James Salter - Light Years

It was late. He was tired.

For Danny he had bought a bear, a huge bear on wheels with a collar and a little ring in his shoulder that, pulled, made him growl. What a face he had! He was all the Russian bears, circus bears, bears stealing honey from a tree. He was a present that rich children get and ignore the next day, the present one remembers always. He cost fifty dollars. Viri had brought him home in the trunk of the car.

On Christmas Eve it was cold and windy. The darkness came early, the cars were in endless lines on every road. Viri arrived late with the final packages, brandy, Nedra’s cigars. The snow on the ground lit everything. Music was playing; Hadji ran barking from room to room.

“What’s wrong with him?”

“He’s excited,” they said.

“I’ve been thinking about him. We don’t have anything for him.”

“I got him something,” Nedra said.

“I think we should do a play about him.”

“What?” they cried. “How?”

“About how he falls in love. With a toad.”

“Oh, Papa!” Franca said.

“Oh, neat!”

In the driveway, Jivan, his arms filled with presents, was passing the lighted windows. A glimpse of white bookshelves, children whose voices he could not hear, Nedra smiling.

They sat by the fire as Viri read. A Child’s Christmas in Wales , a sea of words that wet his mouth, an unending sea. They were rapt, they were dazed by the very sounds. His calm, narrator’s voice flowed on. The dog’s head lay triangular, like a snake’s, on his knee. The final sentence. In the silence that followed they dreamed, the wood dropping clots of white ember softly into the ashes, the cold at the windows, the house filled with brilliant surprises.

Jivan was quiet, he felt like a guest. His mistress was untouchable. She was in the midst of ritual and duty. He was jealous, but did not show it. They were precious to her, these things; they were her essence. It was because of them she was worthy of stealing.

There was no dinner; they were too busy with last-minute things. Viri and Nedra worked together, Jivan helping, and the girls wrapped presents in their rooms. The lights stayed on until after midnight. It was a great celebration, the greatest of the year.

Nedra had changed the sheets. They went to bed contented. Her sense of order was satisfied. She was tired, fulfilled.

“You read so beautifully tonight,” she said.

“Do you think so?”

“Yes, I was watching their faces.”

“They liked it, didn’t they?”

“They loved it. Jivan, too.”

“It was the first time he’d heard it,” Viri said.

“Is that right?”

“He told me that. But you’re right, he liked it. I think he liked it very much. You know, he reads quite a lot.”

“I know.”

“He’s deeper than you think,” Viri said. “That’s what’s interesting about him.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, I know him fairly well. He’s really hiding something.”

“What do you think it is?” Nedra asked.

“This word is so inclusive, it really doesn’t express what I want to say, but I think he’s hiding love. By that I mean a kind of sensitivity. He’s a nomad, he’s always had to struggle. You know, it doesn’t seem we’d have anything in common, and yet in a strange way we do.”

“I think you do.”

“I’m sure of it,” Viri said. “We’re at different levels entirely, but there is something.”

“It’s so hard to really understand these things,” she said.

They slept. The house was in darkness, its rooms ghostly. The fire had gone out, the dog slept, the cold fell on the roof in brittle white spots.

Christmas morning was clear, the wind was still blowing, the branches squeaked. Franca received a Polaroid camera with a shriek of pure joy as she unwrapped it; she almost wept. They took pictures of each other, of their rooms, of the tree. In the afternoon they had a party, just a small one, one guest each; Franca had a girl from school she had met, Danny had Leslie Dahlander. There was a treasure hunt, ice cream, lighting real candles on the tree, a huge tree standing near the window, thick as a bear’s coat, birds in its branches, silver balls, mirrors, angels, a tree with a wooden village nestled beneath it and a ten-pointed star bought at Bonnier’s on top.

The performance could not begin until all the presents had been seen, the chickens, the photographs, the Christmas eggs. Then Viri appeared as Professor Ganges in a mustache and an old set of tails. He was droning, inscrutable, he performed certain tricks. Nine magazines were placed on the floor, three in each row. He would leave the room, and on returning, tell them the one they had picked. Nedra was his confederate; she touched the magazines with a cane—Is it this one, she asked, is it this?

“Now I will tell you about a trick my master performs: he can stay under water for seven minutes, he can memorize a book at a glance. With an ordinary deck of cards, he invites you to think of one, merely think , and he throws the cards at the window. They scatter and fall, but one card sticks to the glass. It’s the card you thought of. He says, Good, now go and remove it from the glass, and you go, and when you reach to take it, you discover it is on the outside of the glass! Would you like to see that?”

“Yes, yes!” they cried.

“Next year,” he said; he was bowing in the manner of the East, backing from the room. “Show us!” they were crying. “Professor! Show us!”

What a party! There was a howling contest, a scissors game, dropping pennies into water and cards in a hat. When evening came, it was snowing. Snow coming down in the silent lumberyards along the river, on the empty Christmas roads.

Besides the bear, Danny had gotten a radio, riding boots, a magnificent Larousse book of animal life. Franca received a guitar, a coat and an English paint box. In her diary she wrote: The most beautiful Christmas ever. It even snowed. My presents were all a success. The party was fantastic. I really like Avril Coffman. She’s very smart. She solved the magic square before anyone. Her hair is so terrific. Very long. Danny wouldn’t go out and feed the pony, the pig (she is), so I did. I have the best mother in the entire world .

HER FATHER WAS VISITING. HE WAS sixty-two. Teeth were missing. He had worn-out hair combed back over his head, hair cut by a provincial barber. He was garrulous, hard, with a solid cleft chin like a German postman. He smoked incessantly. His laugh was hoarse. He told many stories, he told the truth and he told lies. “I made it in seven hours,” he said. “I never had it over sixty-five.”

It was his birthday. He had come bringing two identical oversized dolls. The boxes were cheap, gray cardboard, open to view like a coffin, covered in cellophane. The two girls thanked him and stood not knowing what to do. “You’re not too old for dolls?” he asked.

“Oh, no.”

He began to cough in the midst of a long explanation of how to take care of an automobile. He had owned cars continuously since 1924. “People don’t understand,” he said. “You can tell them, but they still don’t know.”

In her oat-colored sweater Nedra was laying potatoes beside a leg of lamb. They were peeled and wet. She held them in her hand like marbles. She wore a dark, pleated skirt, knee-length socks, low heels.

“It’s your oil,” her father was saying. “You want to use nothing but top-grade, and change it—don’t just add, change it—every thousand miles. I don’t care what they tell you. Remember the Plymouth I had?”

“The Plymouth?”

“The ’36 Plymouth,” he said. “I drove it all through the war.”