Light Years

by James Salter

  It was a dog like a collie, with a long, narrow nose.

  “Yeah, she’s mine.”

  “What’s her name?” Nedra asked.

  “Anita.”

  She looked out once more at the town. “They’ll take good care of it?”

  “Oh yes, m’am,” he said. “Don’t worry.”

  She gave him ten dollars as she left.

  “No,” he said, “that’s all right.”

  “Keep it,” she told him and walked down. The path seemed steeper. In places the tall iron fence around the cemetery had collapsed. Overhead, quite abruptly, the sky had grown dark.

  Her father’s suits were laid on the bed to be taken by the Salvation Army, his shirts, his empty shoes. The earth had thudded down on the crypt in which he lay. All the ornaments, hats, belts, rings—how plain and cheap they seemed without him. They were like theatrical things—seen in the daylight very ordinary, even deceiving.

  She kept a few of the photographs; the house and its furnishings she put up for sale. She was wiping out all traces, stepping back into a life unconnected to this, a life more brilliant, more free. She had waited here once for seventeen years, desperate years, the air filled with quiverings of the world beyond; would she ever be part of it, would she ever go forth?

  Goodbye Altoona, roofs, churches, trees. The watershed where they had gone on many summer afternoons, the cool, ferny ground, the abandoned ovens filled with butterflies and leaves. Broad Avenue with its houses, the neighborhoods of the unknown. In every dark parlor, it seemed, was a woman with swollen legs, or an old man, used, empty, stained. A town almost European in appearance, steep and spacious, shining in the sun of late afternoon. Like all such junctions it was a penal colony, pinned in the provinces by its rails.

  She drove through the streets for the last time. Altoona was blue with morning, a city of trees. The cheap cafés were filled, the traffic passing. Poor food, plain people. All these meager lives were like mulch; they had made the trees of the town, its cornerstones, its endless solitude and calm. She thought of the snow falling in these same streets, of long winters, plays that had toured years before, of certain rich families whose homes were like another land, their daughters, their stores. She thought of her father, of men he once played cards with, his friends, their wives.

  It was finished, done. Suddenly she felt it all through her like an omen. She was exposed. The way was clear for her own end.

  15

  ARNAUD WAS SITTING COMFORTABLY, veiled in the haze of cigar smoke, indolent, amused. The amusement was hidden; it was like coals beneath the ashes, it had to be uncovered to come to life. His hair seemed grayer, more tangled, his eyes more pale. There was the look of a marvelous derelict about him, a holy failure. He had full lips, stained teeth that were nonetheless strong, a face of the earth.

  Nedra sat opposite him. “You must think of a question,” she said.

  “All right.”

  “And you must concentrate on it. I can’t do this unless you’re serious.”

  He was smoking a small cigar like a dark bit of wood. He nodded slightly. “I’m serious.”

  She began to look through the cards. He watched her. He was grave. It was as if they had entered a cathedral together. There fell about them a cool, a perceptible change of scale.

  “I’m going to choose a card now,” she said, “to represent you.”

  “How do you do that?”

  “It depends on your characteristics, your age.”

  “And if you didn’t know me, how would you do it?”

  A swift smile. “How could I not know you?” she asked.

  She laid down a card, a king who wore a yellow robe. His feet were hidden as well as the throne on which he sat, a Frankish king. “The King of Swords.”

  “Good.”

  It was winter. The days were deliciously aimless and long. She handed him the cards. “Shuffle them, and concentrate on the question.”

  He shuffled them slowly. “What is the origin of this?” he asked.

  “The tarot deck?”

  “Who invented it?”

  “It wasn’t invented,” she said. “Are they well mixed? Cut them three times. You know, I’m not an expert, Arnaud,” she said as she laid them out.

  “No?”

  “I don’t know all there is,” she apologized, “but I know quite a bit.”

  She placed the cards carefully, with a kind of ceremonial precision. She covered the king with a card. She put still another one crossways on it. Then, in the further form of a cross, she put single cards above, below, and to either side.

  Strange cards, their illustrations like those in books. They left her fingers with a faint, crisp sound. To the side of the cross she placed four cards in a column, one after another. The next to last was Death. It seemed to spread darkness over the rest. It was as if, casually, they had begun to read someone else’s letter in the middle of which suddenly was horrifying news.

  “Well,” Nedra said, “you have a marvelous card here.” She was pointing to the last one. It was the Emperor.

  “This is what is to come,” she said. “It means reason, strength, greatness.

  “The most important influence is here.” She indicated the card on top of his. “This is a woman, a very good woman, a friend, loving, honorable. She is the key.”

  They were bound together by the fragrance of tobacco, by the cold that lay at the windows, by a winter sky white as a cup.

  “I think that your question may even be answered by this woman. Am I right?” she said.

  “You’re too clever.”

  “She either has the answer or she is the answer.”

  “Well, the answer to my question is really a yes or a no.”

  “I don’t think I can answer that yet.”

  “Neither can I,” Arnaud said.

  “Sometimes it’s impossible to see things clearly in your own life. You have to rely on someone outside to show you.”

  “I’m willing to do that.”

  “We’re talking about Eve, aren’t we?”

  “Of course.”

  “She’s my closest friend.”

  “It’s difficult, isn’t it?”

  “Well, you know you’re the only man in her life. I mean, in her whole life the one true man.”

  “It’s very difficult,” Arnaud said. “I love her, I like Anthony, and yet there’s something that keeps me from it.”

  “What?”

  “I can’t say.”

  “There probably has never been a marriage that hasn’t been entered with some uncertainty.”

  “Were you uncertain?”

  “It was just like going to be executed.”

  “Come on, Nedra.”

  “I suppose it wasn’t quite.”

  “What else do you see for me?”

  She looked at the cards. “I see another woman who is influencing you. I don’t recognize this woman. She’s dark, she has money, she’s probably very confident, very secure. She is the obstacle, the opposing force. She has unusual tastes which perhaps are hidden.”

  “Have I met this woman yet?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “She doesn’t sound like anyone I know.”

  “Well, it’s here. You’re covered by the Queen of Wands …”

  “This one.”

  “Yes, and crossed by the Queen of Pentacles. That’s very unusual. It shows that your true companions are women. Now, what has happened is that …” She paused. “Certain ideas, certain suggestions have been made. It’s probably one principal proposition. You have a very hard struggle to face.”

  “Still?”

  She was reading ahead, she did not seem to hear him. “I don’t think I’m doing this well,” she said suddenly.

  “I think you’re doing fantastically. I’d like to learn a bit about these unusual tastes.”

  “No. No, I’m wrong. There are things here that are confusing.” She was vague, even a little nervous.

 
; “Wait, I just want to know one thing.” Death in black letters was astride a white horse. The banner he bore was Arab, stiff as wood. “What does this mean?” he asked.

  “Well, it can mean a number of things …”

  “For instance.”

  “Oh, anything. The loss of a benefactor, for example. Look, it’s snowing,” she said.

  She took one of his cigars. Her long fingers held it at the end near her mouth. She leaned forward to accept a light.

  Beyond the windows the snow was falling, more and more dense. Everything vanished in it.

  “Let’s find Viri,” she cried.

  He was out walking somewhere. They began to dress wildly in whatever was at hand. They bundled themselves like Russians in hats and scarfs and carried a coat for Viri.

  “He’s down by the river,” Nedra guessed.

  The snow was pouring down. It was covering their shoulders, brushing their eyes. They walked without speaking, as if in northern wastes. Their footsteps filled behind them. It was marvelous, strange. Then, racing toward them, his face white with snow, was Hadji. He barked, he dove at the soft drifts which were just forming, went sideways, rolled ecstatically, his legs in the air. Viri appeared behind him like a myth, a wanderer, his collar turned up, snow in his hair.

  “We are your Eskimo guides,” Arnaud said.

  “What good luck.” He was putting on the coat.

  “This is Nushka, my woman,” Arnaud said.

  “Ah.”

  “Of course you know the Eskimo custom regarding wives.”

  “It is truly civilized,” Viri agreed.

  “Nushka, rub noses with our friend.”

  Nedra performed the act gravely, sensually.

  “She is yours,” Arnaud said.

  “She doesn’t speak?”

  “Rarely. She who speaks does not nose,” he said, “she who nose does not speak.”

  Hadji lay flat in the deepening snow, half buried: black eyes—mascaraed eyes, Danny said—tall, intelligent ears. He would not move when they called.

  * * *

  For dinner there arrived Jivan and, back from life with her boyfriend, Kate Marcel-Maas. Her face was sunburned, her arms lean.

  “Do you know Kate?” Nedra asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Arnaud said. He smiled. “Are you living in New York?”

  “No, I’m just here for two weeks.”

  “Oh, really? Where have you come from?”

  “Los Angeles.”

  “Where’s that?” he murmured.

  “Where’s Los Angeles?” she said.

  “I think I remember. What were you doing there?”

  “We have a little house there, with a garden. Most of the time I was growing lettuce.”

  Jivan was in a cotton shirt open at the neck. He seemed filled with energy, almost impatience.

  “Come, I want to show you something,” he told her. He led her to the kitchen where, before the fascinated eyes of Franca and Danny, he had been carving the celery into birdlike shapes.

  “Where did you learn that?” Kate said.

  “Do you like it?”

  “Fantastic.”

  “You should grow some celery,” he said. “Here, now I’m going to make a swan. Will you have some wine?”

  It was retsina. He poured her a little. She tasted it. When he was close to her, he seemed slightly shorter than she was. On his finger was a ring with a dark stone.

  “It’s bitter,” she complained.

  “You’ll get used to it. Franca, would you like to try it?”

  “Yes, I’d love some.”

  “You’ll grow to like it,” he told Kate. “In the end the things that were bitter are always the best.”

  “Oh, yeah?” she said.

  Night had fallen. The house was illuminated as if for a ball, the lights on everywhere. Nedra was cooking. She was at her most beautiful: a slim, camel skirt, her sleeves pushed up, her wrists bare. Nearby stood a glass of wine she sometimes paused to sip.

  Arnaud was talking to Viri. They were at ease amid the cushions of the largest couch. They laughed, their smiles appearing at the same time. They were like directors of a gallery seen through the clear, tinted glass of their window at the end of the day; they were like publishers, owners of shares.

  Nedra brought them the St. Raphael. “What are they doing in the kitchen?” Viri asked.

  “Jivan is trying to seduce her.”

  “Before dinner?”

  “I think he’s a little nervous,” Nedra said. “He senses danger.”

  “Nedra, don’t you think—I mean, in principle—that we have a certain responsibility to her parents?”

  “What are you talking about, Viri? She’s been married.”

  “That’s not strictly true.”

  “It’s the same thing.”

  “Isn’t she a little young?” Arnaud asked.

  “Ah, you forget,” Nedra said.

  The dinner, she announced when they were seated at the table, was Italian. Petti di pollo. Jivan poured the wine. This time Kate refused it.

  “Have some,” he urged.

  “What is petti di polio?” she asked.

  “Pollo is chicken,” Arnaud said.

  “What’s petti?”

  “Breasts,” he said. “You know what they say about chicken.”

  “No.”

  “Every part strengthens a part.”

  “I can use it,” she said.

  Arnaud was vague, amusing. He told stories of Italy, of towns on the sea that had no hotels and you went along the street knocking at doors to find a room, of Sicily burning in sunlight, of Ravenna and Rome. Franca sat beside him drinking wine.

  He had an ear for language. He lapsed into Italian and wove in and out of it as if they all shared the power. “In Sicily everyone has a lupara—that’s a shotgun. In the paper there was an article about a man who shot another man for making too much noise under his window. He went before the judge, he was furious at being brought there. ‘You mean to say I can’t shoot someone beneath my own window?’ he asked.”

  “Is that true?” Franca asked.

  “Everything is true.”

  “No, really.”

  “Either that,” he said, “or it comes true later. I’ll tell you another story. There was a father who gave his son a shotgun. It was very small. It was a luparetta. So the son went to school, and he met another boy with a wrist watch. It was a beautiful wrist watch, he fell in love with it. He wanted it, so he traded; he gave his luparetta to the boy and he got the watch.”

  “Is this a true story?”

  “Who knows? When the son came home that afternoon, his father said, ‘Where’s your luparetta—Dov’è la luparetta?’ And the son said, ‘I traded it.’ ‘You traded it!’ ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I traded it for this watch.’ ‘Fantástico,’ the father said, ‘meraviglioso, you traded it for a watch. Now when someone calls your sister a whore, what are you going to do, tell them the time?’ ”

  They ate like a family, noisy, devoted, they passed plates freely. Kate was drinking from Arnaud’s glass. Later, in the other room, she played the guitar. The table was left uncleared. Nedra lit the fire which had been carefully laid, dry pieces of kindling, paper beneath. It soared into life, blooming like those beneath martyrs. She sat beside Jivan. They were drinking pear brandy. Kate, the guitar across her lap, was singing for Arnaud in a faint, high voice.

  “You’d better get her out of here,” Nedra whispered.

  “Don’t worry.”

  “He’s going to get her into bed, I can see it.”

  “She’s had a little too much to drink,” Jivan said.

  “Yes, but nothing that you gave her.”

  “She told me she didn’t like the wine.”

  “Why are you whispering, Nedra?” Viri called.

  “It’s fun,” she said, smiling.

  She poured more brandy. She was like a silver Christmas helix, a foil decoration turning slowly, the dazzle
descending only to reappear time after time.

  “You play beautifully,” she said.

  She excused herself to say good night to the children. Viri went up afterwards. He kissed his daughters. Sitting on their beds, he felt the warmth of their rooms, the chambers in which they slept and dreamed, were secure. Their books, their possessions filled him with a sense of accomplishment and peace. On the stairs he heard voices, the sensual chords from below. Kate was sitting near Arnaud. Her teeth had a bluish cast to them, the blue that flourishes on pure white, in diamonds. He had a moment of concern for her—no, not concern, he realized, but covetousness. He was like a sick man as he thought of her, stricken and unhappy. The pain he felt was a phantom pain, like that in the toes of a missing leg. It was only desire, which he hoped would leave him, which he prayed would not.

  Nedra was talking to her. “I wish I’d had your courage when I was your age,” she said.

  Kate shrugged. “I don’t really like California.”

  “At least you’ve lived there. You’re seeing what it is.”

  “My mother doesn’t like the idea. She’d like us to be married.”

  “Yours is a better way,” Nedra said.

  She poured them each a little more brandy. Jivan and Viri were listening to the music; Arnaud sat sprawled near the fire, his head back, his eyes closed. The snow was still falling, even the roads had disappeared.

  The elegance of the evening, the dishes remaining on the table, the ease with which Nedra and her husband treated each other, the understanding which seemed to stream from them, all of this filled Kate with a feverish happiness, that happiness which lies within the power of another to confer. She was drenched with love for these people who, though they had lived nearby all through her childhood, it seemed she was suddenly seeing for the first time, who were treating her as someone she longed at that moment to be: one of themselves.

  “Can I come and see you while I’m here?” she asked.

  “Of course.”

  “I mean, I really like to talk to you.”

  “I’d love to see you,” Nedra said.

  One afternoon, then. They would walk together or have tea. She had never set foot beyond the borders, this woman Kate suddenly loved, this woman with a knowing face, not at all sentimental, who leaned on her elbows and smoked small cigars. She had never traveled, not even to Montreal, and yet she knew so well what life should be. It was true. In her heart she carried an instinct like that of a migrant species. She would find the tundra, the deeps, she would journey home.