James Salter - Light Years

Her boyfriend in California was a painter. They smoked, with music filling the air, for days at a time. They stayed out late, they slept half the day. Her father had taught her nothing, but the fabric of his life was the only one that felt good to her; she wore it as she wore his old shoes sometimes, his feet were very small.

“Well, where is she?” he asked. “You can’t get rid of her when you work. Then when you want her, she leaves. Why don’t you go and tell her Jivan is here?”

“Oh, she knows,” Kate replied.

JIVAN LOVED CHILDREN. THEY showed him their games, they knew he would learn to play them quickly. He did not descend to it; he became a child. He had time for it. He embodied the simple virtues of a life lived alone. He had time for everything—for cooking, for plants.

He lived in an empty store that had once been a pharmacy. A long, serene room in front, the windows curtained with bamboo and dense with plants. At night one could just barely see in. It looked like a restaurant, the last patrons lingering. A racing bicycle hung on the wall. A white Alsatian put his nose silently, without barking, to the glass of the door.

He had birds in a cage and a gray parrot that spread its wings.

“Perruchio,” he would say, “do the angel.”

Nothing.

“The angel, the angel,” he said. “Fa l’angelone.”

Like a cat stretching its claws the parrot would slowly fan out its wings and feathers. Its head turned in profile to one, black, heartless eye.

“Why is he named Perruchio?” Danny asked. As she tried to approach him, he moved sideways a step at a time.

“That was his name when I got him,” Jivan said.

He played twenty questions. His education had been the simplest possible: books. He read no fiction, only journals, letters, the lives of the great.

“All right,” he said. “Are you ready? I have one.”

“A man,” Danny said.

“Yes.”

“Living.”

“No.”

A pause while they abandoned hope of its being easy.

“Did he have a beard?”

Their questions were always oblique.

“Yes, a beard.”

“Lincoln!” they cried.

“No.”

“Did he have a big family?”

“Yes, big.”

“Napoleon!”

“No, not Napoleon.”

“How many questions is that?”

“I don’t know—four, five,” he said.

He brought them gifts, boxes in which expensive soap had come, miniature playing cards, Greek beads. He appeared for dinner in the October dusk, his feet crushing the cool gravel, a bottle of wine in his hand. Autumn was coming; it was in the air.

Hadji was lying on his side in the shadow of a shrub, the dark leaves touching him.

“Hello, Hadji. How are you?” He stopped to talk as if to a person. There was a faint movement near the dog’s rump, a beat of the missing tail. “What are you, having a rest?”

He entered the house confident but correct, like a relative who knows his place. He respected Viri’s knowledge, his background, the people he knew. He had dressed carefully, in the gray pants one finds in chain department stores, an ascot, a white shirt.

“Hello, Franca,” he said. He kissed her naturally. “Hello, Dan.” He smiled as he extended his hand to Viri.

“Let me take the wine,” Viri offered. He examined the label. “Mirassou. I don’t know it.”

“A friend of mine in California told me about it,” Jivan said. “He has a restaurant. You know how the Lebanese are; when they come to a place, the first thing they do is find a good restaurant, and then they always go there, they don’t go anywhere else. That’s how I know him. I used to eat there. When I was in California, I was there every night.”

“We’re having lamb for dinner.”

“It should be very good with lamb.”

“Would you like a San Raphael?” Nedra asked.

“That would be nice,” he said. He sat down. “Well,” he said to Danny, “what have you been doing?” He was less at ease with them when their father was present.

“I want to show you something I’m making,” she said.

“What is it?”

“It’s a forest.”

“What kind of forest?”

“I’ll show you,” she said, taking his hand.

“No,” Viri said. “Bring it here.”

They were almost the same size, the two men, the same age. Jivan had less assurance. They sat like the owner of a great house and his gardener. The one waited for the other to introduce a subject, to permit him to speak.

“It’s getting cold,” Viri remarked.

“Yes, the leaves are beginning to turn,” Jivan agreed.

“It won’t be long. I like the winter,” Viri said. “I like the sense of its closing in on you.”

“How is Perruchio?” Franca asked.

“I’m teaching him to hang upside down.”

“How do you do that?”

“Like a bat,” Jivan added.

“I’d like to see that.”

“Well, when he learns.”

Nedra brought his drink.

“Thank you,” he said.

“Would you like more ice?”

“No, this is fine.”

She was easily kind, Nedra, easily or not at all. Jivan sipped the drink. He wiped the bottom of the glass before setting it down. He owned a moving and storage company, quite small. His truck was immaculate. The quilts were piled neatly, the fenders undented.

At noon, twice a week, sometimes more, she lay in his bed in the quiet room in back. On the table near her head were two empty glasses, her bracelets, her rings. She wore nothing; her hands were naked, her wrists.

“I love the taste of this,” she said.

“Yes,” Jivan said. “It’s funny, no one else serves it.”

“It’s our favorite.”

Noon, the sun beyond the ceiling, the doors closed tight. She was lost, she was weeping. He was doing it in the same, steady rhythm, like a monologue, like the creaking of oars. Her cries were unending, her breasts hard. She was flinging out the sounds of a mare, a dog, a woman fleeing for her life. Her hair was spilled about her. He did not alter his pace.

“Viri, light the fire, would you?”

“Let me do it,” Jivan offered.

“I think there’s some kindling in the basket,” Viri said.

She saw him far above her. Her hands were clutching the sheets. In three, four, five vast strokes that rang along the great meridians of her body, he came in one huge splash, like a tumbler of water. They lay in silence. For a long time he remained without moving, as on a horse in the autumn, holding to her, exhausted, dreaming. They were together in a deep, limb-heavy sleep, sprawled in it. Her nipples were larger, more soft, as if she were pregnant.

The fire took hold, crackling, curling between the heavy pieces of wood, Jivan kneeling before it. Franca watched. She said nothing. She knew already, as a cat knows, as any beast; it was beating in her blood. Of course, she was still a child; her glances were brief, inconsequential. She had no power, only the buds of it, the vacancy where it would appear. She had already learned what it meant to say his name, artlessly pausing. Her mother was fond of him, she knew that, and she felt a warmth in him, not like her father’s but less familiar, less bland. Even when he was doing something with Danny, as he was now, looking at the miniature landscape she had made of pine twigs and stones, his attention and thoughts were not far off, she was sure of it.

Nedra woke slowly to dreamlike, feathery touches. She struggled to come to the surface, to regain herself. It took half an hour. The afternoon sun was on the curtains, the voice of the day had changed. He held up an arm as if to the light. She held hers beside it. They stared at these arms with a vague, mutual interest.

“Your hand is smaller.”