Four or five years ago, Cluche tried to eat the pond. He didn't even get a quarter of the way through before his body screamed out that it had had enough. Warming the ice to water in his stomach was giving him hypothermia from the inside out, which is as dangerous as it sounds. Alternating with mouthfuls of hot tea helped a little, but practically it was never going to get him markedly nearer the end. It did mean, however, that he had an awful lot more liquid in his system, (both tea, and through being able to take on more ice), which gave him another problem: too much of anything is never good, even pond water.
Why Cluche tried to eat the pond is, I guess, the important question. It would be wrong for me to even consider answering it for him, and the closest he ever came to answering it himself was saying "Ah, y'know...", in a way which made it clear there were three full stops, not one, but also made it equally clear - as clear as two unresolved options ever are - that the sentence was either not finishable or would not be finished. Why he did it is always going to be the important question, just as that he did it is always going to be the important fact.
He was violently sick for weeks afterwards, and violently beaten during these weeks to teach him not to eat ponds anymore. (Although his parents were probably right that he shouldn't eat ponds, I can't help but feel they shouldn't have tried to beat this information into him. Cluche knew for himself that he shouldn't eat ponds, not because of the beatings he was having to endure, but because he had failed so miserably when he'd given it his best shot). Pond water, when not tainted by the chemical excesses of man, can be comfortably dealt with by even the shakiest of immune systems, in even the largest of quantities. It wasn't any germs in the water that made Cluche sick, it was the extreme cold he'd subjected himself to by eating a frozen pond. It wasn't any water-borne bacteria that was causing Cluche's sweating and shaking, it was the quantity of water which he'd swallowed, which his body couldn't deal with quickly enough, and had channeled away anywhere it possibly could, along with the consequences, until it had time to deal with them.
Cluche also got chilblains in his mouth. His mother said it was from his alternating between the cold of the ice, and the hot of the tea. His father didn't think that the alternating temperatures was what caused chilblains, just the cold. They both beat him for getting chilblains in his mouth, and told him differing information whilst they did. (Again, I think they were probably right that Cluche should try not to get chilblains in his mouth, but I don't feel their message was helped by beating it into him, doubly so because theirs wasn't one clear message. Cluche knew for himself he should try to avoid getting chilblains in his mouth because they were beyond infuriating, and all conventional treatments couldn't be used semi-internally, or when one was being violently sick every couple of minutes. He could do nothing but endure them).
The night after Cluche tried to eat the pond, it dropped below freezing, and the not-even-a-quarter froze over again. Did this compound his failure? I don't know. Confined to his bed, he couldn't see the pond, couldn't see his attempt totally undone. He had a frozen view of elsewhere, and must have known the pond he ate was back as it was. There was no way of knowing at the time if that was affecting him, affected, as he was, by so much else, the vomiting, the beatings. I will say this though: it was always going to be below freezing that evening, and everyone had to know it, including Cluche.