James Salter - Light Years

She saw herself in the mirror. The light was mild. A mole near her jaw had darkened. The lines in her face were tentative no longer. There was no question, she looked older, the age of one who is admired but not loved. She had made the pilgrimage through vanity, the pages of magazines, through envy itself to a vaster, more tranquil world. Like a traveler, there was much she could tell, there was much that could never be told.

Young women liked to talk to her, to be in her presence. They were able to confess to her. She was at ease. There was one who worked with Franca, Mati, whose husband had left her, who acted as if she had already drowned herself. One afternoon Nedra showed her how to paint her eyes. In an hour, just as Kasine was said to have changed an actress, she transformed a plain, defeated face into a kind of Nefertiti able to smile.

She could see the lives of such young women clearly, things invisible to them or hidden. And one day there came to her a Japanese girl, small-boned, mysterious, a girl born in St. Louis but indelibly foreign, completely of another place. It was like watching an exotic animal that eats in its own way, that has its own stride. Her name was Nichi. She came often, sometimes she stayed for two or three days. Her s’s were soft, with an Oriental secrecy. She was graceful, like a cat, she could walk on plates without making a sound. She had lived with a doctor for five years.

“But that’s over,” she said. “A psychiatrist, he had no practice, he was in research. A very intelligent man, brilliant.”

“But you never married.”

“No. I slowly realized that… the answer isn’t in psychiatry. You know, they’re strange, they have very strange ideas. I don’t even want to tell you. He’ll be a famous man,” she said. “He’s writing a book. He’s worked on it for a long time. It’s about unconventional healing. Of course, it has to do with the mind, the power of thought. You know, there are men who can perform what we think of as miracles. There was a famous one in Brazil; we went to see him. He was a clerk in a hospital, but after work he saw patients, they came from all over, from hundreds of miles away. He even operated on them without anesthetic. They didn’t even bleed. It’s the truth. We made a film of it.”

“I’ve never heard of him.”

“Oh, the government suppresses everything,” she said. She was intense, certain. “The doctors try to deny him.”

“But how does he work? What does he say to a patient?”

“Well, I don’t speak Spanish, but he asks them: What’s wrong? Where does it hurt? He touches them, like a blind man touches all over, and then he stops and he says: It’s here.”

“Incredible.”

“Then he cuts, with an ordinary knife.”

“He sterilizes it?”

“A kitchen knife. I’ve seen it.”

They hypnotized one another with talk and admiration. The hours passed slowly, hours when the city sank into afternoon, hours that were theirs alone. Nedra had a taste for the East given to her, perhaps, by Jivan, and now, in the presence of this slim girl who spoke of having nine senses, who complained that she had no breasts, she found herself drawn to it once more. Nichi had small teeth, terrible teeth, she swore, she had just paid her dentist two hundred dollars and even that was a special price.

“I told him that when I was under the gas, he could do what he liked.”

“And?”

“I’m not sure.”

She was perfectly shaped. She was, as they say so often, like a doll. Her fingers were thin, her toes bony as the feet of a sparrow. In her own apartment she burned incense; her clothes had a faint scent of it. She had a master’s degree in psychology, but aside from her studies had read nothing. Nedra mentioned Ouspensky. No, she had never heard of him. She had never read Proust, Pavese, Lawrence Durrell.

“What did they write?” she said.

“And Tolstoy?”

“Tolstoy. I think I’ve read some Tolstoy.”

They met in the garden of the Modern Art, the city muted beyond its walls. They had lunch, they talked. Beneath the gleaming black hair burning in the sun, behind the intense eyes, for a moment Nedra saw something which touched her deeply—that rare thing, the idea of a friend one makes when the heart has already begun to close.

She was like a fruit tree, she thought to herself, past bearing but still strong, like the trees in the sloping orchard of Marcel-Maas long ago. His name had been in the paper recently. He had had an important show, there were articles about him. He was being conceded at last, all he had dreamed and wanted, the things he could not say, the friends he had never had, the acclaim—all of it was laid now at the foot of canvases he had painted. He was safe at last. He existed, he could not disappear. Even his ex-wife was saved by this. She was part of it, she had made her exit before the final act, but she would have it to talk about for as long as she lived—at dinners, in restaurants, in the great, empty rooms of the barn, if she lived there still.

The young women came to her. Telephone calls, conversations with friends, an occasional letter from Viri. She realized that life consisted of these pebbles. One has to submit to them, she told Nichi. “… walk on them,” she said, “bruise one’s feet.”

“What do you mean by pebbles? I think I know.”

“…lie on them, exhausted. Do you know the way your cheek is warmed by the sun they have gathered?”

“Yes.”

“Let me read your palm,” Nedra said.

The hand was narrow, the lines surprisingly deep. It seemed naked, this palm, like that of an older woman. She traced the chief lines. She felt those flat eyes glancing up at her own face with its leanness, its intelligence, its immobility, in fascination and belief, but she acknowledged nothing.

“Your hand is halfway between emotion and intellect,” she said, “divided between them. You are able to see yourself coldly, even in periods when you are ruled by emotion, but at the same time you are a romantic, you would like to give yourself completely, without thinking. Your intellect is strong.”

“It’s the emotion I’m worried about.”

“That there isn’t enough?”

“Yes.”

“There’s enough. There’s more than enough. Oh, yes.”

They were both looking in the small, bare palm.

“But you know that already,” Nedra murmured. She was creating truth, devising it. The brightness of plants and sunlight was behind her, the air was filled with panels of light in which floated a luminous dust. She did not answer, as she might have, “No, the truth is, you are a woman who will never be satisfied. You will search, but you will never find it.”

She was close to things which were too powerful. She sensed an ascendancy over this willing girl, she could easily go too far. Suddenly she understood how the prick of a pin in a doll could kill.

She told this to Eve later as if it were an accident that had been averted.

“Well, what did you do?”

“I took her to lunch at L’Étoile.”

“L’Étoile?”

“I felt guilty,” Nedra said. “Of course, I didn’t feel quite so guilty when I got the bill. It was thirty dollars.”

“What did you eat?”

“I don’t know what makes me spend money like that. I’ve struggled against it.”

“Occasionally.”

Nedra smiled. Her teeth were still white, the teeth of a woman well cared for. “No, I’ve tried. For some reason, it’s difficult for me. I know I’m going to die in poverty…”

“Never.”

“… without a cent. Having sold everything—jewels, clothes. They’ll be coming to take away the last bits of furniture.”

“It’s impossible to imagine.”

“Not for me,” Nedra said.