by James Salter
“So what do you mean?”
She did not answer.
“Nedra.”
She turned toward the bridge. “The time will come to talk about it,” she said.
They walked back in the dusk. The river slept beneath them. The boats were almost gone.
They slept in Brown’s, the midnight cool at last, the city covered only with the sound of an airliner crossing. They bathed and undressed in the comfort of rooms maintained for a race that loves hunting, that knows perfectly the rules of behavior, is laconic in personal talk and triumphant in public. Side by side in separate soft beds they lay, like rulers of different realms.
She wrote to André: We have never walked in Hyde Park, which is one of the things you said you’d like to do when you showed me London. Of course it hasn’t been hard to avoid the park, there’s so much to see. It’s such a great city that you could never use it up.
I walk along these marvelous streets, I think of your face and how I love you, of those things you say which are somehow everything. I think of you often and and in ways I leave for you to imagine. For some reason I feel quite close to you here, and I’m really not unhappy because we are apart. No unhappiness can come because of you—that is the sun you’ve put inside me (the only son, I hope). I miss you, I long for you, I see you everywhere.
We are having a wonderful time. We talk buildings, we travel to see buildings, we track them down. I’m like the wife of a bug collector. We are on this extraordinary island of forests, concerts, restaurants—and everything is bugs. But I’ve always believed, I know it’s true, that any main branch leads you straight to the trunk. If you know one thing completely, it touches everything. But, of course you have to know it.
I love you very much today. I hug you with all my heart.
Four
1
THEY WERE DIVORCED IN THE fall. I wish it could have been otherwise. The clarity of those autumn days affected them both. For Nedra, it was as if her eyes had been finally opened; she saw everything, she was filled with a great, unhurried strength. It was still warm enough to sit outdoors. Viri walked, the old dog wandering behind him. The fading grass, the trees, the very light made him dizzy, as if he were an invalid or starving. He caught the aroma of his own life passing. All during the proceedings, they lived as they always had, as if nothing were going on.
The judge who gave her the final decree pronounced her name wrong. He was tall and decaying, the pores visible in his cheeks. He misread a number of things; no one corrected him.
It was November. Their last night together they sat listening to music—it was Mendelssohn—like a dying composer and his wife. The room was peaceful, filled with beautiful sound. The last logs burned.
“Would you like some ouzo?” she asked.
“I don’t think there is any.”
“We drank it all?”
“Some time ago.”
She was wearing slippers and brown velvet pants. On her wrist were bracelets of silver and bamboo, her hair was loose. She was leaving to achieve a life, even though she was forty. She used the figure forty, in truth she was forty-one. She was miserable. She was content. She would do her yoga, read, calm herself as one calms a cat. Monkey breed tirty, tirty-two times each minute, monkey lib twenty years. Frog breed two, tree times each minute, go beneat mud in winter, frog lib two hundred years.
“That’s insane,” Viri had said. “Frogs don’t live two hundred years.”
“He’s thinking of something else.”
“They’d be as big as we are.”
She would have difficulties, of course, but she did not fear them. She was confident of what lay beyond. Perhaps—so many thoughts and ideas, most of them brief, came to her—she would even achieve, in the end, a kind of new, more honest understanding with Viri; their friendship would deepen, unfettered at last. In any case, she could imagine it as she could imagine many things. She was turning away from all that was useful no longer; she was turning to face what might come.
The next day she left for Europe. The car stood before the house in the late afternoon. From afar it seemed like any other departure, like one of the thousands that preceded it.
“Well, goodbye,” she said.
She started the engine. She turned on the radio and left quickly. The road was empty. The lights of nearby houses were on. In the early darkness, going swiftly, she passed the ghostly white fence of the field where Leslie Dahlander had ridden her pony. The silence of that meadow bade goodbye to her in a way that nothing else had. It was solemn, dark, like the site of a sunken ship. The pony was still alive. It had foundered; it was in a field beyond the house. And now she began to weep, without bowing her head, tears for someone’s dead child streaming down her face as the six o’clock news began.
Viri was left in the house. Every object, even those which had been hers, which he never touched, seemed to share his loss. He was suddenly parted from his life. That presence, loving or not, which fills the emptiness of rooms, mildens them, makes them light—that presence was gone. The simple greed that makes one cling to a woman left him suddenly desperate, stunned. A fatal space had opened, like that between a liner and the dock which is suddenly too wide to leap; everything is still present, visible, but it cannot be regained.
“Perhaps we should go out to dinner,” he said to Danny.
They hardly spoke. They ate in silence, like travelers. When they returned to the house, it stood lighted and empty like some hotel in the outskirts, open but lost.
“Hello, Hadji,” he said. “We got you something good to eat. Poor old Hadji, your mother’s gone.”
He held the dog in his arms. The gray muzzle lay against his chest, the stiffened legs hung down. Danny was cutting into scraps the steak they had brought back.
“Don’t worry, Hadji,” Viri said. “We’ll take care of you. We’ll still have fires. When it snows we’ll go down to the river.”
“Here, Papa.” She handed him the dish. She was crying. “Poor Danny.”
“I’m all right. I’m just not used to it yet.”
“No, of course not.”
“I’m going upstairs.”
“I’ll light a fire,” he said. “Perhaps you could come down in a while.”
“Yes, perhaps,” she said. She was like her mother, provisional, discreet. She had a fuller figure than Nedra and a somewhat cruel mouth, the lips soft and self-indulgent, the smile irresistible, sly. Her face had the sullen resignation of girls who are studying subjects they see no use for, girls betrayed by circumstance, forced to work on Sundays, girls in foreign brothels. It was a face one could adore.
2
THAT WINTER NEDRA WAS IN Davos, which she had been mistakenly told she would find an interesting town. It was oppressive even when covered with snow. The sun was dazzling, however. The air, clear as spring water, filled her room.
At lunch one day she was introduced to a man named Harry Pall.
“Where do you live, in Paris?” he asked her.
“I haven’t decided yet.”
“You look like Paris,” he said. He poured wine generously into his glass, then gestured with the bottle toward hers. “I’d love some,” she said.
His hair was curly, his eyes a fading blue. He was fifty, with a large torso and a face coming apart from age like wet paper. He dominated the table with his power and voice, and yet there was something in him that touched her immediately. It was the resemblance to Arnaud. He was like some battered survivor of the same family, the older brother who would die without pain, convivial, still joking, leaving a hundred dollars for the nurse. His hands were paws. He was the last of the bears, or so it seemed. Wine, stories, friends; he was a man lying fully clothed in the stream of days.
“I don’t want to leave anything,” he confessed. To his ex-wife, definitely not. “She has everything, anyway, except my lawyer’s home telephone number.” To his son, that was different. He would leave his son some mistresses, “Like Dumas did.” He laughed. “You’re sure you’r
e not from Paris?”
“Why do you say Paris?”
“You’re tall, like a Dior model.”
“No.”
“An ex-Dior model. There’s a time in life when everything becomes ex—ex-athlete, ex-president, expatriate, x-ray.” The food was spilling from his fork. He found it again. He ate steadily. “Where are you staying?”
She named the hotel.
“In Davos?” he exclaimed. “Terrible town. You know it’s the setting for The Magic Mountain. What are your plans for dinner? I’ll take you to the Chesa, it’s my favorite place in Europe. You know the Chesa? I’ll come by for you at seven.”
He rose abruptly, settling the bill amid cries from friends which he ignored, waved and walked out. She saw him putting on his skis, his face red from the effort. He had an extraordinary face, a face on which everything was written, lined, coarse, like the bark of a tree. The glass he had been drinking from was empty, his napkin was thrown to the floor. When she looked again he was gone.
She returned to her hotel in the late afternoon. There were no letters. A subdued race of people was leafing through the Zurich and south German papers. She asked for tea to be sent to her room. She took a hot bath. The chill of the day which was part of its glory began to leave her in feverish waves, and a sense of well-being, of bodily delight replaced it. Afterwards, as after all deep pleasure, she was a bit undone. It was evening. The last, cold light had gone. A vague disorientation came over her, a feeling of nonexistence. Swallows were screaming over the stained roofs of Rome. The sea was crashing at Amagansett on a beach gray as slate. She was pulled by terrestrial forces to places far away. She could not seem to summon herself into the present, into an hour as empty as that before a storm.
The room had the bareness of tables in closed restaurants. It was an invalid’s room, the rugs worn, cold. It was a room in which objects began, in isolation, to radiate an absurdity. A book, a spoon, a toothbrush seemed as strange as a sofa in the snow. She had dressed this barren space with her clothes, with lipsticks, sunglasses, belts, maps of the ski lifts, but nothing had dented the coldness. Only in the first, clear light of early morning did she feel secure, or when it stormed.
She prepared her eyes in the mirror. She examined herself, turning her head slowly from side to side. She did not want to grow old. She was reading Madame de Staël. The courage to live when the best days were past. Yes, it was there, but still she could not think of it without confusion. The rooms in hotels when one is alone, when the telephone is silent and voices from the street are like gusts of music—these were things she had already decided she would not endure. She had her teeth still, she had her eyes. Drink, it’s the last of it, she thought.
She stepped back. How to re-create that tall young woman whose laugh turned people’s heads, whose dazzling smile fell on gatherings like money on restaurant tables, snow on country houses, morning at sea? She took up her implements, eye pencil, cucumber cream, lipstick the color of isinglass … Finally she was satisfied. In a certain light, with the right background, the right clothes, a beautiful coat … yes, and she had her smile, it was all that was left from the early days, it was hers, she would have it always, the way one always remembers how to swim.
He arrived at the door unexpectedly with a bottle of champagne. “I’ve had this on ice for weeks,” he said, “waiting for an occasion.”
The champagne poured over his hand when he opened it and fell to the floor in long, foaming gouts. He paid no attention. He smelled the glasses in the bathroom, they were clean.
“You’re married,” he announced.
“No.”
“You’ve been married.” He handed her a glass. “I can see it. Women become dry if they live alone. I don’t think it needs explaining. It’s demonstrable. Even if it’s not a good marriage, it keeps them from dehydrating. They’re like the fruit flies in Franklin’s wine. You know that story? Incredible. One of the great stories of all time—I mean, even if you know it, it’s still amazing, it never disappoints you, it’s like a trick. And I believe Franklin; he was our last, great, honest man. Well, Walt Whitman, maybe. No, forget about Whitman.”
He took a large swallow of champagne.
“This is like youth,” he said. “Nothing is sweeter, even though I hardly remember it. Well, I remember some things. Certain houses people lived in. Latin class. I don’t think they even have Latin classes any more. It’s all like a suit that’s been pressed too much, nothing left but the spots.
“The flies—listen to this—the flies had been drowned in the wine, they were at the bottom of the bottle with a little sediment, the dirt that tells you things are real. That’s what’s missing in American life, the sediment. Anyway, Franklin saw these little drowned flies, they were fruit flies, they’re always hovering over peaches and pears, and he put them on a plate in the sunlight to let them dry. You know what happened?”
“No.”
“They came back to life.”
“How could they?”
“I told you it was incredible. This was wine that had come all the way from France. It was at least a year old. You can say that’s the power of French wine, but the story is true. So that’s my plan. If it works for flies, why not for primates?”
“Well …”
“Well what?”
“That’s been tried many times,” she said.
At dinner they had a good table, he was clearly at home, there were flowers, the wineglasses were large. The young headwaiter in his high collar and striped pants came over to talk.
“How are you, Mr. Pall?” he said.
“Bring us a bottle of Dole,” Pall told him.
A fire crackling. Dry Swiss wine. It disappeared rapidly into the glasses.
“So what are your plans?” he asked. “You’re not staying in Davos? You should come here. It’s very comfortable. I’ll talk to the owner; I’ll see if I can get you a room.”
“I love the restaurant.”
“Consider it done. This is the place for you. Do you like the wine?”
“It’s delicious.”
“You don’t drink very much,” he said. “You have a great economy of act. I admire that. Tell me about your life.”
“Which one?”
“You have many, eh?”
“Only two,” she said.
“Are you going to spend the winter here?”
“I don’t know. That depends.”
“Naturally,” Pall said. He drank some wine. He had ordered dinner for them without looking at the menu. “Naturally. Well, I have friends here you should meet. I used to have a lot of them, but during the divorce you split everything, and my wife took half of them when she left—some of the best ones, unfortunately. They were really hers, anyway. I always liked her friends. That was one of the problems.” He laughed. “One or two of them I liked a little too much.”
He ordered more wine.
“The best friend I ever had—you never heard of him—was a writer named Gordon Eddy. You know him?”
“No.”
“I didn’t think so. Wonderful guy.”
There were beads of saliva in the corners of his mouth. His movements were loose, his hands waved freely. Solid, generous, practical, he was all hull; he had no keel. The rudder was small, the compass drifting.
“He was the friend of my life. You know, you only have one friend like that, there can’t be two. He had no money—I’m talking about a certain period after the war. He was living with us. I’d give him some money and he’d go right down and lose it at the casino. He’d bring back girls who’d stay for a day or two. Naturally, my wife didn’t like him: the girls, and he’d leave cigarette ashes around and come downstairs with his fly open. What she remembers most about France, she says, is Gordon’s fly being open. So finally she said either he went or she did. I should have said, All right, you. I knew nothing then.”
The dinner was served on large, warm plates: sliced steak and rosti, raspberries in cream for dessert. He w
as emptying the second bottle of wine. Outside it was cold, the small streets dark, the snow creaking underfoot. His eyes were glazed. He was like a beaten boxer waiting in his corner. He could still smile and speak, his embrace of life was not loosened, but he was spent. When people stopped to talk to him, he did not rise, he could not, but he remembered Nedra’s name.
“Let’s have a brandy,” he said. He called to the waitress. “Rémy Martin. Zwei. Rémy Martin is good,” he advised Nedra. “Martell is good, but I know Martell. I mean personally. He’s rich enough as it is.”
“You seem to know a lot of people. What do you do?”
“I’m an owner. I used to be in banking, but I retired. Now I’m having a little fun. I don’t have any responsibilities. I can do everything by telephone. I’ve gotten rid of my problems.”
“Such as?”
“Such as everything,” he said. “I’m thinking of going to India.”
“I’d love to go to India. I’ve studied with Indians.”
“I’d be willing to bet you don’t know anything about it.”
“About India?”
“Have you ever been there?”
“No.”
“Well, that’s the trouble,” he said. “You study, but India is something else.”
“There’s probably more than one India.”
“More than one India … no, there’s only one. There’s only one Chesa, one Nedra, and one Harry Pall. I wish there was another one, with two livers.”
“Have you been to Tunisia?”
“Don’t ever have anything to do with Arabs.”
“Why?”
“Just believe me. Believe me,” he murmured. “You don’t have to worry, you’re not that young, they don’t even care how young you are. They’re a sick people.”
“Desperately poor.”
“They’re not so poor. I was poor. Look, I don’t care what you do, they’ve always been like that, they’re not going to change. You can give them schools, teachers, books, but how do you keep them from eating the pages?”