Short story
Glaciation
Italo Calvino
Ice? Yes? I'll just go into the kitchen for a moment and get the ice. And immediate- ly the word 'ice' expands between her and me, separates us, or perhaps unites us, but like the fragile sheet that unites the shores of a frozen lake. If there's one thing I loathe it's getting out the ice. I'm forced to interrupt the conversation barely begun, at the crucial moment when I am asking her: can I pour you a drop of whisky? and she says: thanks, just a little bit, and I say: ice? And I'm already heading for the kitchen as if for exile, I can already see myself wrest- ling with the ice cubes that refuse to come loose from the tray.
It's nothing, I say, only a moment, I always take whisky with ice myself. It's true, the tinkling in the glass keeps me com- pany, separates me from the noise of the others, at parties where there are so many people, prevents me from losing myself in the flux of voices and sounds, the flux from which she detached herself when for the first time she appeared within my field of vision, in the reversed telescope of my glass of whisky, her colours came forward along that corridor between two rooms filled with smoke and with music at top volume, and I was staying there with my glass, going into neither one nor the other, and she saw me too in a shadow distorted through the transparency of the ice of the whisky, I don't know if she heard what I was saying to her because there was all that noise, or also because perhaps I hadn't spoken to her, I had only moved my glass, and the ice, swaying, had gone ding ding, and she said something too in her bell of glass and ice, I surely didn't yet imagine she would come to my house tonight.
I open the freezer, no, I close the freezer, first I must look for the bucket. Just a mo- ment, I'll be right back: The freezer is a polar cavern, dripping icicles, the tray is soldered by a crust of frost to the metal, I tear it away with an effort, my fingertips turning white. In the igloo the Eskimo wife awaits the seal hunter lost on the pack. Now only a slight pressure is needed to separate the cubes from the walls of their compart- ments; but no, on the contrary, it's one compact block, even if I turn the tray over
they won't fall out, I put it under the tap in the sink, I turn on the hot water, the jet sizzles on the frost-encrusted metal, InY white fingers turn red. I have got a shirt-cuff wet, this is very annoying, if there is one thing I loathe it's feeling damp cloth around my wrist, clinging, shapeless. put a record on, I'll just be a minute with the ice, can you hear me? She can't hear me till I turn otf the tap, there is always something that prevents our hearing and seeing each other. Also in that corridor, she spoke through her hair, which covered half her face, she, spoke over the rim of her drink and I could hear her teeth laugh over the glass, over the ice, as she repeated gla-ci-a-tion?, as if, from everything I had been saying to her; only that word had come across, I also had hair falling over my eyes and 1 was talking into the ice which was melting very slowly I knock the side of the tray against the side of the sink, only one cube comes loose, it falls outside the sink, it will make a Pod- dle on the floor, I must pick it up, it 1125 fallen under the cupboard, I have to kneel' reach under there with one hand, it sliP.s through my fingers, there, I have grabbed It and I throw it into the sink, again I hold the upturned tray under the tap. I was the one who told her about the great glaciation which is about to return and cover the earth, all human history has taken place in the interval between .tw° glaciations and now it's about to end, the shivering rays of the sun can barely reach the. earth's crust glistening with frost, the Brains of malt accumulate solar energy before it is lost and they make it flow again
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la the fermentation of the alcohol, in the bottom of the glass the sun fights again its war with ice, in the curving horizon of the Maelstrom the icebergs spin. Suddenly three, four pieces of ice come loose and drop into the sink, before I have time to ._ turn over the tray they have all dropped, rattling against the metal. I grope la the sink to grab them and put them in the bucket, now I can no longer distinguish the Cube that got dirty falling on the floor, to recover them all it's best to wash each of ahead bit, with hot water, no cold, they're kutreadY melting, in the bottom of the bucket a snowy puddle is forming. Adrift in the arctic sea the icebergs make a white embroidery along the gulf stream, t,hey. Pass it, they advance towards the tropics like a flight of gigantic swans, they lock the harbour entrances, they float up the estuaries of the rivers, tall as Skyscrapers they dig their sharp spurs arncmg the sky-scrapers, clanking aginst the al ass walls. The silence of the boreal night is r°kerl by the roar of the crevasses that °Pen to engulf whole metropolises, then by a rustle of landslides that temper, muffle, attenuate. , God knows what she's up to in there, so shdent, not a sign of life from her, she could ctrl, ve come and lent me a hand, the dear it never even occurred to her to say; t nie to help you? Luckily I've finished ilb°w, dry my hands with this dishcloth, rut wouldn't like the smell of dishcloth to wirlger, I'd better wash my hands again, now bete shall I dry them? , The Problem is whether the solar energy 'recumulated in the terrestrial crust will suf- ,,Ice to maintain the warmth of bodies dur- 'lig the coming ice age, the solar heat of the -rhcool of the igloo of the Eskimo wife. "ere now I am going back to her and we'll `'e able to drink our whisky in peace. What tL, she oing in there, all quiet? She has offd her clothes, she is naked on the leather sofa. I would like to move towards her but the room has been invaded by ice: eazzling white crystals have piled up on the carPet on the furniture: translucent stalac- d'es hang from the ceiling, merge into c'iaPhanous columns, between me and her a bodesvertical slab has risen, we are two juothes , Imprisoned in the thickness of the octeLuer8, we can hardly manage to see each soLuer through a wall, a mass of piercing sun. urs, which sparkles in the rays of a distant Translated from the Italian by William Weaver
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