James Salter - Light Years

“No, I’ll tell you what it is,” she said, “I’m indifferent to it. I’m bored with happy couples. I don’t believe in them. They’re false. They’re deceiving themselves.

“Viri and I are friends, good friends. I think we’ll always be. But the rest, the rest is dead. We both know it. There’s no use pretending. It’s decorated like a corpse, but it’s already rotten.

“When Viri and I are divorced…” she said.

Arnaud came that summer. His arrival was worthy of Chaplin. He drove up with Eve in a white convertible, giving little waves when the front wheels went up on a stump and lifted the nose of the car three feet in the air. He took over two rooms in the back of the house, a bedroom and sun porch overlooking the fields. He wore a white cap and a ribbed shirt, pants the color of tobacco or certain perfumes, and a scarf for a belt. He was outrageous, serene, sleek as a cavy. The first thing he did was to buy a hundred and fifty dollars’ worth of liquor.

“A wonderful gift,” Nedra recalled.

“Although,” Viri said, “as a matter of fact…”

“He didn’t drink it all.”

“Well, not all.”

And cigars. It was the summer of lunches and marvelous cigars. Every day, having finished lunch in the sun, Nedra would ask, “Arnaud, what are we going to smoke?”

“Let me see,” he would say.

“A Coronita?”

“No, I don’t… perhaps. What do you think of a Don Diego?” he would ask. “A Don Diego or a Palma.”

“A Palma.”

“That’s it.”

She wrote to Jivan: You know how much I hated to think of being apart, even for a few weeks, but somehow I find it’s not as difficult as I imagined. It isn’t that I don’t think of you. If anything, I think of you even more, but the summer seems like one long day after we’ve been together, I have time to reflect, to savor you again. It’s like sleep, like bathing. We often talked about going to the sea together, and though I am here without you, I see it through your eyes and am content. I couldn’t feel this if I didn’t love you and feel your love strongly. We are so fortunate. There is that terrific electricity that goes back and forth between us. I kiss you many times. I kiss your hands. Franca speaks often of you. Even Viri does…

There was a small drawing, done from memory, beside the signature.

She had mail from Robert Chaptelle, who was in Varengeville. His cards began without a salutation, his handwriting was illegible and dense.

My play is the first of its kind, running two hours and a half without intermission. It is called “Le Begaud.” I am giving it its finishing touches .

“So he’s back in France,” Viri said.

“Yes.”

“What a loss.”

This is my schedule, and my aim is to follow it very closely. I will be at “Hôtel de la Tenasse” until the 15th of August. At “L’Abbaye” in Viry-Chatillon until the 30th of August. At the Wilbraham Hotel, Sloane Street, London, the whole month of September .

A certain Ned Portman may call you. He is an American, quite intelligent, I have come to know here. He has seen me at work, and what he has to say about me may interest you .

She had nothing to say, but she managed to write a brief reply. She was strangely elated by his addresses, their underlined words and stamps of Le Touquet and sculptured heads of the thirties.

The children loved Arnaud. His curly hair was bleaching, it was much too long. He had a big belly; it made their father seem slender in comparison. Arnaud was a patriarch, an Alpha man. He wore a straw hat, his toes moved contentedly as he lay on the sand, a beachcomber with white teeth, white as seashells, and pockets filled with crumpled money. He was a book dealer. He had money because his business was well-run, secure, and because he had no hesitation about asking the best price. He could joke about money, he could waste it, it flowed to him like water to a drain.

He ran with them on the beach. He was powerful in the burning sunshine, his face shaded, his skin brown. Eve came for the weekend. They moved to a motel.

“It’s too quiet there,” he complained the next day. He was mixing drinks, rum with fresh fruit; it was the last of the fine rum. Viri was gathering wood. The beach was almost deserted. In the distance, half a mile away, one other group was bathing in the sea.

While the ears of corn soaked in sea water were broiling, they drank the icy rum.

“You’ve heard what happened?” Nedra said. “Our house was robbed.”

“Oh, God,” Eve said. “When?”

“We just got a call this morning. They took the record player, the television, they broke into everything.”

“You must be just sick.”

“I want to live in Europe,” Nedra said.

“Europe?” Arnaud cried. “They’re worse.”

“Are they really?”

“They invented stealing,” he said.

“What about England?”

“England? The worst of all. You know, I do some business there, I have friends in England. Their flats are broken into constantly. The police come, they look around, they dust for fingerprints. Well, we know who it is, they say. Wonderful, who? The same ones who did it last time, they say.”

“Oh, but I love those pictures of England.”

“The grass is quite good,” he admitted.

Eve was drunk. “What grass?” she said.

“The English grass.”

She was stroking his hair. “You really are beautiful,” she said. “How can a woman hope to…”

“Hope to what?”

“Interest you,” she murmured vaguely.

“There’s surely some way.”

She walked off a few feet, paused, and then in one motion turned and removed her dress. Underneath she was wearing nothing but a pair of white underpants.

“Are you hot, darling?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“You’re so impulsive about clothes.”

“Let’s swim,” she said. Her arms were covering her breasts. The sea hissed behind her.

“The corn is almost ready,” Arnaud complained.

“Darling.” She reached out. “Don’t make me swim alone.”

“Never.”

He carried her down to the water, soothing her as if she were a child. They could see her long legs dangling over his arm. The waves were silky. Hadji stood barking at the footsteps vanished into the sea.

Eve was no longer young, Nedra noticed. Her stomach was flat, but the skin had stretched. Her waist was thickening. Still one loved her for this, one loved her even more. Even the faint lines beginning to appear in her forehead seemed beautiful. When they came back, the ends of her hair were soaked, her body glistened, the womanly mons showed through her wet pants. She leaned against Arnaud in deep affection. She had put on his sweater; it came to her hips, she seemed naked beneath it. His arm was around her waist. “The trouble is,” she said, “what can I do about it, I love Jews.”

Summer. The foliage is thick. The leaves shimmer everywhere, like scales. In the morning, aroma of coffee, the whiteness of sunlight across the floor. The sound of Franca upstairs, of a young girl’s steps as she made her bed, combed her hair, descended with the warm smile of youth. Her hair hung in a smooth column between her shoulder blades. When one touched it, she grew still, certain already, sure of her beauty.

Drives to the beach. The sand was hot. The sea thundered faintly, as if in a glass. Their limbs were tanned. Franca had the faint outlines of a woman, hips just beginning, long fine legs. Her father held them so that she could practice standing on her hands. She was in her black swimsuit. Her buttocks showed as she arched her body, her calfs, the small of her back.

“All right, let go!” she cried.

Wavering, unsteady, she took two or three brief steps with her hands and then fell. “How long was it?” she asked.