But it has been a long time since I threw a stone at an ice-covered surface. The ice no longer forms on the lakes. Pollen season is already underway in January. The ice is washed away by the rain—the world is being covered by flowing water. I wish I had a river so long.

I used to go skating, I remember, on the fjord, I skated faster than everybody. Magnus stood onshore and watched me, we were ten or eleven, we still didn’t know each other, but I remember that I liked that he watched me, that he knew I was the fastest. I had skates that I screwed onto my boots, with sharp blades. Nobody uses those any longer; they buy new skates every autumn, new skates every year for the children—black hockey skates or white for figure skating. They think that one has to have skates, but nobody uses them, because the lakes don’t freeze over any longer. I wish I had a river I could skate away on. But everything I have done has been to no avail. I have really tried, I have been fighting for my entire life, but I have been mostly alone. There are so few of us, it was futile. Everything we talked about, everything we said would happen, has happened, the heat has already arrived, nobody listened.

Magnus, your grandchildren will not be able to skate across the lakes. Yet you have approved this, our glacier, the ice. You have dissociated yourself to such a large extent from everything that once was ours—or perhaps you have always been like this, you have just let it happen. I can hear you, how you are thinking now, how people like you think. We’re just following the development: what I have allowed to happen is happening everywhere, evil’s banality—you have become like Eichmann. But nobody holds you accountable. Your Jerusalem never arrives.

I have these twelve containers, twelve containers containing ice one thousand years old. I am not going to throw them overboard, because you have to see them, Magnus. You can’t just sit down there and let it happen; it’s not supposed to be as easy as that. You are going to see the ice, feel it, you will personally stand next to it while it melts. You will have the chance to walk on it, step on it—it will melt beneath your feet, the way it once melted under our feet.

Again I start lugging containers. One by one I take the twelve containers of ice with me out of the cargo ship, over onto Blue.

Chapter Six

David

Once again my hands were immersed in soapy water. It foamed between my fingers and soaked through our clothing. My shirt swelled like a taut balloon on the surface of the water until the water prevailed. As the filth released its grip on our clothes, the color of the soap and water changed from transparent to a nondescript grayish-brown.

The air in the sanitary barracks was stagnant, with a strong odor of cleaning products. Familiar. Anna’s head bent over the washing machine at home. August’s tiny garments, clean and damp. The smell that spread through the room, covering up the aroma of food and the faint stench emanating from the trash can in the heat.