James Salter - Light Years

Children are our crop, our fields, our earth. They are birds let loose into darkness. They are errors renewed. Still, they are the only source from which may be drawn a life more successful, more knowing than our own. Somehow they will do one thing, take one step further, they will see the summit. We believe in it, the radiance that streams from the future, from days we will not see. Children must live, must triumph. Children must die; that is an idea we cannot accept.

There is no happiness like this happiness: quiet mornings, light from the river, the weekend ahead. They lived a Russian life, a rich life, interwoven, in which the misfortune of one, a failure, illness, would stagger them all. It was like a garment, this life. Its beauty was outside, its warmth within.

For Franca’s birthday there was a marvelous tablecloth Nedra had made, a jungle of flowers she had cut out of paper and then glued flat, piece by piece, the richest ferns and greens imaginable. She also made invitations, games, hats. There were chef’s hats, opera hats, blue and gold conductor’s hats with names painted on them. Over the table hung a great papier-mâché frog filled with gifts and chocolate coins. Viri played the piano for musical chairs, scrupulously careful not to look at the nervous marchers. Leslie Dahlander was there, Dana Paum whose father was an actor. There were nine little girls in all, no boys.

A cake with orange icing. Nedra had even made ice cream pungent with vanilla, so thick it stretched like taffy. The house was like a theater; there was the performance, in fact, of Punch and Judy to end the day, Viri and Jivan kneeling behind the stage, the script strewn between them, the limp forms of puppets arranged according to their appearance. The children sat on couches, screaming and clapping. They knew it by heart. In the midst of them was Franca. On this day of her birth she seemed more beautiful than ever before. Her face was filled with happiness, her white teeth shone. Viri had a glimpse of her through an opening at the edge of the stage. Her hands were in her lap. She sat attentive, hanging on every word.

“Where is the baby?”

“Why, didn’t you catch him?”

“Catch him? What have you done?”

“Why, I threw him out the window, I thought you might be passing by.”

Shouts of glee. Franca, radiant, was taller than the girls around her. She was clearly their star.

The automobiles turned slowly into the drive to pick up exhausted guests, the lights in the windows came on, a haze filled the evening. Hadji lay exhausted among the debris. At last there was quiet.

“Some of them are nice children,” Nedra admitted. “I’m very fond of Dana. But isn’t it strange—do you suppose it’s because they’re ours—Franca and Danny are different. They have something very special I don’t know how to describe.”

“Jivan misread half the lines.”

“Oh, the puppet show was marvelous.”

“He stepped on Scaramouch—by mistake, of course.”

“Which one is Scaramouch?”

“He’s the one who says, I’ll make you pay for my head, sir.”

“Oh, too bad.”

“I can fix it,” Viri conceded.

The room was silent, littered with bits of paper. The events of the day had already a kind of luminous outline. The frog, like a shipment of damaged goods, lay in pieces on the table, destroyed by countless blows.

She would make dinner after a while. They would dine together, something light: a boiled potato, cold meat, the remains of a bottle of wine. Their daughters would sit numbly, the dark of fatigue beneath their eyes. Nedra would take a bath. Like those who have given everything—performers, athletic champions—they would sink into that apathy which only completion yields.

“ARE YOU HAPPY, VIRI?” SHE asked.

They were in traffic, driving across town at five in the afternoon. The great mechanical river of which they were part moved slowly at the intersections and then more freely on the long transverse blocks. Nedra was doing her nails. At each red light, without a word, she handed him the bottle and painted one nail.

Was he happy? The question was so ingenuous, so mild. There were things he dreamed of doing that he feared he never would. He often weighed his life. And yet, he was young still, the years stretched before him like endless plains.

Was he happy? He accepted the open bottle. She carefully dipped the brush, absorbed in her acts. Her instinct, he knew, was sharp. She had the even teeth of a sex that nips thread in two, teeth that cut as cleanly as a razor. All her power seemed concentrated in her ease, her questioning glance. He cleared his throat.

“Yes, I suppose I’m happy.”

Silence. The traffic ahead had begun to move. She took the bottle to allow him to drive.

“But isn’t it a stupid idea?” she asked. “If you really think about it?”

“Happiness?”

“Do you know what Krishnamurti says? Consciously or unconsciously, we are all completely selfish, and as long as we get what we want, we believe everything is all right.”

“Getting what we want… but is that happiness?”

“I don’t know. I know that not getting what you want is certainly unhappiness.”

“I’d have to think about that,” he said. “Never getting what you want, that could be unhappiness, but as long as there’s a chance of getting it…”

They had only to reach Tenth Avenue and the street would be empty, open, as on a weekend; they would be free, speeding onto the highway, rushing north. The gray, exhausted crowds were trudging past newsstands, key shops, banks. They were slumped at tables in the Automat, eating in silence. There were one-legged pigeons, battered cars, the darkened windows of endless apartments, and above it all an autumn sky, smooth as a dome.

“It’s difficult to think about,” she said. “Especially when he says that thought can never bring you to truth.”

“What can? That’s the real question.”

“Thought is always changing. It’s like a stream, it moves around things, it’s shifting. Thought is disorder, he says.”

“But what is the alternative?”

“That’s very complicated,” she agreed. “It’s a different way of seeing things. Do you ever feel you would like to find a new way of living?”

“It depends what you mean by a new way. Yes, sometimes I do.”

It was the day Monica died, the little girl with one leg. The surgeons had not removed enough, there was no way to do it. She had begun to have pain again, invisible, as if it had all been for nothing. That pain was the knell. After it came fever and headaches. She swelled everywhere. She went into a coma. It took weeks, of course. Finally—it was in the evening, Viri was bringing in wood, bits of bark stuck to his sleeves, his arms filled, he was making a bank of cut ends, a parapet that would last through the winter when she died. Her father was still at work. Her mother was sitting there in a folding chair, and her child ceased to breathe. In an instant she was gone. She was lighter suddenly, much lighter, she lay with a kind of terrifying insignificance. Everything had left her—the innocence, the crying, the dutiful outings with her father, the life she had never lived. All these weigh something. They pass, dissolve, are scattered like dust.

The days had lost their warmth. Sometimes at noon, as if in farewell, there was an hour or two like summer, swiftly gone. On the stands in nearby orchards were hard, yellow apples filled with powerful juice. They exploded against the teeth, they spat white flecks like arguments. In the distant fields, seas of dank earth far from towns, there were still tomatoes clinging to the vines. At first glance it seemed only a few, but they were hidden, sheltered; that was how they had survived.