The Solitude of Thomas Cave (6 page)

7

W
HERE IS SHE? He wakes in fear and claws for her, thinking that his narrow cot is the wide high bed they had in Copenhagen,
and where his hand reaches there is only cold air. A blizzard rages about him, howling with such intensity that he feels that
it is right in his ear, that it has entered the vacuum of the cabin, that with mounting pressure it will at any instant blow
the place apart and scatter it, man, furs, splinters of wood, flying out across the ice. Oh Lord, let Thou deliver me from
the tempest! Oh my girl, where have you gone? He breathes deep and attempts for some moments to control his thoughts. When
he opens his eyes again the storm has receded beyond the walls. It seems even to have quietened. The room appears before him
again solid and square despite the unsteadiness of the lamplight, which is shaken by the draught that succeeds in penetrating
the cracks of the doorway however he may attempt to caulk them.

The blanket he had wrapped about his face is stiff as board and thickly sugared with hoarfrost where it has soaked up the
moisture of his exhaled breath. He understands that he must have been asleep for quite some time and yet all that time he
seems to have been constantly aware of the storm. He has heard the scream of the wind, felt its vibration within the cell.
He does not need to see in order to picture it: the white flakes invisible in the blackness, whirling in such a terrible,
dervish way that you could not tell if they fell from the sky or were driven up from the ground.

I have yet to discover the extremity of the climate in this place. It is no more than December and I must expect that the
worst of the winter is still to come, yet I have never before experienced such a storm as the current one, nor such a degree
of cold. So suddenly and violently it came, just as I had returned within the tent, that I do not dare to think what might
have occurred if it had caught me out of doors. It came without forewarning and without apparent direction, as if it had only
exploded in the sky above.

There is a thin coating of ice on the walls of my cabin and on the floor beneath my feet, a frost hanging even on the edges
of the chimney hood. So cold it is here that everything that does not face towards the fire is frozen, however close it may
be. Even the vinegar is frozen in its cask. The bear meat is hard like rock. I have dragged a great chunk of it right to the
side of the fire and cut it with a hatchet until it splits, and it does not begin to melt and bleed until I have it in hot
water in the pan and over the fire. I believe that it was the liver alone that poisoned me and in the days since my recovery
I have eaten tentatively of the other parts of the animal without ill effect. It would be great shame to waste God's bounty,
particularly since there is no knowing when I may be able to venture out again for food.

He melts the vinegar as he melts his water, by taking a hot iron from the fire and placing it into the cask. It cracks and
steams like a sorcerer's cauldron and the acidic smell rises into the room. His beer also is frozen though the barrel is only
a few feet from the stove. He is disappointed that when it has been thawed what pours off it is no more than sour and yeasty-tasting
water, as if it has lost its essence in the cold. But that is so with everything here, every real thing seems numb and without
essence. Survival itself is a numb activity. He eats without appetite. He performs routine tasks listlessly as if he has lost
the sense of their purpose. He writes his log, and when he dusts off the words and reads them back he does so without emotion,
seeing only that they are well formed on the page.

The storm has lasted now some days without change. The ceaseless howl of the wind and the knowledge of the blackness weigh
most heavily on my spirit. I endeavour to occupy myself and as I await the Lord's compassion I have repaired my clothes and
made the heels for fifty pairs of shoes. Two or three times a day I cast myself down in prayer. I pray to the Lord that He
may hold me sane as well as alive until I shall see His blessed sun again, that He will hold me to this Earth, for there are
moments when delusions and dreams come to me more vividly than my actuality.

He writes this and knows that what he writes is not the full truth. But is a man's diary ever the truth? Isn't it always an
invention, an idea of a possible truth which he uses to control his understanding of himself? He dips his pen again into the
ink that he keeps warm by the edge of the stove.

The truth is that the hardest thing to bear through these frozen days has not been the dreams but the absence of them. The
loneliness. He remembers how it was in his illness, how she came to him and slept by him and was a comfort to him. She has
not come to him again since the storm began, since that moment when she stood out there beside him beneath the sky.

A short time before the onset of this storm I beheld a most amazing display of lights in the heavens. They appeared high above
the northwest horizon and played until the very zenith of the sky was lit with shooting rays of fiery colours such as I had
not seen before. No sooner had these vanished and I myself returned and closed myself within the fastness of the tent than
there came a rush of sound and the wind began its awful howling. As I had seen no other indication I begin now to wonder whether
this very phenomenon of the lights may not have been a harbinger of the weather that was to come.

He writes at the table with the light beside him, puts his pen once more to the ink and sees in the corner of his eye the
movement of a shadow against the wall. He looks up, but there is nothing there. The effect can only have been due to the movement
of his own arm across the light. He reaches again, experimentally repeating his previous action, and there it is, the same
dim shudder. He feels a touch light on his head, but it is no more than a flake of ash that has detached from the chimney.
He puts a hand to his eyes for a moment's rest, but pulls it away and opens them sharply, thinking that he has heard the rustle
of her skirt in the sound of the flames.

He opens his door at last, clambers up over driven snow. Every surface reflects the moonlight, white and smoothed as the wind
has left it, the form of the tent gone into a dune, the boilers, the two remaining shallops, every mark of the whalers erased,
his footprints gone from the ground. There was a path he had made to a pool far along the beach where water still ran from
beneath the glacier and since the beginning of winter he had been able to break through the ice. It is quite lost now, the
landmarks about it eerily altered. He sees that he will not find the spot again but must melt snow for his drinking until
the ice itself begins to thaw. He brings out a half-barrel and fills it, ramming his shovel against the hard crust.

The aurora that appears as he works comes without colour or pulsation. He perceives only an increase in the light about him
and looks up to see white shining clouds in the sky. Like high cumulus, he thinks, soft and woolly like lambs, but they come
and go without pattern, without wind to drive them. And before he turns his eyes back to the ground he sees that she is standing
not twenty yards off where the beach merges with the ice.

The air is cold enough to pain his nostrils and freeze a rime on his beard and yet she has only a shawl wrapped about her
jacket and her hands tucked into it as into a muff.

'With the baby,' she says, 'I am always warm. It is like a stove within me.' And she is big like a stove and he puts his hand
to her so that it might warm him too.

And then she walks off ahead of him and he follows, leaving a single line of new footprints in the untouched surface of the
snow. As the aurora dims she becomes no more than a shadow, wavering and faintly drawn. So the Lord led His People through
the Wilderness, a cloud by day. On he walks in a state of strange elation, out over the frozen sea, past rocks whose outline
he might know and others that he does not know. Ahead she goes, becoming fainter before him until at last the aurora is gone,
as if it had never been there, and she is gone with it. Quite gone, not a sign, not a track of her remaining, so that he must
know the truth that he has held ignored within him all the time: that she was never there. She was a delusion, his warm and
lovely apparition. And if that, then who had brought her to him? Could it be that it was God, bringing solace to him in the
darkness, or was it some other? He wakes, it is like a waking, and sees where he has come to. So far. A little time more,
another step and another, a dimming of the moonlight, and she might have led him to his death, drawing him, enticing him so
far out on to the ice on this night of all nights, this stark night when the snow has fallen deep and orientation is lost.
And he had likened her in his mind to the Lord who led the Israelites in the desert. What pride, what blasphemy! He feels
the breath chill before his lips and questions if he deserves to live. Yet God is merciful and the moon stays with him. Looking
down, he can see his footprints in the snow, and they are indented just enough and the light is just enough for him to make
his tentative and shamed way home.

He bends first one and then the other stiffened knee onto the wooden floor, puts together his frozen hands and prays, begs
forgiveness for his temptation. She is no work of the Lord, he knows that now; she is not to be confused with any sign of
Him. She is weakness and superstition, the softness of his mind. He sobs out contrition along with thanksgiving and vows that
he will be seduced by her no more.

His flesh feels sore as if he has been beaten by the cold. One of the fingers of his right hand is blistered by the frost.
He rubs it with alcohol, wraps it, and writes with great awkwardness in his log. He chooses not to record his misadventure:
December twentieth, by my reckoning, a Friday. I shall keep this day following the cessation of the great storm as a day of
fast in gratitude for my deliverance.

No recognition, but only the memory of her will he keep. There cannot be sin, he tells himself, in memory.

As that winter hardened the baby grew within her. She seemed healthy as a cow, he thought, and he saw her fatten all over,
saw her cheeks become round and red as apples and began to laugh to see the size of her coming through the narrow cottage
door.

As she approached her time her back began to ache and her ankles to swell and she was awake often changing her position in
the night. 'I cannot lie comfortably,' she said, 'he is pressing against me.' He, she was sure that it was he, on account
of his apparent length within her and the size she was with him. And she would take a pillow and arrange it beneath a part
of her and for some time the new position would allow her to rest. Thomas Cave however lay wakeful those nights watching her
shadowy outline and listening to the steadiness of her breath. He knew that soon enough she would wake again and that in the
darkest hour of the watch there would be fear. The child would turn within her and she would wake again clutching her belly
as if he were already breaking out of it.

'He is too big for me, Thomas. I dreamt that he had the long bones of a whale. I saw the bones that came from Greenland, long
curved bones that you said came from the jaw of the beast.'

'Nonsense,' he said, and moved on to his side behind her so that he wrapped her in his length. 'You must not let such thoughts
prey upon you. You who are so young and fit. It is only that you do not have a mother to tell you so.' He put his arm about
her and stroked her calm again, and yet her fear had communicated itself to him as he silently recalled that her own mother
had not lived beyond her birth.

There was a woman in the district who knew about these things. He did not feel at ease with her. She had a thin white face
and long teeth, and her hair was all put away in a cap as if she might be bald beneath, and yet her ugliness did not prevent
her from talking good sense. 'No whale my dear but too much cheese you ate. Those bones you feel will be the boy's legs, for
with that shape you have he'll be a boy for sure, and a tall one. Have you not seen how they are, a newborn's legs? They come
out bent from being so long cramped up inside, bent like those of a trussed chicken.'

Yet she gave her an ale that she had brewed from sage and other herbs, and returned on the following day and felt Johanne's
belly again, and this time she rubbed both her belly and her back with oils of violets and poppies. He saw then that she had
soft white hands like those of a lady and that her fingernails were trim and clean. He had more confidence in her, seeing
that, and chose to walk with her back to her house. A ship had just come in at the quay and the street was packed with its
comings and goings. Their talk was interrupted often as some hasty figure divided them or they must step aside before a trolley
or a cart.

'She's all right, isn't she?'

'She's young.'

'And strong. You've seen her.'

'She looks strong enough.'

Again he tried for reassurance.

'The fear is all in her mind, don't you think? You must see that often, the first time.'

'See that she drinks that ale I gave her each morning when she wakes. That will make her strong and help her to hold the baby
until her time.'

'And the baby, the baby's well?'

A sailor brushed between them and when they came together again he had just a glance from her small brown eyes. 'Keep some
pears in her chamber. Good, big pears. That will stop it from coming too soon.'

That was the week of Christmas. They spent it warmly, the three of them, Johanne, her father and himself. He had money still
from his Greenland voyage, and he went about the city and bought them gifts, a length of fine russet wool for Johanne and
a piece of fine-tooled Cordovan leather for Hans. He felt sure now that he would be able to settle with them on land, was
impatient even to do so after so many years. Just once more would he go to sea, in the summer that followed, and with good
whaling bring back enough to set them up. Johanne cooked a goose and for those days she too was happy and seemed to lay her
fears aside. He took his fiddle down from the wall and played to them, and if she could not dance in such a lively way as
she had before, then she could get up in her pleasure and stamp her foot or clap her hands and sway from side to side so that
her loosened hair flowed behind her. Without a word Hans took up his sticks and hobbled away to bed, and he played on and
was proud of her, so grand in scale that she might be a figurehead and break the waves and lead men out to sea.