James Salter - Light Years

“The flies—listen to this—the flies had been drowned in the wine, they were at the bottom of the bottle with a little sediment, the dirt that tells you things are real. That’s what’s missing in American life, the sediment. Anyway, Franklin saw these little drowned flies, they were fruit flies, they’re always hovering over peaches and pears, and he put them on a plate in the sunlight to let them dry. You know what happened?”

“No.”

“They came back to life.”

“How could they?”

“I told you it was incredible. This was wine that had come all the way from France. It was at least a year old. You can say that’s the power of French wine, but the story is true. So that’s my plan. If it works for flies, why not for primates?”

“Well…”

“Well what?”

“That’s been tried many times,” she said.

At dinner they had a good table, he was clearly at home, there were flowers, the wineglasses were large. The young headwaiter in his high collar and striped pants came over to talk.

“How are you, Mr. Pall?” he said.

“Bring us a bottle of Dole,” Pall told him.

A fire crackling. Dry Swiss wine. It disappeared rapidly into the glasses.

“So what are your plans?” he asked. “You’re not staying in Davos? You should come here. It’s very comfortable. I’ll talk to the owner; I’ll see if I can get you a room.”

“I love the restaurant.”

“Consider it done. This is the place for you. Do you like the wine?”

“It’s delicious.”

“You don’t drink very much,” he said. “You have a great economy of act. I admire that. Tell me about your life.”

“Which one?”

“You have many, eh?”

“Only two,” she said.

“Are you going to spend the winter here?”

“I don’t know. That depends.”

“Naturally,” Pall said. He drank some wine. He had ordered dinner for them without looking at the menu. “Naturally. Well, I have friends here you should meet. I used to have a lot of them, but during the divorce you split everything, and my wife took half of them when she left—some of the best ones, unfortunately. They were really hers, anyway. I always liked her friends. That was one of the problems.” He laughed. “One or two of them I liked a little too much.”

He ordered more wine.

“The best friend I ever had—you never heard of him—was a writer named Gordon Eddy. You know him?”

“No.”

“I didn’t think so. Wonderful guy.”

There were beads of saliva in the corners of his mouth. His movements were loose, his hands waved freely. Solid, generous, practical, he was all hull; he had no keel. The rudder was small, the compass drifting.

“He was the friend of my life. You know, you only have one friend like that, there can’t be two. He had no money—I’m talking about a certain period after the war. He was living with us. I’d give him some money and he’d go right down and lose it at the casino. He’d bring back girls who’d stay for a day or two. Naturally, my wife didn’t like him: the girls, and he’d leave cigarette ashes around and come downstairs with his fly open. What she remembers most about France, she says, is Gordon’s fly being open. So finally she said either he went or she did. I should have said, All right, you. I knew nothing then.”

The dinner was served on large, warm plates: sliced steak and rosti , raspberries in cream for dessert. He was emptying the second bottle of wine. Outside it was cold, the small streets dark, the snow creaking underfoot. His eyes were glazed. He was like a beaten boxer waiting in his corner. He could still smile and speak, his embrace of life was not loosened, but he was spent. When people stopped to talk to him, he did not rise, he could not, but he remembered Nedra’s name.

“Let’s have a brandy,” he said. He called to the waitress. “Rémy Martin. Zwei . Rémy Martin is good,” he advised Nedra. “Martell is good, but I know Martell. I mean personally. He’s rich enough as it is.”

“You seem to know a lot of people. What do you do?”

“I’m an owner. I used to be in banking, but I retired. Now I’m having a little fun. I don’t have any responsibilities. I can do everything by telephone. I’ve gotten rid of my problems.”

“Such as?”

“Such as everything,” he said. “I’m thinking of going to India.”

“I’d love to go to India. I’ve studied with Indians.”

“I’d be willing to bet you don’t know anything about it.”

“About India?”

“Have you ever been there?”

“No.”

“Well, that’s the trouble,” he said. “You study, but India is something else.”

“There’s probably more than one India.”

“More than one India… no, there’s only one. There’s only one Chesa, one Nedra, and one Harry Pall. I wish there was another one, with two livers.”

“Have you been to Tunisia?”

“Don’t ever have anything to do with Arabs.”

“Why?”

“Just believe me. Believe me,” he murmured. “You don’t have to worry, you’re not that young, they don’t even care how young you are. They’re a sick people.”

“Desperately poor.”

“They’re not so poor. I was poor. Look, I don’t care what you do, they’ve always been like that, they’re not going to change. You can give them schools, teachers, books, but how do you keep them from eating the pages?”

He had the bill brought to him and signed it in a scrawled, illegible hand. “Carlo,” he called.

“Yes, Mr. Pall.”

“Carlo,” he rose to his feet, “will you arrange for Mrs…. Berland,” he finally remembered, “to be taken to Davos.” He turned to her. “We’ll meet tomorrow on top,” he said, “for lunch. I’m too drunk at the moment to entertain you further.”

His eye fell on the glass of brandy. He drank it down as if it were medicine. It seemed to revive him, a sudden, false wave of composure came over him.

“Nedra, good night,” he said very clearly and left the room in a firm, deeply preoccupied walk, as if rehearsing. He fell on the entrance steps.

“Shall I call you a taxi?” the headwaiter asked her.

“In a few minutes,” she said.

She felt confident, a kind of pagan happiness. She was an elegant being again, alone, admired. She had a drink at the bar with friends of his. She was to meet many others. It was the opening of the triumph to which her bare room in the Bellevue entitled her, as a schoolroom entitles one to dazzling encounters, to nights of love.

FRANCA WORKED AT A PUBLISHER’S, it was a summer job. She answered the telephone and said, “Miss Habeeb’s office.”

She typed and took messages. People came to see her—that is to say, employees, boys in the mail room, young editors passing by. She was the girl for whom, in a sense, the whole house suddenly existed. She was twenty. She had long, dark hair which she parted in the middle and, as is sometimes the case with breath-taking women, certain faintly male characteristics. How often one is stunned by a girl who runs swiftly, a back slim as a farmboy’s or a boyish arm. In her case it was straight, dark brows and hands like her mother’s—long, useful, pale. Her face was clear, one could almost say radiant. She was not like the others. She smiled, she made friends, in the evening she disappeared. The sacred is always remote.

Outside the streets were burning, the air heavy as planks. A city without a tree, without a green fountain, even the rivers were invisible from within it, even the sky. She found it thrilling, its crowds, its voices, the heads that turned as she passed. She talked to the writers who came to the office and brought them tea. Nile was one of these.