James Salter - Light Years

“You’re losing it at the office.”

“Everywhere,” he said.

She was sitting in the armchair covered in white, her favorite chair—his, too; one or the other was always sitting in it, the light was good for reading, the table was piled with new books.

“Oh, God,” she sighed, “we’re in the grocery store of life. We sit here at night, we eat, we pay bills. I want to go to Europe. I want to go on a tour. I want to see Wren’s cathedrals, the great buildings, the squares. I want to see France.”

“Italy.”

“Yes, Italy. When we’re there, we’ll see everything.”

“We couldn’t go until spring,” Viri said.

“I want to go this spring.”

The thoughts of travel thrilled him too. To wake in London, the sunlight falling, black cabs queued outside the hotels, four seasons in the air.

“I want to read about it first. A good book on architecture,” she said.

“Pevsner.”

“Who is that?”

“He’s a German. He’s one of those Europeans who become strangely at home in England—after all, it is the civilized country—and live their entire lives there. He’s one of the great authorities.”

“I’d like to go by boat.”

The winter night embraced the house. Hadji, who was growing old, lay against a sofa, his legs stretched out. Nedra was borne by a dream, by the excitement of discovery. “I’m going to have some ouzo,” she said.

She poured two glasses from a bottle Jivan had brought at Christmas. She looked like a woman for whom travel to Europe was an ordinary act: her ease, her long neck from which there hung strings of Azuma beads, putty, blue and tan, the bottle in her hand.

“I didn’t know we had any ouzo,” he said.

“This little bit.”

“Do you know how Mahler died?” Viri said. “It was in a thunderstorm. He’d been very sick, he was in a coma. And then at midnight there came a tremendous storm, and he vanished into it, almost literally—his breath, his soul, everything.”

“That’s fantastic.”

“The bells were tolling. Alma lay in bed with his photograph, talking to it.”

“That’s exactly like her. How did you know all that?”

“I was reading ahead in your book.”

As they stood on the corner near Bloomingdale’s, the crowd passing, brushing against them, the buses roaring by, she said to Eve, “It’s finished,” by which she meant everything which had nourished her, most of all the city beyond the far margins of which she had found refuge, still subject to its pull, still beneath a sky one end of which glowed from its light.

Passing through the doors of the store she looked at those going in with her, those leaving, women buying at the handbag counters ahead. The real question, she thought, is, Am I one of these people? Am I going to become one, grotesque, embittered, intent upon their problems, women in strange sunglasses, old men without ties? Would she have stained fingers like her father? Would her teeth turn dark?

They were looking at wineglasses. Everything fine or graceful came from Belgium or France. She read the prices, turning them upside down. Thirty-eight dollars a dozen. Forty-four.

“These are beautiful,” Eve said.

“I think these are better.”

“Sixty dollars a dozen. What will you use them for?”

“You always need wineglasses.”

“Aren’t you afraid they’ll break?”

“The only thing I’m afraid of are the words ‘ordinary life,’ ” Nedra said.

They were sitting at Eve’s when Neil arrived. He had come to visit his son. The room was too small for three people. It had a low ceiling, a little fireplace covered by glass. The whole house was small. It was a house for a writer and a cat, off the street at the end of a private alley, a disciplined writer, probably homosexual, who occasionally had a friend sleep over.

“Too bad about Arnaud,” Neil said.

“It’s horrible.”

“Eve says he… may never talk right again,” he said to the water glass. He had a thin mouth, the words leaked out.

“They don’t know.”

“Would you like some tea?” Eve asked.

“Let me make it,” Nedra said, rising quickly to her feet. She disappeared into the kitchen.

“Rotten weather, isn’t it?” Neil murmured after a pause.

“Yes.”

“It’s a lot colder than… last winter,” he said.

“I guess it is.”

“Something to do with the… earth’s orbit… I don’t know. We’re supposed to be entering a new ice age.”

“Not another one,” she said.

THE SEASONS BECAME HER SHELTER, her raiment. She bent to them, she was like the earth, she ripened, grew sere, in the winter she wrapped herself in a long sheepskin coat. She had time to waste, she cooked, made flowers, she saw her daughter stricken by a young man.

His name was Mark. He made beautiful line drawings, without shadow, without flaw, like the Vollards of Picasso. He resembled them; he was lean, his legs were long, his hair faded brown. He came in the afternoons, they sat in her room for hours with the door closed, sometimes he stayed for dinner.

“I like him,” Nedra said. “He isn’t callow.”

Afterwards Franca looked up the word. Destitute of feathers, it said.

“She likes you. She says you’re feathered.”

“I’m what?”

“Like a bird,” she said.

Franca he was in love with, but Nedra he revered. Their world had a mysterious pull. It was more vivid, more passionate than other worlds. To be with them was like being in a boat, they floated along their own course. They invented their life.

The three of them met in the Russian Tea Room. The headwaiter knew Nedra; they were given one of the booths near the bar. It was one she liked. Nureyev had once sat nearby. “At that table there,” she said.

“All alone?”

“No. Have you ever seen him?” she said. “He’s the most beautiful man on earth. You simply can’t believe it. When he got up to leave, he went over to the mirror and buttoned his coat, tied the belt. The waiters were watching, they were standing in adoration, like schoolgirls.”

“He comes from a little town, isn’t that right?” Franca said. “They knew he was very talented. They thought he should go to Moscow to school, but he was too poor to ride the train. He waited six years to be able to buy a ticket.”

“I don’t know if it’s true,” Nedra said, “but it fits him. How old are you, Mark?”

“Nineteen,” he said.

She knew what that meant, what acts were burning within him, what discoveries were ordained. He had been to Italy on a year of exchange and inspired in Franca a desire to do the same. Imagine a boy of eighteen landing in Southampton. He looked at a map and saw that Salisbury was not far. Salisbury, he suddenly thought, the painting of its cathedral by Constable came to his mind, a painting he knew and admired, and here was the name on a map. He was overwhelmed by the coincidence, as if the one word he knew in a foreign language had brought him success. He took the train, he had a compartment all to himself, he was delighted, the countryside was ravishing, he was alone, traveling the world, and then, across a valley, the cathedral appeared. It was late afternoon, the sun was falling upon it. He was so deeply moved he applauded, he said.

Viri arrived and sat down. He was urbane; in that room, at that hour, he seemed the age one longs to be, the age of accomplishments, of acceptance, the age we never achieve. He saw before him his wife and a young couple. Franca was surely a woman, he knew it suddenly. He had somehow missed the moment it had happened, but the fact was clear to him. Her real face had emerged from the young, sympathetic face it had been and in an hour become more passionate, mortal. It was a face he was in awe of. He heard her voice saying, “Yeah, yeah,” eagerly in response to Mark, the years of her girlhood vanished before his eyes. She would take off her clothes, live in Mexico, find life.