The World as Cold

She even went so far as to say The blankets are cold, and she shivered as she spoke the trembling words, holding onto the blankets’ corners like they were a shield, defending her from some icy chimera.  We had lost power a fortnight ago, suddenly, due to some attack thirty or so kilometers from here, at the coal plant, when the hooded figure of winter was just about to give us a frozen run to secure our temperatures and about to hit us hard, stealing warmness from us like a skilled, swift, and determined thief.  We did best as we could to mirror what the world had been before when the furnaces were on full blast, attempting to block off the cracks and passageways of the house through which the frigid breath of the outdoors could thread themselves.  Nine blankets we had found scattered throughout the rooms of the house, our poor and cracked, brittle house, and she had taken all of them.  At first she had thanked me, and curled up into the blanket like a satisfied kitten.  But after a few days of this hopelessness set in, a hopelessness merely translated into lack of heat, a hopelessness come to in looking out to the unlit horizon and finding no alternative to today and its powerlessness.  I’m cold, she would say now, even when my body took to the covers with her and held her through the night, pressing flesh to flesh, she would complain I’m cold, and getting colder.

            One morning beside her bed–I had woken early to fetch for her what nonperishable breakfast I could find for her in our cupboards; finding them was hard in the flickering of the lamps we had placed in even distances from one another throughout the house–I said to her after serving her, as she was taking her shaking hands from underneath the layers of cloth, I don’t know what else I could do, treasure of mine.  Whatever you think would help, whatever you can think of that will ease the frost, that I’ll do, I said, as she reached a stiff hand towards the tray with the plates and her cold coffee, took hold of a piece of untoasted bread, brought it to her mouth and removed from the slice a crumb the size a snow-blasted bird would take from its grains and seeds.  She said, dropping the toast on the tray because of her unsteadiness, I’m so cold I cannot chew.  Cold myself, but with enough heat in the moment to become frustrated, I stripped myself of my sweater, then stripped myself of my longsleeve, then stripped myself of my undershirt and draped all three across my wife’s body, hardened like a crystal with unflowing geode stones for blood.  A bit better, yes, thank you, honey, a bit better, she squinted up at her more-than-half-naked husband and thanked him through her chattering teeth, since she was shivering none the less.  Shivering and agitated all over, over my whole surface and throughout my entire insides too, rocked by the cold and its hardness towards me, rocked by her too and her indifference to my comfort, I still loved her, for all her iciness, more than I loved the morning bitterness, and more still than the deep freeze of the night.  Continued loving her, I guess, because she gave me something to do when everything else seemed stock stiff and stuck in its place.  That and the warmth she gave me, that other warmed, the warmth she gave me in goading me on, to give, to give to her, like that.  We followed days upon days of this, this impossible reciprocity, and endured the nights along with them, she complaining, I uncomplaining, adjusting to the habits we had to form, each in a singular fashion, to the loss of homeostasis, to the loss of the protection of fire or stove or heater when the warmth of the world had run out, when it was too cold for mere blankets.

            One night–perhaps a week of nights had passed since that morning I had stripped myself of my best clothing to give my perpetually shaking lover–the lights turned on at once throughout the house, as though all directed to do so at the same time, flicked on by a merciful hand, the lights came on and the furnace downstairs kicked on too, with a little tender prodding from me, it started breathing tenderly again.  Come upstairs after a few minutes of tinkering with the cylinder in the basement, the house already losing its bite and sting and losing it more, softening and warming steadily, I returned to the room to rejoice with my wife.  Still in covers, still covered up nine times over and unreasonably, I shook my head as I walked closer up to her.  Tell you what, treasure of mine, I think you can take off those blankets.  But, warm as it was–I even began to sweat and feel uncomfortable in my change of clothes–she didn’t reply with so much as a Yeah or Uh-huh, not so much as a I noticed to, a loving gesture of removing just one blanket from the nine-folds of her shield.  Tess, I called out her name, bent down and held her cheek in the palm of my hand: cold, gone away to the cold, lost to the cold.  It was sad, and I cried and cried for days before I could manage to move, cried warm tears soaking through all nine layers of her envelope.  At the same time, though, it was not surprising, and the death, horrible as it was, seemed fitting, the world as cold as it was then, and remained, and remains–monstrously cold.