The Ice Cream Man by Katri Lipson Page A

takes a basket and a pair of scissors from the kitchen, and goes out barefoot into the garden. She strolls around the dewy grass without lifting up her hem and breathes in the mist; the dissipated, vaporized water permeates her skin. She picks some roses and places them in her basket, carefully selecting the flawless blooms at their peak, fully opened, with no signs of fading. Those are the roses she cuts as they are still asleep. In the kitchen, she tears off the petals, tips them into some hot, sugary water, hides everything under a lid, and simmers it over a low flame, so low that the pink remains pink. When the man wakes up, he wonders what the smell from the kitchen is. The landlady glances at Esther and says she cannot smell anything, but the man stops and sniffs the air now that he has found a sufficiently minor issue over which to disagree with the landlady, and he wonders again, both as a formality and out of sheer satisfaction.
     
    In the evening, after the potatoes and dumplings, there is bread and jam. They are sitting in the same places as before. The landlady at the head of the table, the man and woman on either side of her, opposite one another.
    “How does it taste?” the woman asks.
    The man pokes his thumb into the pink jelly stuck to his lip, pushes it into his mouth, and licks his thumb clean.
    “How do the roses taste?” she asks again.
    “What roses?”
    “The roses you’ve just poked into your mouth.”
    “Hasn’t Tomáš ever eaten rose-petal jam before?” the landlady wonders.
    “Well, is it good?”
    “Difficult to describe . . . you try some,” he says, at the same time stretching over the table, putting his hand behind the woman’s head, and pulling her face close enough to kiss, but this happens so fast that the woman has no time to think, and Esther’s face turns away from Tomáš’s as if to avoid a slap or to flinch from a flying object, and Esther quickly gets up from her chair, picks up her plate and takes it to the sink, plunges it into the soapy water, hears the silence behind her, then the chair, the squeak of the floorboards, and the door as Tomáš leaves.
    The landlady eats the rest of her bread and jam and brushes the breadcrumbs from the tablecloth onto the floor. The sound of the saw starts up in the yard again. The landlady gets up and clears the remaining dishes from the table.
    “Just leave those; leave them to soak,” she says.
    “I’ll have them finished in no time.”
    “Stop clattering them together, or they’ll break.”
    “I’m sorry.” Esther takes her hands out of the water, dries them on a cloth with her back to the landlady, and bursts into tears.
     
    In the bedroom, the landlady pulls the curtain aside with one hand and places the other on Esther’s shoulder.
    “Look at him now. What do you see?”
    “He’s sawing some wood.”
    “Yes, of course, but what else?”
    “It’s going well. The saw’s been sharpened.”
    “Silly girl, why are you crying?”
    “I’m frightened.”
    “What are you frightened of?”
    “I don’t know. Everything.”
    “Really, everything? You’re not frightened of Tomáš as well, are you? Look now. He’s doing everything for you. Getting up, sawing boards. He even breathes for you.”
     
    Mrs. Němcová has a locked metal box in the chest of drawers in her boudoir that contains no money or brooches, only a substance of immeasurable value: a quick solution for every torment.
    “It’s important to get the dose right,” she says, then explains, “One for a cough, two for nerves, three for insomnia, four for pain. The fifth pill puts an executioner out of work and turns a rapist into a necrophile. Do you understand? You can cheat Death himself by gobbling these up while he’s still knocking at the door.”
    “What are they?” Esther asks.
    “Cough pills. But it depends on the dosage. Remember: from one to five, just like the fingers of one hand. I can give you a few.”
    “I don’t need