‘What is to be done?’ The baffling question of the frozen man, the man with a tomato nose and tomato toes. His epidermis is an opulent pallor, spotted with a burning red. Everything is felt though everything is numb. It begins at the tip of the toes, slowly rolling deeper into the poor, undeserving feet. It takes control of the appendages– tying little icy strings to their tendons and puppeteering them into inertia. They are inexorably modulating and abundantly stagnate. It makes its way to the tips of the fingers, just on the surface at first but then it burrows and burrows deep. It is much harder to wrench out that way. Every sensation is more piquant, more acutely felt. It is felt deeper than was ever thought possible and it is always cutting or blunt, something that burrows deep and stays past its welcome. Every finger, every toe, and every vein in one’s body is felt. So then what? Warmth? Yes, but that is only half right. There is a very specific warmth required…
— December 21st
The snow was blacker between the lattices of the track. The four endlessly parallel rails glistened with an extra chilled hardness. Nobody was sitting on the green metal bench outside the small shack of a building. Inside this building was a man pacing and two, almost identical, bundles of fur, wool, cashmere, suede, and god-knows-what-other burdens of warmth. The only movement made by these two bundles was the darting of their eyes, which adamantly followed the man. The only thought that passed through their minds was that he was ‘undoubtedly of a queer sort’. The pacing man’s eyes went from the discolored floor, his little airplane watch, the glossed-over windows and back. He was profusely sweating despite his few layers and the seemingly growing cold. Every so often he would abruptly stop, remove a small, somewhat tattered piece of paper from his pocket and pedantically read it over. Unconsciously he would remove his furry hat and attempt to pass his fingers through his knotted hair. Failing to make it even halfway to the back of his head he would pull his hat snugly back on and resume pacing. This routine was carried out a handful of times, during which neither of the two bundles of warmth did anything but blow out thin plumes of icy breath and oscillate their pupils, until the grumbling and distant whistling of the train seeped through the thin walls. The man checked his watch one last time and walked out onto the platform. The two bundles followed close behind him.
The approaching train was green, short, and filled to the brim with smoke blowing passengers. Its glowing face grew at a steady pace until it slowly eased into the station and made a lurching yet graceful stop. There was a moment of limbo before the doors opened with a sigh and a wave of shivering bodies exuded from the metallic snake. There was a rush that had an air of panic. No one, however, stepped out of the last car.
The bustle on the platform did not last and the young man soon found himself alone facing the still steaming body of the train. After a moment of held breath, a figure emerged from the last car.She had surprisingly dark hair and a blue tinged pallor. She illuminated the night sky with a sickly and misty air. It was no longer dark and everything began to glow, dripping with silver. Everything became distinct, as if it were all trying to curl away from her and escape the cold. There was a certain delicacy in her demeanor and an enticing chill in her gray eyes and the young man could not help but grow a little curious, curious if the burning of his being could withstand her enchantment. In her face there was an inherent pensiveness that could easily have been mistaken for either a profound sadness or even anger, though these emotions were rarely present. She was, undoubtedly, calm; though there was an unaccountable adamance in her gaze and one could not help but discern a crafty shrewdness in her being. She could not have been more poorly dressed for the weather, which itself had grown much harsher with the train’s arrival. Her dress was delicately modest with a light touch of ostentation. It was the color of a frozen lake, with lace like the arms of a snowflake knit into a gossamer frost. Her voice, when she finally spoke, was delicately sharp, like cracking ice.
‘You haven’t been waiting long, have you?’ she asked him.
‘No– no, not at all. You actually got here a little early’ he responded without looking away from her. He could not break his gaze from her’s. A dim flame flickered behind his eyes.. His mouth was tight and chapped. His red, agape ears hung achingly from his head like a pair of wings. His nose snivelled quietly with each intake of icy breath. Each individual toe was cold and most certainly red. His gloveless left hand was also in a desiccated state. There was no doubt Winter had come to town.
—January 25th
Puffy flakes fluttered down to the draped earth. Everything was shining and the sky was a blinding gray. There were no tracks or flaws to be seen, not yet. It smelled chilly and the young man could feel his lungs glaze over when he breathed in. His lips were already cracking, cut by deep fissures. The world was petrified but the snow continued to dance. There was little wind so the flakes’ course was steady and straight, though not overly brusk. The landscape seemed to sigh in a continual breath from all directions. The young man watched the snow land delicately in her hair and, instead of melting, crystalize into ethereal jewels. With their first few steps the snow cracked with an overstrained snapping.
‘It is hard not to feel guilty when one plants their booted foot into the unbroken sheet of snow. Who am I to deface winter’s masterpiece? Even the hare takes soft steps to not leave its mark but I, with my trudging feet, cut across the canvas,’ the man observed in a somewhat gravelly voice.
‘Best not to worry about such things,’ she responded and after a moment, ‘Don’t the trees seem surprisingly happy? I know their skin looks pale and hard but one cannot help but admire their opulent dress. Doesn’t it seem almost Victorian-esque with all itsdelicate ruffles? Have you ever noticed how sometimes, getting too weighed down, they shake off a little of their adornment and reveal a little more skin?’
‘They have given up their lush hair for these most fantastical of costumes. Or perhaps they just look older, now being adorned with a head of white hair,’ letting out a contented little chuckle, ‘beautiful day, is it not?’
‘You don’t dislike the cold?… I fear people tend to hate the cold. I think they just see it as a total lack, a consuming chasm of unending depth and insatiable hunger. They cower in their homes as it fills the night sky, bellowing its woeful howl. In their mind it is always something searching, trying to crawl into the depths of their souls. ’
‘It is only harsh when it is unwanted. Even the prick can be pleasant, even just as a reminder of existence– call it a necessary evil’
‘The world seems to run on “necessary evils”. We love to hate the necessary evils. The only things we really care about are those we hate and those we love. The love less so. Love is too shared of an emotion, there is just love and it is universal and unending. Hate has the unfortunate quality of being singular. It is a singular thought or feeling that your mind has tricked you into. Why would your mind be wrong? And what of this notion of loving hate? Or hating love? Would one not love hating love? That is what I don’t understand, is it not a false love found only in illusory circumvention? It is all the more work for something of lesser value, at least as far as I see it. It’s all basically just love.’
‘And what is love?’
‘Love is finding the warmth in the very fiber of the cold; letting it wrap around your soul. Dare I say this embrace of love can, I think, even be cold.’ He knew that it could be. He had found her chill to be of a very singular quality. At first it was slow and cautious, like a gradual illness. At first he had been unsure of its presence and so there had been nothing to be done, because it had not yet been fully perceived. His first fulfilled experience of it was through the realization of his utter and inescapable imprisonment. Creeping into crisp crinkles beneath the skin, it had burrowed into the fibers of his being, spreading wide its glossy palm, reaching out to take a firm hold of his soul. It wrapped itself many times over the entire essence of his being, permeating from the material to the transcendent. It no longer surrounded but became everything, within everything. He could not restrain the forthcoming response,
‘Do you know what love is? It is the chill of winter, your chill permeating into my being, condensing my soul. It adds an inescapable, death-like layer to my skin, one that seems to burrow down into my very being so it is not lost easily. Even when I am within the full embrace of my comfortable bed, and my feet are starting to warm, there is still a chill within, a chill untouchable. The shivering of the body is nothing but the soul trying to break out of its icy cage. The body can be warmed easily, the soul cannot. But I have come to understand that one need not overcome, need not surpass but rather embrace the chill. One must permeate their being into the dense frigidity of its body. The cold is not cold itself, nor does it suffer the pricking of its own touch. It isn’t work to appreciatethe cold, it is a privilege. There is no difference between the prickling of the cold and the caressing touch of love. Even at its most arduous there is a cherishing of the struggle.’
She didn’t respond but for the first time a soft glow of warmth arose in her cheeks and he, too, felt warm.
Sam Meis is a current undergraduate English major at Marquette.
Meis says about the piece: “Primarily written outside on winter nights spread across the season.”
“Love of Winter”, George Wesley Bellows (1914).