James Salter - Light Years

Viri was left in the house. Every object, even those which had been hers, which he never touched, seemed to share his loss. He was suddenly parted from his life. That presence, loving or not, which fills the emptiness of rooms, mildens them, makes them light—that presence was gone. The simple greed that makes one cling to a woman left him suddenly desperate, stunned. A fatal space had opened, like that between a liner and the dock which is suddenly too wide to leap; everything is still present, visible, but it cannot be regained.

“Perhaps we should go out to dinner,” he said to Danny.

They hardly spoke. They ate in silence, like travelers. When they returned to the house, it stood lighted and empty like some hotel in the outskirts, open but lost.

“Hello, Hadji,” he said. “We got you something good to eat. Poor old Hadji, your mother’s gone.”

He held the dog in his arms. The gray muzzle lay against his chest, the stiffened legs hung down. Danny was cutting into scraps the steak they had brought back.

“Don’t worry, Hadji,” Viri said. “We’ll take care of you. We’ll still have fires. When it snows we’ll go down to the river.”

“Here, Papa.” She handed him the dish. She was crying. “Poor Danny.”

“I’m all right. I’m just not used to it yet.”

“No, of course not.”

“I’m going upstairs.”

“I’ll light a fire,” he said. “Perhaps you could come down in a while.”

“Yes, perhaps,” she said. She was like her mother, provisional, discreet. She had a fuller figure than Nedra and a somewhat cruel mouth, the lips soft and self-indulgent, the smile irresistible, sly. Her face had the sullen resignation of girls who are studying subjects they see no use for, girls betrayed by circumstance, forced to work on Sundays, girls in foreign brothels. It was a face one could adore.

THAT WINTER NEDRA WAS IN Davos, which she had been mistakenly told she would find an interesting town. It was oppressive even when covered with snow. The sun was dazzling, however. The air, clear as spring water, filled her room.

At lunch one day she was introduced to a man named Harry Pall.

“Where do you live, in Paris?” he asked her.

“I haven’t decided yet.”

“You look like Paris,” he said. He poured wine generously into his glass, then gestured with the bottle toward hers. “I’d love some,” she said.

His hair was curly, his eyes a fading blue. He was fifty, with a large torso and a face coming apart from age like wet paper. He dominated the table with his power and voice, and yet there was something in him that touched her immediately. It was the resemblance to Arnaud. He was like some battered survivor of the same family, the older brother who would die without pain, convivial, still joking, leaving a hundred dollars for the nurse. His hands were paws. He was the last of the bears, or so it seemed. Wine, stories, friends; he was a man lying fully clothed in the stream of days.

“I don’t want to leave anything,” he confessed. To his ex-wife, definitely not. “She has everything, anyway, except my lawyer’s home telephone number.” To his son, that was different. He would leave his son some mistresses, “Like Dumas did.” He laughed. “You’re sure you’re not from Paris?”

“Why do you say Paris?”

“You’re tall, like a Dior model.”

“No.”

“An ex-Dior model. There’s a time in life when everything becomes ex—ex-athlete, ex-president, expatriate, x-ray.” The food was spilling from his fork. He found it again. He ate steadily. “Where are you staying?”

She named the hotel.

“In Davos?” he exclaimed. “Terrible town. You know it’s the setting for The Magic Mountain . What are your plans for dinner? I’ll take you to the Chesa, it’s my favorite place in Europe. You know the Chesa? I’ll come by for you at seven.”

He rose abruptly, settling the bill amid cries from friends which he ignored, waved and walked out. She saw him putting on his skis, his face red from the effort. He had an extraordinary face, a face on which everything was written, lined, coarse, like the bark of a tree. The glass he had been drinking from was empty, his napkin was thrown to the floor. When she looked again he was gone.

She returned to her hotel in the late afternoon. There were no letters. A subdued race of people was leafing through the Zurich and south German papers. She asked for tea to be sent to her room. She took a hot bath. The chill of the day which was part of its glory began to leave her in feverish waves, and a sense of well-being, of bodily delight replaced it. Afterwards, as after all deep pleasure, she was a bit undone. It was evening. The last, cold light had gone. A vague disorientation came over her, a feeling of nonexistence. Swallows were screaming over the stained roofs of Rome. The sea was crashing at Amagansett on a beach gray as slate. She was pulled by terrestrial forces to places far away. She could not seem to summon herself into the present, into an hour as empty as that before a storm.

The room had the bareness of tables in closed restaurants. It was an invalid’s room, the rugs worn, cold. It was a room in which objects began, in isolation, to radiate an absurdity. A book, a spoon, a toothbrush seemed as strange as a sofa in the snow. She had dressed this barren space with her clothes, with lipsticks, sunglasses, belts, maps of the ski lifts, but nothing had dented the coldness. Only in the first, clear light of early morning did she feel secure, or when it stormed.

She prepared her eyes in the mirror. She examined herself, turning her head slowly from side to side. She did not want to grow old. She was reading Madame de Staël. The courage to live when the best days were past. Yes, it was there, but still she could not think of it without confusion. The rooms in hotels when one is alone, when the telephone is silent and voices from the street are like gusts of music—these were things she had already decided she would not endure. She had her teeth still, she had her eyes. Drink, it’s the last of it, she thought.

She stepped back. How to re-create that tall young woman whose laugh turned people’s heads, whose dazzling smile fell on gatherings like money on restaurant tables, snow on country houses, morning at sea? She took up her implements, eye pencil, cucumber cream, lipstick the color of isinglass… Finally she was satisfied. In a certain light, with the right background, the right clothes, a beautiful coat… yes, and she had her smile, it was all that was left from the early days, it was hers, she would have it always, the way one always remembers how to swim.

He arrived at the door unexpectedly with a bottle of champagne. “I’ve had this on ice for weeks,” he said, “waiting for an occasion.”

The champagne poured over his hand when he opened it and fell to the floor in long, foaming gouts. He paid no attention. He smelled the glasses in the bathroom, they were clean.

“You’re married,” he announced.

“No.”

“You’ve been married.” He handed her a glass. “I can see it. Women become dry if they live alone. I don’t think it needs explaining. It’s demonstrable. Even if it’s not a good marriage, it keeps them from dehydrating. They’re like the fruit flies in Franklin’s wine. You know that story? Incredible. One of the great stories of all time—I mean, even if you know it, it’s still amazing, it never disappoints you, it’s like a trick. And I believe Franklin; he was our last, great, honest man. Well, Walt Whitman, maybe. No, forget about Whitman.”

He took a large swallow of champagne.

“This is like youth,” he said. “Nothing is sweeter, even though I hardly remember it. Well, I remember some things. Certain houses people lived in. Latin class. I don’t think they even have Latin classes any more. It’s all like a suit that’s been pressed too much, nothing left but the spots.