The Cage

by Audrey Shulman

  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 glass. 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 grass.

  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 balls. You touched his…” Maggie chortled and they both folded over, rocking gently, almost crying, trying to say the word “testicles.”

  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 assumed 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 mass 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.

  The doctor asked her what kind of clothing she had for the cage. Beryl looked down at her hospital gown and the bandages. She recited the Natural Photography list.

  “Yes,” he said, “yes.” He nodded. “That’s good. But never more than twenty minutes.”

  “Yes,” Beryl said, “yes.” She had no intention of wearing the Natural Photography suit again. She thought if she had been able to move more easily she could have kept warmer, if her vision hadn’t been so restricted by the hood she might have been able to find her way back.

  The day before they left, the doctor took off the bandages. Beryl’s feet had been the least prepared for the cold. She hadn’t worn the electric socks, just five pairs of wool. She thought maybe the circulation had partially been cut off by all the material. She examined her feet slowly, carefully. In outline they now reminded her of cartoon feet, like the Flintstones’, only the big toe and three others. So much simpler, three such a magical number. She tried to imagine wearing sandals again or standing barefoot by a pool. Someone staring at her feet, knowing something was wrong, but not sure what. She imagined, in the heat of the sun, by the blue glare of the pool, trying to explain. She remembered rocking forward through the storm. She felt again the strength rising in her limbs.

  Her feet were peeling; white patches of dead skin stuck out across her toes, ankles, soles. The patches peeled off easily, pink skin beneath. A scab lay where each of her little toes used to be. The smallness of the scabs surprised her a bit, the exact circumference of her old digits. She’d had many bigger scrapes on her knees as a kid. She pressed her thumbs into the empty place where her flesh used to be. It felt as if her toes were still there, curled in, pressed tight against her feet.

  She pulled her hands away. Her body had grown smaller, losing weight once again. There would be more space within her shoes, a small pucker for an extra fold of socks to fill.

  She eased her feet out of the bed and stood up slowly. The weight shifted more onto the outside of her arches. She’d never been conscious before of her baby toes, never really noticed them, yet now the lack of them pushed her legs out just a touch to compensate. She stepped forward, holding on to the bed, rolling slightly, cautious. Her feet didn’t leave the ground all the way. She shuffled, her arms held out, her head up. As she had in the storm, as awkward as a newborn.

  She looked down triumphant.

  For a moment she thought she saw white patches of fur growing out from her ankles.

  CHAPTER 17

  They left on Monday morning, five days behind schedule, on the morning the bus arrived. Natural Photography had had the Arctic Traveler designed for the expedition in hopes of selling a whole line of them to the companies that maintained the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. The first thing that struck Beryl when she saw the bus was its vast black tires. They stood easily eight feet high, wider than she was tall and with tread deep enough to swallow her whole fist.

  Butler slapped his hand against the tires as affectionately as against a horse’s neck. “There’s no air inside these babies. Air would contract too much at the first real chill. They’re not even made of rubber. Some sort of new compound of Mylar and metal.” Looking closer, Beryl saw that the tires had a light silver shimmer, like a puddle with oil in it. “They’ve been tested in cold down to eighty below,” Butler continued. “With tires this wide the bus can hump its way up a mountain of ice.”

  He crouched slightly to point out a network of tubes and cyli
nders curving beneath the high belly of the bus. Some of the tubes looked as if they were made from the same material as the tires, but the cylinders were made of a light metal. The whole thing looked as complex as the exposed innards of an animal. The bus stood so high on its tires Beryl could have crossed beneath if she walked with her head tilted just a bit to the side. Even on four legs, the bigger bears would have to crawl to get under the bus, their front legs held out as they shuffled forward.

  “There’s a holding tank for waste,” Butler said, pointing. “It’s carried along under here so we don’t dirty up where we travel. Very environmental and all. It’s used as insulation for the main gas tank.” Butler pointed farther back. “There’s even an extra safety tank with enough fuel for fifty miles or five days of heat, whichever you prefer.”

  Above them the bus hunched heavy, a metallic lime green. Beryl wondered if the green was a misguided attempt to make visitors from temperate zones feel more at home. Butler swung open the doors, which hissed and sighed just like those on a Greyhound bus.

  Holding them back for a moment with his arm across the doorway, Butler smiled at them and said, “You know, I don’t want you thinking this is going to be roughing it in any way. I’m talking a VCR, microwave, stereo. This thing’s so spacious it’s really our little arctic RV. Arctic RV, don’t you like that? We’ve got a Kelsey generator—the size of a V-8 and twice as efficient. We can afford to be comfortable.” The four of them would share four hundred square feet for the next three weeks. On weekends they would make the three-hour trip back into Churchill to take a break from each other. The project would be done whenever the ice froze and the bears stalked away across it.

  The bus’s engine was in the front, beneath the driver’s seat. When they started it up, the vehicle heaved into motion, rumbling and groaning, making normal conversation difficult in the front room. The scenery moved by very slowly. Jean-Claude drove and Butler sat happily in the passenger seat, studying the instruction manual and yelling out every feature of the bus and the corresponding set of directions. Beryl thought Butler had probably gotten hold of his first car long before he was legally allowed to drive, simply for the pleasure of taking the engine apart, tracing the insides of each of its components, and putting it back together again. When Butler pointed out an instrument on the dashboard, his hand ran over the object as though stroking a prize pet.

  For each new feature essential to the bus’s operation, Jean-Claude glanced at the diagrams available, asking questions until he was sure he understood. He shook his head over the extras that Butler seemed so pleased with. Beryl looked outside. The thermometer registered eighteen below.

  David and Beryl decided to explore further. Behind the front room, which served as a living/dining/driving room, lay the kitchen and bathroom. Each room hummed busily with details designed to create a plush and comfortable look: hand-spun rugs glued to the floor, imitation wood paneling, calming colors that discouraged feelings of isolation and surging helpless fear. The rooms were eight feet tall, and Beryl noticed that every inch was put to use. In the kitchen pots hung from the ceiling above the oven. Everything had its place, locked in with an audible snap. Already Beryl wanted to move things around. She remembered the science museum exhibit of the square yard of space, tried to imagine this bus shrunk even further. Her imagination failed.

  In the kitchen David and Beryl shuffled around each other opening cupboards and drawers, prying at the pictures glued onto the wall. In the tiny space they moved almost as closely together as they had when photographing bears from the van. She reached in front of him to pull at the toaster nailed to the counter. He put a hand on the top of her head to hold it safely out of the way while he opened a cabinet door above her. As on a ship, the plates and glasses had their exact places. Velcro nets fastened around the glasses and small prongs held the cups. The cupboards below were packed with every type of preserved food she could imagine—artichoke hearts, jars of pesto, mandarin oranges, tamarind concentrate and hoisin sauce. Cooking and eating were two of the few pastimes possible on board; the bus’s designers had planned to make them as enjoyable as possible.

  Opening the cupboards at face level, Beryl noticed she was leaning most of her body against David and that his hand had slipped down to comfortably cradle the back of her neck. He was rummaging through the spices muttering something about Scotch peppers. She felt no tension at being this close, only the physical comfort of another body. She knew at some point the expedition would be over. The four of them would separate. They would make promises of reunions, future expeditions, but in the end they would leave the others and the Arctic and go back home. She would find another freelance job in the city. A few months later she would get a complimentary video of the show created from their trip. She would take it to her parents’ house to show them, to explain her experience, but she would find that her story wasn’t on the video. The four team members would hang back, invisible. Only the bears would be seen, stalking slowly through a world without people or arctic buses.

  “Yugh,” David said, pulling down a plate from the cupboard. “What is this shit? I think Holiday Inn and Hallmark cards designed this place.” On the plate was the picture of a dewy-eyed, twig-legged fawn sitting up in a pile of leaves, one leaf still perched on its head. “Hell, these are the kind of people who think childhood is cute and restful.”

  Beryl pulled down another plate. The material felt light and cheap. The design showed a young woman walking on a beach at dawn, everything colored pink or beige. The wind pushed the woman’s clothes against her front, outlining her breasts. The individuality of her face was erased by her hair. Beryl saw the men this plate was designed for, eating off it, uncovering her body with each mouthful. She dropped the plate back onto the counter. It bounced.

  “Hey,” said David. “Neat-o.” He dropped the Bambi plate on the counter. It bounced back almost up into his hands. “This stuff is unreal. It’s made for big engineers. I bet it’s made from Mylar and metal too. If we get a flat tire we can strap these on.” He dropped the plate onto the floor. It made a sharp click and bounced almost up to his knees. He caught it, whipped it at the floor. It came right back up into his hands.

  “When I was a kid,” he said, “I was definitely one of those who tested the claims of products: ‘unbreakable,’ ‘stainless,’ ‘waterproof.’ I figured it was an express invitation to me, personally. Once I left my watch for three days at the bottom of my aquarium before it finally filled up and stop working. All the numbers peeled off and floated to the inside of the glass face. Really, quite a neat-looking watch. I wish I had it now. Then, it bummed me out. I wrote a depressed letter to the manufacturer talking of my broken trust and decreased belief in the assurances of adults.” He picked up a glass and dropped it straight down. It twacked against the floor and turned in the air. “He sent me a better watch free.

  “Yo,” he continued, “watch this.” He pushed up his sleeves, reached for two more plates and began to juggle. He had skill, but the kitchen was too restricted for the plates to achieve more than a small arc. They kept bouncing off the edge of the cabinets or the hanging pans and spinning in ways David didn’t expect. The plates hit him on the nose and shoulder and one hit Beryl on the ear. She held her hands out in front of her face and narrowed her eyes nervously.

  “And now,” David said while scooping another pile of plates from the cupboard, “for the rarely tried and never accomplished triple somersault while juggling an entire setting for eight, including soup bowls. Ladies and gentlemen, silence please. This has the potential to be pretty embarrassing.” Beryl watched amazed as David tossed the plates straight up into the air, where they clattered against the hanging pots and the walls and the cupboards. He immediately bent over to attempt a somersault toward the hall, but he seemed to have forgotten how, and his head got in the way as he tried to roll over on his shoulder. The bowls bounced off every surface around him.

  He had balanced partway over on his shoulder and head,
as though he were about to do a headstand, when Butler stepped into the doorway of the kitchen and thundered out, “What the hell’s going on here?” Butler looked down at David’s butt and stepped back quickly. Beryl thought he couldn’t have looked more alarmed if David had been nude.

  Butler retreated into the front room. “Try to keep it quiet,” he blustered over his shoulder.

  David stood back up, and he and Beryl looked at each other. He shrugged and they picked up the dishes.

  Past the kitchen, they found the storage areas followed by the sleeping area: two bunk bedrooms on each side, one upper, one lower. Beryl crawled into one, dragging her luggage in behind. It reminded her of an animal’s den. A complete room four feet tall with a door she could close for privacy and a dresser built into the wall. She couldn’t imagine Butler trying to dress himself within its confines. She sat down in the center of her room. It was almost the size of her cage.

  She put her clothes into the drawers without respect for neatness or order. She wanted this place to feel homey, human. Her socks stuck out of the top drawer. She took a picture of her parents out of her bag. It’d been taken by her father using a timer. He’d gone through two rolls of film trying to get the timing and angle right. In all the pictures he’d either been caught halfway to the chair in awkward positions of fast movement, or he’d been sitting in the chair looking expectant and slightly confused. In this picture of both her parents, her father was blurred and only just looking up from the seat he’d taken. Her mother simply looked patient, still, like an old-time frontier woman with one hand on the shoulder of her man.

  Beryl tacked the picture to the wall facing where her head would be when she lay down, then changed it so they looked out the window to the whiteness. Her mother wore a summer dress in the picture. She wore sandals. Leaning close, Beryl could count all of her mother’s ten toes.