The Ice Cream Man Read Free Page B

spiritual and physical beauty. Martin is portraying a man running for his life. It’s not all that far from the truth. And he’d better act well, as Tomáš’s life depends on it, too. It is every bit as real, as important, as effective as stopping a bleeding wound in a tent at a field hospital. Tomáš shuffles in a gray line of people, lining up for their death; Martin grabs his shoulder and pulls him aside. It’s a skill he has—death won’t notice a thing—and soon the gap left by Tomáš in the line disappears and the gray shuffling continues, neither increasing in density nor thinning out . The patrol dogs salivate menacingly, but Martin has risen above their sense of smell.
     
    During a break, he tries to slip out into the forest of spruce trees growing behind Mrs. Němcová’s house. He thinks he’s alone.
    “Martin,” I say.
    He’s startled.
    “Martin”—he tries not to be startled again—“am I disturbing you? You probably want to be by yourself for a while.”
    “Of course you’re not disturbing me.”
    “You’re just saying that to be polite, but you know what? That politeness is true: you have to believe me.”
    “What?”
    “I never intend to disturb you, do you hear? Never . I never intend to cause you trouble . I never intend to threaten you in any way.”
    He stands stock still, as if his trousers are about to fall down, then answers me in English. “All right.”
    I look around, dig the tip of my shoe into the carpet of spruce needles covering the ground, and start explaining once and for all why I’ve never liked spruce forests. From the outside, they look majestic; but from the inside, they look like this: the spruce trees grow so close together that all other vegetation and undergrowth dies away; they even suffocate one another and are nothing but a tangle of twigs until about halfway up the trunk . . . then there are those horrid giant ants scurrying among the needles; the spider webs, thick as the lichen growing up the spruce trunks . . . how I hate this kind of forest! It’s so poor, so homogenous, so inbred, so impenetrable and bleak . . .
     
    As far as our artistic work is concerned, 1947 is a problematic year. Worry about forthcoming societal changes means we should discuss our art in mournful tones. And with regard to the array of characters in The Ice Cream Man , the problem manifests itself most pointedly in the figure of the one-legged man. The director would like to use the one-legged man far more, but after careful consideration, the man is introduced only near the end of the story, and even then he just puts in a cameo appearance. The man’s physical disability demands that we take a stance. Where did he come from all of a sudden? During the years of the Protectorate, an amputated leg always needs an explanation. But when we finally get that explanation, there is always someone who cannot or does not want to believe it.
    There are a couple of soldiers urinating in the hay, but their speech is indistinct, and in the darkness, you can’t even make out their uniforms. When it comes to eroticism, ambiguity is allowed; but the soldiers must be filmed distinctly, showing their colors and military stripes. Under no circumstances should they seem somehow undefined. What would happen then? People would start shooting at random. We’d shoot our comrades; the enemy would shoot each other.
     
    The one-legged man appears on location out of the blue, as though he’s just arrived from the place where his other leg disappeared. He loiters in the background, sits around on the grass next to the water barrel behind Mrs. Němcová’s woodshed. At midday, one of us takes him something to eat, and he doesn’t look the least bit abnormal as he sits on the ground slurping his soup.
    “Are you an actor?”
    “Yes.”
    “But in that case . . . you’ll excuse me . . . you’ll probably always end up performing the same part: the role of the one-legged man.”
    “Is that