The Ice Palace
Page 13
It was gone now. Was it in vain? No, no, it wasn’t in vain; it will never be forgotten by those who stood here that night.
But the ice palace will soon be destroyed, and then it will look just as before, only the savage waterfall that concerns no one, that fills the air and shakes the earth and will never come to an end.
Everything will go on as before, Siss.
Somebody pulled at her arm – as she stood smarting with thoughts from which she could not free herself.
‘Siss, don’t you want to come and eat?’
‘I’m coming.’
She awoke and saw a ring of friendly faces. They had all shown that they wanted her. And now they put aside solemnity.
In a while they were racing up the steep slope in the spray to climb to the top of the ice. On the slope they could see how the palace gripped the earth banks with huge claws of ice around the stones, into hollows and around trees. Even so, the waterfall would be strong enough to tear it loose. The wearing-down process was under way and must have reached its climax by now, but was invisible: a tug-of-war impossible to picture was taking place all the time.
Up on the top the ice was the same as anywhere else: white and pitted by the sun, not one transparent spot.
‘Can we go out on it, do you think?’ called someone above the din.
Siss started and remembered what she had reasoned out as she lay in bed.
‘We mustn’t. It’s dangerous,’ she said, but nobody heard her in the roar of the falls.
‘Yes, of course we can!’ shouted the boy who had led the way and sprang out on it before Siss’s very eyes.
They all stormed out. Siss was there, too, before she realized what she was doing. As soon as she set foot on it she felt the quivering in the huge block.
‘Can’t you feel it?’ she shouted as loudly as she could.
They heard nothing. They were all shouting just as loudly. All was noise.
‘Hooray!’ screamed someone, a shout so unfettered that they might have been standing on the severed ice palace, sailing with it downwards in the seething spume. ‘Hooray.’
Their eyes shone strangely. They crawled about on the top, among the domes, in the grooves. They were a little cautious, not entirely blind to the danger, knowing they would never have been allowed to do this if any grown-ups had been with them. Siss no longer warned them; she was enjoying it herself, her eyes shining, too. And then came the crack.
Bang! it exploded beneath them, in the foundations: an explosion or a blow or whatever it resembled. It might have been a hammer blow on a clock that needed one in order to strike. But it was a crack, a crack with destruction in the sound. In the impossible tension in which it stood, the ice palace had split apart somewhere. It was the first warning of death.
Loud above the din of the falls.
All of them out on the top turned white and made for dry ground on two legs or all fours, whichever was easiest. They had no desire to ride away with the ice when destruction overtook it; they wanted to live.
No, no! thought Siss, too, as she saved herself. But it was as close as could be to what she had imagined during the night.
Once safe on the ground, they stopped to see whether its destruction would be completed. It was not. Nothing more happened. The ice stood. There had only been the one bang! from inside, and then silence. The river came pouring mass upon mass of new water from above, but the palace withstood the pressure.
Somewhat shaken, they climbed down the banks of the waterfall again, over-courageous, too, since it had gone so well. Now they had something to talk about later. They were not ready to go. The ice palace still held them. Their eyes still glittered.
They glittered towards Siss, too, but she could not meet them. The wild mood from on top had passed. Couldn’t they see that it was impossible to stay here? No, they couldn’t, they had no reason to do so. For them it was an adventure.
Did they read her expression, and were they disappointed with her? But they ought to have seen how impossible it was to stay here. The eternal roar of the waterfall filled the heavens and the earth, but still they could not fill one empty space. The others did not know this. They saw the adventure, and their eyes glittered with it.
She stood up after a while and said, ‘I can’t stay here.’
Nobody asked her why.
The leader-girl came over and asked, ‘Are you going?’
‘No. Only a little way, just over there, to get away from it.’
‘All right, we’ll all come in a minute.’
Siss walked away slowly between the trees, where the way would lead back for them all.
No, I shan’t go away from them now.
I’ve gone to them now.
She walked in among the trees and bushes and sat down on a stone. The wood was leafless, and the slender trees were visible, stem upon stem, for a great distance. Siss sat beneath a steep slope, so that the roar of the falls was deadened, but the air still seemed to vibrate with it. Wild and unceasing. Unceasingly new, unceasingly moving on.
She thought of the consideration the others had shown her that day. When they catch up with me I must try to be different. How?
She sat on the stone and thought over the matter for a long time, waiting to hear the great crash behind her, telling her that now it was happening. It did not come; only the even roar churned on.
In any case it’s over.
Everything is over here. It has to be.
Today I really shall break my promise.
It’s because of Auntie that I’m doing it, that I can manage to do it. I still don’t know whether I ought.
But I shall.
Thank you, Auntie.
I shall write to Auntie when I find out where she is.
She was not left sitting alone for long. The group did not come, but a dry twig cracked against the soft floor of the wood – and two fine lines passed through her: it was the girl and that boy. Both of them were coming.
The burden fell away. She got to her feet, her face a little flushed. There they were, both of them.
7
The Palace Falls
No one can witness the fall of the ice palace. It takes place at night, after all the children are in bed.
No one is involved deeply enough to be present. A blast of noiseless chaos may cause the air to vibrate in distant bedrooms, but no one wakes up to ask: What is it?
No one knows.
Now the palace, with all its secrets, goes into the water-fall. There is a violent struggle, and then it has gone.
A wild commotion in the empty, half-light, half-cold spring night. A crash out towards nothing, from the inner-most holds that have worn loose. The dead ice palace takes on an echoing tone in its last hour, when it releases its hold and must go. There is a clangour in its struggle; it seems to be saying: It is dark within.
It is shattered by the pressure of the water and pitches forward into the white froth from the falls. The huge blocks of ice strike one another and dash themselves into smaller pieces, making it easier still for the water to seize them. It dams itself up, breaches the dam again and tumbles downwards between the rocky banks of the broad channel, floating away and quickly disappearing around a bend. The whole palace has vanished from the face of the earth.
Up on land there are slashes and scars in the river banks, upturned stones, uprooted trees, and supple twigs that have only been stripped of their bark.
The blocks of ice tumble away pell-mell towards the lower lake and are spread out across it before anyone has woken up or seen anything. There the shattered ice will float, its edges sticking up out of the surface of the water, float, and melt, and cease to be.
By the same author
The Birds
The Boat in the Evening
The Bridges
The House in the Dark
Spring Night
PETER OWEN PUBLISHERS
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Translated from the Norwegian Is-slottet
English translation first published 1966 Peter Owen Modern Classics edition 2005, 2009 This Peter Owen Modern Classics ebook edition 2013
© Gyldendal Norsk Forlag A/S 1963
English translation © Peter Owen and Elizabeth Rokkan 1966, 1993
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