The Cage (22 page)

She remembered when she had said good-bye to her parents, clasping her mother against her, the feel of the bra straps obvious through the thin shirt, the soft flesh and the bones inside. Her father standing back awkward, covering his face with the camera until it was his turn. She looked up and around for more bears.

It began to snow. She walked on through it, keeping pace with Jean-Claude's stride, listening to the rustle of the fur against her skin and the creak of her shoes until she could not hear as well through the rising wind. The snow came down faster. She realized she was losing sight of her feet through the shifting snow. Jean-Claude stopped and she stumbled to a halt beside him. He turned around in the storm, scuffed his foot into the snow beneath them, examining the texture. She couldn't see more than a white round room about them, the same in every direction. Jean-Claude pulled off suddenly to the left. They walked single file. The wind rose. The room
shrank. Her eyes squinted, snow built up on her face. She followed him. For a sense of time, of distance, she counted her own breaths. She got to five hundred. She was pretty sure by that time that she had begun to count slower, to breathe slower, that time was changing.

She could no longer see the end of the sled rope she followed.

The rope stopped, dipped down. Jean-Claude was hunkered down, an outline as soft as gray mist in the snow, digging. She reached out cautiously and touched the fur of his hood, pushed it a little to the side to see his face. She'd thought she would be alone with the rope until her will gave out. He looked at her, startled. Human eyes looked strange after so much snow. She touched her glove to his cheek. He watched her blankly, then something softened. He brushed the back of his glove against her lips.

Turning away, he tunneled straight into the snow, hollowing out a ditch on the far side of the wind. They sat in the hole, held a blanket up as a roof to keep back the snow, leaning against each other. The blanket grew heavy above her head, darkening as snow piled above. The air stilled within their hole, closed off. The sound of the wind dulled. She warmed up. She could see nothing. She felt his leg across her foot. She was trying to remember the exact sound of summer rain on leaves, in puddles on the earth. They held the roof up until at some point her head nodded forward. When she woke her arms were still pushing up.

Later she woke again. She lay curled round Jean-Claude,
warm. She sat up, her body moving easily in their quiet den. She rummaged around in the dark, found the meat. The air was thick with the smell of human sweat and meat, stuffy. She ate. Chunks fell from her mouth. She touched the skin of her arms, legs, neck. She was warm, she could feel. Her fingers ran across the walls. They steamed wet with the heat, the ceiling the rough texture of the blanket. She searched Jean-Claude's body, found his face. With each breath something clicked within his throat. She leaned down very carefully, matching the outline of his mouth with hers. She kissed him. Again. He laughed beneath her, that soundless pant. Their lips lay slack against each other; she could feel the kiss only in the roots of her teeth. They pushed together, miming passion. Pressed tight and awkward, turning their heads from side to side, letting go. They pulled their bodies slowly into each other's curves, so close they could feel each other's bellies filling with breath. She felt warm. They slept.

She dreamed she was pregnant. She looked into the face of her child and saw a strong happy woman looking back into her mother's old lair with pride.

She struggled awake. The walls were iced solid, pitch black, no air. Her head felt fuzzy, slow. She heard Jean-Claude's hoarse breath, felt her own within her chest. She woke him, had to shake him hard. He had trouble sitting up. She fumbled for the knife on his belt, held it tight, swung to the side of the den where there was no blanket, chipping at the ice. Cold chunks hit her face. Tiny lights swayed in front
of her. She threw her arm fast into each chip. She couldn't tell if the lights were real. Her arm didn't want to move. It wanted to sleep again. She clenched the knife with her other arm, drove outward. The wall sighed, air whispered down onto them. She breathed deeply, widened the hole.

Jean-Claude managed to sit up. The lights disappeared. She breathed deeply. Now she drove upward with the knife, at an angle, packing the snow down beneath her and crawling over it. A handful of snow fell with a sigh onto her face. She wiped it off. She'd forgotten how cold it could be. Her face tingled. Jean-Claude pulled himself up behind her, bumping against her feet. She dug farther out of the den, pulled herself up. She began to use her hands against the snow. No light showed through. For a while she wondered if she was really heading upward. She imagined them on the side of a mountain, tunneling along the angle of the slope. Their breaths wheezed, the only noise, the snow smooth beneath their hands.

As soon as she could see light, snow slapped down again across her face. This snow had weight; it pushed onto her face like a hand, held her down like a body. Snow blocked her nose and mouth, held her arms back against her sides. She tried to force them straight up. They didn't move. She remembered her dream of the child. She snaked her fingers, her hands, her arms slowly through the snow, forward, inch after inch. Patient, calm. Held her breath. Snow melted down into her mouth, tickled her nostrils, cold water. Jean-Claude
tapped against her feet, not knowing what had happened. If she suffocated, she knew he would climb out over her body. She wanted to breathe the water. She wanted to suck in the snow. The lights reappeared. Her hand touched her own face. She cupped the snow away. Air. Breathed raggedly, then deep and strong. She pushed up one more time. Beryl broke from the snow into the morning like the bears she had seen. The sun. The sky was clear, the air as clean and blue as that first morning in Churchill.

Jean-Claude crawled out beside her. They had slept ten feet down, on the side of a drift a hundred feet wide. He had brought only the rifle with him, dragging it along by its strap.

Neither wanted to go back down into the den even for the meat. They could see the town in the distance—roofs, walls, spots of color. Tiny cars puttering slowly about.

“Not more than four miles,” Jean-Claude said. His voice sounded hoarse, unused. She still had not spoken. He looked at her more easily now, no longer doubting she would live. She felt strong.

They shuffled quickly through the snow. Their throats rasped. She felt her leg muscles clenching and pushing. She saw herself plowing through the snow with the grace of a caribou, the power of a polar bear. Her blood coursed certain and hot. She looked over at one point and realized that Jean-Claude couldn't keep up. His limp had become more pronounced; he was slowing down.

She heard the sigh of snow beneath him as he fell. It took her several steps to stop, to turn back. He lay on his back
where he had fallen, just lying and breathing. He gazed at his right foot, perplexed.

“Damn,” he said and tried getting up. He moved each limb in turn, with concentration, then gradually pulled himself up to a sitting position. She reached down, grasped his arms and tried to pull him up. Looking at his right boot she wondered if his foot was hanging strangely. She could not really tell through the thickness of its material. Her left knee crumpled beneath her. She took a step forward and recovered her balance. She thought if she fell she would not be able to get back up either.

He let go of her, pulled the gun off his back, set it across his lap and scanned the area around them.

“Get help,” he said, his words slurred as if he were drunk. She nodded, watched him for a moment and then turned away. It took her several minutes to get the rhythm back in her stride. She was half-running again. Looking over her shoulder, she could see him receding in the distance. He sat on the ground, flapping his arms up and down, half of a jumping jack, trying to keep warm. She quickened her pace. Ahead, she saw a truck drive out of town toward the airport. In the quiet she could hear its gears grind as it shifted. Farther away a door slammed, a child laughed. She tucked her head into her hood, tried to go faster.

She arrived in town, the sun bright above. She marveled at the vividness of the houses, the colors of the doors and curtains and cars. Reds, purples, blues, greens. Sharp solid angles, textures. So much vibrant life in such a compressed
space, such a tiny curtailed place. Walls, roads, corners. A bear passed her on the street, looked her over, walked on. She held no rifle, felt no fear.

She walked toward a bright growing green, the painted door of a house. She'd never seen such a beautiful color as this green, never seen such brilliance. She pulled herself up the seven stairs to the door, one step at a time. Her knees wouldn't bend, her hands wouldn't grasp. She hooked her forearms through each railing and levered herself up. The door stood in front of her. She'd never seen anything so neat and cleanly defined, the door frame painted bright blue. She fumbled with her gloves, trying to pull them off, then gave up and pushed the buzzer with her elbow. A chime, electronic, sounded high and clear. She heard voices inside.

Even at noon, a light clicked on above her. She blinked into the tiny glitter of its coil. She looked down again at the door, at its emerald green, its smooth wood knob and small iron basket with yellow plastic flowers.

The door began to open. She thought to herself, How small it all is.

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© 1994 by Audrey Schulman. All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America.

Published simultaneously in Canada by Thomas Allen & Son Limited.

Design by Bonnie Campbell.

“Puppy Love,” written by Paul Anka. © 1959,1987 Management Agency & Music Publishing, Inc. International Copyright Secured. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

E-book ISBN 978-1-61620-287-3