The Cage Part 5

Jean-Claude said, "When the British explored the Arctic, they wore the normal navy uniform. Weren't allowed anything else. They thought nothing could be as good as two layers of British woolens."

Beryl was glad he was finally talking. She wanted him to continue. "Didn't they cheat?" she asked. "Once they got here, didn't they ignore the rule?"

"Difficult to smuggle other clothes on board. Certainly couldn't wear them in public. The officers punished that." Jean-Claude looked at the wall as though he read the words there. She wondered if he cared who he was talking with. She wondered if he had any friends, any siblings. "Each year a boat was trapped in the ice. The ice floes would grind together over the months. The boat's hull would crack. The men froze or starved slowly. Winter's nine months long here. Most of it's a single night. With no sun, they could be awake at noon or three in the morning. It didn't matter, still dark. They could stay awake for two hours or twenty. Didn't matter. Time pa.s.ses slowly that way."

Beryl watched his hands. They lay in his lap, too big and heavy for the rest of his body. They had thickened knuckles and deep calluses. She wondered if they hurt.

He turned to look at her for a moment. "In situations like that," he said, his words clear and careful, "you've got to understand what you live for, exactly. You've got to be able to hold on to it. If you don't have it, or if you forget, you die."

He watched her. She wasn't sure how to respond to what he'd said. It seemed he was waiting for something. "It must be a horrible death," she offered.

He turned away. She couldn't tell if he was satisfied or not. "There was this one Dutch captain. The s.h.i.+p ran into an iceberg. It's easy to do. Some of the floes are the size of city blocks, switching directions with the wind. The captain ran forward, his hands held out like this." Jean-Claude put his hands up in front of him, his shoulders pus.h.i.+ng behind. "Ran up to the floe, placed his hands against the ice. He was sucked down between the s.h.i.+p and floe. His men watched it. He'd been a good captain." Jean-Claude let his hands fall back into his lap.

"Part of his s.h.i.+p survived. It fell over on the ice with seven men inside. They had no food. They had no wood but the piece of the s.h.i.+p around them. They slowly burnt it in pieces. They floated about on the ice. They bled one another in turn, drank the blood from a shoe. After a month a man went out onto the ice to kill himself. He saw another s.h.i.+p pa.s.sing. They were rescued."

Jean-Claude turned toward her. His face was blank. He held his hands palm up in a gesture she didn't understand.

She reached out and ran her fingertips across his palm. The skin was thick and hard, split open in places. Warm. She pulled her hand back and smiled at him, embarra.s.sed.

Jean-Claude looked at her, confused, suddenly very young.

CHAPTER 15.

On their last night in town they all stayed around after dinner talking until late. They drank and looked hungrily about at strangers pa.s.sing by the table. None of the four attempted to talk to any other people. So far as Beryl knew, only she and Jean-Claude actually knew anyone in town. Jean-Claude seemed to know every person who walked by smelling of dogs and gasoline. Each one looked around at the Natural Photography group and then gave Jean-Claude a silent nod. He nodded back.

Most of the people he knew were men, but Beryl noticed one woman. Small with dark eyes. Beryl looked to see how Jean-Claude nodded back. She could tell nothing from him, his patient steady gaze, his precise nod. She realized she was getting quite curious about his life.

David began to talk about his home in southern California. He said, "I live right on the beach with a friend, near San Diego. We got the place in order to snorkel there. We used to snorkel every day. I like the silence, you know, the light and the fish. So much movement and color in such a small area." David breathed out through his mouth. "I never filmed that world there. I never wanted to, you know?" He looked about at them.

"In the last few years, though, it's changed. I don't know what happened. It wasn't anything abrupt, not any one thing, just all the developments, all the new towns, a small oil spill." He picked up his napkin and rubbed his thumb across its edge. "Now when I walk down to the beach, the sound is the same. The sun is the same, the waves. But I wade into the surf and the water is empty." He put the napkin down.

Beryl watched Butler as David talked. He seemed slightly confused by the story, or perhaps by other clues, by the way David mentioned his "friend." Butler looked at David's face and then, for some reason, at his hands. He s.h.i.+fted his chair away from David, but not far. He still looked confused.

David pestered Jean-Claude to do some calls of arctic animals. Jean-Claude finally agreed.

"Snow grouse," he said, pulling his upper lip in and making the clucking and whispering calls of the white bird with the astonished eyes, the bird that slept beneath the drifts each night and in the morning stuck its head up through the snow like a periscope. s.p.a.ce and cold echoed in his calls as physical as a touch on Beryl's face.

Jean-Claude didn't move his hands to make the call. He simply fixed his eyes on open s.p.a.ce, pursed his mouth and made the noise. Beryl a.s.sumed he didn't use his hands because when he needed to do these calls outside, his hands would be covered by gloves.

"Arctic fox," he said next. He barked and yipped the small voice of the scavenger, busy, hungry, constantly complaining.

"The wolf." He craned his neck upward and Beryl watched the sound roll up from the bones of his chest. A howling, curling call that poured out and quieted the entire dining room at the first note. The sound of speed and power, of loneliness and snow. A roomful of faces turned to look at him.

Jean-Claude put his head down. He blinked at all of them, then around at the dining room. He didn't seem to realize that his imitation would attract any attention. Someone dropped a fork clattering to the floor. With the silence broken, people s.h.i.+fted a little in their seats. The dining room quickly returned to normal.

Beryl asked about the polar bear, what sounds it made.

Jean-Claude turned to her, looking for a second without recognition. Then he spoke. "The polar bear makes no noise. It's a loner. No need to talk to other bears, except in raising cubs or when angry. The only sounds are from its breath."

She thought of its noises-hissing, chuffing, the snow settling back after its black-bottomed paws have already moved on.

Beryl was the first one to say good night. She had to get dressed in order to meet Maggie for the night's patrol. She walked up the stairs to her room, feeling warm and fairly drunk. Looking down the staircase at the three men laughing and talking together, she set about carefully memorizing the scene. She knew this would be as good as it got.

After she got dressed in the Natural Photography suit, she went around the back hall to the parking lot where Maggie was to meet her. She had decided in the end not to wear Jean-Claude's suit because she thought Maggie would tease her. Also, she found the long night in the car quite cold; although she liked the feel of the fur suit, she thought she would rather experiment with it during the relatively short periods she would spend in the cage.

She stepped outside into the unheated tunnel that led to the parking lot. The warm air from the hotel steamed and swirled around her, then disappeared. Her face numbed so quickly that her eyes blinked a few times in shock. The air was colder than she'd ever felt. She walked down the concrete tunnel listening to the echo of her breath and the squeak of the snow. Her limbs felt loose and her thoughts a bit slow. Being a little drunk probably helped in this kind of cold. Dimly, beyond the walkway, she heard the hum of what seemed to be a large motor. She thought it might be Maggie waiting for her in the car and sped up.

She turned the handle and pushed open the final set of doors. They jerked wide, pulling her with them. Her parka snapped hard in the wind. She skidded sideways, arms out. Snow filled her eyes and nose. Instinctively she twisted her back to it, crouched down. Then the wind roared from another direction and she twisted back around and stood cautiously up, one glove s.h.i.+elding her face.

She could not see the hotel.

She turned again. Snow covered her eyelashes. She could hear nothing but the uneven snap and scream of the wind. The air and ground whirled white, curving into each other, no farther away than an outstretched arm. The wind roared up her legs, ballooned out her parka, rolled across her belly. Her skin deadened instantly at its touch. It ached deeper down, throbbing.

She wasn't sure at all where the hotel should be.

Looking down she could see nothing below her knees. The snow hissed and flowed about her like a river. The wind jerked at her ankles. She tried to curl her toes in, then out. She couldn't tell if they moved at all. She was sobering quickly. She knew she couldn't stay still.

She began to walk across the snow toward where she thought the hotel might be, taking small steps so she wouldn't fall with the sudden shoves of the wind. Her face hardened with cold. She was sure that sooner or later she would hit the hotel or one of the houses on the street.

She held one arm out in front of her. The snow immediately covered it, whitened it. The snow whirled thicker around her until she could barely see the glove on the end of her arm. The wind hit her hard in the side, the back, then the arm. She swayed and moved each foot forward in its baby step, her arm waving. She could see small drifts building up on the wrinkles of the parka. She breathed slower and slower. She could no longer feel her feet hit the ground. She couldn't even see her feet. She s.h.i.+fted each leg on through the tide, floating.

She thought she must have walked a hundred feet through the snow, certainly at least fifty. The street couldn't be wider than that. She still hadn't hit a building. She wondered if she could be walking in circles. Without being able to see any landmark, with the battering wind, it was hard to hold a straight line. It seemed as though she was going directly forward. She wondered if she could be walking between the buildings, by people's back steps and driveways, or straight down the street toward the end of town into the open tundra beyond. She tried edging off to the left.

After a while she could no longer feel the arm held out in front of her. She edged off to the right. From above, her path must seem quite confused, staggering around, arm waving. An adult playing pin the tail on the donkey, late at night, all alone. She walked on slowly like Jean-Claude, knowing his cautious balanced limp.

Abruptly she decided she must be outside of town by now; that was why she wasn't hitting any buildings. She turned around the way she'd come, but going back directly along her path wouldn't work. She knew the hotel wasn't that way. Perhaps a bit to the left. She stood there, leaning into the wind, confused.

The wind slapped her hard on the right. Her feet slid out from under her. She didn't feel herself hit the ground. She struggled up. Her legs slid in the snow. Her arms wouldn't lift. How silly, she marveled. And how quick. The wind knocked her back down. She felt very small in the face of all this power, a child, a baby. The snow cus.h.i.+oned her face, soft as a blanket. Her heart beat slow and full against the cold of her limbs. She listened to it. The center of her body felt warm.

The snow swirled across her face and up her nose. She coughed.

She thought, Lazy, and got to her hands and knees. She had a hard time knowing what they did. Her wrists wouldn't move the way she wanted, her feet dragged behind her. This all seemed like such a simple mistake to her, warmth such an easy luxury. Her left sleeve had pulled up a bit. She could see the skin of the wrist. Blue-white.

She looked at it and was surprised to realize that she was dying.

She crawled forward, rocking. She concentrated on keeping her balance. Her body drifted away from her bit by bit. She could feel nothing now but the air sucking down into her lungs. She could see nothing but the edges of her hood and her wrists sliding forward through the soup. The blood pushed in her ears, her limbs limped across the snow. The sounds filled her head, such strong noises, each thump and sigh, each rustle and drag.

She remembered the sounds of brus.h.i.+ng her hair last night before she slept, the whisk and pull of the brush across her scalp. She remembered stepping into her bath the night before she left Boston, her toes flus.h.i.+ng suddenly pink in the hot water. She saw the polar bear burning crisply, running over the hill, the sounds of her breath and the crackle of the fire. She moved on four legs like the bear.

She thought, Live, and crawled on. She imagined her parents sitting in their living room in Boston, the television on, the blue light across their faces, their hands lying loose and open two inches from each other.

Ahead she saw something solid within the s.h.i.+fting of her world. She saw more than one object ahead. If she could only cover her face, she thought, she would be warm. If she could only close her eyes.

The first object was a bear. The b.u.t.t and side of a giant bear, a white bear defined in negative against the blue of the open car door and Maggie's parka lying below. Maggie's black hair poured out of the hood, wet with blood. Maggie's arm waved in the air. Beryl was close, crawling closer.

The bear turned to face Beryl, dropping the front of Maggie's parka from his mouth. He was a giant, yellow with age, a low mean head moving toward her. His fur ruffled with the wind and the snow he was made of. His eyes narrowed, his teeth white against the black gums of his mouth. She crawled toward him.

The bear pushed up and stood to such a height she lost his face in the snow above. She could smell his warm thick stink of meat and p.i.s.s and damp fur. He swiped his arms about. She crawled forward toward the heat. She crawled forward into the bow of his body, the bow of his legs. Her head b.u.mped against his t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es, her nose wiggled itself deep within the private heat of his fur until it touched the skin beneath, dry and smooth like talc.u.m powder. She touched her nose to this and breathed deeply of this sanctuary. Her face would warm.

She felt the bear stiffen. She felt the fur fly up. She saw the bear above her leaping up into the snow. She was alone.

She heard a small noise. A kind of chortle, a kind of snort. She looked all around and then down and there Maggie laughed as hard as she could with her cheek gaping open, ripped to the bone to show the teeth and gums. Beryl could see the mechanics of laughter in all their glory.

Maggie sat up and hugged her. Beryl stilled for a moment within the gesture, then placed her head deep within the hug, within the arms, burrowing deep into the warmth. Beryl made a noise like a cough, mouth distorted and unwilling. Maggie began to cry. The tears froze against the skin of her cheeks. The two of them crawled slowly up and into the car. They closed the door and sat.

The wind blew outside. There was a silence, a stillness, as deep as any Beryl had ever imagined. It poured slowly across her skin until Maggie threw the whole of her leadened weight down onto the horn and the snow by the front b.u.mper pushed back into hotel doors and people were helping them in.

CHAPTER 16.

The hospital released Maggie before Beryl. Maggie's injuries to face, shoulder and hip needed only st.i.tches. She had no frostbite, for she hadn't been outside long enough. There would be scars though, the doctor warned her. Maggie said she was glad; the town would feel too guilty to ever take her job away from her now. Also, she said, scars would scare the kids, make them mind her more.

The doctor worried more about Beryl. The skin flaked and peeled off her arms, legs and back as though she'd lain too long in the sun. At first she felt pain like hot water being poured across her skin, then the slow irresistible itching. She scratched luxuriously everywhere, even leaning up against the headboard of the bed and wriggling her back like a deer against a tree. She smoothed on the lotion the doctor gave her. The fresh pink skin beneath made her look like a newborn baby emerging from the sh.e.l.l of her old body. And as though her body were new, she felt a great awe of it, for pulling her through the storm. She held each limb carefully, measuring its width with her hand, tracing the bones beneath the cover of flesh, studying her body with clear admiring eyes. Her gentlest touch hurt the places that had been frostbitten. Her wrists turned an angry red for a while after the dead skin flaked off, and she slept holding both wrists off the sides of the bed like a hawk soaring.

On the second day the doctor told her the smallest toes had been removed from both her feet.

Beryl looked down at her bandaged toes. She couldn't tell. At first she thought maybe he was just kidding, hoping to scare her. They would have taken her toes while she was unconscious that first night. She didn't know what they did with them afterward. She imagined herself wandering around the hospital, rummaging through garbage cans. She imagined herself finding the toes, small and white and fat, smooth slivers of the nails, curled tightly together as babies.

The doctor had wide cheekbones, black hair. Beryl wondered if he were part-Inuit, but he could also have been Hawaiian. He said he was amazed that Beryl had survived as well as she had. He advised her to show some caution in this world that had almost killed her.

Beryl nodded. The hospital seemed airy and far away. Sometimes she had a problem paying attention to people's words. She looked down instead at her tingling body, awed.

No one could convince her to give up the expedition. Butler visited her on the first day and explained, "Natural Photography's asked me to send their regrets about this whole incident. They say if you're willing to sign a paper saying you won't sue, they'll understand if, with the shock of this whole thing, you want to get out of your contract." He pursed his lips in thought, and she noticed again their thick beauty. "Don't worry about the project. I've seen this happen before. It'll still be done in time. They'll just scramble for a few days to find someone. Someone'll fit in the cage."

While Butler talked, he kept looking at her white-wrapped toes. He looked away from her face. He seemed uncomfortable and sad. He picked at his fingers, pulling at the cuticles. She realized he probably gave money to charities that showed children and mothers suffering. He looked smaller sitting in the bare white hospital room. She guessed that for himself he hoped for a good clean death, something violent, a falling tree or charging moose, while he was still in his prime. He wouldn't want to watch the slow decrease of his body, because he knew clearly that he was stronger than most humans, faster, taller. He felt proud of that. She knew she was smaller, weaker, slower than the average. She felt pride that her body existed at all, that it struggled on. From now on she would fight relentlessly for every breath.

"But Butler," she said, "I've no intention of suing Natural Photography and there's nothing that could dissuade me from finis.h.i.+ng the expedition."

He looked her straight in the eye. She could see he hadn't expected her to want to finish.

"I'm glad," he smiled. "Real glad." He left soon, saying she needed her rest.

David asked her if she'd gotten any of it on film. He looked hurt that she hadn't asked him to join the patrols. During the four days they waited for her to heal, he went out each night with Maggie, filming.

"I got some great shots," he told her, s.h.i.+fting in his seat in excitement. "You know, white bears trotting forward through darkness, long black shadows behind. I got 'em with this megaspotlight I borrowed from Maggie. She's neat. Real fun to talk to. The spotlight's intense. The bears look wicked, every hair on their bodies glowing with power.

"The narration," he said, "will be a cinch. You know the kind: a deep male voice, probably British, reciting facts. Long pauses, the bear's breathing piped over." David panted deep and raspy a few times.

He paused then and looked down the hospital bed to her feet. He shook his head, and when he spoke his voice was slower, quieter. "You know, you don't have to worry about the cage if you don't want to. You wouldn't inconvenience anyone. No one would think less of you. Really. I could do it. No problem. I know how to handle a still camera."

When she told him that she still wanted to finish the expedition, he laughed.

"Stubborn fool," he said. "But it's a good thing, 'cause I don't know d.i.c.k about a still camera. And, you know, I would've thought less of you."

He leaned forward, touched her arm where the skin tingled when she rubbed cream into it, tingled as though she were still just warming up. Less skin flecked off each time, the flesh beneath blus.h.i.+ng red. David held her arm. He asked, "You're not scared of the bears now, are you?"

The first day Jean-Claude visited, he said, "You should stay here as long as you want. You aren't holding us up. The bus still hasn't arrived." The bus was their transportation for the next leg of the trip.

"When's it due?" asked Beryl.

"Monday morning." The company had missed the deadline twice now. Jean-Claude turned his head away then toward the window and made his only nervous gesture; he ran the b.a.l.l.s of his fingers back and forth over the wood arms of his chair.

Jean-Claude visited for long periods, sitting beside her. Most days he did not even say as much as he had about the bus and if she hadn't been so tired and drugged up, she might have felt nervous, responsible for a conversation. Only later did she realize that if she'd tried to talk more he probably would have left. As it was, he seemed to feel more and more at ease.

At first Jean-Claude lay his hands across his legs as he usually did, stretched out and empty, but once when she woke up he was holding her hand, cupping it within his own. He didn't look at her as she slowly sat up. She wondered if he'd picked up her hand because that was what one was supposed to do when visiting sick people, or if he was trying to heat the frostbite out. The warmth of his hands comforted her, harsh as a heated rock held to the face. Round her bandages and raw skin, she could feel the deep cracks in his hands from the cold and the dryness. She liked the touch of his human palms. Sometimes she remembered the bear's powdery flesh against her nose. She'd made no comment to Jean-Claude. They continued their silence.

From then on when he visited he conscientiously held each hand in turn. She kept her hands still, relaxing them into his hardened palms. She sensed that acceptance from him was rare. Her hands healed more each day. His care reminded her of when she was a child and her mother had held the wet cool washcloth against her fevered forehead, the hand cupped firm and worried over her brow and cheek.

While he visited they both faced the window, watching the frost grow slowly across the gla.s.s. She slept a lot those days with him nearby; she had fewer nightmares with him around. She'd begun to dream each night that she crawled through the storm in her hospital clothes and the bear paced just ahead of her, slowly unzipping his head with his curved yellow nails.

For days after the blizzard she felt sleepy and ate more than normal, as though she'd been drained over a period of weeks.

One night when she woke panting, silently struggling under the covers to crawl forward, to survive, he placed both his hard hands against her face, pulled her up close against him. "Beryl," he said, "you're safe. You're warm. Wake up." His shoulder smelled like gra.s.s.

When she began to gasp and then to cry, he held her still for a while and said, "It's all right. It's all right. You lived. You did well."

She and Maggie laughed and laughed.

"The bear's b.a.l.l.s. You touched his..." Maggie chortled and they both folded over, rocking gently, almost crying, trying to say the word "t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es."

Maggie touched the bandages over her own face and said, "Uh oh. The doctor's gonna yell at me again." Blood began to freckle the bandages. Maggie a.s.sumed a stern expression, shook her finger back and forth and said, "Margaret Johnson, no more laughing. Do you hear? No more smiling."

Sometimes Maggie and Beryl got quiet. They sat side by side, not saying a thing.

Every once in a while one of them would jump slightly at a movement in the window, the wind in the snow or a nurse all in white running to the cafeteria. They both watched the movement until the end, conscious of their own breath.

Beryl looked over at Maggie then. She faced the hard bandages, the plaster nose pushed out as if sniffing, the swirl of white, the small black eye. She expected Maggie to yawn and show a black tongue, sharp teeth.

The experience had changed Maggie. She said she hadn't been stupid like Beryl and lost her way. She'd known where the hotel doors were, had stepped out of the car toward them. But then the white ma.s.s she'd thought was part of the hotel wall had knocked her right back against the car. The strange part was, she said, when the bear had reached forward with its mouth open for the front of her parka, she'd relaxed. Like the bear was going to give her a backrub. Her muscles just loosened. She'd felt the pressure, the tugging, but she'd been peaceful, very aware and far away.

She ran her hand round the edge of her bandages and said, "You're going to think this is really weird of me. But it was one of the best moments of my life."

She said she no longer got scared out on the patrols, turning alone outside in the snow. She felt warm then.

Beryl turned back to the window, away from Maggie. She moved her hands. She had problems now staying still. At night she wanted to wander down the halls, white floors, white walls, the smell of the wind and floor cleaner rising up beneath her, leading her toward the door.

The tall doctor told Beryl the risks. Where the skin had frozen once, it could easily be frostbitten again. The circulation had been damaged. Her toes especially would always need protection. Everyone had areas of bad circulation, and some people are more susceptible to frostbite. She couldn't be exposed for long. She could lose fingers, the rest of her toes, her nose. The doctor looked down severely at Beryl, lying in bed. He wore a white lab coat, carried a white clipboard. Beryl found herself wondering what he thought of all this white in his life.