James Salter - Light Years

Their opinion, however, when he came to dinner, of Robert Chaptelle was the same: he did not interest them.

He was nervous when he arrived. He had taken the train as far as Irvington, but it was as if he had made a journey of a thousand miles. He was undone. Viri attempted to put him at ease and even to discuss Valle-Inclan, whose plays he had been reading, but the reaction to this was as if Chaptelle did not hear a word. As soon as they entered the house, he said, “Do you have any music?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Could we hear something?” Chaptelle said.

He waited, ignoring the children, while Viri selected some records. The music began. It was like a powerful medicine. Chaptelle grew calm.

“Valle-Inclan had only one arm,” he declared. “He cut the other off so he could be like Cervantes. Are you interested in Spanish writers?”

“I don’t know very much about them.”

“I see.”

He ate with his head close to the plate like a man in the dining hall of an institution. He did not eat much. He wasn’t hungry, he commented, he had eaten a sandwich on the train. As for wine, he had none. He was forbidden to drink any alcohol.

Afterwards they played Russian bank. Chaptelle, almost indifferent at first, became very animated.

“Ah,” he said. “Yes, I have a talent for cards. When I was twenty I did almost nothing else. What is this? Is this the jack?”

“The king.”

“Ah. Le roi ,” he exclaimed. “Yes, I remember.” Viri drove him to the train. They stood on the long, deserted platform. Chaptelle peered down the empty tracks.

“It comes from the other way,” Viri told him.

“Oh.” He looked in that direction.

They entered a small waiting room where a stove was kept going. The benches were scarred with initials of travelers, the walls dense with certain primitive drawings.

“Can you lend me a few dollars for the taxi?” Chaptelle said unexpectedly.

“How much do you need?”

“I don’t have any money with me. I have only a ticket. At least I can’t be robbed.”

Viri had withdrawn what money he had. He held out two dollars. “Is that enough?”

“Oh, yes,” Chaptelle said grandly. “Here, a dollar is enough.”

“You might need it.”

“I never tip,” Chaptelle explained. “You know, your wife is a very intelligent woman. More than intelligent.”

“Yes,” Viri agreed.

“Du chien . You know that expression?”

The floor beneath their feet had begun to tremble. The high, lighted windows of the train rushed by and abruptly slowed. Chaptelle did not move.

“I can’t find my ticket,” he announced.

Viri was holding the door. A few passengers had stepped down; the conductor was looking both ways.

“Why don’t you get on and then look for it?”

“I had it in my poche… Ah, merde!” He began to mutter in French.

There was the piercing sound of a whistle. Chaptelle straightened up. “Ah, here,” he said.

He hurried out and stood, indecisively, trying to see which doors were open. There was only one, in which the trainman stood.

“Where does one go up?” Chaptelle asked. The trainman ignored him.

“There, where he is,” Viri called.

“But that’s two cars away. That’s the only one they open?”

He began to walk toward it. Viri expected the first jerking movement of the wheels at any second. The trains were electric and accelerated quickly.

“Wait, here’s a passenger!” he shouted. He detested himself.

Chaptelle was casually climbing the steps. The train began moving before he had taken a seat. He bent over slightly in the aisle to wave with an awkward motion, palm forward, like a departing aunt. Then he was gone.

“Did you get him aboard?” Nedra asked.

“He’s one of a kind,” Viri said. “I hope.”

“He’s invited me to come to France.”

“It would be a trip you would never forget. What do you mean, he’s invited you? Doesn’t he know you’re married? This evening, for instance, did he think it was just a coincidence we were here together?”

“It doesn’t have anything to do with marriage. I mean, as a man he has no attraction for me. I wouldn’t hide it.”

She was lying in bed, white pillows behind her, a book in her hand. She seemed quite reasonable.

“We’d stay at his mother’s,” she said.

“Nedra, you don’t even speak French.”

“I know. That’s why it would be so interesting.” She could not keep from smiling. “His mother has an apartment on Place St. Sulpice. It’s a beautiful square. You can walk out, he says, there’s a balcony all around with an iron railing.”

“Wonderful. A railing.”

“Fireplaces in the bedrooms. It isn’t dark, he says. It’s on the uppermost floor.”

“Linen is supplied, I presume.”

“His mother lives there.”

“Nedra, you really are extraordinary. You know I love you.”

“Do you?”

“But as for going to France…”

“Just think about it, Viri,” she said.

EVE WAS TALL. HER FACE HAD cheekbones. Her shoulders slumped when she walked. The shelves in her living room were bent beneath the books. She worked for a publisher; oh, you’ve never heard of him, she said. Her life was one in which everything was left undone—letters unanswered, bills on the floor, the butter sitting out all night. Perhaps that was why her husband had left her; he was even more helpless than she. At least she was gay. She stepped from her littered doorway in pretty clothes, like a woman who lives in the barrio walking to a limousine, stray dogs and dirt on the way.

Her ex-husband came to visit her. He sat hunched in a chair by the fireplace, an overnight bag near his feet. His suede jacket was stained, the pockets torn. He was only thirty-two; he had the face of a derelict. His eyes were spent, they had nothing in them. When he spoke, it was agony—enormous, long pauses. He was going to… build a model with his son, he said.

“Don’t keep him up too late,” Eve said. She was leaving in the morning for Connecticut, where they still owned an old house they used alternately.

“Listen, while I think of it…” he said.

Silence. Children were skating in the narrow, blind street. The afternoon was fading.

“The willow near the pond,” he said. His voice was lost, wandering. “You should call Nelson, the guy who gardens, while you’re there. It needs…” He stopped. “Something’s wrong with it,” he finally said.

“The one that’s not growing?”

A pause.

“No, the one that is,” he said.

He’d been living with a young woman. They ate in restaurants; they appeared at parties. When he stood up his pants were empty; they hung in the back like an old man’s.

“He’s so sad,” Eve said.

“You’re lucky he’s gone,” Nedra told her.

“She doesn’t even keep his clothes clean.”

“That’s why he’s sad.”

Eve laughed. There was gold behind her teeth; it made them dark at the edges, a halo of bitumen, like a whore’s. She was ready to laugh. She was funny. Her life had no foundation. She was only vaguely devoted to it, she could treat it lightly. It was this that made her irresistible—these smiles, this carefree air.

They were like sisters, the same long limbs, the same humor. It was easy for them to imagine themselves in each other’s place.

“I’d like to go to Europe,” Nedra told her.

“Wouldn’t that be marvelous?”

“You’ve been to Italy.”

“I have, haven’t I?” Eve said.

“What was it like?”

Their words drifted off in the late afternoon. They were sitting in the worn love seats. Anthony was at a friend’s. His schoolbooks were on the table, his bicycle in the kitchen. The untidiness of the apartment and its little garden were pleasing to Nedra; she could never live like that herself.