The Cage

by Audrey Shulman

  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 shifted 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. Space 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 space, pursed his mouth and made the noise. Beryl assumed 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 shifted 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 shielding 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 shifted 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 cushioned 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 brushing 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 flushing 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 shifting 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 butt 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 piss 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 bumped against his testicles, her nose wiggled itself deep within the private heat of his fur until it touched the skin beneath, dry and smooth like talcum 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 bumper 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 stitches. 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 shell 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 finishing 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, shifting 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 dick 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 blushing 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 balls 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.