James Salter - Light Years

“Hello, Monica,” they called to her. They circled her and waved. She seemed not to see; she was motionless, like an old woman who has lived too long.

“Hold on,” they cried to her. “Hold tight.”

Her father was bareheaded. Viri knew him only by sight. He worked for an insurance company, driving to the city every day. “Hold on, Moni,” he told her. He began a sweeping turn. The plate swung around, tilting.

“Hold on,” they cried.

The air was crossed with voices, shouts, the scrape of skates. It was possible to go further out than anyone could remember; the ice was thick for half a mile from shore. People had lit bonfires and stood around them on the bank, warming themselves, still in their skates. A few dogs tried to run on the ice.

Nedra had not gone with them. She was in the kitchen. A fire burned. She had poured a dish of warm milk, and the puppy was drinking with brief, clumsy laps, the milk flashing in his mouth. He was tan, the color of a fox, with white underneath. His movements were hopelessly crude.

“You like it, don’t you?” she said. She touched his soft coat while he drank beneath her hand. “Hadji,” she said. “You’re going to be a big man. You’re going to bark and bark.”

Viri came in from skating, rubbing his hands. Close behind him, the children were taking off their coats in the hall.

“I’ve named him.”

“Good. What?”

“Hadji,” she said.

“Hadji.”

“Doesn’t it fit him?”

“Yes. What does it mean?”

“What does anything mean?”

Hadji was licking the empty dish. It clattered on the floor.

“We saw that little girl with one leg.”

“Monica.”

“Yes.”

“That’s so sad.”

“I can’t bear to look at her. It takes away my courage.”

“It was freezing cold.”

In the early afternoon they had chocolate and pears. The light had changed. The sun had gone behind some clouds; the day had no source. Viri played an Arab game of beans with them. In the end he let them win.

“Is there more hot chocolate?” he asked.

“I’ll make some,” Nedra said.

On the river the gulls seemed to be standing on the water. The ice was invisible. Their reflections were dark; one could see the black lines that were their legs. A canopy of music in the room, a tray with three cups, white cubes of sugar in a bowl, many books.

Their life is mysterious, it is like a forest; from far off it seems a unity, it can be comprehended, described, but closer it begins to separate, to break into light and shadow, the density blinds one. Within there is no form, only prodigious detail that reaches everywhere: exotic sounds, spills of sunlight, foliage, fallen trees, small beasts that flee at the sound of a twig-snap, insects, silence, flowers.

And all of this, dependent, closely woven, all of it is deceiving. There are really two kinds of life. There is, as Viri says, the one people believe you are living, and there is the other. It is this other which causes the trouble, this other we long to see.

“Come here, Hadji,” he says.

The dog, all knowledge already within it, all courage, all love, looks alert but uncomprehending.

“Come here,” Viri says. He reaches for it. It does not cower; it submits to being held.

“So you’re a cattle dog, are you? Where’s your tail? What happened to it? You don’t even know what a tail is, do you? You think a tail is something that hangs at one end of a cow. Now listen, Hadji, the first thing we have to talk about is hygiene. Our bathroom is in the house, yours is outside. The trees—”

“He wouldn’t know what to do with a tree, Viri.”

“You wouldn’t know what to do with a tree? The grass then, to start with. Afterwards small rocks, the corner of the building, steps, and then—then a tree. You’re going to be a huge dog, Hadji. You’re going to live with us. We’re going to take you down to the river. We’re going to take you to the sea. Oh, your teeth are sharp!”

He slept in a fruit basket, on his back like a bear. One morning there was great excitement. Franca saw it first. “His ear is up! His ear is up!” she cried.

They all ran to see it while he sat, unaware of his triumph. But it fell again in the afternoon.

He became intelligent, strong, he knew their voices. He was stoic, he was shrewd. In his dark eye one could see a phylum of creatures—horses, mice, cattle, deer. Frogboy, they called him. He lay on the floor with his legs stretched out behind. He watched them, his face resting on his paws.

LIFE IS WEATHER. LIFE IS MEALS. Lunches on a blue checked cloth on which salt has spilled. The smell of tobacco. Brie, yellow apples, wood-handled knives.

It is trips to the city, daily trips. She is like a farm woman who goes to the market. She drove to the city for everything, its streets excited her, winter streets leaking smoke. She drove along Broadway. The sidewalks were white with stains. There were only certain places where she bought food; she was loyal to them, demanding. She parked her car wherever it was convenient, in bus stops, prohibited zones; the urgency of her errands protected her. The car was a little convertible, foreign, green and, unlike other things, neglected.

January. She drove to the city early, a cold day, the pavements were frozen, the pigeons huddled in the R’S of a FURNITURE sign. The city is a cathedral of possessions; its scent is dreams. Even those who have been rejected by it cannot leave. An ancient woman was sitting on a doorstep, her face coursed by years, her hair disarranged, a hideous woman with her teeth gone. She had an animal in her lap, its eyes running, its muzzle gray. She lowered her head and sat, her cheek against the little dog’s, silent, abandoned. In the next block was a derelict walking on his knees, his face so filthy, so red it seemed covered with wounds. His clothes were rags stained with vomit. He struggled, looking down into his pants as if for blood, oblivious to those who passed. In the theater lobbies were dwarfs, fat men, financial wizards with sullen faces, women in black stockings, furs. There were rings on their aging fingers, gold in their teeth.

She went to the museum, to her husband’s office, to a shop on Lexington where she stood among the art books, tall, pensive, a woman with long legs, a graceful neck, on her forehead the faintest creases of the decade to come. In a nondescript restaurant she sat down to have a sandwich. She took off her coat. Beneath was an Irish sweater, ordinary, white, hung with necklaces of amber and colored seeds. Men alone at their tables looked at her. She ate calmly. Her mouth was wide and intelligent. She left a tip. She disappeared.

In the early winter evening she passes Columbia. The traffic is thick but moving. The food stores are crowded, the flashes of the railway above her make blue images lit like executions in the dusk. Home on the long, curving stretches, borne by other cars. By the time she had crossed the river the trees were black. She flew along, in the left lane only, above the limit, tired, happy, filled with plans. Her eyes were burning. On the seat behind her were white and orange bags from Zabar’s, on the floor were gas slips, parking tickets, mail that had never been opened, bills. The road runs along the great cliffs of the west bank; for most of the way there is not a house visible, not a store, nothing except the long galaxy of towns across the river, beginning to shine in the dark.

She turns from the highway and enters the backwaters, the pools of small life, houses she knows intimately without any idea of who is in them, parked cars she recognizes, a corner post office, a grocery that sells the city papers, the wooden fence of neighbors, the lights of home.