ICEHOTEL (7 page)

‘Tomorrow, your first night at the Icehotel, the management
will be holding a reception here. Karin and I are the hosts. We will be giving
you a Purple Kiss.’

‘A kiss?’ Mike flashed Marita a smile that showed his even white
teeth. ‘I’ll be first in the queue.’

She eyed him coldly. ‘Purple Kiss is a cocktail. You would
know that if you had read your dossier.’

A faint titter ran through the group.

I whispered into Liz’s ear, ‘There’s always one.’

She pretended she hadn’t heard and smiled prettily at Mike,
keen to show she’d appreciated his remark.

I caught her eye. ‘You’re such a tart, Liz,’ I murmured,
smiling.

We were back in the foyer. Marita ran a hand across one of
the red velvet curtains hanging against the walls. ‘These lead to the sleeping
areas. We will visit them now.’ She pushed the curtain aside and disappeared.

We followed, nearly running to keep up. After the vaulted
spaces of the bar and foyer, the ceiling seemed too low. And it was darker
here.

Marita stopped abruptly, causing a minor pile-up. She
motioned to a ceramic plaque embedded in the wall. ‘Please look closely. This
is the room number.’

Harry, like a giant baby in his powder blue suit, brought up
the rear. I hung back to walk with him, slipping a hand through his arm. He was
like a boy on a school trip, his face shining with excitement.

‘I love her to bits, don’t you, Maggie? When she’s not a
tour guide she must be a Rhine maiden. Do you think she sings Wagner?’ He put
on his glasses and peered at the nearest wall plaque. ‘This might be my
corridor. Yes, I’m in room 15, further along.’

‘It’s my corridor too. I’m in room 16.’ I tugged at his arm.
‘Come on, or we’ll get lost.’

Marita had stopped outside room 20. ‘We have time to see
only two or three rooms, but this is one of the more interesting. We call it
the Chess Room.’ She drew back the curtain.

Behind it was an arch-shaped entrance.

It was Robyn who
voiced my
thoughts. ‘But there’s no door,’ she said shrilly. ‘It’s just a curtain.’

Marita was ready with the reassurances. ‘Please don’t be
alarmed. Your valuables will be safe in the lockers.’ She stepped into the room
and, holding back the curtain, ushered us through.

Robyn had opened her mouth to speak, but thought better of
it. Looking prim, she followed the others inside.

Harry held back, signalling to me to stop. ‘I bet she and
her husband were planning a night of passion,’ he whispered. ‘But not now they
know anyone could burst in on them.’

I tried to picture the Ellises writhing under the reindeer
skins, and failed. Harry, shaking with laughter, took my elbow and guided me
into the now-crowded Chess Room.

Miniature lights hung high across the walls, winking
rhythmically and throwing faint splashes of colour onto the ice. In the centre
of the room lay the double bed, a block of ice buried under reindeer skins. I
fingered them carefully, remembering Jim’s doubts, and wondered how effective
skins were as insulation.

It was then that I saw the ice statues: huge chess pieces, a
king, queen, and knight, standing proudly around the room. Carved into the
pressed snow on the wall behind them was a chessboard. The Danes crowded in
front of it, arguing loudly.

Marita was watching, curiosity in her eyes. ‘Can you see who
will win? And in how many moves? Each day we carve a different puzzle onto the
wall and invite our guests to solve it.’ She paused. ‘It is black’s turn.’

The Danes moved away, still arguing. I studied the board,
biting my lip in concentration. It was an unusual play but, after a minute, I
had it. ‘It’s now impossible for white to win. Black will win in three moves,
but only if he sacrifices his queen.’ I moved my finger to show Marita. ‘But if
black keeps the queen, he’ll take a minimum of two – no, three – further moves
to win.’

She gawped. ‘That is absolutely correct.’

A murmur ran through the group. I glanced around in
surprise; Mike was smiling, clapping his hands soundlessly; Jane, beaming, gave
me a thumbs-up.

‘You solved it so quickly,’ Marita said.

I shrugged, puzzled by her remark. ‘It was obvious.’

‘Golly, Mags, I didn’t know you played chess,’ said Liz.

‘My father taught me when I was a child.’ I grinned. ‘I used
to bunk off sports to play in the chess club. I was school champion. Don’t you
remember?’

‘You bunked off sports?’ Mike said in amazement. ‘To play
chess
?’

‘We have a chess set in the Excelsior,’ Marita was saying,
‘although we find that our guests prefer outside activities.’ She turned to the
group. ‘There is time to visit one more corridor. Please stay close or we will
become separated.’

We filed out through the curtain and followed her back the
way we’d come. Jim Ellis mouthed a hurried, ‘Well done’, as he overtook me to
join his wife.

As Marita passed room 15, Harry stopped and said, ‘Oh, wait,
please. Can we go in here? It’s my room.’

She hesitated. It was clear she wanted to avoid this room.
But Harry pushed back the curtain, and we trooped in.

‘Aha,’ he said triumphantly, ‘I’ve got a ceiling window.’

The room was plainer, if brighter, than the Chess Room. The
double bed lay in the centre, but there was nothing else; I wasn’t surprised
Marita didn’t want to waste time here.

‘Holy Mother o’ God.’ It was Mike.

I wheeled round. Behind us, set into a deep alcove, was a
huge ice statue of the god, Pan.

His conical horns grew through shaggy hair which curled
thickly over his head and fell in ringlets below the lightly-pointed ears. Hair
sprouting from the cheeks tangled into a beard, ending in two strands like a
goat’s. His eyebrows arched like pointed moustaches and, below the flared
nostrils, his lips were drawn back into a demonic grin that I found disturbing.
He was holding a set of pipes to his mouth, the fingers so long they touched
above the reeds. Matted hair covered his neck and chest.

I looked down his body, expecting a goat’s legs and hooves,
and then saw what had shocked Mike. The sculptor had given Pan an erection. But
this was no ordinary erection. The enormous penis wasn’t human, it was an
animal’s, buried in the belly hair, only the tip visible. It ran the full length
of the abdomen to the waist.

‘Good Heavens!’ Harry said, breaking the silence. He pushed
his glasses further up his nose and openly scrutinised the penis. ‘Now we know
why he was called The Great God Pan.’

The tension was broken, and peals of laughter echoed through
the room. We crowded around the statue, examining it, marvelling at the detail.
I touched the penis. It was so lifelike that I half-expected it to throb under
my hand. As I turned away, I saw Mike watching me, his eyes steady.

Harry drew me to one side. ‘Maggie, I’m not sure I’ll be
able to sleep with that thing grinning at me. There’s a lamp behind it. Do you
think I’ll be able to switch it off?’

I peered into the alcove. Light was filtering through the
statue from a lamp high in the wall, but I could see no way of turning it off.
‘Marita, is that light on all night?’ I said.

She seemed grateful for the change of subject. ‘In the early
hours of the morning, all the Icehotel lamps are switched off from the master
switch in the Excelsior.’

‘There you are,’ I said to Harry. ‘It’ll be too dark to see
him. That means he won’t see you, either.’

‘I suppose I could get used to it . . . ,’ he said, eyeing
the erection.

Mike clapped him on the back, laughing. ‘Now you know where
you can hang your clothes, Harry.’

Jane, standing with the Danes, sniggered loudly. Robyn,
tutting softly, eyed Mike with a look of disapproval. Jim had his back to her,
probably so she couldn’t see the expression on his face.

We visited one more room. In the Scottish Room, we found Macbeth
seated on a crude ice throne. Stretched across his lap was the dead king,
Duncan, staring sightlessly at his murderer. Macbeth’s left arm was under the
corpse, cradling it as a mother would a child. His right hand was removing the
crown from Duncan’s head. Scratched into the snow-covered wall, three witches
danced in a frenzy around a bubbling cauldron, their arms flung back, beards
billowing about their faces. Behind them, Birnam Wood marched to Dunsinane.

‘This brings our tour of the Icehotel to an end,’ Marita
said, in her sing-song voice. ‘I should mention two further buildings that may
interest you. Adjacent to the Icehotel is the Ice Chapel, where we hold
services, including christenings and weddings. And behind the Icehotel, on the
river bank, there is an Ice Theatre, a replica of London’s Globe Theatre. I
should remind you that every Sunday there is a performance in the
Sami
language of one of Shakespeare’s plays. This Sunday, it
will be Macbeth.’

‘Are we going to get anything out of it?’ said Mike,
scratching his face. ‘I hear Sami’s a weird language, and no mistake.’

‘That should not deter you from seeing the play. Few Swedes
understand
Sami,
but
we
still
go
.
’ She looked
directly at him. ‘Anyway, you will be familiar with Macbeth. I can tell from
your accent that you are Scottish.’ She beamed, delighted with herself.

I glanced at Mike. The look on his face was priceless.

‘And now, I must leave you,’ she said. ‘I hope you have
enjoyed the tour. It has been a great pleasure for me also.’

She inclined her head, acknowledging our applause. We
watched her sashay down the cor
ridor, her heavy
buttocks rolling as she walked.

The group dispersed. The Ellises
marched out first, Robyn in the lead, then Jane left with the Danes, who were
still arguing about chess. Harry announced he was going to unpack (and it would
take him ages), and Liz said she needed to call the twins before her nap. Mike
left for a long workout after accepting with alacrity Harry’s invitation to
meet later in the bar.

I wandered around the Icehotel, getting hopelessly lost
until I eventually stumbled on the corridor that led to the suites. I chose one
at random. It was larger than the regular rooms, the main feature being a giant
ice peacock. He was
spreading his tail feathers to
create a fan-shaped headboard for the double bed nestling inside his body. Ice
tre
es grew in the corners of the room, their gnarled branches creeping
across the ceiling and intertwining to form a dense canopy. A myriad of tiny
white lights, glowing hypnotically, hung like raindrops from the branches.

It would soon be the hour when the Icehotel ceased to be a
gallery and became a hotel. I found the signs to the foyer and left by the main
entrance.

The Ice Chapel stood separated from the Icehotel by a narrow
path leading to the river. From the Chapel door, I could see the expanse of
frozen water and the snow-capped forest on the far side. The temperature had
dropped, and a chill gripped my body, but the sun had not yet set. Promising
myself only a few minutes outside, I started towards the bank.

Workmen were warming their hands at a smoking brazier. They
watched silently as I passed, making no attempt to detain me. A JCB was still
out, its faint angular shadow stretching long arms as it lifted the ice blocks
and laid them in neat piles. I walked onto the river and peered down. The
water, black in the failing light, slid silently past, carrying fragments of
blue ice. The man at the controls shouted what could have been a warning,
signalling to me to move away. I stepped back and watched the cutting of the
ice until a combination of boredom and cold prompted me to leave. As I turned
away, I glimpsed the church tower in the distance. The tower with the viewing platform.
Perhaps the aurora would be visible tonight.

I retraced my steps to the Chapel, and pulled at the antler
handles.

The interior was larger than I’d expected. A dozen ice pews,
strewn with skins, lined the nave, although there was room for easily twice
that number. At the far end, a bare ice altar, striking in its simplicity,
stood on a platform. It was overshadowed by the rose window carved high into
the wall, its tracery as intricate as anything in a stone-built church. But
there was no glass; the Chapel was open to the elements. Glass would serve
little purpose, I remembered then, as the daytime air temperature would be the
same inside and out.

The pulpit stood at the side, its curving sweep of steps
sprinkled liberally with snow. Unlike the Icehotel’s columns, it was crudely
assembled from small slabs of ice. Snow had been pressed into the joins,
masking them. There was nothing else in the Chapel other than the broad columns
at the ends of the pews.

Something at the pulpit’s base caught my eye: symbols,
carved into the snow. They jumbled around each other as though the sculptor had
overreached himself and run out of space. I removed a glove and traced the
outline of a shape with my fingers. It was a mythical beast, the long arrowed
tail curling back under the belly to protrude obscenely between the front legs.
Lettering, too faint to be legible, was scratched into the pedestal beneath.

I was trying to decipher the letters, my fingers touching
the ice, when my legs buckled. I staggered and fell to my knees. The back of my
throat tightened, and I realised with dismay that I was going to be sick. I
swallowed repeatedly, trying to control the convulsions, bracing myself for the
ultimate indignity of vomiting up my lunch in a church. In desperation, I pressed
my face into the gritty coldness and hugged the pulpit, praying for the nausea
to subside.

I lifted my head, and looked at the figures. And I saw
something that sent a ripple of fear through my body. The mythical beasts had
vanished. In their place, a half-formed vision appeared.