Ice - Anna Kavan [50]
Somehow or other, by a colossal effort, I managed to hoist the girl on to the wooden steps, climbed up after her, pushed her up to the deck. We were allowed to stay. No one else came aboard. The ship started moving immediately. It was a triumph.
We travelled on, changing from ship to ship. She could not stand the intense cold, she shivered continually, broke in pieces like a Venetian glass. The disintegration could be observed, she grew thinner and paler, more transparent, ghostlike. It was interesting to watch. She did not move more than was absolutely essential. Her limbs seemed too brittle for use. The seasons ceased to exist, replaced by perpetual cold. Ice walls loomed and thundered, smooth, shining, unearthly, a glacial nightmare; the light of day lost in eerie, iceberg-glittering mirage-light. With one arm I warmed and supported her: the other arm was the executioner's.
The cold abated slightly. We went ashore to wait for a different ship. The country had been at war, the town had suffered severe damage. There was no accommodation available; only one hotel was being rebuilt, only one floor was finished, every habitable room occupied. I could not persuade or bribe anybody to take us in. Travellers were disliked and discouraged: it was natural, in the circumstances. We were told we could stay at some sort of centre for strangers outside the town, drove there through the ruined suburbs, everything flattened, no trace of trees or gardens remaining, nothing left standing upright. The country beyond had been a battlefield and was now a desert, covered in shapeless rubbish.
We were deposited at a place which had been a farm. All around was indescribable chaos. Bits of broken carts, tractors, cars, implements, lay about, bits of old tyres, bits of unrecognizable tools, all mixed up with the debris of shattered weapons and war supplies. Our escort walked cautiously, told us to look out for mines, unexploded bombs. Inside, the rooms were littered with fragments of all kind of rubbish, too smashed to identify. They took us to a room with an earth floor and no furniture, holes in the walls, roof roughly boarded over, when three people sat on the ground, propped against the wall They were silent, unmoving, hardly seemed alive, took no notice when I spoke to them. I learnt later that they were deaf their eardrums had burst. There were many in the same state all over the country, their faces ripped and lips torn by the same deadly wind. A desperately sick man lay on the floor under a thin blanket. Great tufts of his hair had fallen out strips of skin hung from his hands and face, his loose teeth rattled in black bleeding gums every time he coughed, he never stopped coughing and groaning and spitting blood Emaciated cats wandered in and out, licked the blood with delicate pointed pink tongues.
We had to stop there until the ship came. I longed for something to focus my eyes on, there was nothing inside or out; no fields, houses, or roads; only vast quantities of stones, rubbish the bones of dead animals. Stones of all shapes and sizes were spread thick all over the ground to a depth of two or three feet often piled up in enormous mounds, which took the place of hills in a normal landscape.