James Salter - Light Years

In the summer they went to Amagansett. Wooden houses. Blue, blue days. Summer is the noontime of devoted families. It is the hour of silence when the only sound is sea birds. The shutters are closed, the voices quiet. Occasionally the ring of a fork.

Pure, empty days. The sea is silver, rough as bark. Hadji has dug a hollow in which he lies, eyes narrowed, bits of sand stuck to his mouth. He always faces the sea. Franca has a black tank suit. Her limbs are shining and strong. She is afraid of the waves. Danny is more courageous. She goes out in the surf with her father; they scream and ride on their bellies. Franca joins them. The dog is barking on the shore.

That whistle of the sea in the long afternoon, the great beds of brown foam, of kelp brought up by the storms, the mussels, the whitened boards. To the west it is steaming, a long, brilliant stretch as if in rain. In the dunes Franca has found the dry husk of a beetle. She brings it, quivering in her hand, to Viri. It has a kind of single horn.

“Look, Papa.”

“It’s a rhinoceros beetle,” he tells her.

“Mama!” she cries. “Look! A rhinoceros beetle!”

She is nine. Danny is seven. These years are endless, but they cannot be remembered.

Viri sleeps in the sun. He is tan, his fingernails are bleached. On Mondays he goes to the city on the train and returns on Thursday night. He is shuttling between one happiness and another. He has a new secretary. They work together in a kind of excitement, as if there were nothing else in their lives. The isolation and indifference of the city in summer, like a long vacation, like a voyage, casts its spell on them. He cannot get over her niceness, the beauty of her name: Kaya Doutreau.

Near him on the beach lie two young women on their stomachs. Beyond them, scattered, are families, clothing, men sitting alone. It’s late. The sea is empty. Down near its dying edge walk a bearded young man in Levis, naked to the waist, and a girl in the slimmest of bathing suits. They are talking, heads down. The new freedom pours from them; their lives seem infinitely useful and sweet.

Sometimes at noon, reflected in shop windows, he sees himself and a child, sees them as if looking into the stream of life, among cakes and Bordeaux wine. For a moment they stand there, their backs to the street. They have almost finished their errands. Her face is against his arm. They are speechless, united. She has a straw hat. Her feet are bare. He is overwhelmed with a sense of contentment. The sun fills the summer town.

They return to the house. The faded sound of car doors closing. Danny is feeding the rabbit near the kitchen step, a black rabbit with two white paws and a spot on his chest; they call it his star. His mouth moves hastily as he eats. His ears lie flat.

In the brimming paper bags Viri finds a carrot. “Here,” he says.

She slips it through the wire of the cage. The rabbit ingests it like a mechanical toy.

“He likes lunch,” she says.

“What about breakfast?”

“He likes that, too.”

“Does he wash his hands?”

The carrot greens are vanishing in little jerks.

“No,” she says.

“Does he brush his teeth?”

“He can’t,” she says.

“Why not?”

“No sink.”

Danny is less obedient; she has a stubborn quality. She is less beautiful. In the summer her leanness and tan skin conceal it. She goes out in the deep water in a rubber tube, daring, kicking like an insect. It is morning, the surf falling forward, its white teeth hissing on the shore. Viri watches, sitting on the sand. She waves at him, her shouts carried off by the wind. He understands suddenly what love of a child is. It overwhelms him like the line from a song.

Morning; the sea sound faint on the wind. His sunburned daughters walk on creaking floors. They pass their life together, in a compact that will never end. They go to the circus, to stores, the market shed in Amagansett with its laden shelves and fruits, to picnics, pageants, concerts in wooden churches among the trees. They enter Philharmonic Hall. The audience is hushed. They are seated, the programs in their laps. To listen to a symphony is to open the book of faces. The maestro arrives. He collects himself, stands poised. The great, exotic opening chords of Chabrier. They go to perfomances of Swan Lake , their faces pale in the darkness of the Grand Tier. The vast curve of seats is lighted like the Ritz. A huge orchestra pit, big as a ship, a ceiling of gold, hung with bursts of light, with pendants that glitter like ice. The great Nureyev comes out after, bowing like an angel, like a prince. They beg each other for the glasses; his neck, his chest are gleaming with sweat, even the ends of his hair. His hands, like those of a child, play with the cape tassels. The end of performances, the end of Mozart, of Bach. The solo violinist stands with her face raised, utterly drained, the last chords still sounding, as if from a great love. The conductor applauds her, the audience, the beautiful women, their hands held high.

They pass their life together, they pass boys fishing, walking to the end of the pier with a small eel tied, doubled up, on the hook. The mute eye of the eel calls out, a black dot in his plain, silver face. They sit at the table where their grandfather eats, Nedra’s father, a salesman, a man from small towns, his cough yellow, the Camel cigarettes always near his hand. His voice is out of focus, his eyes are filmed, he hardly seems to notice them. He brings death with him into the kitchen; a long, wasted life, the chrysalis of Nedra’s, its dry covering, its forgotten source. He has cheap shoes, a suitcase filled with samples of aluminum window frames.

Their life is formed together, woven together, they are like actors, a group of devoted actors who know nothing beyond themselves, beyond the pile of roles from old, from immortal plays.

The summer ends. There are misty, chilly days, the sea is quiet and white. The waves break far out with a slow, majestic sound. The beach is deserted. Occasional strollers along the water’s edge. The children lie on Viri’s back like possums; the sand is warm beneath him.

Peter and Catherine join them, together with their little boy. The families sit separated, in the solitude and mist. Peter has a folding chair and wears a yachting cap and a shirt. Beside him is a bucket filled with ice, bottles of Dubonnet and rum. An eerie and beautiful day. The fine points of mist drift over them. August has passed.

At a pause in the conversation, Peter rises and walks slowly, without a word, into the sea, a solitary bather, swimming far out in his blue shirt. His strokes are powerful and even. He swims with assurance, strong as an iceman. Finally Viri joins him. The water is cool. There is mist all about them, the swelling rhythm of the waves. No one is in sight except their families sitting on shore.

“It’s like swimming in the Irish Sea,” Peter says. “Never any sun.”

Franca and Danny come out to them.

“It’s deep here,” Viri warns.

Each of the men holds a child. They huddle close.

“The Irish sailors,” Peter tells them, “never learn to swim. Not even a stroke. The sea is too strong.”

“But what if the boat sinks?”

“They cross their hands on their chests and say a prayer,” Peter says. He performs it. Like the carved lid of a coffin he sinks from sight.

“Is it true?” they ask Viri later.

“Yes.”

“They drown?”

“They deliver themselves to God.”

“How does he know that?”

“He knows.”

“Peter is very strange,” Franca says.

And he reads to them, as he does every night, as if watering them, as if turning the earth at their feet. There are stories he has never heard of, and others he has known as a child, these stepping stones that are there for everyone. What is the real meaning of these stories, he wonders, of creatures that no longer exist even in the imagination: princes, woodcutters, honest fishermen who live in hovels. He wants his children to have an old life and a new life, a life that is indivisible from all lives past, that grows from them, exceeds them, and another that is original, pure, free, that is beyond the prejudice which protects us, the habit which gives us shape. He wants them to know both degradation and sainthood, the one without humiliation, the other without ignorance. He is preparing them for this voyage. It is as if there is only a single hour, and in that hour all the provender must be gathered, all the advice offered. He longs for the one line to give them that they will always remember, that will embrace everything, that will point the way, but he cannot find the line, he cannot recognize it. It is more precious, he knows, than anything else they might own, but he does not have it. Instead, in his even, sensuous voice he laves them in the petty myths of Europe, of snowy Russia, the East. The best education comes from knowing only one book, he tells Nedra. Purity comes from that, and proportion, and the comfort of always having an example close at hand.