by James Salter
“How did I know you were coming?” she said. “Why didn’t you call me?” She began to weep. “Don’t you have any brains?” she cried.
He hung up. He knew perfectly well that talking was useless, that there had been a moment when he should have slapped her with all his strength. But he was not that sort of man. His hatred was weak, pallid, it could not even darken the blood.
Ten minutes later he excused himself from his client and rushed to call her again. He tried to be calm, unfrightened.
“Kaya.”
“Yes.”
“Meet me this evening.”
“I can’t.”
“Tomorrow, then.”
“Maybe tomorrow.”
“Please, promise me.”
She would not answer. He begged her.
“Yes, all right,” she finally said.
He could not go back to work. He went instead to her apartment and rang the bell. No answer. He let himself in. A chill had come over him, a deep chill like the shock that follows an accident. The sun was shining. The radio gave the weather, the news.
The bed was unmade, he could not approach it. In the kitchen were dirty glasses, a tray of ice that now held only water. He went to the closet. Her things surrounded him, they seemed flimsy, without substance. His hand trembling, he somehow cut the heart out of a tumbling, dark dress, the most beautiful one she owned. He was afraid she might come back as he was doing it; he had no explanation, no way to turn. Afterwards he sat by the window. His breath was shallow, like that of a newt. He sat motionless; the emptiness, the tranquillity of the rooms began to calm him. She lay in the gray light of morning, her back smooth and luminous, her legs weak. She was barelimbed, unthinking. He parted her knees. Never.
Nedra was happy that evening. She seemed pleased with herself.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“What? Yes, it’s been a long day.”
“We’re going to have our own eggs,” she announced.
The children were ecstatic. “Come and see!” they cried.
They pulled him by the hand to the solarium with its floor of gravel. The chickens ran for the corners, then along the wall. Danny managed to catch one at last.
“Look at him, Papa, don’t you love him?”
The hen sat panicked within her arms, its small eyes blinking.
“Her,” Viri said.
“Do you want to know their names?” Franca asked.
He nodded vaguely.
“Papa?”
“Yes,” he said. “Where did you get them?”
“That’s Janet …”
“Janet.”
“Dorothy.”
“Yes.”
“And that one is Madame Nicolai.”
“That one …”
“She’s older than the others,” Franca explained.
He sat on the step. Already there was a slight, bitter smell in the room. A bit of feather floated mysteriously down. Madame Nicolai was sitting as if dumped in a great, warm pile of feathers, brown, beige, becoming paler as it descended to soft tan.
“She is wiser,” he said.
“Oh, she’s very wise.”
“A sage among hens. When do they begin to lay eggs?”
“Right away.”
“Aren’t they a little young?” He sat idly on the step watching their careful, measured movements, the jerk of their heads. “Well, if they don’t lay eggs, there are other things. Chicken Kiev …”
“Papa!”
“What?”
“You wouldn’t do that.”
“They’d understand.”
“No, they wouldn’t.”
“Madame Nicolai would understand,” he said.
She was standing now, apart from the others, looking at him. Her head was in profile, one unblinking eye black with an amber ring.
“She’s a woman of the world,” he said. “Look at her bosom, look at the expression on her beak.”
“What expression?”
“She understands life,” he said.
“She knows what it is to be a chicken.”
“Is she your favorite?”
He was trying to coax her to come to his half-closed hand. “Papa?”
“I think so,” he murmured. “Yes. She is a hen among hens. A hen’s hen,” he said.
They were clinging to his arms in happiness and affection. He sat there. The chickens were clucking, making little soft sounds like water boiling. He continued to extol her—she had now turned cautiously away—this adulterer, this helpless man.
5
FRANCA WAS TWELVE. IN THOSE slim dresses that fit a body still without hips one could not easily tell her age. She was perfectly formed, though without even the faint beginning of breasts. Her cheeks were cool. Her expression was that of a woman.
She made up stories and did drawings for them. Margot was an elephant. Juan was a snail. Margot loved Juan very much, and Juan was mad about her. They used to sit and just look at each other. One day, she said to him, Juan.
Yes, Margot.
Juan, you are not very intelligent. I’m not?
You haven’t seen the world.
No, Juan said, I don’t have an airplane …
The writer as a child, solemn, serene. Viri took a photograph of her holding the rabbit in her arms, a white paw resting on her wrist.
“Don’t move,” he whispered.
He stepped nearer, focusing. The rabbit was calm, immobile. His eyes, black and gleaming, gave no sense of seeing; they were hypnotized, fixed. His ears lay along his back like wilted celery. Only his nose trembled with life. Slowly Franca put her face to him, her lips to his rich coat. Viri took the picture.
She was in touch with mystery, like her mother. She knew how to tell tales. The gift had appeared early. It was either a true talent or it was precocious and would fade. She was writing a story called The Queen of Feathers. She sat on the entry step observing the hens. The house was silent. They were aware of her and unable, at the same time, to maintain interest. Their minds wandered, they searched for bits of grain as she patiently acquired their secrets. Suddenly their heads went up. They listened; someone was coming.
It was Danny. Hadji was with her. As soon as she opened the door he began to bark.
“Oh God, Danny.”
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing. Get him out of here. He’s scaring the chickens.”
They both shouted at him. The chickens were huddled beneath an iron table filled with plants. The dog was in the doorway, barking. His ears went flat at each bark, his legs were planted firmly.
“He doesn’t like them,” Danny said.
“Make him stop.”
“I can’t. You know you can’t make him stop.”
“Well, take him away, then.”
They flew at him with their hands, shooing him down the hallway. He gave ground unwillingly, barking at them, at the room, the unseen chickens.
“It’s beginning to smell in there,” Danny said.
As sisters they were not devoted. They complained about each other, they hated to share. Franca was more beautiful, more admired. Danny was slower to bloom.
Their opinion, however, when he came to dinner, of Robert Chaptelle was the same: he did not interest them.
He was nervous when he arrived. He had taken the train as far as Irvington, but it was as if he had made a journey of a thousand miles. He was undone. Viri attempted to put him at ease and even to discuss Valle-Inclan, whose plays he had been reading, but the reaction to this was as if Chaptelle did not hear a word. As soon as they entered the house, he said, “Do you have any music?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Could we hear something?” Chaptelle said.
He waited, ignoring the children, while Viri selected some records. The music began. It was like a powerful medicine. Chaptelle grew calm.
“Valle-Inclan had only one arm,” he declared. “He cut the other off so he could be like Cervantes. Are yo
u interested in Spanish writers?”
“I don’t know very much about them.”
“I see.”
He ate with his head close to the plate like a man in the dining hall of an institution. He did not eat much. He wasn’t hungry, he commented, he had eaten a sandwich on the train. As for wine, he had none. He was forbidden to drink any alcohol.
Afterwards they played Russian bank. Chaptelle, almost indifferent at first, became very animated.
“Ah,” he said. “Yes, I have a talent for cards. When I was twenty I did almost nothing else. What is this? Is this the jack?”
“The king.”
“Ah. Le roi,” he exclaimed. “Yes, I remember.” Viri drove him to the train. They stood on the long, deserted platform. Chaptelle peered down the empty tracks.
“It comes from the other way,” Viri told him.
“Oh.” He looked in that direction.
They entered a small waiting room where a stove was kept going. The benches were scarred with initials of travelers, the walls dense with certain primitive drawings.
“Can you lend me a few dollars for the taxi?” Chaptelle said unexpectedly.
“How much do you need?”
“I don’t have any money with me. I have only a ticket. At least I can’t be robbed.”
Viri had withdrawn what money he had. He held out two dollars. “Is that enough?”
“Oh, yes,” Chaptelle said grandly. “Here, a dollar is enough.”
“You might need it.”
“I never tip,” Chaptelle explained. “You know, your wife is a very intelligent woman. More than intelligent.”
“Yes,” Viri agreed.
“Du chien. You know that expression?”
The floor beneath their feet had begun to tremble. The high, lighted windows of the train rushed by and abruptly slowed. Chaptelle did not move.
“I can’t find my ticket,” he announced.
Viri was holding the door. A few passengers had stepped down; the conductor was looking both ways.
“Why don’t you get on and then look for it?”
“I had it in my poche … Ah, merde!” He began to mutter in French.
There was the piercing sound of a whistle. Chaptelle straightened up. “Ah, here,” he said.
He hurried out and stood, indecisively, trying to see which doors were open. There was only one, in which the trainman stood.
“Where does one go up?” Chaptelle asked. The trainman ignored him.
“There, where he is,” Viri called.
“But that’s two cars away. That’s the only one they open?”
He began to walk toward it. Viri expected the first jerking movement of the wheels at any second. The trains were electric and accelerated quickly.
“Wait, here’s a passenger!” he shouted. He detested himself.
Chaptelle was casually climbing the steps. The train began moving before he had taken a seat. He bent over slightly in the aisle to wave with an awkward motion, palm forward, like a departing aunt. Then he was gone.
“Did you get him aboard?” Nedra asked.
“He’s one of a kind,” Viri said. “I hope.”
“He’s invited me to come to France.”
“It would be a trip you would never forget. What do you mean, he’s invited you? Doesn’t he know you’re married? This evening, for instance, did he think it was just a coincidence we were here together?”
“It doesn’t have anything to do with marriage. I mean, as a man he has no attraction for me. I wouldn’t hide it.”
She was lying in bed, white pillows behind her, a book in her hand. She seemed quite reasonable.
“We’d stay at his mother’s,” she said.
“Nedra, you don’t even speak French.”
“I know. That’s why it would be so interesting.” She could not keep from smiling. “His mother has an apartment on Place St. Sulpice. It’s a beautiful square. You can walk out, he says, there’s a balcony all around with an iron railing.”
“Wonderful. A railing.”
“Fireplaces in the bedrooms. It isn’t dark, he says. It’s on the uppermost floor.”
“Linen is supplied, I presume.”
“His mother lives there.”
“Nedra, you really are extraordinary. You know I love you.”
“Do you?”
“But as for going to France …”
“Just think about it, Viri,” she said.
6
EVE WAS TALL. HER FACE HAD cheekbones. Her shoulders slumped when she walked. The shelves in her living room were bent beneath the books. She worked for a publisher; oh, you’ve never heard of him, she said. Her life was one in which everything was left undone—letters unanswered, bills on the floor, the butter sitting out all night. Perhaps that was why her husband had left her; he was even more helpless than she. At least she was gay. She stepped from her littered doorway in pretty clothes, like a woman who lives in the barrio walking to a limousine, stray dogs and dirt on the way.
Her ex-husband came to visit her. He sat hunched in a chair by the fireplace, an overnight bag near his feet. His suede jacket was stained, the pockets torn. He was only thirty-two; he had the face of a derelict. His eyes were spent, they had nothing in them. When he spoke, it was agony—enormous, long pauses. He was going to … build a model with his son, he said.
“Don’t keep him up too late,” Eve said. She was leaving in the morning for Connecticut, where they still owned an old house they used alternately.
“Listen, while I think of it …” he said.
Silence. Children were skating in the narrow, blind street. The afternoon was fading.
“The willow near the pond,” he said. His voice was lost, wandering. “You should call Nelson, the guy who gardens, while you’re there. It needs …” He stopped. “Something’s wrong with it,” he finally said.
“The one that’s not growing?”
A pause.
“No, the one that is,” he said.
He’d been living with a young woman. They ate in restaurants; they appeared at parties. When he stood up his pants were empty; they hung in the back like an old man’s.
“He’s so sad,” Eve said.
“You’re lucky he’s gone,” Nedra told her.
“She doesn’t even keep his clothes clean.”
“That’s why he’s sad.”
Eve laughed. There was gold behind her teeth; it made them dark at the edges, a halo of bitumen, like a whore’s. She was ready to laugh. She was funny. Her life had no foundation. She was only vaguely devoted to it, she could treat it lightly. It was this that made her irresistible—these smiles, this carefree air.
They were like sisters, the same long limbs, the same humor. It was easy for them to imagine themselves in each other’s place.
“I’d like to go to Europe,” Nedra told her.
“Wouldn’t that be marvelous?”
“You’ve been to Italy.”
“I have, haven’t I?” Eve said.
“What was it like?”
Their words drifted off in the late afternoon. They were sitting in the worn love seats. Anthony was at a friend’s. His schoolbooks were on the table, his bicycle in the kitchen. The untidiness of the apartment and its little garden were pleasing to Nedra; she could never live like that herself.
“Well, I was there with Arnaud,” Eve said.
“Where did you stay? I’ll bet Arnaud is great in Rome.”
“He loves it. You know, he speaks Italian, talks to everyone. Long conversations.”
“And what did you do?”
“Usually I kept on eating. You know, you sit in those restaurants for hours. He reads the menu, he reads everything on it. Then he discusses it with the waiter, he looks to see what people at the other tables are eating. If you’re in a hurry, forget it. He says, no, no, wait a minute, let me see what he says about the … the fagioli.”
“The fagioli …”
“I forget, what are fagi
oli? I don’t know. We were always eating them. He likes bollito misto, he likes baccala. We ate, we visited churches. He knows Italy.”
“I’d love to go with Arnaud.”
“He likes very small hotels. I mean, minute. He knows all of them. I learned a lot. There are certain kinds of bugs you can let live on your body, for instance.”
“What?”
“Well, I never did, but that’s what he claimed. He’ll never marry,” Eve said.
“Why do you say that?”
“I know it. He’s selfish, but it isn’t selfishness. He’s not afraid of being alone.”
“That’s the whole thing, isn’t it?”
“Yes. On the other hand, I am,” Eve said.
“No, you’re not.”
“I’m terrified of it. I think I fear it more than anything. He knows how to face it. He likes people. He likes to eat, go to the theater.”
“But eventually he’s alone. He has to be.”
“Well, I don’t know. It doesn’t bother him. He’s content, he knows we’re thinking of him.”
She was terrific, Eve; that was what he said. She was generous in every way. She gave books, dresses, friends, she graced rooms with her hard, dissolute body, her wanton mouth. The kind of woman seen on the arm of a boxing champion, the kind who is not married, who appears one morning with blackened eyes.
They were thinking of him.
“Yes,” Nedra agreed, “that is a difficulty. How is Arnaud?”
“It’s his six-month birthday next week. I mean, it’s halfway between.”
“Do you celebrate that?”
“I sent him some handkerchiefs,” Eve said. “He likes a certain kind of big workman’s handkerchief, and I found some. I don’t know, sometimes he drops out of sight for a week or two. Sometimes he even goes away. I wish I were a man.”
7
CHRISTMAS. TOM, THE OLD SUPER, drinking as always. He had a lean face and an ulcerous ear. An honest man with bottles hidden in the basement behind the fuse boxes. He jumped back when Viri tried to hand him an envelope with some money in it.
“What’s that?” he cried. “No, no.”
“It’s a little something for Christmas.”
“Oh, no.” He had not shaved. “Not for me. No, no.” He seemed about to cry.