The Ice-Cream Makers by Ernest Van der Kwast

polishing, and cutting machines: screaming monsters with large benches, as well as lovely little adjustable wrenches and the minuscule instruments used by watchmakers and engravers. He bought everything, absolutely everything he didn’t have yet, including seven-inch nails, cap nuts, lock nuts, rivet nuts, right-threaded screws, left-threaded screws, double-ended screws, endless screws, blind bolts.
    One day a lorry driver pulled up outside the house in Venas, having been directed here by the ironmonger in Belluno. The man had been looking for a particular nut for years. My father listened to the driver’s description the way a child listens to a fairytale and then escorted him down into the basement. When he switched on the light, the treasure chamber sparkled in all its glory. The lorry driver’s pupils dilated instantly. He couldn’t believe his eyes — and it probably contained only half of all the tools there are now. These days the double garage is full of shiny metal too.
    Except for that one occasion, my father never showed his collection to others, ‘because nobody understands’. Most people think it’s an illness. But the driver congratulated my father on his wealth of tools and machines.
    â€˜I’ve never seen anything like it,’ he said.
    There probably wasn’t anything like it.
    My father rummaged in a couple of metal trays and a minute later retrieved a nut.
    â€˜Yes,’ was all the driver said at first. ‘Yes.’ Then his eyes filled with tears. ‘Unbelievable,’ he said. ‘This is it. Yes, this is it. This nut …’
    It was the best day of his life, and probably of my father’s life too.
    He liked to tell the story whenever my mother expressed her disapproval of a new drill or sander.
    â€˜I hope one day you’ll find the screw that’s loose in your head,’ she would reply.
    â€˜Nobody understands, not even my own wife.’
    Once she gave him an ultimatum. ‘If you buy that workbench, Beppi,’ she declared, ‘I’m leaving you.’
    My father bought the workbench, my mother stayed. My brother and I didn’t get it. We were young and knew little about marriage — about the threats, the compromises, the cracks. My mother never said another word about my father’s collection, but the grooves in her forehead deepened, looking as if they’d been chiselled there.
    My father used the life he led as an excuse to buy tools. He had never wanted to be an ice-cream maker and had never wanted to take over his father’s ice-cream parlour. But he had done so anyway.
    â€˜For seventy-five years I didn’t have a summer,’ he often said after he retired, before opening a box with a spirit level or a metal saw. For over half a century, no long, sun-drenched summer, no early summer, no empty summer, no sultry summer, no cool summer, no sweet, melancholic summer and no summer by the seaside. That was his lament — or the mantra with which he tried to convince himself and others.
    Many are the occasions when I had fruitless discussions with him. ‘Why didn’t you do something else?’
    â€˜It was impossible.’
    â€˜Nothing’s impossible.’
    â€˜No, not in those days.’
    â€˜You should have carved out your own path.’
    â€˜That path had already been mapped out for me,’ he said. ‘And when a gap opened up, when there was finally some space, you scampered off.’
    My father likes to blame me for the fact that he had to make and scoop ice-cream until the age of seventy-two.
    â€˜While you were groomed by your poetry pals, I had to help Luca.’
    â€˜I wasn’t groomed.’
    â€˜Brainwashed, then.’
    â€˜It’s called passion.’ It sounded more dramatic than intended, but I couldn’t think of another word on the spur of the moment. ‘The way you love a chainsaw, I love poetry.’
    â€˜You’ve been