Al from the Ice

Heart Cry

Al from the Ice

He was of the ice. That day when he came from the ice he heard the call, in the cold sharp blue green air beyond the glacial cutting. The sound struck him. It was a quick sharp slap like the palm of a hand on a hard edge. Was it just the ice or was it more?

Once he was with the driver he knew he’d not just heard a sound. It was more than that it was the cracking of the ice, the breaking of a heart. The driver said his name was Gunnar, punching his other hand against the cold hard yellow beast of a truck. He ferried supplies to the northern research stations and the engine had cut out again. He was on the side-sloping low road that bypasses the military base and he’d lost control. But Gunnar had lost more than that, he’d given up. In his lonely panic when the heavy grey snowed tyres had slipped their hold and his elbow splintered against the bulkhead in the struggle; at that moment he could no longer go on. Now this stranger with the clear English voice was here and taking over, making things less wrong.

Gunnar had never wanted to drive trucks along the unforgiving snow packed roads. He hated the supply depot and the outposts of silent numbered minds measuring and boring into pack ice and staring at screens in their stale smelling huts. But he needed the work. He and Anya had found a home away from their scene of sadness; away from a life gone from happy. They needed even this home with its mildewed walls and stove smelling warmth. She told the iceman later, because she too could see him. She told him in a way that meant she hadn’t told him. She let him listen for unspoken words between her offers of kindness as she went about her tired daily routines. He looked at the dog-eared pages of an old scrapbook tucked down the side of a chair; noticed her hesitation around a cupboard door where a jacket hung with two scarves, none worn by the lonely Gunnar. One, the orange scarf, would later serve to warm the neck of the iceman.

It was his making the sling for Gunnar’s arm, restarting the truck and driving them both back to the depot. These were more than kindnesses from a stranger which Anya must acknowledge and make a gesture of gratitude. It was her way. Her husband was alive and still with her, unlike the son who had left them. Later Gunnar plodded off to the outhouse insisting despite his injured arm that he must see about the oil tank. Only then did she name him, the treasured completion of their young lives together. His name was Klas but he was lost in the invading clatter of a hospital ward and the machine tube world of intensive care. Gunnar carried the guilt and Anya closed her heart as they moved away, far away to the north where he could drive a truck and she work in the supply stores. It gave them a place to be, but memories and sadness followed them and kept them company in their condensing solitude. There were to be no more children as Anya escaped into her fantasy of a life Klas would never live. Gunnar had lost a friend and a lover as well as a child.

The cupboard door was forced ajar by the dark coat and coloured scarves hanging from a hook on the inside. Anya absently pushed at it but Al could still see all sorts of things stacked haphazardly onto the shelves. An orange scarf had caught at one end on the tin framed windscreen of a scratched and dented toy car.

As the iceman looked at the car he could see on the screen of his mind the boy that might have been Klas sitting his elbows propped on a dark wood table and behind him flames licking up from the opened top of a stove.  The boy looked straight at him his mousy brown hair in damp straggles over his ears.

“She puts her love into old things. I want her to be as she was but there is only duty, loyalty for my father love for what wasn’t to be. It’s sad.”

The iceman watched as the boy ran the car around the table top making engine noises as it turned. In his mind he asks the boy what he wants to do for his mother and father.

“I know my father will be healed and his arm will get better. But how do I make him know it was not his fault I did not live? How do I tell my mother my time was short, this time?”

Anya pushed her chair back and got up. She poked around in a drawer and laid worn cork mats with three sets of cutlery on the table. “We must eat you will be hungry by now.” She bustled out into the kitchen. Returning with a pot of steaming stew she placed it in front of the iceman. “Come it will warm you.” Anya is convinced he is cold inside as well as out.

“Please Mrs Liedholm I am sure your stew is very tasty but as I say I don’t need to eat. I’m fine. But thank you, you mustn’t be offended that I don’t eat, I need only the light and a little water.”

Anya sighs and dunks a chunk of bread into her own stew pushing its warmth into her mouth.

“Mrs Liedholm, please forgive me for speaking this way but I have the gift. Your son Klas he talks to me. I can see and hear him and he worries that you are so sad. He tells me to say it was not his father’s fault he did not live. He knows about the condition that runs in the family but that was not the reason he did not stay. It was decided he would be here only a short time, this time around.” The iceman looked at the woman as her spoon stopped midway to her mouth and the broth splashed loudly back into her bowl.

“Why does my Klas speak to you like this?”

“He is here in my mind, in my vision. He is a boy and he has grey green eyes like yours. Mrs Liedholm, Anya, he wants you to smile again not to be sad all the time.”

Her spoon clatters on the china and she lets go sobs that convulse her body like shock waves. Her other hand covers her face. “He was everything, he was our life and then he was gone. How can he speak to you and not to me?” her English voice had returned.

“He does speak to you but through me, because I can do that, I am from the ice, I have the gift.”

“Yes and you are too cold, man from the ice. It will be your death that my Gunnar has to worry about soon. Your head is still in the ice and your throat croaks like a seal.” She reached back pulling open the cupboard door and wrestled the orange scarf onto her lap. “Here you must wear this Klas would want you to have it, not to always be cold.” She thrust the scarf toward him then returned her gaze to the bowl in front of her.

Gunnar bustled back into the room dragging his coat off over his injured arm and dropping it onto a chair. “The oil is up enough for two maybe three weeks. I will order more at the depot tomorrow.”

“There’ll be no depot for you tomorrow Gunnar Liedholm. You’ll rest where you are. I will go in and order the oil.” Anya dumped his bowl of stew down as he manoeuvred onto the dining chair. He grunted an acknowledgment and tucked awkwardly into his meal.

The iceman smiled at Anya as she reached to push the scarf closer around his neck. She mumbled something in Swedish at Gunnar and he grunted again, looking up with a smirk that served as a smile. 

In days to come Anya saw how her husband was healed from the crash that could have taken even him from her. The doctor said there were no signs of joins or breaks, not even a scar on his head from the ugly gash that had been so hurriedly stitched. This meant to Anya that the iceman was a healer. He just said, “I am from the ice” and he sounded English like her father. After such a time she hardly remembered that she was English, always seeing her Malmo mother in the mirror.

The iceman knew he could not explain how on that bone cold day with the driving snow beginning again he had been shown the man in trouble there on the ice-packed roadway. How he had heard the heart-cry through the cracking ice. No he could not tell her that. She just tucked her son’s scarf about his neck once more, knowing his voice was cracking and his throat was sore from the brittle air.

“Take it” she said as the iceman stepped out over her threshold to leave. “Klas was a kind boy, he would give it to a friend and you are a friend, you saved his father.”  So Al from the ice told her that he could see her Klas standing in the snow waving. He was like a child having his photo taken and his fair brown head bobbed as his wide smile flashed in the sunlight. He could hear her boy say “Yes take the scarf then through you I can talk to her from where I am.” The iceman clutched the welcome wool closer to his neck then hugged Anya and saw the recognition in her eyes. He left knowing that the son she lost would keep trying to open her shuttered heart.’

(c) spiritja