The Empire of Ice Cream Read Online Free PDF

wrinkles—the crow’s-feet at the edges of her eyes, the lines descending from the corners of her lips—belied her charm more so than her age and were in no way at odds with the youthful beauty of her elegant hands or the glint in her green eyes.
    She wore loose garments—wraps and tunics and sometimes a shawl—all fixed with glitter and sequin designs. Her earrings were thin hoops of crystal that caught the light of the candles positioned about her shop and transformed it into stars on the dark draperies that covered the walls. Her only other piece of jewelry was a ring on the left middle finger that held no precious stone, but instead the polished eyetooth of a man who was said to have once betrayed her.
    That tea she served, redolent of the digitalis, slowed the heart and tinged the mind with a dreamlike effect that seemed to negate the passage of time, so that, after a single cup and what seemed a brief conversation, I would look up and notice the sun rising out over the treetops of the forest beyond the waterway. The sudden realization of a new day would place me back in reality, and invariably I would turn to her and ask, “What exactly were we discussing?”
    She would smile, eyes closed, and shoo me home with a weary wave of the back of her hand. “A pleasant week then, Mrs. Strellop,” I’d say. She would offer me the same and, as I stepped into the street, add the rejoinder, “Good days are ahead, Jonsi.” It was only later, while lying in the cot in my small room over Meager’s Glass Works, listening to the morning wind and the distant tolling of the bell over in the Dunzwell district, that I would try in vain to piece together what she had told me through the night. With all my concentration I could only bring up slivers of her tales, and these I could not see but only feel the irritation of like thistle spines in my memory. The effort to do even this exhausted me beyond reason, and when I finally awoke later on, it was with an indistinct and transient belief, like a morning mist already evaporating, that my dreams had brought me closer to a recounting of her words than any conscious effort. In truth, every atom of these baroque nightmares was completely lost to me.
    Like Mrs. Strellop, I had also known betrayal and was drawn to the Bolukuchet the way the others who wandered the world with a hole in the heart were, as if by a great magnet that attracted emptiness. The majority of us had a little bit of money, at least enough to live comfortably, and those who didn’t worked at some lazy job from ten in the morning till three in the afternoon when the café opened and generous old Munchter served the first round for free. I had originally landed in that purgatorial quadrant of a crumbling town on the banks of the muddy Meerswal with the ridiculous idea that I might, in my middle years, revive my youthful interest in poetry. Though I jotted down some words upon waking each morning, the writing was, in all honesty, a dodge.
    Mrs. Strellop owned a shop the way I wrote poetry, for although she trafficked in talk and that mischievous tea, they came free of charge. There was no product or service I could readily discern. I knew very little about her, save for the fact that she was the first one to welcome me to the district. Ever since then, I’d gone by her place from time to time for a sip of oblivion and a session of amnesia therapy. I never saw her that the sun wasn’t in its descent, and I saw her most just prior to the autumn rains. It was Munchter who told me about the ring she wore. I inquired, “What sort of betrayal?” “What difference does it make?” he replied, and then with a shrug, denoting something close to sympathy, refilled my glass for free.
    There were many engaging personalities I could have written about in the Bolukuchet. In fact, there were as many as there were individuals living there, for everyone had a tale they