James Salter - Light Years

“The West Side?”

“Not just there. Anywhere else.”

He had three rooms, clean, carefully furnished, everything in its place. The music was playing: Petrouchka , Mahler. The blinds were already drawn.

To her husband she was understanding, even affectionate, though they slept as if there were an agreement between them; not so much as a foot ever touched. There was an agreement, it was marriage.

“We must speak of it like a dead person,” she told him.

All about them in the morning, entering at every window, in the very air, was the autumn light. The hard yellow apples were on the table, the sections of the newspaper.

“Nedra, it’s obviously not dead.”

“Would you like some toast?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“It is,” she said.

Mark was coming through the door. He had been up in Franca’s room; he had washed his hands, his sleeves were rolled. They sat talking of the weather, of the first, faint yellows which were now in the woods. No leaves had fallen yet. It was dry underfoot. The earth was still warm.

“You don’t have a chill from sleeping out there?” Viri asked.

“No.”

“Well, I often take a nap near that spot,” Viri admitted.

“In the daytime.”

“The grass is beautiful,” Mark said.

Nedra brought them toast and butter, figs, tea. She sat down. “It’s like a burned photograph,” she said calmly. “Some portions of it are there. The main part is gone forever.”

Viri smiled slightly. He did not reply.

“We’re talking about marriage,” she said to Mark.

“Marriage…”

“Do you ever think about it?”

He hesitated. “Yes,” he said finally.

“Probably not very much,” she said. “But once you’re married, you’ll find you think about it a great deal.”

“Good morning, Papa,” Franca said. She was still a little sleepy as she sat down beside them. They welcomed her; she was doelike, warm, her smile said everything, she sat there comfortably. Her life was her own, but it was deeply entwined with these other lives: her gnomelike father’s, with her mother’s brilliant smile. She was like a young tree demure in the sunlight, in a clearing, graceful and alone, but the moss on the earth around, the stones, buried roots, the distant groves, the forest—all of these had their influence and spoke to her still.

On the counter was a glass bowl green as the sea, filled with bleached shells like scraps from the summer. Three photographs, each of a different female eye, were pinned one above the other to the wall. Keys hung in an old gilt frame. There were drawings of birds, beautiful onyx eggs, a framed post card from Gaudí to a man named Francisco Aron.

They were talking about the day ahead as if they had only happiness in common. This gentle hour, this comfortable room, this death. For everything, in fact, every plate and object, utensil, bowl, illustrated what did not exist; they were fragments borne forward from the past, shards of a vanished whole.

We live untruth amid evidence of untruth. How does it accumulate, how does it occur? When Viri mentioned André, whose presence was just beginning to be felt, who did not yet leave telephone messages or sit at their table, Nedra calmly replied that she found him interesting.

They were alone in the kitchen. Autumn filled the air.

“Just how interesting?”

“Oh, Viri, you know.”

“As interesting as Jivan?”

“No,” she said. “To be honest, no.”

“I wish I didn’t find it so disturbing.”

“It’s not that important,” she said.

“These things… I’m sure you realize these things, done openly…”

“Yes?”

“…can have a profound effect upon children.”

“Well, I’ve thought about that,” she admitted.

“You certainly haven’t done anything about it.”

“I’ve done quite a lot.”

“Is that meant to be funny?” he cried. He got up abruptly, his face white, and went into the next room. She could hear him dialing the telephone.

“Viri,” she said through the doorway, “but isn’t it better to be someone who follows her true life and is happy and generous, than an embittered woman who is loyal? Isn’t that so?”

He did not answer.

“Viri?”

“What?” he said. “I’m afraid it makes me ill.”

“It all evens out in the end, really.”

“Does it?”

“It doesn’t make that much difference,” she said.

DANNY FELL BY CHANCE, AS A BIRD to a cat.

It was winter. She was with a friend. They met Juan Prisant on the street near the Filmore. He wore a rough white sweater, nothing more. It was cold. The teeth in his bearded mouth were perfect; they were like the soft hands that betray fleeing aristocrats. He was twenty-three. From the first instant she was ready to forget her studies, her dog, her home. He paid no attention to her in that tribute which the stricken have learned to expect. She was too young, she knew, too middle-class; she was not interesting enough for him. She was wearing a coat she hated. She stared at the sidewalk and from time to time dared a glance to reaffirm a face that dazed her with its power. No matter what she did, she could not seem to remember it, she could not stare at it long, like the sun. He radiated an energy which terrified her and drove all other thoughts from her mind.

“Who is that?” she asked afterwards.

“A friend of a friend.”

“What does he do?” Her questions were helpless, she was ashamed of them.

He lived on Fulton Street. At the first chance she leafed feverishly through the telephone book: there was his name. Her heart was jumping wildly, she could not believe her luck. He was no closer, but she had not lost him, she knew where he was.

Love must wait; it must break one’s bones. She did not see him, she could not imagine any coincidence by which it would happen. Finally—there was no other way—on a pretext she called. His voice was puzzled, cold.

“We met near the Filmore,” she said awkwardly.

“Oh, yeah. You have a purple coat.”

She rushed to denounce it. She wondered, she was going to be in his neighborhood that day, could she…

“Yeah, all right.”

She had never known a happier moment in her life.

They met at a place on the corner, a long, ancient room such as once existed everywhere in the city, its tile floor worn down, the bar deserted. There was now a kitchen in back. The air smelled of soup. He was sitting at a table.

“Still the same coat,” he said.

She nodded. The hateful coat.

“You want anything?” he asked. “Some soup?”

No. She could not eat, like a dog that has been sold.

“So what do you do? You work?” he asked.

“I’m going to school.”

“What for?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“Come on.”

An afternoon in winter, bright and cold. They crossed a wide street, almost a square, with gulls standing in the middle of it. There were gulls on roof peaks white from droppings.

They were walking fast and then running. She tried to keep up. They were passing the dirty fronts of commercial shops, cutting through open lots where he found the timbers for his work, running, he was pulling her across the rubble. The ground was strewn with bricks; she stumbled and fell. The heel of her shoe was broken.

“It’s nothing,” she said. She held the broken piece in her hand.

He ran on, reaching back for her. She hobbled after him. He took her into an entrance filled with broken glass; the doors were empty, a ruined mattress was lying there, bottles beside it. Limping, she climbed the stairs.

He lived in a huge room, a warehouse, the windows filthy, the floor splintered wood. Someone else was already there, standing near the stove.