The Solitude of Thomas Cave by Georgina Harding

hands in the air
and hopping from one little fur boot to the other. Then the creature turned its head to the sound of the drum and he saw that
the look on its face was weirdly still, its blue eyes, despite the sinuous movement of its body, fixed and quite unblinking.
For a second he looked and did not understand, and then at some apparent signal from the pipe, the creature set its little
hands to its neck as if to lift away its head. One, two, a roll of drums, and the blue-eyed baby face came off, and beneath
it was another one, the wizened, brown, wide-grinning face of a monkey: the dainty dancer was no child at all but a monkey,
wearing the head of a life-sized doll. He was so disturbed by the sight that he was suddenly glad that Johanne had not come
and seen it. At another sound from the pipe the monkey made a bow, to the right, to the left, to the crowd before it, and
took up a red-lined box to collect its pay. Thomas Cave held out a coin and when it came close he thought that its grin seemed
a grimace and saw how its arm shivered and its teeth were chattering, and he felt pity that it had its nature taken from it
and that it was so far removed from home and climate. What were men to take a free creature so and play with it and make it
like a human? When he went on he was sobered so that the cold began to get to him and drive him in.
    For Johanne all he bought was an orange. It was one that he chose with care from a tall pile, and big enough to fill his hand.
    He brought it home and gave it to her, and for three days she treasured her piece of sun on the stone window-sill until she
could resist no longer. She took it down then and peeled the skin with clumsy fingers and broke it open, and the tang of its
scent shot through the room.

8
    A GAIN SHE IS there about him. During this spell of hard still days he has relaxed his vigilance and let himself think about
her, and his thoughts have brought her back. Even if he does not see her he knows her presence, the slow rustle of her movement
about him, her soft breath. 'Oh Johanne, who would have thought it could be like this? The cold is not at all as I could have
imagined. The sensation of it when I step outside, how it strikes deep in the stomach, how my muscles seem sore from the effect
of it as from a beating, the way it burns as if God made my nerves and sinews to react to fire but never to know this degree
of cold. Even here inside the cabin I have touched a piece of metal so cold that it burns and clings to the fingers like birdlime
and I must warm it or tear my skin before it can be released. Once too hastily I put a stoneware mug to my lips to drink and
it stuck to my beard and lips. It is more intense than anything I could have anticipated but at the same time more bearable.
It astonishes me how the time passes and the fire burns down and is built up again and I shape my day between sleep and work
and meals and prayer and continue to endure. I eat little, sleep much. I become like an animal that hides itself through the
winter and sleeps until spring.'
    Beneath the weight of his rugs, he knows her. He knows the hardness of her pregnant belly. That had surprised him at first,
its hardness. Her belly is taut like clenched muscle; it has not the softness of woman to it. And because of it he must take
her differently and she must come on him. Slow she comes on him, taut, hard, strong, like a ship climbing a wave. Her face
is strange and her eyes are closed and her breasts full as sails, the veins showing in them, the nipples dark and roughened
and distended, and he closes his eyes also and has no thoughts in the surf.
    After, there are words again, easy words.
    'Do you remember last winter, Johanne, how cold we thought it? How we said to each other that it was one of the coldest we
had known? Day after day of biting north-easterlies and the sky leaden and damp above us. On the streets within the town,
ice froze layer upon layer so that walking