J. Sidorova - The Colors of Cold

That night, Julien said, “I came because I feel freezing cold. Can you help me?”

She was so surprised she laughed out. “ Me ? Help you get warm? You’ve come to the wrong girl, soldier.”

He shrank back in his chair but did not give up just yet. “No. It’s not like that. Hear me out, please, Constance.”

Below her, Marquis is sawing and slicing through an allegro. Arthritic fingers—he is probably in pain right now, but he never complains. She only knows because she’s seen how he looks when he thinks he is alone; seen his chin tremble when he accepts the medicines she’d bought him. She knows, because his violin adds to the tension that grows with every breath of her spectators; and they must be breathing faster and faster now—that weasel-looking man, that lizard of a woman. She is fighting against them all, one little cold against their billowing warmth—because the warmer the air, the colder she needs to get. This thought alone could’ve made her bright red not so long ago. But not today. She undoes the two upper crisscrosses of her corset’s ties and inserts her finger under the third. She pushes her mind back to the old anatomy theater, its circle of steeply ascending pews and domed ceiling, a skylight full of fleeing clouds, the wall paintings that frightened the child’s mind. There were four men, and Marquis said to them, Messieurs, I now invite you to touch the girl and dispel what doubts you have. She opens her corset and shrugs the straps off her shoulders. She hears Marquis’s younger voice—from twelve years ago—in her mind, I am sorry, Cherie, but we had to upset you. You know you won’t get cold enough unless you are very, very upset. And it will go unnoticed unless we get you out of these warm clothes. Do you want them to believe you, Cherie? Do you want to make miracles?

She remembers nodding, tears on her face. She remembers Marquis holding her, some weeks later, murmuring into her ear, People, you know, they call these things fear, and rage, and shame. But you are not like other people. What you feel—these upsets—they make your magic work. Your cold. They are useful. Necessary. They make you special.

And thus she began calling these things , her feelings, by colors—blue, red, white—because her feelings are unlike anybody else’s. She does not even know what others would call her blue upset, her red upset. She doesn’t care to know.

She thinks of her patrons . Of all those who had come to her boudoir with the white flower Ressentir in their hands, with the requests to “experience her physically.” Whatever names they’d have for her upsets would be wrong, wrong! She peels her shift off her shoulders and begins to free out her arms. She glimpses several more snowflakes in the air across the stage from her. They fall to the floor, they melt. Why is it only the blue upset, only the slightest hint of red, like a fresh bruise, that she feels?

Hear me out , Julien said yesterday night, and she did. “It’s not me. It’s my other leg that feels cold, the one that is missing. I lost it in Russia, during the retreat,” he said.

How could a missing leg feel anything ? She backed away from him and sat on the taboret in front of her vanity.

“I thought you of all people will believe me,” he said, breaking a shiver. She kept silent, so he added, “Because of the snow maiden. I’ve seen her. I’ve gone to your performance. Then after the show the old gentleman in a wig was selling those flowers, ‘For a private audience with the snow maiden,’ he said, and I thought—”

She interrupted him. “You thought you’d meet the snow maiden that I conjure?”

He was abashed. “Yes… I don’t know. Maybe—you let me ask the snow maiden for… to undo what was done to me. She was like an angel. And she appeared in snowfall. I thought, maybe—” He looked into her face and blushed.

What she desired most of all that moment was to stamp out his stupid phantasms. To yank him hard and slam him into the ground of her truth. There is no “snow maiden,” it’s just me! And there is no such thing as a cold, missing leg. And I can’t help you. “It’s been a year and a half since 1812,” she said sternly, “your leg, Julien, it no longer exists. It was burned or buried, or both. It’s just no longer there, you understand it, right?”

“It does exist.” He clenched at his stump with one hand, then with both. “Last time I’ve seen it attached to me it was frozen into ice. Trapped in it. I prayed for escape.” He started rocking his upper body back and forth. “Next thing I remember, it was gone. I gave up my leg so I could get out of there, and I accept that. But it’s still frozen into ice. And I can feel it. The pressure. And the freezing cold.” His fingers clasped tight around the stump’s end as if he were making a tourniquet to check the flow of influence from far, far away, from the icy wastes of Russia.

Radiant cold , she thought. If only Monsieur Pictet and those other men from the anatomy theater could hear this! She said, “What about spring? And summer? They have summer in Russia, don’t they? Is your leg cold in summer?”

He nodded.

“So you’re imagining it then,” she concluded. “Ice melts in summer.”

“No, you don’t understand! This ice—that trapped my leg—it will not melt, ever. They store it—someone must have. You know how they harvest and store ice there? They must have taken it, my leg and all, to some cellar and they will keep it there captive forever!” His face glared with conviction, his good leg bounced on the ball of its foot.

Julien the one-legged veteran, you are mad . “Who would do such a thing, freeze your leg in ice and then cut it off and keep it? How did you survive this? Have you not been wounded in battle, attended by a surgeon? Sent to a hospital? Is this not how it really happened?”

“I told you how it went,” he cried out. “I don’t remember anything else!”

He hugged himself, shivering. His eyes teared up and the tip of his nose turned red as if he were truly freezing. He doesn’t want to remember, she thought. Sweet Mary, mother of God, behold what Napoléon has done to these boys. Weep for them. What is this one going to do when they kick him out of Les Invalides? How will he fend for himself if he’s going to shake like this half the time, as if he were out of his mind? What’d happen to him if the Russian army were to enter Paris?

She approached and took his hand softly. “Julien, why don’t you come here and lie down on this ottoman. And close your eyes, and keep them closed no matter what. Then you can ask the snow maiden for help. All right?”

She helped him out of the chair. As he settled on the ottoman, she told him to rest and wait. She tiptoed into the corner and pulled off her gloves and shift. She was upset enough, with blue and white colors of upset. She returned and slipped in next to him, took his hand and placed it on her breast. His fingers twitched over her nipple. She cleared his forehead of the strands of his hair and kissed it. “Make a wish.”

Marquis is the only family she has, and yet she can’t explain it even to him. She wants to tell him, My blue upset, even my red upset, no longer work on stage. She imagines how he smiles absently and shakes his head and says, But, Cherie, you are my powerful magician. You can—

No, listen to me, she insists. There is a white upset that I feel, what is it? The white upset, the strongest, strangest of all, the kind that overtakes her against her will when she lies under a white flower patron— Ressentir, Égalité —it is blazing white before they squirm away from her, exclaiming, some with distress, others with thrill, You really are cold, girl, colder than a corpse. You’re burning my privates, I swear!