James Salter - All That Is

“It was that easy?”

“Oh, not at the time. Things are never that easy at the time.”

“I know,” she said. “I married for sex.”

“I hoped that was what I was marrying for.”

“Women are very weak.”

“That’s funny. I haven’t found that to be so.”

“They’re weak. A bracelet, a trinket, a ring.”

“I notice you’re still wearing one.”

“It’s sentimental,” she said. “I can’t wait to take it off.”

“Let me,” he said but did not move.

“You certainly deserve to.”

He didn’t want to say anything further but to let that remain like a last chord. Then he said,

“I was very impressed when you were speaking Greek. He was impressed, too.”

“I don’t really know that much.”

“You seemed to have no problem.”

“My problem is that I need to find a place to live. I need to earn money, and I need a place to live.”

“I’ll help you.”

“Do you mean that?”

“Absolutely. A woman like you can have anything she wants.”

“A woman like me,” she said.

Yes, like her. The thought of traveling with her, the two of them together in Greece—he ignored the fact of her husband there—the Greece she had told him about. He imagined it, Salonica, Kythira, the women in black, the white boats that linked the islands. He’d never been there. He’d read The Colossus of Maroussi , wild and exaggerated, he’d read Homer, he’d seen Antigone and Medea and listened to the fabulous voice of Nana Mouskouri filled with life. Not all at once but somehow together he thought of Aleksei Paros who had more or less disappeared, Maria Callas, the shipping magnates, the white wine that tasted of pine sap, the Aegean, white teeth and dark hair. It was all a brilliant dream, Greece was in one’s blood, they wailed at the grave there, they washed the bodies of the dead. But it was not death that drew him, it was the opposite. With Christine it would be unimaginably rich, living in the sunlight, on the water, on terraces hidden by vines, in the bare rooms of hotels. She would shake it flat and read some of the Greek newspaper to him, perhaps she would, he imagined her able to do anything. He wanted the Greek words for morning, night, thank you, love. He wanted some dirty Greek words so he could whisper them. Nude, he remembered, was the same in every language but probably not in Greek. He loved her nude, he loved thinking of it. He was for the moment emptied of desire but not in the broader sense.

Outside, the day was made up of various silences. The hours had come to a stop. She was quiet, thinking of something, perhaps of nothing. She could not possibly know her allure. He was lying with a smooth-limbed woman who had been stolen from her husband. She was now his, they were in life together. He was thrilled by it. It fit his character, the daring lover, something he knew he was not.

The train that Dena and her son, Leon, were taking to Texas to see her parents went to Dallas and they lived near Austin but would come with their car. Dena wanted to see the country, and Leon was excited by the idea. In the dark lower level of Penn Station where the trains arrived and left, overlapping voices announcing departures filled the air, godlike and final. Eddins stopped to ask a porter for directions to the right car, and they came to it a few moments later and the three of them carried the luggage down the corridor to their compartment where Eddins helped them stow it and stayed talking to them. There hadn’t been time to take them to lunch as he’d intended. Leon was becoming nervous, the train was about to leave, he said. He was as tall as Dena, taller.

Eddins looked at his watch.

“There’s still three or four minutes,” he said.

“Your watch may not be right.”

“Tell them I’m really sorry I couldn’t come,” he said to Dena. “Next time, all right?”

“Take care of yourself,” she said.

He hugged each of them,

“Have a good trip.”

Out on the platform he stood by the window, waiting. Perhaps he heard it, but in the compartment there was a kind of low sound and electric trembling just as, exactly on time, the train began to move. He waved and they waved back. He blew a kiss and walked along beside them for five or ten feet until he began to fall behind as the train picked up speed. Face pressed to the glass, Dena waved good-bye. It was three forty-five in the afternoon. They would be in Chicago in the morning and from there take the Texas Eagle to Dallas. It was their first trip to Texas on a train. They had always flown there.

They were in darkness at first, beneath the streets, but then broke out into daylight, deep in a series of concrete cuts that took them to the Hudson, the train smooth and swaying slightly as the speed increased. They could hear the low, familiar sound of the whistle far ahead. As if exhilarated by it, they continued to go faster, They went along the river. On the opposite side were dark granite cliffs covered in green. It was a bluish day with the clouds shaped like smoke. The stations, all strangely vacant late in the day, sped by, Hastings, Dobbs Ferry. Soon after, in the distance was their own town, Piermont, almost completely hidden in trees.

“There it is,” Dena said. “That’s Piermont.”

“I’m trying to see our house.”

“I think I see it.”

“Where?”

They tried to pick it out but there was too much foliage that hid even their street, and moments later they were passing beneath the shadowy steel of the bridge at Tappan Zee.

For a long while they followed the idling river. They went by Ossining and the great prison there, Sing Sing, that she pointed out. Leon had heard of it but never seen it. It was where they had executions, he knew.

As the tracks drifted inland, away from the river, there were marshes and trees. Peekskill, a station flashing past. Then, with the sun still high above the hills, there came the steep, silent walls of West Point, part of the cliffs it seemed. They went by the empty ruins of an old castle on a small island. Then two kids pressing themselves against a rock embankment as the train sliced the air from their chests. The river narrowed and became blue. Geese were flying along it, powerful, free, almost skimming the surface. A radiant light was spilling through the clouds and at the heart of it, the sun. From far off came the sharp sound of the train’s whistle.

Leon was by the window and Dena looked past him as the country unrolled and the day began to pass into evening. She wished that Neil had decided to come. It was so beautiful. He would have some ice brought and they would have a drink. She could hear the tinkle of ice in the glasses. Perhaps they would go to Chicago another time and see the city, almost as great as New York, people said. Somehow the river had begun to go beneath them and disappear as they slowly entered Albany with its somber state buildings and ancient streets. There were the solitary spires of churches, reassuring, silhouetted in the last light.

Sometime after seven, they walked forward to the dining car for dinner.

“This is going to be great,” Dena said.

She began to sing happily, nothing could be finer than to be in Carolina, even though the Limited went up along Lake Erie and the Texas Eagle went nowhere near the Carolinas.

The train was lurching. They almost lost their balance. She was right, the dining car was like the stage in a theater, brightly lit, with waiters in white jackets moving smoothly past the tables as the train jerked and swayed beneath their feet.

“This is like shooting the rapids,” Leon called.

The head waiter showed them to a table by themselves. The menu listed broiled sirloin steak and oven fries. Past the wide, black window yellow lights that looked like lanterns floated along in the rural dark, then sudden, surprising clusters of red lights or a single white one going by like a comet. They ordered a glass of wine.