by James Salter
“No, just everything else,” he said.
It hung there, dumb, enormous, shooting beams that crushed the honeycomb of tissue like eggshells. The patient lay beneath it, inert, arranged. With the scream of the invisible it began its work. It was either this or the most extreme surgery, radical and hopeless, blood running down from the black stitches, the doomed man served up like a pork roast.
The greatness of technology was focused on him for a moment, the nurses joked with him, the young doctors called him by his first name.
“Am I dying yet?” he asked them.
“Well, not at the moment,” they said.
He was telling them about automobiles, about his three-legged cat.
“Only three legs, eh?”
“His name’s Ernie,” he said.
“Ernie, is that so?”
“Yeah, he’s black. He gets a lot of fun out of life, old Ernie. He climbs up trees and catches birds. Limps when he sees you,” he said.
It was all in his cells, the stain of tobacco, the darkness. He had to give up smoking.
“Dying’s nothing compared with that.”
Easter Sunday. The morning was beautiful, the trees filled with sun. The Verns came out, Larry and Rae. They looked like a young working couple turning up the drive on their motorcycle. She was sitting behind him, her arms around his waist. He was wearing a white Irish sweater, the wind was scattering his hair. The children ran to meet them. They loved the machine, which was lacquered and gleaming. They liked his fine beard.
“You’re just in time to help hide,” Nedra told him.
“Good. Who’s this?”
It was Viri in a hat with two ears sprouting from it, holding a basket of eggs. “Come inside and warm up,” he said. “Are you cold?”
The table was laid in the kitchen: Kulich, a sweet, Russian cake, chunks of feta, dark bread and butter, fruit. Nedra poured tea. Her nature showed itself in the generosity of her table.
“Eve is coming,” she said.
“Oh, nice,” Rae said.
“And the Paums, do you know him?”
“I don’t think so.”
“He’s an actor.”
“Oh, yes, of course.”
“Well, he may come, he may not.”
“He drinks,” Franca said.
“Ah.”
“And I would think that on a morning like this,” Nedra said, “he might have begun early.”
“That’s sad,” Rae said.
“I understand it more and more.”
Rae was dark, her face lean, intense. It was a face that appeared to have been in an accident; there was a certain contradiction between the halves. Her hair was cut short. She had an awkward smile.
They had no children, Rae and Larry. He worked for a toy company. His skin was white. He had the resignation of someone who has passed through many difficulties, the calm of an addict. He went off with Viri to hide the eggs.
“What have you been doing?” Nedra asked. She was warming her face on the cup.
“I don’t know,” Rae said. “You’re so lucky you don’t live in the city. I get up, I make breakfast, the window sills are covered with dirt, it must take me two hours a day just to keep things clean. Yesterday I wrote a letter to my mother. I suppose that took most of the day. I had to walk to the post office; I had no stamps. I went to the laundry. I didn’t cook dinner. We went out for dinner. So what am I really doing?” She smiled helplessly, showing discolored teeth.
Outside they were hiding the eggs in the faded grass, beneath leaves, under stones.
“Don’t make them too easy to find,” Viri called.
“Do you put any up in the branches?”
“Oh, absolutely. There should be some they don’t ever find.”
“Your hat is beautiful,” Larry said as they finished.
“Nedra made it.”
“I took some pictures of you in it.”
“Let me take yours.”
“Later,” Larry said. They had begun to walk back.
“At the house.”
It stood above them, bathed in the light, its gabled roof with chimneys at each end, the rain-washed gray of the slates. Like a huge barn it was stained by weather, like a ship that has crossed. Mice lived along its stone foundation, weeds grew at its ends.
The vastness of the day surrounded them. The ground was warm, the river glinting in the sun.
“It’s a beautiful day,” Larry said. He still had three or four small chocolate eggs. He turned his back to the house and gently scattered them.
“The dog will find them, don’t worry,” Viri said.
Eve had arrived. She was in the kitchen drinking a glass of wine. Her car, its fenders rusted, was parked along the edge of the driveway, wheels half in the drainage ditch.
“Hello, Viri,” she smiled.
She looked older. In a single year she had abandoned her youth. Her eyes had lines around them, her skin showed tiny pores. Still, she could rise to occasions, there were times she was beautiful, even more, unforgettable, given the hour, the right room. And if she was fading, her son was coming into the light. Along the edge of his face, Anthony already gave a hint of the man he would be. He was very good-looking, but there was a risk of even more: a beauty made imminent by a deep, unfathomable silence. He stood near Franca. Larry took their picture, two young faces at once very different yet sharing the same sort of privilege.
“He’ll be absolutely devastating,” Nedra said.
Rae agreed. She watched him through the window, drawn to him. He was too old for her to imagine as a son, he was a youth already; the characteristics which would become pride, impatience, were seeded, germinating day by day.
Booth Paum arrived with his daughter. He had made entrances since the days of Maxwell Anderson. Like all actors he could unfurl long speeches, reciting with a kind of threatening intensity; he could mimic, he could dance.
“I hope we’re not late,” he said. He introduced the friend his daughter had brought.
Four girls and a boy, they were. Viri began explaining the rules. “There are three kinds of eggs,” he said. “There are solid colors, speckled, and there are also twelve gold bees. The bees are worth five, the speckled three, and the solid colors one.”
He pointed out the boundaries.
“It’s now eleven-thirty,” he said. He told them how much time they had. “Are you ready?”
“Yes!”
“Begin.”
They scattered across the sunny ground, Hadji dashing after them, barking. Soon they were far off, separate figures moving slowly, heads down among the trees.
“They’re not all on the ground!” Viri called.
During the long hunt with its distant shouts and cries, the adults sat outside, the women on small, iron benches, the men on a bank. Paum had a glass of tea which he drank Russian style, a cube of sugar between his teeth. Actors were original, actors were vivid. He stood with the river behind him, a confident figure. It was as if all reports were unfounded; he refuted them with his ease, his well-combed hair.
“I heard a funny story,” he told them. “It seems there were two drunks in an elevator …”
The tea was brown in the glass, his fingernails were perfectly shaped, his shoes from Bally were shined.
Dana, his daughter, won the hunt. She found the most eggs, including four of the bees. The prize was a huge cardboard soldier filled with popcorn; second prize was a rosewood pen.
The women brought the food out and arranged a table. There was wine and a bottle of Moët and Chandon. The afternoon was mild, spacious. A slight breeze carried off voices so that twenty feet of separation were mysterious, one saw conversations, the words were lost.
“Danny will be beautiful,” Larry said. He was watching as she sat with the others, a plate in her lap. “She’s different from Franca,” he said. “Franca was always beautiful, she simply grows like a cat. I mean, from the very first she had claws, a tail, everything was there, but in Dann
y’s case something more mysterious is happening. It will all come slowly. It will only appear at the end.”
Beyond them was the sleeping grass, dry from the winter, warmed by the sun.
“She’s like that in many ways,” Viri said. “She has traits that are more or less awkward, even disturbing, but I have the feeling they’ll make sense later.”
“Your children give you something very special,” Larry said. “Sheltering them, knowing them. But that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?”
Viri was silent. He knew their situation. Rae sat down beside them.
“Why don’t you take some photos?” she asked.
“I’m out of film.”
“Oh, you have film.”
“No, I’m out.”
“I told you to stop and get some,” she said.
He was sipping the last of his champagne. “Yes, you did. You’re always right, aren’t you?”
She did not answer.
“I’m very lucky, you see,” he said to Viri.
Her face seemed quite small as she sat there, knees drawn up beneath her skirt.
“Yes, very lucky. Rae is always right. She has to be right. Nothing can be her fault, can it?”
She said nothing. He did not continue. He lay there supported by his elbows, the glass in his hand. Their whole life was displayed in the image of them there, he motionless, chin on his chest, the glass empty; she, head lowered, barren, hands clasped about her legs. They had Siamese cats, they went to museums and openings, she surely was passionate, they lived in a large Village flat.
In the late afternoon they were all inside. Larry was drinking coffee, a scarf around his neck, preparing to drive home. The children were playing, their exhaustion had not yet touched them. They would fall asleep by the fire after dinner, their faces flushed, their hearts at peace. Rae said goodbye. She was cheerful. In her pocket she revealed a small grass nest, and in it four chocolate eggs. They were going to have an omelet on the way home, she said. She offered an affectionate smile, unhygienic, brief.
Nedra and Eve sat by the window. The sound of the motorcycle died away. Viri had gone for a walk. Nedra was needlepointing a pair of slippers. There was a sun god on each toe.
“She’s very nice,” Eve said.
“Yes, I like her.”
“She talks a lot. I don’t mean foolishly—she’s interesting.”
“That’s true.”
“He, on the other hand …”
“He talks very little.”
“He hardly said a word.”
“Larry is always silent,” Nedra said.
“What hatred.”
“Do you think so? You’re very perceptive, Eve.”
“I’ve lived through it.”
Viri came in, the dog behind him, bits of grass stuck to his coat.
“Oh, you’ve been down to the river,” Nedra said.
“He’s had a day.”
“You like Easter, don’t you, Hadji? He’s probably thirsty, Viri.”
“He drank a lot of the river. Would you like some tea? I’ll make it.”
“That would be wonderful,” Nedra said. After he had gone, she turned to Eve. “What do you think of Viri and me?” Eve smiled.
“Can you see it in us?”
“You are absolutely … you’re perfect for each other.”
Nedra gave a slight sound as if finding a mistake in her work. “It’s impossible to live with him,” she said finally.
“It isn’t. That’s plain.”
“Impossible for me. No, you don’t see it. I love him, he’s a marvelous father, but it’s terrible. I can’t explain it. It’s what turns you to powder, being ground between what you can’t do and what you must do. You just turn to dust.”
“I think you’re just tired.”
“Viri and I are like Richard Strauss and his wife. I’m as nasty as she was—the only thing is, Strauss was a genius. She was a singer, they had terrific arguments. She would shriek and throw the music at him. When she was nobody, I mean. They were rehearsing his opera. She ran off to her dressing room. He followed her and they kept right on fighting.”
Viri returned with a tray and the tea.
“I’m telling about Strauss and his wife,” Nedra said.
“He had absolutely beautiful handwriting,” Viri commented.
“He was so talented.”
“He could have been a draftsman.”
“Well, anyway, the orchestra came and announced that they would not play any opera in which this woman had a role. And Strauss said, well, that’s unfortunate, as Fraulein de Ahna and I have just become engaged. She was an absolute bitch, you can’t believe it. He used to beg to get into her room. She told him when to work, when to stop work; she treated him like a dog.”
Viri poured the tea. A perfume rose from the cups.
“Milk?” he asked Eve.
“Just black,” she said.
Franca and Anthony came into the room.
“Would you like some tea?” he asked them. “Bring two cups.”
He poured theirs; they sat on cushions on the floor.
“There’s a certain kind of greatness,” Viri said, “Strauss’s, for instance, which begins in the heavens. The artist doesn’t ascend to glory, he appears in it, he already has it and the world is prepared to recognize him. Meteoric, like a comet—those are the phrases we apply, and it’s true, it is a kind of burning. It makes them highly visible, and at the same time it consumes them, and it’s only afterwards, when the brilliance is gone, when their bones are lying alongside those of lesser men, that one can really judge. I mean, there are famous works, renowned in antiquity, and today absolutely forgotten: books, buildings, works of art.”
“But isn’t it true,” Nedra said, “that most great architects were accepted in their time?”
“Well, they had to be, or they wouldn’t have built anything. There are many architects, though, who were very highly regarded and have passed into obscurity.”
“But not the reverse.”
“No,” Viri admitted. “No one has yet gone the other way. Perhaps I’ll be the first.”
“You’re not obscure, Papa,” Franca protested.
“He obscure but he was honest,” Viri said.
“What about Obscure, the Jude?” Nedra said.
“Ha, good, very good,” he said. He felt a touch of bitterness at the jokes they were making.
When they began to prepare supper late in the day, he went upstairs. He looked at himself in the mirror, suddenly without illusion. He was in middle life; he could no longer recognize the young man he had been.
He sat in the bedroom drawing figures, words, embellishing them, making them into designs. 1928, he wrote, and after it, Born June 12 in Philadelphia, Pa. 1930 moves to Chicago, Ill. He continued the entries, listing his life as if it were a painter’s. 1941 Enters Phillips Exeter. 1945 Enters Yale. 1950 Travels in Europe. 1951 Marries Nedra Carnes.
In the quiet the thoughts came streaming to him: days he had nearly forgotten, failures, old names. 1960 The single most beautiful year of my life, he wrote. And then, beneath, Loses everything.
He was interrupted by the calling of his wife: Arnaud was on the telephone. The chronology in his pocket, he came downstairs. The lights were on, evening had come. Eve, her knees bent to one side, her smooth, stockinged feet half out of her shoes, was talking on the phone.
“You know, I can’t decide whether I wish I were there or you were here,” she was saying. Arnaud had been visiting his mother, but now he longed to speak to his other family, the family of his heart. His affection was extravagant, he told funny stories, he begged for details of the day.
Viri took the phone. They were united, all of them, in the great, blue evening that reigned over the river and hills. They talked on and on.
Afterwards he sat with the paper, the Sunday edition, immense and sleek, which had lain unopened in the hall. In it were articles, interviews, everything fresh, unimagined; it w
as like a great ship, its decks filled with passengers, a directory in which was entered everything that had made any difference to the city, the world. A great vessel sailing each day, he longed to be on it, to enter its salons, to stand near the rail.
You are not obscure, they told him. You have friends. People admire your work. He was, after all, a good father—that is to say, an ineffective man. Real goodness was different, it was irresistible, murderous, it had victims like any other aggression; in short, it conquered. We must be vague, we must be gentle, we are killing people otherwise, whatever our intentions, we are crushing them beneath a vision of light. It is the idiot, the weakling, he thought, the son who has failed; once beyond that there is no virtue possible.
Night falls. The cold lies in the fields. The grass turns to stone.
In bed, he lay like a man in prison, dreaming of life.
“What was the joke Booth told that was so funny?” Nedra asked. She was brushing her hair.
“His smile is extraordinary,” Viri said. “It’s like an old politician’s.”
“Where was his wife?”
“She’s learning to fly.”
“Learning to fly?”
“So he says. Anyway, there were two drunks on an elevator. It was in some hotel …”
“This is the joke?”
“A woman got on—she was completely nude. They just stood there and didn’t say anything. After she got off, one of them turned to the other: ‘You know,’ he said, ‘s’funny, my wife has an outfit exactly like that.’ ”
13
THE MORNINGS WERE WHITE, THE trees were still bare. The telephone rang. A soft vapor was rising from the roof of the Marcel-Maas barn. His wife was there alone.
“Come and see me,” she begged Nedra.
“Well, I’m going into the city later. Perhaps on the way.”
“I want to talk to you.”
Nedra drove by at noon. The uncut grass was silent, the air cool. The stone walls of the barn shone in the clear April light. Still dry, still sleeping, the orchard sloped away.
“I’m having a kir,” Nora said. “Would you like one? It’s white wine and cassis.”