Summer by Karl Ove Knausgaard

Author:Karl Ove Knausgaard
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Knopf Canada
Published: 2018-08-20T16:00:00+00:00

Ice Cubes

Ice cubes are small, hard and shiny cubes of frozen water which are used mainly to cool drinks. The ice cubes produce a rustling or clinking sound when the glass they are floating around in is moved, and for many that is one of the most distinctive and joyful of noises. Glasses are generally moved with smooth gestures, from kitchen to table, from table to mouth, but when it comes to glasses with ice cubes in them, one may often observe that the hand holding the glass jiggles it a little, often without the holder paying much attention, it is done distractedly, the underlying purpose being to wrest from the ice this distinctive sound, which is like a swishing when the pieces of ice are small, more of a tinkle when there are large ice cubes in the glass. Since the ice slowly melts and turns into water, ice cubes are usually used in drinks that are already a mixture of liquids, such as water and fruit squash, gin and tonic or vodka and juice, or drinks that don’t really matter, like Coke or Solo, in which the slowly melting water causes no particular damage to either taste or consistency. In organic drinks, whose taste is finely balanced and produced through considerable effort and which consequently have an air of exclusivity about them, ice cubes are rarely used – this goes for white and red wine, but also for port, champagne and beer. Since beer is less exclusive than wine, it is not a sign of poor taste to put ice in your beer, it’s merely odd, and in fact I don’t think I have ever seen anyone do it, while putting ice cubes in a glass of good wine is considered vulgar and a sign of low breeding. For writers the clink of ice cubes in a glass is an abiding topos and an ever-present possibility when the text requires the description of a summer scene, because precisely that sound is so evocative and seems to contain the very essence of summer – the afternoon sun in the sky, the warm air, the well-dressed people on the veranda, their tanned faces and white teeth, the hum of their voices, the smell of grilled meat, the hostess who takes a quick sip of her glass and sets it down on the sideboard to go inside and check on something, while the man she was just speaking to also takes a sip of his drink, which he then continues to hold in his hand as he looks out over the garden and then in across the veranda, at all the naked shoulders and bare arms, all the routinely smiling faces. The cubes in the glass give off a tinkling sound as he jiggles it distractedly. It is as if the sound brings him back, for he looks down into his glass, ascertains that it is nearly empty and goes over to the sideboard to refill it. As he stands there waiting for the woman in front of him to finish, the hostess comes to the door and their eyes meet.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.