James Salter - Light Years

“Well, I was there with Arnaud,” Eve said.

“Where did you stay? I’ll bet Arnaud is great in Rome.”

“He loves it. You know, he speaks Italian, talks to everyone. Long conversations.”

“And what did you do?”

“Usually I kept on eating. You know, you sit in those restaurants for hours. He reads the menu, he reads everything on it. Then he discusses it with the waiter, he looks to see what people at the other tables are eating. If you’re in a hurry, forget it. He says, no, no, wait a minute, let me see what he says about the… the fagioli.”

“The fagioli…”

“I forget, what are fagioli? I don’t know. We were always eating them. He likes bollito misto , he likes baccala . We ate, we visited churches. He knows Italy.”

“I’d love to go with Arnaud.”

“He likes very small hotels. I mean, minute . He knows all of them. I learned a lot. There are certain kinds of bugs you can let live on your body, for instance.”

“What?”

“Well, I never did, but that’s what he claimed. He’ll never marry,” Eve said.

“Why do you say that?”

“I know it. He’s selfish, but it isn’t selfishness. He’s not afraid of being alone.”

“That’s the whole thing, isn’t it?”

“Yes. On the other hand, I am,” Eve said.

“No, you’re not.”

“I’m terrified of it. I think I fear it more than anything. He knows how to face it. He likes people. He likes to eat, go to the theater.”

“But eventually he’s alone. He has to be.”

“Well, I don’t know. It doesn’t bother him. He’s content, he knows we’re thinking of him.”

She was terrific, Eve; that was what he said. She was generous in every way. She gave books, dresses, friends, she graced rooms with her hard, dissolute body, her wanton mouth. The kind of woman seen on the arm of a boxing champion, the kind who is not married, who appears one morning with blackened eyes.

They were thinking of him.

“Yes,” Nedra agreed, “that is a difficulty. How is Arnaud?”

“It’s his six-month birthday next week. I mean, it’s halfway between.”

“Do you celebrate that?”

“I sent him some handkerchiefs,” Eve said. “He likes a certain kind of big workman’s handkerchief, and I found some. I don’t know, sometimes he drops out of sight for a week or two. Sometimes he even goes away. I wish I were a man.”

CHRISTMAS. TOM, THE OLD SUPER, drinking as always. He had a lean face and an ulcerous ear. An honest man with bottles hidden in the basement behind the fuse boxes. He jumped back when Viri tried to hand him an envelope with some money in it.

“What’s that?” he cried. “No, no.”

“It’s a little something for Christmas.”

“Oh, no.” He had not shaved. “Not for me. No, no.” He seemed about to cry.

The draftsmen were bent over their tables in anticipation of their bonuses. The shops were glittering. It was dark before five.

Parked beneath a sign that prohibited it absolutely, Viri ran up the steps of the theater to buy tickets for Nutcracker Suite . It was a ritual; they saw it every year. Franca was taking ballet at Balanchine’s school. She had the calm and grace to be a dancer, but not the resolution. She was the youngest in the class, their legs rose in unison to dry commands, it was above Broadway, over a melancholy Schrafft’s.

Dusk in the city, the traffic, the buses pouring light, reflections in windows, optician’s shops. It was cold, splintering, a world filled with crowds passing newsstands, cut-rate drugstores, girls in Rolls-Royces, their faces lit by the dash.

Parking by hydrants as Viri went in to buy a single bottle of wine and write a check for it, or flat, white wedges of Brie, soft as porridge—nothing in abundance, nothing stored up—they cruised along Broadway. It was their natural street, their boulevard, they were blind to its ugliness. They went to Zabar’s, to the Maryland Market. They had certain places for everything, discovered in the days when they were first married and lived nearby.

The radio was playing, the parking lights were on. Nedra sat turned in her seat, talking to the children while in the store Viri was slowly moving to the head of the line. They could see his gestures through the window, could almost make out his words. The girl to whom he was speaking was sullen, rushed; she was picking up pastries with a square of waxed paper in her hand.

“You’ll have to speak up,” she said.

“Yes. What are those?”

“Apricot.”

“Ah,” he managed.

She had a wide, even mouth. She waited. He felt a sudden muteness, despair. Before him he was seeing a last image, as of a crude sister, of Kaya. Her breasts made him weak.

“Well?”

“Two of those, then,” he said.

She did not look at him; she had no time. When he took the package she placed before him, she was already talking to someone else.

In the car it was warm, they were joking, it smelled of the perfume Nedra was letting them try. They drove through residential streets to miss the traffic, back streets, little used ways, to the bridge. And then in the winter evening, the children grown quiet, home.

Nedra made tea in the kitchen. The fire was burning, the dog laid his head on their feet.

She adored Christmas. She had a wonderful idea for cards: she would make paper roses, roses of every shade, and send them in individual boxes. She spread the tissue on the table—not this, not that, she said—to find pieces she liked, ah, here! There was an almost theatrical excitement in the house. For days now, spread on window sills and tables in the rooms she preferred were beads, colored paper, yarns, pine cones painted gold. It was like a studio; profusion bathed one, caught one’s breath.

Viri was making an Advent calendar. He was late, as usual; a week of December had already passed. He had made a whole city, the sky dark as velvet cushions, stars cut with a razor blade, smoke rising from chimneys and vanishing in the night, a city that was a compendium of hidden courtyards, balconies, eaves. It was a city like Bath, like Prague, a city glimpsed through a keyhole, streets that had stairways, domes like the sun. Every window opened, so it seemed, and within was a picture. Nedra had given him an envelopeful, but there were others he had found himself. Some were actual rooms. There were animals sitting in chairs, birds, canal boats, moles and foxes, insects, Botticelli’s. Each one was put carefully in place and in secret—the children were not allowed to come near—and the elaborate façade of the city glued over it. There were details that only Franca and Danny would recognize—the names on street signs, curtains within certain windows, the number on a house. It was their life he was constructing, with its unique carapace, its paths, delights, a life of muted colors, of logic, surprise. One entered it as one enters a foreign country; it was strange, bewildering, there were things one instantly loved.

“For God’s sake, Viri, haven’t you finished it yet?”

“Come and look,” he insisted.

She stood at his shoulder. “Oh, it’s absolutely fabulous. It’s like a book, a fabulous book.”

“Look at this.”

“What is it? A palace.”

“It’s a section of the Opéra.”

“In Paris.”

“Yes.”

“It’s beautiful.”

“See, the doors open.”

“Open them. What’s inside?”

“You’ll never guess. The Titanic.”

“No, really.”

“Sinking.”

“You’re mad.”

“The thing is, will they know what it is?”

“You don’t have to know, you can see what it is,” Nedra said. “What are the others?”