He who said that the ice was safe. Perfect ice to hammer a hole for burbot fishing. It had been an ordinary day at the beginning of winter. Mama’s sister, who was only eight, had gone with him, the thirteen-year-old. He couldn’t save her. The red jacket had slipped from her, just as a petal drops from a rose, without a sound. The red material floated in the hole in the ice long after she had been sucked under and disappeared into the center of the lake. The ice hole where she drowned recurred constantly in Papa’s dreams. The silence. He dreamed of silence—that the disaster was so silent and quick and calm was the most frightening thing of all. It was too late to do anything. To make a sound or even try to save her. He just stood there in the middle of the lake, alone. There then followed a winter that would never end. They knew that she was there somewhere beneath the ice, her body drifting along the bottom, or perhaps it had stuck fast in the ice during the coldest nights.
