James Salter - Light Years

They lay beside one another in the dark. In a drawer of the writing table, buried in back, was a letter composed of phrases clipped from magazines and papers, a pasted letter of love with jokes and passionate suggestions, a famous letter sent from Georgia before they were married when Viri was in the army, aching, alone. There were bees nesting in the greenhouse, erosion along the river shore. On a child’s bureau, in a box with four small legs, were necklaces, rings, a starfish hard as wood. A house as rich as an aquarium, filled with the rhythm of sleep, limbs without strength, partly open mouths.

Nedra was awake. She suddenly rose on one elbow.

“What is that ungodly smell?” she said. “Hadji? Is that you?”

He was lying beneath the bed.

“Get out of there,” she cried.

He would not move. She continued to command. At last, ears flat, he came forth.

“Viri,” she sighed. “Open the window.”

“Yes, what is it?”

“Your damned dog.”

MARCEL-MAAS LIVED IN AN UNFINISHED stone barn, much of it built with his own hands. He was a painter. He had a gallery that showed his work, but he was largely unknown. His daughter was seventeen. His wife—people found her strange—was in the last years of her youth. She was like a beautiful dinner left out overnight. She was sumptuous, but the guests were gone. Her cheeks had begun to quiver when she walked.

A thick beard, wartiness of nose, corduroy jacket, long silences: that was Marcel-Maas. His effort was all on canvas now; the window frames of the barn were flaking, the inside walls were stained. He repaired nothing, not even a leak; he seldom went out, he never drove a car. He hated travel, he said.

His wife was a mare alone in a field. She was waiting for madness, grazing her life away. She went to the city, to Bloomingdale’s, the gynecologist, to art supply stores. Sometimes she would see a movie in the afternoon.

“Travel is nonsense,” he announced. “The only thing you see is what’s already inside you.”

He was in his carpet slippers. His black hair lay loose on his head.

“I can’t agree, somehow,” Viri said.

“The ones who could gain something from travel, who have sensitivity, they have no need to travel.”

“That’s like saying those who could benefit from education have no need to be educated,” Viri said.

Marcel-Maas was silent. “You’re too literal,” he said finally.

“I love to travel,” his wife remarked.

Silence. Marcel-Maas ignored her. She was standing at the window, looking out at the day, drinking a glass of red wine. “Robert is the only one I’ve ever heard of who doesn’t like to,” she said. She continued to look out the window.

“Where have you ever traveled?” he said.

“That’s a good question, isn’t it?”

“You’re talking about something you don’t know anything about. You’ve read about it. You hear about these doctors and their wives who go to Europe. Bank clerks go to Europe. What is there in Europe?”

“What are you talking about?” she said. Their daughter appeared in the doorway. She had lean arms, a lean body, small breasts. Her eyes were a riveting blue. “Hello, Kate,” Viri said.

She was engaged in biting her thumbnail. Her feet were bare.

“I’ll tell you what Europe has,” her father continued, “the detritus of failed civilizations. Night clubs. Fleas.”

“Fleas?”

“Jivan’s here,” Kate said.

Nora Marcel-Maas pressed her face to the glass to see out. “Where?”

“He just drove up.”

They heard the front door open. “Hello,” a voice called.

“In here!” Marcel-Maas shouted.

They heard him come down the hall. The kitchen was the warmest room in the barn; the upper floors were not even heated.

Jivan was short. He was thin, like the boys one sees loitering in plazas of Mexico and countries further south. He was one of those boys, but with manners, with newly bought clothes.

“Hello,” he said, entering. “Hello, Kate. You’ve gotten so beautiful. Let me see. Turn around.” She did so without hesitation. He took her hand and kissed it like a bunch of flowers. “Robert, your daughter is fantastic. She has the heart of a courtesan.”

“Don’t worry. She’s getting married.”

“I thought it was just a trial,” Jivan complained. “Isn’t it?”

“More or less,” she said.

“Viri,” Jivan said, “I saw your car. That’s what made me stop. How are you?”

“Are you driving your motorcycle?” Viri asked.

“Would you like another lesson?”

“I don’t think so.”

“That was nothing, that little accident.”

“I’d like to try again,” Viri said, “but my side still hurts.” Jivan accepted some wine. His hands were small, the nails well cared for, his face smooth, like a child’s.

“Where have you been, in the city?” Marcel-Maas asked.

“Where’s Nora?”

“She was here a minute ago.”

“Yes, I just came back,” Jivan said. “I spent last night there. I went to a sort of reception… a Lebanese thing. It was late, so I stayed. They’re very strange, American women,” he said. He sat down and smiled politely. With him one was in cafés and drab restaurants warmed by the murmur of talk. He smiled again. His teeth were strong. He slept with a knife at the head of his bed.

“You know, I met this woman,” he said. “She was the ex-wife of an ambassador or someone, blond, in her thirties. After the party we were near the place where I was going to stay. There was a bar, and I asked her, very matter-of-factly, if she’d like to stop there for a drink. You can’t imagine what she said. She said, ‘I can’t. I have the curse.’ ”

“Haven’t you had enough of them?” Marcel-Maas said.

“Enough? Can one have enough?”

“They’re all like lukoum to you.”

“Locoum ,” Jivan corrected. “Rahat locoum . That’s Turkish delight,” he translated. “Very fattening. Robert likes the sound of it. Someday I’ll bring you some rahat locoum . Then you’ll see what it is.”

“I know what it is,” Marcel-Maas said. “I’ve had plenty of it.”

“Not the real rahat.”

“Real.”

Jivan was his friend, Marcel-Maas used to say. He had no other friends, not even his wife. He was going to divorce her anyway. She was neurotic. An artist should live with an uncomplicated woman, a woman like Bonnard’s who would pose in only her shoes. The rest of it would follow. By the rest of it, he meant a hot lunch every day, without which he could not work. He sat down to the table like an Irish laborer, hands stained, head down, potatoes, meat, thick slices of bread. He was silent, he had no jokes in him, he was waiting for things to resolve themselves while he ate, to form into something unexpected and interesting like the coat of fine bubbles on one’s leg in the bath.

“So where’s your mother, Kate?” he said. “Where’d she disappear to?”

Kate shrugged. She had the languor of a delivery boy, of someone who could not be hurt. She had lived through unheated bedrooms, unpaid bills, her father’s abandoning them, his returns, beautiful birds he had carved out of applewood and painted and placed on her bed. He had spent a lot of time with her when she was a child. She remembered some of it. She had lived in the waves of color he had chosen, irradiated by them as by the sun. She had seen his torn sketchbooks on the floor with footprints across their pages, she had found him sprawled drunk in her room, his face on the thick spruce boards. She could never betray him; it was unthinkable. He asked nothing of her. All these years he had been beaten, as if in a street fight, before her eyes. He did not complain. He talked about painting sometimes, about pruning the trees. There was in him the saintliness of a man who never looked in the mirror, whose thoughts were dazzling but illiterate, whose dreams were immense. Every penny he had ever made he had given to them, and they had spent it.