With ice? Yes? I go to the kitchen a moment to get the ice. And immediately the word 'ice' expands between her and me, separates us, or perhaps unites us, but the way a fragile sheet of ice unites the shores of a frozen lake.
If there is one thing I hate it's preparing the ice. It obliges me to break off a conversation just started, at the crucial moment when I ask her: A drop of whisky? and she: Thanks, but really just a drop, and me: With ice? And already I'm heading towards the kitchen as though into exile, already I can see myself fighting with ice cubes that won't come out of the tray.
No problem, I say, it won't take a second, I always have ice with whisky myself. It's true, the tinkling in the glass keeps me company, separates me from the din of the others, at parties where there are lots of people it stops me from losing myself in the ebb and flow of voices and sounds, that back and forth she detached herself from when she appeared for the first time in my field of vision, in the inverted telescope of my whisky glass, her colours advancing along that corridor between two smoke-filled rooms booming with music, and I stood there with my glass without going to one room or the other, and she too, she saw me in a distorted shadow through the transparency of the icy whisky glass, and I don't know if she heard what I was saying to her because there was all that din or perhaps again because I hadn't spoken, had only moved the glass and the ice rising and falling went clink clink, and she too said something into her little bell of glass and ice, certainly I hadn't imagined she would be coming to my place tonight.
I open the freezer, no, close the freezer, first I have to find the ice bucket. Hang on, I'll be with you in a sec. The freezer is a polar cave, dripping with icicles, the tray is welded to the base by a crust of frost, I pull hard and snap it off, fingertips turning white. In her igloo the Eskimo bride waits for the seal hunter lost out on the pack-ice. Now just a slight pressure to separate the cubes from the walls of their compartments: but no, it's a solid block, even when I turn the tray over they won't come out, I put it under the tap in the sink, turn on the hot water, the jet crackles on the frost-encrusted metal, my fingers turn from white to red. I've got my shirt cuff wet, that's very annoying, if there's one thing I hate it's feeling shapeless wet cloth clinging to my wrist.
Put a record on, I'll be back in a sec with the ice, can you hear me? She can't hear me with the tap on, there's always something stops us hearing and seeing each other. In the corridor too she was talking through hair falling half across her face, she was speaking over the edge of her glass and I heard her teeth laughing on the rim, on the ice, she was repeating: gla-ci-a-tion? as if of everything I'd said to her only that word had got through, and my hair was falling over my eyes too as I spoke into slowly melting ice.
I bang the edge of the tray against the edge of the sink, only one cube comes away, it falls outside the sink, it'll make a puddle on the floor, I'll have to pick it up, it's gone and got under the cupboard, I'll have to get down on my knees, reach a hand under, it slips through my fingers, there, I've got it and I throw it in the sink, go back to passing the tray upside down under the tap.
It was I who spoke to her about the great glaciation, now due to return and cover the earth, the whole of human history has taken place in a period between two ice ages, a period which is almost over now, the numbed rays of the sun can barely reach the earth's frost-sparkling crust, grains of malt accumulate the sun's dissipating strength, then set it flowing again, fermenting into alcohol, at the bottom of the glass the sun is still fighting its war with the ice, in the maelstrom's curving horizon the icebergs roll.
All at once three or four pieces of ice break off and fall into the sink, before I have time to turn the tray right way up they all tumble down drumming on the zinc. I grope around to grab them and put them in the ice bucket, now I can't find the cube that got dirty on the floor, to save them all I'd better wash them one by one, with warm water, no, with cold, they're already melting, a snowy lake is forming in the bottom of the bucket.
Adrift on the Arctic Sea the icebergs form a white embroidery along the Gulf Stream, pass beyond it, head down towards the tropics like a flock of giant swans, block harbour mouths, sail up river estuaries, tall as skyscrapers they drive their sharp spurs between skyscrapers, ice rasping on walls of glass. The silence of the northern night is broken by the roar of cracks that yawn to swallow up entire cities, then by the hiss of ice slides that deaden muffle soften.
I wonder what she's getting up to in there, so silent, no sign of life, she could have given me a hand, couldn't she, very nice, didn't even occur to her to ask: would you like me to help? Thank heaven I've finished now, I'll wipe my hands with this kitchen cloth, but I wouldn't want that kitchen cloth smell to linger, better wash them again, now where can I dry them? The problem is whether the solar energy accumulated in the earth's crust will be enough to maintain body heat throughout the next ice age, the solar heat of the Eskimo bride's igloo alcohol.
Off back to her then so we can drink our whisky in peace. See what she's been up to in here, without making a sound? She's taken her clothes off, she's naked on the leather couch. I'd like to go over to her but the room's been invaded by ice: dazzling white crystals piled on the carpet, on the furniture; translucent stalactites hang from the ceiling, weld themselves into diaphanous columns, a vertical sheet of solid ice has formed between her and me, our two bodies are prisoners in the thickness of the iceberg, we can barely see each other through a wall all sharp spikes glittering in the rays of a distant sun.