Ice Trilogy Read Online Free PDF Page A

search furiously through a starry violet bag of masks.
    “Where is i t... ? Oh,
mon Dieu
! Here it is!”
    I kneeled down next to her, hugged her tightly around the neck, and kissed her cheek.
    “Sasha, you’re so funny,” she muttered, staring at the big-nosed witch mask.
    I kissed her again. My heart fluttered. She turned toward me, closed her eyes, and pressed her face to mine. We froze. And for the very first time, I felt that time could stand still.
    “Now who do you think could be hiding in here?” came a feigned query, accompanied by the loud rustle of skirts.
    Hateful time started up again. And along with it the mistress of the house and a lady with a green fan entered the room. I didn’t have time to release Nika from my embrace.
    “They’re being amorous!” the lady exclaimed rapturously, aiming her lorgnette at us. “Nina Pavlovna, just look at them! How sweet!”
    But Nika’s homely, taciturn mother was clearly displeased. She looked at us — we were blushing and pressed to each other — attentively.
    “Put on the masks. And go downstairs,” she said.
    We grabbed the tiger and Baba Yaga masks and ran downstairs.
    Nina Pavlovna didn’t say anything to my parents. But she did everything possible to make sure Nika and I didn’t see each other again. My requests to my mother to “definitely visit Nika” came to naught: Nika was either “under the weather,” or “visiting relatives,” or (despite the Christmas holidays!) “intensively studying arithmetic.”
    A month and a half of unrequited desire to see my black-eyed love threw me into a feverish state. I lay in bed hallucinating for three days with a high temperature. I would surface from terrifying, colorful dreams into Mother’s cool hands placing a towel soaked in water and vinegar on my brow, and bringing me a cup of cranberry
mors
to drink. I never saw my Mountain in any of those dreams. I glimpsed a human sea, a boundless ocean of voices, faces, dresses, and tuxedos, that rolled powerful waves at me. I drowned in them, floundered, attempted to swim out past them, but again and again they covered my head. I knew that somewhere nearby, in the same place, Nika was floundering. But the harder I searched for her in whirlpools rustling with women’s dresses, the more furiously I was tossed through endless suites of rooms into smoked-filled parlors and stuffy bedrooms. My head was bursting with voices. Finally I broke through to her and saw my love in her little white dress, wearing a Baba Yaga mask. I ran over to her, grabbed the endlessly long, bumpy nose of the mask, and tore it off. But under the mask I found Nika with a live donkey head. She was chewing on something and stared straight at me with donkey eyes. I awoke with a cry.
    I came to on the fourth day.
    Neither Mama nor the nanny was anywhere to be seen. I raised my head: the drapes were drawn tight, but through a crack you could see daylight. I got out of bed. My head swam from weakness. Swaying, wearing a nightshirt that went to the floor, I headed for the door, opened it, and frowned: our huge apartment was bathed in sunlight. It issued from the parlor. I headed that way, my bare soles shuffling along the cool parquet floor. In the parlor, all their backs turned to me, stood our family. The windows were open and the spring sun beat blindingly through them. Everyone standing there was looking out the window. I walked over to Mama. She grabbed me, kissed me, hugged me hysterically, and picked me up. I could see our street, Millionnaya Street, out the window. It was usually quiet and almost empty, but now it was flooded with people. The crowd surged, roared, and crawled toward something. Here and there strips of red fabric could be glimpsed.
    “What is it, Mama?” I asked.
    “It’s the Revolution, son,” Mother answered.
    Later everyone in the family joked: Sasha slept through the Russian Revolution.

Revolution
    They had been talking about it for a long time. For me it