James Salter - All That Is

“I’m not kosher,” Monique said.

She was from Algeria. Her family were French colonists, pieds-noirs , and when the trouble started they left and came back to France. She became a journalist. It was for a right-wing Catholic paper, but she had nothing to do with the politics, she only wrote book and theater reviews and sometimes interviewed writers. She met Beckerman through some friends.

As he sat there, Bowman was more and more conscious of not being one of them, of being an outsider. They were a people, they somehow recognized and understood one another, even as strangers. They carried it in their blood, a thing you could not know. They had written the Bible with all that had sprung from it, Christianity, the first saints, yet there was something about them that drew hatred and made them reviled, their ancient rituals perhaps, their knowledge of money, their respect for justice—they were always in need of it. The unimaginable killing in Europe had gone through them like a scythe—God abandoned them—but in America they were never harmed. He envied them. It was not their looks that marked them anymore. They were confident, clean-featured.

Baum was not religious and did not believe in a God who killed or let live according to an unknowable design unconnected to whether you were decent, devout, or useless to the world. Goodness had no meaning to God, although there had to be good. The world was chaos without it. He lived as he lived because of that and seldom thought of it. In his deepest feelings, however, he accepted that he was one of his people and the God they believed in would always be his as well.

“Do you go to France?” Monique asked.

“Not very often,” Bowman said.

She had a rather coarse complexion, he observed, and was not beautiful, but she was the one you would pick out. She might be an ex-girlfriend of Sartre’s, he thought idly, though he had no idea what any of them were like. Sartre was short and ugly and made very frank arrangements that he could imagine her understanding.

He decided to say,

“Do you miss living in France?”

“Yes, of course.”

“What things do you miss?”

“Life here is easier,” she said, “but in the summer we go to France.”

“Where do you go?”

“We go to Saint-Jean-de-Luz.”

“That sounds very nice. Do you have a house there?”

“Near there,” she said. “You should come.”

It was no longer women of an Eastern European swarm, the toiling mothers and wives. It was now women who were glamorous and smart as in nineteenth-century Vienna, a breed of women, New York was known for them. No one called them Jewesses anymore. The word evoked rabbinates and pious, backward villages along the Pale. They were stylish, ambitious, at the center of things. Their allure. He had never gone with one. Their lives had warmth and no scorn of pleasure or material things. He might have married one and become part of that world, slowly being accepted into it like a convert. He might have lived among them in that particular family density that had been formed by the ages, been a familiar presence at seder tables, birthday gatherings, funerals, wearing a hat and throwing a handful of earth into the grave. He felt some regret at not having done it, of not having had the chance. On the other hand, he could not really imagine it. He would never have belonged.

A train had just left and in the crowd slowly making its way up the stairs he was almost certain he saw her, not looking his way. His heart jumped.

“Anet!” he called.

She saw him and stopped, people passing around her.

“Hi,” she said. “Hello.”

They moved to one side.

“How have you been?” he asked.

“I’ve been fine.”

“Let’s go to the top of the stairs.”

He had been going down to catch the train. If he had been a minute earlier he would have been standing on the platform and getting on as she got off, almost certainly at another door, and he would never have seen her.

“How have you been?” he said again. “Are you in school? It’s been a while.”

“No, I’m still in school, but I’m taking a break. I’m taking a year off.”

She was wearing no lipstick. There was the piercing squeal of another train coming in and the groan of the cars.

“So, what are you going to be doing?”

“This is so unbelievable. Actually, I’m looking for a job.”

“Really. What kind of job?”

She laughed a little in saying it,

“In fact, I was looking for a job in publishing.”

“Publishing? That’s a surprise. How did that come about?”

“I’m a Lit major,” she said, making a little face of disbelief.

She was so unaffected that the pleasure from seeing her welled up.

“Well, it’s lucky we bumped into each other, isn’t it? Look, I’m having a little thing tomorrow for a friend in British publishing, Edina Dell, but some other people will be there. It’s just drinks. Why don’t you come?”

“Tomorrow?” she said.

“Yes, at about five-thirty. At the apartment. Do you remember where I live? I’ll write it down. Here.” He wrote it on a card.

They went up to the street together to say good-bye. They stood for a few moments on the corner. He was unaware of the buildings around them, the traffic, the tawdry signs of the shops. She was going east. He watched her walk away, younger and somehow better than others in the crowd. He had always liked her.

He doubted she would come. She must have known about the trial and its consequences and thought of him as the enemy. As it happened, he was wrong.

She arrived a little late. She came into the room almost unnoticed to find people drinking and talking and also at least one person her own age, Edina’s daughter, Siri, slender and half-black with great bushy hair. Edina was wearing a long, gauzy dress of violet and rose. She took Anet’s hand and said, “Who is this stunning girl?”

“This is Anet Vassilaros,” Bowman said.

“You’re Greek.”

“No. My father is,” Anet said.

“The great love of my life was a Greek man,” Edina said. “I used to fly to Athens to see him. He had a fabulous family apartment there. I could never get him to come back with me. Do you work in publishing? No, you’re still in school.”

“No, I’m actually looking for a publishing job.”

“I shouldn’t think you’d have to look long.”

Bowman introduced her to several others. This is Anet Vassilaros, he said. There were two other women about Edina’s age, women who worked and whose names she didn’t get. There was a tall English agent, Tony something. Bowman had bought flowers and arranged them around.

She talked to Siri, who had a soft voice and was in school in London somewhere.

“Is she an adopted daughter?” Anet asked Bowman when she had a chance.

“No, she’s her real daughter. She has a Sudanese father.”

“She’s really beautiful.”

Tony had left, saying good-bye to her. By seven-thirty, most of the others were going. Anet got ready to leave.

“No, don’t go yet,” Bowman said to her. “We haven’t had a moment to really talk. Sit down. I’m just going to turn the TV on. There’s a piece about a writer of mine at the end of the news.”

It would be a few minutes. He turned off the sound and as they sat there, inevitably thought of her mother. He remembered the images shifting silently on the screen like jumps in reality, the face of the actress as she pleaded and then threw open her coat, defiant and submitting.

“You know, I never had the chance to tell you that I’m sorry about what happened,” Anet said. “I mean about my mother and the house. I don’t really know all the details.”