James Salter - Light Years

IN SIX YEARS SHE WOULD BE forty. She saw it from a distance, like a reef, the whitened glimpse of danger. She was frightened by the idea of age, she could too easily imagine it, she searched daily for its signs, first in the harsh light from the window, then, turning her head slightly to erase some of the severity, stepping back a little, saying to herself, this is as close as people come.

Her father in distant Pennsylvania towns already had within him the anarchy of cells that announced itself by a steady cough and a pain in his back. Three packs a day for thirty years; he coughed as he admitted it. He needed something, he decided.

“We’ll take some x-rays,” the doctor had said. “Just to see.”

Neither of them was there when the negatives were thrown up before the wall of light, dealt into place as rippling sheets, and in the ghostly darkness the fatal mass could be seen, as astronomers see a comet.

The doctor was called in; it took only a glance. “That’s it, all right,” he said.

The usual prognosis was eighteen months, but with the new machines, three years, sometimes four. They did not tell him this, of course. His translucent destiny was clear on the wall as subsequent series were displayed, six radiographs in a group, the two specialists working on different cases, side by side, calm as pilots, dictating what they saw, stacks of battered envelopes near their elbows. Their language was handsome, exact. They recited, they discussed, they gave a continued verdict long after Lionel Carnes, sixty-four years old, had begun his visits to the treatment room. Their work never ended. Before them loomed skulls, viscera, galaxy breasts, fingers, hairline fractures, knees, appearing and disappearing in an eternal test, the two of them pouring out answers in a steady monotone.

Sarcoma, they are saying. Well, there are all kinds, there are sarcomas of the muscle, they do occur, even of the heart, but they are very rare, normally they are the result of metastasis. No one really knows why the heart is sacred and inviolable, they say.

The Beta machine made a terrifying whine. The patient lay alone, abandoned, the room sealed, air-conditioned because of the heat. The dose was determined by a distant computer taking into consideration height, weight and so forth. The Beta doesn’t burn the skin like the lower-energy machines, they told him.

“No, just everything else,” he said.

It hung there, dumb, enormous, shooting beams that crushed the honeycomb of tissue like eggshells. The patient lay beneath it, inert, arranged. With the scream of the invisible it began its work. It was either this or the most extreme surgery, radical and hopeless, blood running down from the black stitches, the doomed man served up like a pork roast.

The greatness of technology was focused on him for a moment, the nurses joked with him, the young doctors called him by his first name.

“Am I dying yet?” he asked them.

“Well, not at the moment,” they said.

He was telling them about automobiles, about his three-legged cat.

“Only three legs, eh?”

“His name’s Ernie,” he said.

“Ernie, is that so?”

“Yeah, he’s black. He gets a lot of fun out of life, old Ernie. He climbs up trees and catches birds. Limps when he sees you,” he said.

It was all in his cells, the stain of tobacco, the darkness. He had to give up smoking.

“Dying’s nothing compared with that.”

Easter Sunday. The morning was beautiful, the trees filled with sun. The Verns came out, Larry and Rae. They looked like a young working couple turning up the drive on their motorcycle. She was sitting behind him, her arms around his waist. He was wearing a white Irish sweater, the wind was scattering his hair. The children ran to meet them. They loved the machine, which was lacquered and gleaming. They liked his fine beard.

“You’re just in time to help hide,” Nedra told him.

“Good. Who’s this?”

It was Viri in a hat with two ears sprouting from it, holding a basket of eggs. “Come inside and warm up,” he said. “Are you cold?”

The table was laid in the kitchen: Kulich , a sweet, Russian cake, chunks of feta , dark bread and butter, fruit. Nedra poured tea. Her nature showed itself in the generosity of her table.

“Eve is coming,” she said.

“Oh, nice,” Rae said.

“And the Paums, do you know him?”

“I don’t think so.”

“He’s an actor.”

“Oh, yes, of course.”

“Well, he may come, he may not.”

“He drinks,” Franca said.

“Ah.”

“And I would think that on a morning like this,” Nedra said, “he might have begun early.”

“That’s sad,” Rae said.

“I understand it more and more.”

Rae was dark, her face lean, intense. It was a face that appeared to have been in an accident; there was a certain contradiction between the halves. Her hair was cut short. She had an awkward smile.

They had no children, Rae and Larry. He worked for a toy company. His skin was white. He had the resignation of someone who has passed through many difficulties, the calm of an addict. He went off with Viri to hide the eggs.

“What have you been doing?” Nedra asked. She was warming her face on the cup.

“I don’t know,” Rae said. “You’re so lucky you don’t live in the city. I get up, I make breakfast, the window sills are covered with dirt, it must take me two hours a day just to keep things clean. Yesterday I wrote a letter to my mother. I suppose that took most of the day. I had to walk to the post office; I had no stamps. I went to the laundry. I didn’t cook dinner. We went out for dinner. So what am I really doing?” She smiled helplessly, showing discolored teeth.

Outside they were hiding the eggs in the faded grass, beneath leaves, under stones.

“Don’t make them too easy to find,” Viri called.

“Do you put any up in the branches?”

“Oh, absolutely. There should be some they don’t ever find.”

“Your hat is beautiful,” Larry said as they finished.

“Nedra made it.”

“I took some pictures of you in it.”

“Let me take yours.”

“Later,” Larry said. They had begun to walk back.

“At the house.”

It stood above them, bathed in the light, its gabled roof with chimneys at each end, the rain-washed gray of the slates. Like a huge barn it was stained by weather, like a ship that has crossed. Mice lived along its stone foundation, weeds grew at its ends.

The vastness of the day surrounded them. The ground was warm, the river glinting in the sun.

“It’s a beautiful day,” Larry said. He still had three or four small chocolate eggs. He turned his back to the house and gently scattered them.

“The dog will find them, don’t worry,” Viri said.

Eve had arrived. She was in the kitchen drinking a glass of wine. Her car, its fenders rusted, was parked along the edge of the driveway, wheels half in the drainage ditch.

“Hello, Viri,” she smiled.

She looked older. In a single year she had abandoned her youth. Her eyes had lines around them, her skin showed tiny pores. Still, she could rise to occasions, there were times she was beautiful, even more, unforgettable, given the hour, the right room. And if she was fading, her son was coming into the light. Along the edge of his face, Anthony already gave a hint of the man he would be. He was very good-looking, but there was a risk of even more: a beauty made imminent by a deep, unfathomable silence. He stood near Franca. Larry took their picture, two young faces at once very different yet sharing the same sort of privilege.

“He’ll be absolutely devastating,” Nedra said.

Rae agreed. She watched him through the window, drawn to him. He was too old for her to imagine as a son, he was a youth already; the characteristics which would become pride, impatience, were seeded, germinating day by day.