Every December we build it from nothing. Thirty thousand tonnes of snow and four hundred blocks of river ice, cut from the St. Lawrence with chainsaws and hauled up on trucks, and for six weeks a crew of us carves a hotel out of winter — corridors, a chapel, a bar where the glasses are ice, forty-four bedrooms with ice beds under deer skins. Then in March it opens to the public. And in April, the bulldozers come and it all goes back to water.
That’s the deal. Nothing we make lasts past spring. You learn to love it anyway. You learn to love it because.
* * *
Suite 9 was mine. The theme suite, the big one, the one the brochure photographs. I carved it alone, three weeks in minus twenty-five, my breath freezing on my scarf. Wolves running along the walls. A full moon in the ceiling, lit from behind so it glowed blue. And the headboard — two metres of clear ice, thick as a body, carved with a forest.
And in the forest, if you knew where to look, a man’s face.
Gabriel’s face. In profile. The strong nose, the beard, the line of the throat. You could only see it at one angle, lying on your back on the left side of the bed, with the light low. From anywhere else it was branches.
He’d booked Suite 9 every February for four years. Him and his wife. Their anniversary.
* * *
The first year I didn’t notice him. Just one more couple in matching snowsuits taking photos of my wolves.
The second year he came to the workshop. Two in the morning, the hotel asleep, me working by floodlight on a replacement sconce because a guest had knocked one off. He stood in the door with two paper cups of coffee and the steam pouring off them into the cold.
“I couldn’t sleep,” he said. “It’s my fault, I know. Who sleeps in an ice hotel?”
He watched me work. He asked good questions — about the grain of river ice, about how to cut so it doesn’t crack, about why I did this. I told him the truth: because it disappears. Because nobody can ever own it. He was quiet for a long time after that. Then he said, “Lucky ice,” and I didn’t ask what he meant.
* * *
The third year he came every night of their stay. Four nights.
The workshop was a big tent with a heater in one corner that did almost nothing. We’d stand close to it, closer than we needed to, our shoulders touching through two layers of down. On the third night he took my glove off. Just that. Pulled it off finger by finger, and held my bare hand in both of his, which were warm — God, so warm — and lifted it and breathed on it, slowly, his eyes on mine over my knuckles. Heat on frozen skin is almost pain. I made a sound I have not made before or since.
“Your hands are so cold,” he said.
“It’s my job.”
“Let me,” he said, and put my hand inside his coat, against his chest, under the sweater, flat against his skin. His heart under my palm, fast. His skin flinched at the cold and then pressed back against it, harder. We stood like that, not moving, the heater ticking, the snow hissing on the canvas.
On the last night I took him into the chapel.
* * *
The ice chapel is the most beautiful room in the hotel. Pews of snow covered in fur. A gothic window of clear ice, three metres high, carved by me, with the winter stars coming through it. Nobody goes there at three in the morning. It is the coldest room in the world.
He pushed me back against the altar. The cold went through my snowsuit in a single shock and then his mouth was on mine, hot, coffee and whisky, and his hands were working the zip down my front, and the air hit my skin like a slap, and then his hands did, warm, sliding inside, over my ribs, my waist, and the heat and the cold together were so much that I was laughing and gasping and pulling at his clothes, our breath making one white cloud above us under the stained-glass stars.
You’d think it would be impossible to undress in minus twenty. You’d be wrong. You just have to want it more than you want to be warm.
I’ll stop there. The ice keeps its own secrets. It’s very good at it.
* * *
When he went back to the suite, she was asleep under the deer skins. He told me that, the next morning, when they were checking out and he passed me in the corridor with his wife’s hand in his. He didn’t say it. He told me with his eyes: she was asleep. I lay down next to her. I couldn’t stop shaking.
She looked at me too. She was lovely, small, red-cheeked, with a bright knitted hat. She said, “You’re the sculptor! The wolves are incredible. We come every year for the wolves.” And she squeezed his hand.
I smiled. I said thank you. I went back to the workshop and carved for nine hours without stopping.
That was when I decided to put his face in the headboard of Suite 9. So that every night he lay in my room, with her beside him, his own face would be above them in my ice, in my forest. So that I would be there. So she would sleep under me without knowing.
I know how it sounds. I knew how it sounded then. Jealousy is a cold thing, colder than people think. It makes you very precise.
* * *
This year is the fourth year.
They checked in on Saturday. I saw them from the workshop: his long stride, her bright hat. I watched them walk into Suite 9 and I sat in the cold with my chisel in my lap and my heart going like a hammer.
At two in the morning he came to the tent. He didn’t say a word. He held out his phone and showed me a photo he’d taken from the left side of the bed, lying on his back, with the light low.
His own face. In my forest. Lit blue.
“She saw it,” he said. “Tonight. She lay where I usually lie. She said, look, there’s a man in the trees, he looks just like you.”
I didn’t move.
“She laughed,” he said. “Then she stopped laughing. Then she looked at me for a very long time.” He put the phone away. His eyes were wet and red with cold, or with something. “She’s packing.”
He took my glove off. Finger by finger. He breathed on my hand.
“Your hands are so cold,” he said.
* * *
It’s April now. The bulldozers came this morning.
I stood in the snow at the edge of the site in the first warm sun of the year, and I watched them go into Suite 9. The wolves went first, then the moon. The headboard last. It didn’t break; it slid off its base whole and lay in the slush, and the sun came through it, and for a second I saw his face very clearly, lit gold this time instead of blue — and then the meltwater ran down it like tears and it was branches, and then it was nothing, and then it was water going back to the river where it came from.
He’s in a rented flat in Quebec City now. He asked me to come and live with him. Year-round. A real home, with radiators and a bed that stays a bed.
I haven’t answered yet.
You see, I know what I’m good at. I build beautiful things that nobody can keep. I don’t know if I know how to love something that doesn’t melt.
I’m going to find out. I think. In a heated room. With my gloves off.
