James Salter - Light Years

She had wept in the garden, in the cold. They had found a smooth gray stone and started to carve it, but it was never finished; it was there still, hidden in weeds. LAU…

“Your sister—what’s her name again?”

“She’s changed her name.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, her name is Danny, but she’s changed it to Karen.”

“Karen?”

“It’s a long story. She’s with someone who thinks that should be her name.”

“I see.”

“Well…” Franca shrugged. “That’s not the only thing. That’s minor. She pierced her ears for him.”

“I see.”

“Whatever he says…”

Nile nodded as if he understood. He was dazzled by this glimpse of immolation, the acts of this sister stunned him. He could not imagine them, he was bewildered, as if by light. The more powerful the need to know, the more difficult to ask. He wanted to say something. In rooms above his head, hallways, by curtained windows, these girls had passed their adolescence. Questions about it drenched him; whatever he knew was useless compared to this.

“I see,” he murmured.

DEAD FLIES ON THE SILLS OF sunny windows, weeds along the pathway, the kitchen empty. The house was melancholy, deceiving; it was like a cathedral where, amid the serenity, something is false, the saints are made of florist’s wax, the organ has been gutted.

Viri did not have the spirit to do anything about it. He lived in it helplessly as we live in our bodies when we are older. Alma still came three times a week to clean and dust. He left her forty dollars in an envelope each Friday, but seldom saw her. It was as if something terrible—blindness or the loss of a limb, something without recourse—had happened. No amount of sympathy could overcome it, no distraction make it fade.

At the theater one night he saw a revival of Ibsen’s The Master Builder . The ceiling lights faded, the stage poured forth its spell. It was like an accusation. Suddenly his life, an architect’s life as in the play, seemed exposed. He was ashamed at his smallness, his grayness, his resignation. When on the stage, Solness first talked to his mistress and bookkeeper, when he first whispered to her, Viri felt the blood leave his face, felt people staring as if he had given an involuntary cry.

When Solness, in that first scene alone with her at last, called her fiercely and she answered, frightened, ‘Yes?’ When he said, ‘Come here!’ And she came. He said, ‘Closer!’ And she obeyed, asking, ‘What do you want of me?’ Viri was devastated; his heart shattered, for a moment it gave way.

And when Solness said—all of this at the beginning before there was a chance to be prepared for it, there was no way to have been prepared—‘I can’t be without you, do you understand? I’ve got to have you close to me every day.’ And, trembling, she moaned, ‘Oh, God! God!’ And sank down murmuring how good he was to her, how unbelievably good. Her name—he could not believe it—lay printed in his lap: Kaja.

That was only the beginning. As it went on, as Viri sat through acts he slowly lost his power to resist, the play became that thing most dangerous of all: an unforgettable example, unforgettable and false. Caught by its strength, by phrases that pierced him like arrows, by a story the end of which was already written, the lines stored in the actors’ brains in the exact order in which they were to come forth—and yet he could never dare to try and imagine them—he was like a child, a young boy overhearing behind a door a voice he was not meant to hear, a statement that would crush him for life.

He looked at the other faces, those at an angle in front of him, faces uplifted, lit by the performance. He was so completely helpless, so unable to answer, to argue, to even imagine a world that did not move subject to the energy he saw before him, that it seemed he was free; he could listen, observe, it needed no effort. He traveled endlessly, a hundred times farther than the play, he lived his own life backwards and forwards, he lived their lives, he entered into fantasy with women sitting three rows away.

Afterwards, with everyone leaving, he stood at the entrance, intelligent, composed, as the audience vanished rapidly, fading into the night. It seemed that truth was swimming by in all these people with destinations, these men and women wed to each other, bound up in tedium and ordinary trials. He had always been one of them, though he denied it; now he was one no longer.

He walked along streets half empty, lit by the neon of Chinese restaurants, the doors of cheap hotels. He was thinking of his wife, of where she was. He was not yet free of her, of her approval, her whims. Suddenly, twenty paces ahead of him, he saw his father. For a moment he could not believe it. They were walking in the same direction. He looked more closely: the gait, the shape of the head, yes, they were unmistakable. Reality fell away in slabs, in great segments reaching toward the center. An old man walking along, his mouth a little open, his eye watery and slow. They were coming to a corner, Viri would see him plainly, his heart began to race, he did not want to, he was afraid. It was as if a coffin lid were about to be opened and a man more ill than ever brought forth, the lines black at the corners of his mouth, breath reeking of cigars. He would need medicine and care. He’s going to ask me for money, Viri thought desperately. He would have that gray cast to his cheeks, that sadness of old men who have not shaved. Embraces of those who have already parted, unbearable agonies repeated. For God’s sake, Papa, he thought. His mind, loosened by the heart cries of Ibsen, was alive but powerless, like an oyster cut from the shell. Come home, he thought, come home and die!

He stared at the stranger beneath the streetlight, a man with a face marked by the city, unhealthy, dark with greed. For a moment they were like men in a railway station, alone on the platform. They examined each other coldly and turned away. He stood on the corner as the old man walked on, glancing back once, suspicious. He looked nothing like Isaac Berland. The empty storefronts devoured him, the roaring buses, the night.

It was late when he reached the house. Hadji was barking in the kitchen, he was so old it sounded like a saw.

The house had changed; he had a sudden sensation of it at the door. He knew this house, it was as if someone were hiding in it, an intruder pressed flat against the wall—no, his imagination was overstimulated. As he went from room to room—his dog losing interest meanwhile and lying down, he himself calm, resigned, accepting the peril—he gradually recognized it was empty.

“Nedra!” he began calling. “Nedra!” He ran as he shouted, frantically, as if there were an urgent telephone call. “Nedra!”

He was trembling, undone. He turned on the lights as he ran, and in the hallway unexpectedly came across his sleepy daughter who mumbled in confusion, “What is it, Papa? What’s wrong?”

“Oh, God,” he cried.

In the kitchen she made him tea. She was barefoot in her robe, her face still thick with sleep. The face, he noticed as he sat gratefully at the table, a bit foolish, a bit ashamed, was not as fine as Franca’s. It was more human, not so mysterious; it might have belonged to a serving girl or a young nurse. And without make-up it seemed even more truthful, more revealing, like the palm of a hand. He sat in the kitchen and his daughter made him tea. This simple act that was like love, in which no insincerity could ever be concealed, touched him deeply. In bewilderment he realized it was like some worn piece of furniture in a refuge, it might be nothing to someone else but in these poor times it was everything, it was all he had.