Minus Five

A night of vodka, frostbite, and failed revolution.

That year, we were revolutionaries. We really believed, then, that the world might shift if we shouted loud enough.

In July, we walked through the Highlands. Sunburnt and giddy with purpose, we drank from freezing lochs that stung our teeth and scrambled over shale and heather until our thighs burned. We startled herons from reeds and shouted manifestos into the wind. Our boots stayed soaked for days. At night we slept curled beneath tarps, damp hair tangled with pine needles. We sang to scare off the midges, to scare off our fear. We thought we were dangerous.

But now it was December. Edinburgh had shed its scaffolding of summer; it had grown inward and secretive. The wind came thin and glassy. Stone walls wept a slow, subterranean damp, and overhead, the buildings glared white with frost. Behind windowpanes etched with ice, the blue flicker of screens moved across ceilings and skin: ghostlight in a city gone still. Somewhere, always, a violin was tuning.

I hadn’t seen you since July. Now, there was a look in your eye I couldn’t place. It was somewhere between longing and contempt. It unsettled me. I told myself it wasn’t hate, but even then I think I knew it was.

“You’d be a better comrade if you stopped trying to seduce every man in a suit and actually helped with the mission.”

“I am helping” I said, adjusting the strap on my suede heels. “I’m… what was the mission again?”

“Every person from this street under cover” you snapped. “It’s minus five and the fog’s swallowing people.”

“Right.” I saluted with two fingers, then blew a kiss. I hated myself for it. And more for how good it felt to be wanted.

So I wandered, up and down through the violent cold. Fairy lights blinked through the fog like false stars. Gloaming—the word drifted into my mind. My toes were numb. I wriggled them, trying to reclaim sensation. My heels clicked too loud on the pavement, too proud: a reminder I was still more loyal to vanity than the manifesto. Some of us are better Marxists than others.

While I tried to read you, you were already emptying your bank accounts. Giving the money away.

“It’s too cold” you said.

Too cold for anything with a heartbeat to stay out here. You ushered strangers into the rooms. A stray dog came too. The cold worsened. My bones ached. I breathed in knives. Two of you shouted my name now, your voices cracked with cold and fury.

“You don’t get to be tired” one said. “We don’t have the luxury.”

“I’m not tired” I whispered. “I’m fucking frozen.”

“Act on the theory” you barked. “The one where you don’t fuck off to flirt every few minutes.”

I nodded. Tears stung hot against my frozen face.

“I’ll be a better Marxist next time.”

The night edged forward, hazed by drink and cold. I found myself wearing a suit jacket. You were talking about Faulkner while black-suited knees brushed mine. I pretended I knew what I was talking about: history, Southern Gothic decay—lines I’d half-remembered from a Guardian article I skimmed in the library toilet.

A man was trying to charm a woman with a line about monkeys and typewriters.

“Did you know,” he said, “if you give a monkey a typewriter and a thousand years, he’ll eventually write King Lear?”

I opened my mouth to say something scathing—

—but you tugged my sleeve before I could.

“Come on” you said. “There’s something out back.”

We found an ice-covered trampoline in the courtyard. You climbed on and bounced—once, twice. In the smudged orange light, I saw your face was painted grey. You were a rat in a bow tie, swinging from railings and shouting into the polar dark about syntax trees and semiotic collapse.

We were from the same council estate, but now you smoked cigars and drank from tiny glasses. I smashed a wine bottle in protest, against a brick wall. The silence that followed was cathedral-deep. I stared at the frozen shards. At the blood on my pale skin. I’d gone too far. But you just laughed and drew a penis on a statue to prove you weren’t posh. I remained unconvinced.

You kissed my bleeding lip and tasted winter.

“Why?”

“To shut you up.”

“It hurts.”

“Everything does.”

Even truth. Especially truth.

We were still young enough to believe cold was temporary. On the edge of night, we curled around each other in the inky dark. The fog would lift. We would scatter in different directions after this. I didn’t know it at the time, but this would be the last time I saw you. That night, I stared at your face until my vision blurred. I still couldn’t read your eyes. And I was far too afraid to ask.

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