The Ice-Cream Makers by Ernest Van der Kwast

Author:Ernest Van der Kwast
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC000000, FIC008000
Publisher: Scribe Publications
Published: 2016-07-14T04:00:00+00:00

My Brother’s Wedding and My Father’s Songbird

The wedding in Venas took place on a blue day. The sun had risen above the mountains in the morning, setting fire to the sky. The fields were blanketed in a thick layer of snow, covering even the needles of the larch trees, but the roads were clear. My father had come to pick me up from the station in Dobbiaco. I had travelled from New Delhi, where I had visited a poetry festival with Victor Larssen. We had spent most of the time in a minivan. Although poetry was read in locations across the city, there wasn’t much of an audience. Larssen had explained to me that the festival aimed to bring poets together so they could translate one another’s work. ‘The audience comes second,’ he had said. In my hotel room, with its view of Connaught Place, a rat had spent all night trying to find a way out through the air-conditioning unit. I hadn’t slept a wink.

My father looked well: relaxed and in high spirits, an ice-cream maker in winter.

‘How was your trip?’ he asked as we drove out of Dobbiaco. He had come in the white Land Rover. When you accelerated, the engine growled, a sound my father loved. He had bought the four-by-four for the mountains. For the longer distances, such as the annual drive to Rotterdam and back, he had a green, virtually silent Mercedes.

‘Long,’ I replied. I had flown from Delhi to Rome, where I had boarded the night train to Verona before continuing my journey via Bolzano and Fortezza. I felt as if part of me had yet to arrive.

‘Here you go,’ my father said. ‘Your mother made you a piadina.’

I unwrapped the aluminium foil and took a bite, tasting the prosciutto and stracchino. It was better warm, but it would do for now. I couldn’t get it down my throat fast enough.

‘Luca is dead nervous,’ my father said. ‘I can’t remember finding my wedding day that daunting. Your mother had to help him with his cufflinks.’ He laughed while he stepped on the gas. ‘Maybe he’s scared she’ll say no!’

The engine growled like a bear as we zipped through the white winter landscape. I clung to the grab handle whenever we tilted in a hairpin turn. Every now and then my eyes fell shut, but I would jolt awake when my head hit the car door.

As we drove down the main street of Cortina d’Ampezzo, my father started talking again. ‘I’m curious to see if the church will be full,’ he said. ‘When Valentino and Anna got married, some people had to stand.’ He was referring to the wedding of his brother’s son. ‘Practically the entire village turned out.’ Deep down my father was nervous, too.

‘I wouldn’t mind a drink,’ he said as we approached Venas, ‘but I promised to head straight home. Your mother is worried we’ll be late. No surprises there.’ Still, he slowed down when we spied a bar by the side of the road.

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