so that everyone could hear, making it sound almost like an announcement: ‘Unn.’

  Just the bare name. She could do it in no other way. They would probably understand.

  Nothing happened immediately, if that was what she had expected. Their faces turned towards her, of course, and the chatter ceased, but after that there was merely a silence.

  They were probably waiting for further surprises. When nothing came they began to exchange glances. Still nobody uttered a sound. Siss thought they seemed shocked. She looked around her cautiously.

  Was there a wall of animosity? No, there was no wall. They were perplexed.

  She was perplexed, too. She should never have thought of it.

  At last someone replied. It was not one of the girls and therefore close to her but the boy who had nudged her with his boot. She had noticed that he had come to the fore on various occasions recently. It was he who replied sharply, ‘We haven’t forgotten her.’

  As if cutting off something.

  One of the girls joined in. ‘No, of course we haven’t – if that’s what you think.’

  Siss was burning with shame. She realized that she was on the wrong track in her isolation. She stammered, ‘No, it was only –’

  She ducked down, nonplussed on account of all she could have told them and that would have caused them distress.

  Part Three

  WOODWIND PLAYERS

  1

  Auntie

  I’m not alone in remembering, but this is something people aren’t talking about. Why don’t they talk about it? It’s unlike them.

  Siss started occasionally at the thought: Now the cottage is sold, Auntie’s cottage. Now Auntie will go.

  The next day she went past it on her way home. She saw that someone was still there and that Auntie’s things were outside.

  Since the house isn’t sold, Auntie believes it.

  Siss was caught one day as she was passing the house in this way. She had come too near and was seen. Auntie came to the door and beckoned to her.

  ‘Come here, Siss!’

  When she came, reluctant and tense, Auntie said, ‘I believe I promised to tell you if I were to sell and leave.’

  ‘Yes. Have you?’

  Auntie nodded.

  So it was sold. What has she found out? At the same moment as I was at the ice palace? Nonsense. Say more, wished Siss, and Auntie did so. She said without evasion, ‘I’m certain now that there’s nothing more to wait for.’

  Do you know that?’

  ‘I don’t know, and yet – I do know just the same. So I’ve sold the cottage. And I’m going away.’

  Strangely enough Siss felt secure. Auntie would not say: Now that I’m going, surely you can tell me everything that you didn’t want to talk about before? She would not say it. ‘Are you leaving tomorrow then?’

  ‘Why do you say that? Why tomorrow?’ Auntie looked at her sharply. ‘Had you heard already?’

  ‘No. But every day I’ve thought, I expect she’ll leave tomorrow.’

  ‘Well, you’ve guessed right at last, for I am leaving tomorrow. That was why I called to you. It was lucky I saw you going past. If you hadn’t come by I had thought of looking in on you this evening.’

  Siss said nothing. It was strange to hear Auntie telling her that she was leaving. It was terribly sad. Auntie was silent for a while, too, but then she remembered something.

  ‘Besides, I called you because I’d like to go for a walk this evening just the same. My last evening. I wanted to ask whether you’d come with me?’

  A twinge of joy.

  ‘Yes! Where do you want to go?’

  ‘Nowhere. I just want to walk about for a bit.’

  ‘But I must go home first. I came straight from school.’

  ‘Oh, there’s plenty of time. I shan’t go until it gets quite dark. And the twilight doesn’t come so early any more.’

  ‘I’ll go at once.’

  ‘You must say we’ll be late,’ said Auntie, ‘but there’s no need to be nervous.’

  Siss felt quite solemn as she walked home. She and Auntie were going for a walk. It would be no ordinary walk.

  ‘We shall be late,’ said Siss at home when she was ready to go. ‘She said I was to tell you.’

  ‘Yes, that’s all right,’ they both answered with alacrity.

  Siss knew perfectly well why they were so agreeable. Anything she could find to do was welcomed at this time, even if it was no more than an evening walk with someone else. She had brought them to this pass.

  She thought about it all the way back to Auntie.

  Auntie was not ready.

  ‘There’s no haste,’ she said. ‘We shan’t go before it gets dark. We want to be on our own. This isn’t anyone else’s business.’

  Siss was happy and excited, and it was all mixed up with the sadness of departure. Auntie was busy packing and tidying things. Siss helped her as far as she could – but most of it was already finished. The sitting-room wa
s stripped and bare, cheerless, and much larger than before.

  The door to the bedroom had not been left open. That was a good thing.

  ‘I expect you’d like to look in?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No, there’s no point. There’s not a scrap left.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I think I will after all.’

  She looked in. There was not a scrap left. Such things are odd and make you feel insecure.

  Now they could go; it was getting dark.

  The spring was clearly on its way. You felt it when you stepped out of a house: the soft air, and the snow that had a spring smell about it. But the snow still lay compactly everywhere. The sky was hung with low-lying cloud, the evening mild and dark. You could walk as slowly as you liked in that kind of weather. It was just as it should be, and they walked along slowly for a good while without exchanging a word.

  The landscape around them was indistinct. Indistinctly the houses stood aside for them. Lights shone out. Siss made no sound. Auntie was taking her farewell walk. Tomorrow she would not be here.

  She’ll probably say something shortly.

  The winter-spring evening transformed the landscape into a hazy, shifting pattern that passed their eyes in slow movement, a wall slowly pacing beside them. The shimmer of the snow made walking easy. Across the imperfect screen of their eyes there glided tall trees that seemed to stretch out their arms in admonition; and pitch-black, stooping-shouldered rocks, moving like clenched fists towards their foreheads.

  This was Auntie’s farewell. She was not visiting anybody. She had not had very much to do with other people while she lived here. She had been a friendly stranger who bothered no one and who preferred to manage on her own. But when misfortune had struck and the child was lost, everyone had volunteered their help. Now Siss watched while Auntie said goodbye in her own way.

  So they walked in silence for a long time. But it was not only a farewell. Siss was waiting – and the moment came. Auntie stopped on the road and said in a tone of voice that was almost embarrassed: ‘Siss, I didn’t ask you to come just to have company.’

  Siss answered quietly, ‘I didn’t think you had.’

  ‘What is this to be, then? How I wish it were over. No, I don’t really, but still …’

  Auntie began walking along the snow-hushed road, in the raw air. Her voice was raw, too, when she spoke again.

  ‘I may live alone, but people tell me one thing and another. I meet them here and there,’ said Auntie. ‘And I know you’ve had a hard and difficult winter.’

  She stopped, as if to give Siss time.

  I shan’t, thought Siss, preparing to be on the defensive. ‘I’ve heard that you’ve cut yourself off from your school friends and even from your parents to a certain extent.’

  Siss said quickly, ‘I made a promise.’

  ‘Yes, I realized it must have been something of the sort – and I suppose I ought to be grateful to you, for the sake of kinship, so to speak. I don’t want you to tell me any more about it. But you mustn’t promise so much that you destroy yourself, especially when there’s no point in it any more.’

  Siss said nothing and tried to understand what Auntie was driving at. She was not listening unwillingly.

  ‘You’ve been ill,’ said Auntie.

  ‘They went on so until I couldn’t stand it any more! About something I couldn’t tell them. Over and over again -’

  ‘Yes, yes, I know. You must remember it was at the very beginning when everything had to be tried in order to find some trace. I was in such straits that I tried as well, you know. We none of us realized that it was too hard on you.’

  ‘They’ve stopped now.’

  ‘Yes, they put a stop to it in the end, when things began to go wrong.’

  Siss stared at Auntie’s vague outline. ‘Put a stop to it?’

  ‘Yes. You say they’ve stopped. I don’t suppose you’ve heard anyone mention the disaster for a long time now. To you, I mean. The doctor who came to see you put a stop to it. They’ve had it rubbed into them at school, too.’

  This was a complete surprise to Siss. She scarcely managed to say, ‘What?’

  It was a good thing they could not see each other’s faces clearly, she thought. Then they could not have talked about it. Auntie had chosen the right time for telling her.

  ‘They took a serious view of it, as you know. You were very depressed. It’s best for me to tell you, since I’m going away. I think you ought to know.’

  Siss still stood silent. Here was the explanation of much that had surprised her. Auntie added, ‘You can be told about it now, now that it’s over. Now that we’re not waiting any more.’

  Siss exclaimed, ‘Is it over? What’s over?’

  ‘Yes, I thought we’d better talk about that, too.’

  Siss’s heart began to thud, but Auntie began talking again, about the same thing.

  ‘You mustn’t think people have forgotten who they were searching for. They haven’t forgotten. I know that. They’ve given me so much help that now I’m leaving I don’t know what to do about it. I ought to have gone round to thank them all. But I can’t. I’m not made that way.’

  ‘No …’

  ‘And that’s why I’m walking out here in the dark this evening. I’m too miserable. I want to walk about here, and yet I daren’t show my face.’

  And she did look miserable, standing there in the darkening April evening; but she didn’t seem like it, really.

  ‘Let’s walk on, Siss. I’d like to do the rounds before I go to bed.’

  The road again led among houses and people. The windows were still lit here and there. Siss thought how good it was to be out walking with Auntie. She asked herself why she never went walking like this with her mother? She could find no answer. Even though she was enormously fond of her, she was shy with her, too. She could not think of any way she wanted her to be different, but she was shy. She was shy with her father, too – even though she was especially good friends with him. What in the world was it that made this miserable little Auntie into someone she would walk with all night if necessary?

  Yes, Siss could ask her.

  ‘You must tell me what’s over, the way you said.’

  ‘It’s over for you.’

  ‘Oh no!’

  ‘I think it is, you know. There’s nothing for us to wait for. She’s gone, and she’s not alive.’

  A good thing it was dark.

  A whisper from Siss, ‘Have you found out somehow?’

  ‘Not what you call finding out, and yet – I know just the same.’

  Siss knew this was an important moment. Auntie cleared her throat and steeled herself to say something decisive.

  ‘Listen, Siss, what I want to ask you before I leave is that you should try to go back to all that you used to have. You said you had made a promise. But it can’t come to anything, when the other party to it isn’t here any more. You can’t bind yourself to her memory and shut yourself away from what is natural for you. You would only be a bother to yourself and to others, and no one will thank you for it, far from it. You’re already making your parents unhappy. Are you listening to this speech of mine?’

  ‘Yes, yes!’

  ‘Then listen: she will not come back, and you are freed from your promise.’

  A fresh twinge.

  ‘Freed from my promise?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can you do that?’

  ‘Yes, I think I can, here and now.’

  Auntie’s voice had acquired a ring of authority. Siss did not know what to think. An avalanche of relief, and at the same time doubt.

  Auntie gripped her arm: ‘Shall we say that it is so? Make an agreement?’

  ‘How can I know if it’s true?’ said Siss.

  ‘If it’s true?’ asked Auntie, hurt.

  ‘Yes, whether you can do it for me. Because it was I –’

  ‘Has it gone so deep, Siss? But what I just said – you must have thought the same, now
and again this spring?’

  ‘Yes, I have, but …’

  ‘It will be all right. So I can be a little happier about going away.’

  ‘You are funny,’ exclaimed Siss, gratefully.

  This was something she did not dare acknowledge. Freed from it? Was she? Was it good or sad to be freed from it? You are funny, was all she could say.

  ‘We must get a move on,’ said Auntie. ‘We mustn’t be too late about coming home either.’

  ‘No, but let’s go as far as you want.’

  Beside them glided the increasingly confused pattern of trees, houses and rocks; and occasionally soot-black patches. When the latter came gliding into sight, it went straight to the heart – what’s that! – in this unbearable moment; but it was imagination each time, and her heart started up again, full of the coursing blood. It’s we who are walking; the pattern doesn’t move.

  Auntie’s voice. ‘I say again, you must feel you are freed. It’s not right for you to go on as you are. It’s not like you. You’re a different person.’

  Don’t answer. It’s not meant to be answered. But it’s like the gleaming of stars in a well. And no explanation.

  They had finished their walk. It was black night. Auntie had gone the rounds. They came to Siss’s house first. A single lamp shone, waiting for her; there was no sound.

  ‘Well, here we are, and I’d like to say -’ began Auntie, but Siss said quickly, ‘No. I’ll see you home.’

  ‘Oh no, don’t bother.’

  ‘I’m not afraid of the dark.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re not, but …’

  ‘May I?’

  ‘Yes, of course you may.’

  They set off once more. The sleeping house with the waiting lamp wheeled away. The road was deserted. They began to feel a little tired.

  ‘It’s not cold.’

  ‘Not a bit,’ said Auntie.

  Siss ventured to ask, ‘What will you do in the place where you’re going to live?’

  She did not know where it was; it had not been mentioned. Auntie was used to seeing to everything on her own.