James Salter - Light Years

“Eight seconds.”

“Again,” she begged.

The wind was from the shore. The waves seemed to break in silence.

Days on the beach. They went home in the late afternoons, the great reaches glistening with sunlight no longer hot. Lunches that sheltered them like a tent. Beneath a wide umbrella Nedra spread chicken, eggs, endive, tomatoes, pâté, cheese, bread, cucumbers, butter and wine. Or they ate at a table in the garden, the sea distant, the trees green, the voices drifting from the house next-door. White sky, silence, the fragrant cigars.

She spoke of Europe often. “I need the kind of life you can live there,” she said, “free of inhibitions.”

“Inhibitions?” Arnaud asked. His eyes were half-closed in sleep. Viri had gone to the city. They were alone.

“I need a large house.”

“I don’t think you have many inhibitions.”

“And a car.”

“You’re very uninhibited.”

“Yes, well, it’s other people’s inhibitions I’m talking about.”

“Ah, other people’s. But you don’t care about other people. You care less about other people than anyone I know.”

She was silent. She was looking at her feet in which she noticed, as if for the first time, blue veins. The sun was at its apogee. She was conscious, as if it were a moment of weightlessness, that her life, too, was at its apex; it was sacred, floating, ready to change direction for the final time.

“You know, I think about divorce,” she said, “and Viri is such a good father. He loves his children so, but that isn’t what stops me. It isn’t all the legal business and argument, the arrangements that have to be made. The really depressing thing is the absolute optimism of it all.”

Arnaud smiled.

“I want to travel,” she said. She was not thinking; the words came from somewhere within her and rose to her mouth. “I want to go to a pleasant room at the end of the day, unpack, bathe. I want to go downstairs for dinner. Sleep. Then, in the morning… the London Times.”

“With the room number on it in pencil.”

“I want to be able to pay with a check and not even think about it.”

“No matter what they say, that’s the one great feeling, isn’t it?”

“I’d like to buy all new clothes.”

They sat beneath a dome of heat, of midday silence, in attitudes of languor, as if exhausted, as if somewhere in Sicily, exchanging secrets which encircled them like slow currents and were as sweet to confess as to hear.

“Arnaud, I’m very fond of you. You’re really my favorite man, do you know that?”

“I’d hoped so.”

“I mean it. You have a marvelous quality of understanding, of understanding and accepting.”

“I seem to.”

“You have a wonderful sense of humor.”

“Unfortunately,” he said. “Humor comes largely from not caring.”

“Oh, I don’t think so.”

“Detachment is what brings forth humor. It’s a paradox. We’re the only creatures that laugh, they say, and the more we laugh, the less we care.”

“I don’t think that’s true.”

“Um,” he reflected. “Perhaps. A lot of very clear insights that come in these hours of reflection, especially following lunch, later prove not quite so sound. This has been a lovely summer.”

“I think that every day,” she said.

Toward the end, in the last days of August, they lay on the lawn in the evening, Arnaud in shirt sleeves leaning on one elbow, posed like a Manet, Viri and Nedra sitting. The dinner cloth was spread before them on the grass. The great trees, rich in leaves, sighed in the wind. Viri’s arms embraced his knees, his socks showed.

“A lovely summer,” he said, “hasn’t it been?”

They did not know what they were praising; the days, the sense of contentment, of pagan joy. They were acclaiming the summer of their lives in which, far from danger, they rested. Their flesh was speaking, their well-being.

“I’m going to get the soup,” Nedra said.

“What kind is it?” Viri asked.

She rose to her feet. “It’s one of your favorites,” she said. “Can’t you smell it?”

The air was filled with the odor of grass, dry earth, the faint scent of flowers.

“No,” he confessed.

“Your nose is your weakest part,” she said. “It’s cresson.”

“Did you really make that?”

She brushed her knees. “Just for you.”

She went inside. Franca sat on the sofa, reading. The spoons were in the drawer. The pure light of evening filled the house.

“You’re a lucky fellow,” Arnaud was saying. From the house they seemed immobile, as if posed. The sheets of foliage drifted above them. The corner of the tablecloth blew gently back. “You’ve reached shore.”

Viri did not reply. The vast, mild sway of summer moved the canopy of leaves, sifted through them, made them shimmer.

“You’re responding to a greater reality than other men, Viri. I mean, I could give examples, but it’s manifest. This is a kind of heaven.”

“Yes, well, it isn’t all me,” Viri said.

“It’s largely you.”

“No, you brought the cigars.” He paused. “The fact is, it’s not what it appears. I’m too easy-going.”

“What do you mean?”

“Women should be kept in cages. Otherwise…” He didn’t finish. Finally he said, “Otherwise, I don’t know.”

THEIR FRIENDS THAT YEAR WERE Marina and Gerald Troy. She was an actress—she had played in Strindberg—her eyes were a piercing blue. She was rich. There was nothing recent in this wealth, it shone in everything: her skin, her fine smile. She went to the gymnasium three times a week, to an old Greek named Leon; his arms were still strong at eighty, his hair pure white.

Nedra began to go too. She had always been indifferent to sports, but from the first hours in the emptiness of the main room with its soiled windows above the traffic, the devoutness of the old man, the companionship, she felt she belonged to it. The showers were clean; the spareness, the green walls appealed to her. Her body awakened, she was suddenly aware that within it, as if existing by themselves, there were deep feelings of strength. When it was extended, hung upside down, when the muscles beneath were warmed and loose, when she felt like a young runner, she realized how much she could love this body, this vessel which would one day betray her—no, she did not believe that; the opposite, in fact. There were times she felt its immortality: on cool mornings, summer nights alone lying naked on top of the covers, in baths, while dressing, before love, in the sea, when limb-weary and ready to sleep.

She had lunch with Eve or Marina, sometimes with both. Noons when the restaurants filled with patrons, clamor, a perfect, calm light. In her handbag was a fresh letter from Europe which she had only glanced at, hastily scanned, the sight of the envelope was enough, the splash of its blue and red edge, the feverish handwriting. Robert had appeared sick and self-deluded, whining, sainted. He was being treated for his thyroid condition in a clinic near Reims. Two years from now I can hear people saying: Your play is extraordinary. And my answer: It took me ten years to perfect my craftsmanship. I am wrestling with giants here. Every morning I wake up in a sweat, ready for the struggle. The impact is great, but I am never defeated. It is the rehearsals I miss, to attend them and see the progress the actors make. My being there is an absolute necessity. My eye and ear criticize every move and every intonation. I listen to the “commas” of the play as if they were drops falling from a fountain. Dis moi comment vont tout tes affaires. I am alone .

The room was nearly empty. It was that still, central hour of the day, slow, deliquescent, two-thirty or three, the invisible cigarette smoke mingled with the air, the peel of lemon beside the empty cups, the traffic on the avenue silent, floating past as if in death, women in their thirties, talking.