by James Salter
“Neil is sick. He has diabetes,” Eve said.
“Diabetes?”
“That’s what they say.”
“Isn’t that hereditary?”
They sat at a table near the front. The waiter was watching them from near the bar. He was in love with them, their leisure, low voices, the confidences which involved them so.
“I just hope my son doesn’t get it,” Eve said. “Neil is a mess. I’m surprised that’s all he has.”
“He’s still living with whatever her name is?”
“As far as I know. She’s so stupid she wouldn’t know what to do for him anyway. She only has one … I don’t know what to call it … quality.”
“In bed, you mean?”
“She’s twenty-two, that’s her quality. Poor Neil, he’s like a jellyfish. His teeth are rotting out.”
“He looks terrible.”
“I don’t think he could even pick up a woman in a bar, in the dark. It serves him right, but it’s awful for Anthony to see him like that. It’s so sad. And he likes his father, he always has. They’ve always been close.”
“It’s so much easier when there are two of you,” Nedra said. “I couldn’t have raised my children alone. Oh, of course, I could have, but I see in them qualities that aren’t mine or a reaction against mine, that come from Viri. Anyway, I think girls need a male presence. It brings them to life in certain ways.”
“Boys are the same.”
“I suppose.”
“Why don’t you share Viri with me?” Eve asked. She laughed. “I’m not serious.”
“Share him?” Nedra said. “Well, I don’t know. I’ve never thought of it.”
“I didn’t really mean it.”
“I don’t think it would work, not with Viri. Now Arnaud …”
“You’re right,” Eve said.
“Oh, yes. As a matter of fact, I think he would be better with two women.”
“But you’re much neater than I am.”
“I think you’re more understanding.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Yes,” Nedra said. “And it’s natural. I’m sure it would end with him loving you more. Yes, it’s true.”
They emerged from the narrow doorway unhurried, fond. On Lexington Avenue the traffic was endless, cars from the suburbs, taxis, dark limousines that floated over the ruts. They strolled. The streets were like rivers fed by tributaries along which they lingered, glancing at windows in which their reflections appeared. There were shops Nedra felt drawn toward, places where she had bought things, tablecloths, scent. Sometimes the stare of a salesgirl, idle, alone, met hers above displays of books, by stands of wine. She was not hurried; she did not smile. It was the intelligence in her face that struck them, the grace. It was someone whose face they had seen, someone who possessed everything—leisure, friends, the hours of a day were like a hand of cards. On these same avenues Viri walked alone. The rise of one is the fall of the other. His mind was filled with details, appointments; in the sunlight his skin looked dry.
She drove home in early traffic, between the cars of women returning from the doctor’s and men whose work was ended. The trees were beginning to change.
Five in the afternoon. She arranged her hair before the mirror in her room, her hands were pale. She smoothed her cheeks, her mouth, as if pressing away traces of an event. There was no event, she was preparing for one: a telephone call, a piece of music, half an hour of reading.
It was the telephone. The voice of Mrs. Dahlander, wavering, composed.
“Could you come to the hospital?” she asked. “My husband’s not here. Leslie fell from a horse.”
It had happened an hour before. She was riding alone. No one saw the gallop, the stumble, the moment in which she sprawled through air in a position like a joke and then hit and lay still while her horse stopped and began to graze. The meadow was empty, invisible from the road.
At the hospital they pronounced it grave, a concussion. She was still unconscious. Her face was bruised. Her head had struck a rock. She was adopted, an only child. The doctor was explaining the urgency, the risk, to her stupefied parent. It was in the waiting room of the children’s wing. Torn books were piled on the shelves, there were blocks on the floor. If the bleeding within the skull continued, it would exert fatal pressure on the brain.
“What can you do?”
“We’ll have to operate.”
The neurosurgeon was already visible in a green smock.
“We have to have your permission.”
She turned to Nedra, begging. “What shall I do?”
They questioned the doctor again. Patiently he described it once more. It was dinnertime; the streets were becoming dark. The forgotten horse, still bridled, stood in the empty field. The grass was turning cold.
“I want to wait for my husband.”
“We can’t wait.”
She turned to Nedra again. “I want to wait for him,” she pleaded. “Don’t you think I should wait?”
“I don’t know if you can,” Nedra said.
The barren woman nodded, gave up. She crumpled, yes, all right, save her. There was just a glimpse as the child rolled past, mortally still. She was gone for hours, she emerged like a broken doll, eyes closed, head in white bandages. That night she was placed in ice. The pressure within the shaved head continued to mount. The surgeon was called at midnight. He found her parents waiting.
“We’ll know by morning,” he told them.
A morning when Viri in the last of sleep saw a woman in a beautiful dress arrive at the elevator in a great hotel. It was Kaya. She did not see him. There were two men with her wearing dinner jackets. He did not want to be seen: his ordinary clothes, his teeth, his thinning hair. He saw them enter the elevator, ascend to a roof garden, a party, to an elegance he could not imagine, and suddenly he knew she was no longer the same; she was captured at last.
In the house on the river he dreamed in the early morning. Autumn, alone in his sleep, the rooms cool, deserted, winds from the Hudson washing him like a corpse.
11
THE FIRST SNOWS FELL. IT WAS like midwinter, the windows took on a chill. One could lie in bed in darkness and watch the coming of light.
On Thanksgiving Day there was a dazzling storm. Hadji was joyous. He leapt through the white like a porpoise, rolled on his back, ran wildly, bit at the snow. Danny could see him turn, far off, and look for her: black eyes, kohl eyes, tall alert ears.
“Here, Snowboy,” she called. “Come here.”
His ears lay back as he ran; he would not obey. She clapped her hands. He ran in great, drunken circles, sometimes pausing to lie in the snow and watch her with foxlike glances. She kept calling. He barked.
“You bastard,” she cried.
All through December, it seemed, there were dinners. Discussions of the menu, the guests. Shrimp, Viri said, yes, all right, shrimp, but not gazpacho, he insisted. It was not the weather for gazpacho; it was too cold.
“Not by the fire,” Nedra said.
“But there’s no fire in the dining room,” he cried.
She did not answer. She was hard at work. Who had she finally invited, he asked?
“The Ayashes,” she said.
“The Ayashes!”
“Viri, we have to. I mean, I don’t really care, but it’s embarrassing.”
“Who else?”
“Vera Cray.”
“What is this? The county home for the aged?”
“She’s a marvelous woman. She hasn’t been out since her husband died.”
“Yes, I believe that,” he said. “But they’re not going to mix. Mrs. Ayashe is an idiot. Vera is very intense.”
“You’ll be sitting between them.”
“Not all night.”
“Give them plenty to drink,” she said. “Do you want to taste something?”
It was the pâté maison. “Oh!” he moaned.
“What?”
“It’s brilliant!”
/> “Try it with mustard,” she said.
They were having Meursault, fromages, pastries from Leonard’s.
“It’s going to be a wonderful dinner,” he said. He thought for a moment. “Perhaps we won’t have to talk.”
Two weeks later they were having Viri’s client who had bought some old brick houses and land near Croton and wanted to make them over into a compound. The original structures would be included in a larger, more elegant whole, much as ancient sculpture embedded in villa walls. His name was S. Michael Warner; he was also known as Queen Mab.
“He’s bringing Bill Hale.”
“Oh, shit,” Nedra said.
“You don’t even know him.”
“You’re right. And he couldn’t be worse than Michael, could he?”
“Nedra, he’s my client.”
“Oh, you know I adore him.”
An entire day was consecrated to preparations. She shopped for hours in her favorite stores.
By evening the house was ready. There were flowers beneath the lamps, the curtains were drawn, the fire crackled behind the Hessians’ iron knees. Nedra wore a quilted dress of dark blue and rose. Her belt was sewn with small, silver bells, her hair was drawn back, her neck bare.
Her face was cool and gleaming. Her laugh was gorgeous, it was like applause.
Michael Warner was immaculate, a man of forty-five with the ease and smile of someone who notices every mistake. He was charmed by Nedra. He recognized in her a woman who would not betray him. She would never be banal or foolish.
“This is Bill Hale.”
“Hello, Bill,” she said warmly.
A strange, winter party. Dr. Reinhart and his wife were late, but they arrived at just the right moment. They were like the last players for whom the game has waited. They seated themselves as if knowing exactly what was expected. Reinhart had wonderful manners. This wife was his third.
“You’re a doctor, of medicine?” Michael confirmed.
“Yes.” He was in research, however, he explained. A form of research. In fact, he was writing.
“Like Chekhov,” his wife said. She had a slight accent.
“Well, not exactly.”
“Chekhov was a doctor, wasn’t he?” Michael said.
“There have been a number—who have become writers, that is. Of course, I don’t mean to include myself. I’m only writing a biography.”
“Really?” Bill said. “I adore biography.”
“Who is the subject of it?” Nedra asked.
“It’s actually a … it’s a multiple biography,” Reinhart said. He accepted a drink gratefully. “Thank you. It’s the lives of children of famous men.”
“How interesting.”
“Dickens, Mozart, Karl Marx.” He sipped his drink as a patient might sip a glass of juice, an educated patient, frail, resigned. “Even their names are fascinating. Plorn, that was Dickens’ last child. Stanwix, that was the son of Melville.”
“And what becomes of them?” Nedra asked.
“Well, there isn’t a fixed pattern. But perhaps it could be there are more misfortunes than with other children, more sorrows.”
“Somerset Maugham was a doctor,” his wife said. “Also Céline.”
“Yes, my dear, that’s right,” Reinhart said.
“An awful man,” Michael said.
“Nonetheless a great writer.”
“Céline great? What do you mean by great?”
Reinhart hesitated. “I don’t know. Greatness is something which can be regarded in a number of ways,” he said. “It is, of course, the apotheosis, man raised to his highest powers, but it also can be, in a way, like insanity, a certain kind of imbalance, a flaw, in most cases a beneficial flaw, an anomaly, an accident.”
“Well, many great men are eccentric,” Viri said, “even narrow.”
“Not necessarily narrow so much as impatient, intense.”
“The thing I really would like to know is,” Nedra said, “must fame be a part of greatness?”
“Well, that is a difficult question,” Reinhart answered finally. “The answer is, possibly, no, but from a practical point of view there must be some consensus. Sooner or later it must be confirmed.”
“There’s something missing there,” Nedra said.
“Perhaps,” he admitted.
“I think Nedra means that greatness, like virtue, need not be spoken about in order to exist,” Viri suggested.
“It would be nice to believe,” Reinhart said.
It was Michael that his wife was watching. Suddenly she spoke. “You’re right,” she said abruptly. “Céline was an absolute bastard.”
Nights of conversation that has faded, that rises to the ceiling and gathers like smoke. The pleasures of the table, the well-being of those around it. Here in a house in the country, comfortable, discreet, Viri suddenly knew as he poured the wine how foolish his statement had been, how wistful. Reinhart was right: fame was not only part of greatness, it was more. It was the evidence, the only proof. All the rest was nothing, in vain. He who is famous cannot fail; he has already succeeded.
Near the fire, Ada Reinhart was telling Michael where in Germany she came from. She had lived in Berlin. They were apart from the others. The white hair of her husband, his frail hand stirring the coffee, could be seen in the far room.
“I knew a lot then,” she said.
“Did you? What do you mean?”
She did not answer immediately. She was much younger than her husband.
“Do you want me to tell you?” she said. “If I had only done what I thought I should do …”
“What you thought you should do?”
“Instead of what I did.”
“That’s true for everyone, isn’t it?”
“When I fall in love, it’s with a man’s mind, his spiritual qualities.”
“I feel exactly the same.”
“Of course, one is attracted by a body or a look …”
Nedra could see them talking by the fire. At the table, Mrs. Reinhart had said almost nothing. Now she seemed passionately engaged.
“I’m not unattractive, am I?”
“Quite the opposite,” Michael said.
“You don’t find me unattractive?”
She hardly noticed the others entering the room. She continued to talk.
“What are you persuading Mr. Warner of?” Reinhart asked lightly.
“What? Nothing, darling,” she said.
After the Reinharts had gone, Michael sat back and smiled. “Fascinating. Do you know what she said?” he asked.
“Tell us,” Bill said.
“There is something missing in her life.”
“Is there?”
Michael paused. “Do you think I’m attractive?” he imitated huskily.
“My darling!”
“Oh, yes. And more. Do you think I should have taken her seriously?” he said.
“I’d love to have seen it.”
Michael began to peel a piece of fruit, careful not to stain his fingers. The fire was dying among the ashes, cigarettes had lost their taste.
Nights of marriage, conjugal nights, the house still at last, the cushions indented where people had sat, the ashes warm. Nights that ended at two o’clock, the snow falling, the last guest gone. The dinner plates were left unwashed, the bed icy cold.
“Reinhart’s a nice man.”
“He has no pettiness,” Viri said. “I think his book will be interesting.”
“What happens to children—yes, that’s what one longs to know.”
They lay in the dark like two victims. They had nothing to give one another, they were bound by a pure, inexplicable love.
He was asleep, she could tell without looking. He slept like a child, soundlessly, deep. His thinning hair was disheveled, his hand lay extended and soft. If they had been another couple she would have been attracted to them, she would have loved them, even—they were so miserable.
12
IN SIX YEARS
SHE WOULD BE forty. She saw it from a distance, like a reef, the whitened glimpse of danger. She was frightened by the idea of age, she could too easily imagine it, she searched daily for its signs, first in the harsh light from the window, then, turning her head slightly to erase some of the severity, stepping back a little, saying to herself, this is as close as people come.
Her father in distant Pennsylvania towns already had within him the anarchy of cells that announced itself by a steady cough and a pain in his back. Three packs a day for thirty years; he coughed as he admitted it. He needed something, he decided.
“We’ll take some x-rays,” the doctor had said. “Just to see.”
Neither of them was there when the negatives were thrown up before the wall of light, dealt into place as rippling sheets, and in the ghostly darkness the fatal mass could be seen, as astronomers see a comet.
The doctor was called in; it took only a glance. “That’s it, all right,” he said.
The usual prognosis was eighteen months, but with the new machines, three years, sometimes four. They did not tell him this, of course. His translucent destiny was clear on the wall as subsequent series were displayed, six radiographs in a group, the two specialists working on different cases, side by side, calm as pilots, dictating what they saw, stacks of battered envelopes near their elbows. Their language was handsome, exact. They recited, they discussed, they gave a continued verdict long after Lionel Carnes, sixty-four years old, had begun his visits to the treatment room. Their work never ended. Before them loomed skulls, viscera, galaxy breasts, fingers, hairline fractures, knees, appearing and disappearing in an eternal test, the two of them pouring out answers in a steady monotone.
Sarcoma, they are saying. Well, there are all kinds, there are sarcomas of the muscle, they do occur, even of the heart, but they are very rare, normally they are the result of metastasis. No one really knows why the heart is sacred and inviolable, they say.
The Beta machine made a terrifying whine. The patient lay alone, abandoned, the room sealed, air-conditioned because of the heat. The dose was determined by a distant computer taking into consideration height, weight and so forth. The Beta doesn’t burn the skin like the lower-energy machines, they told him.