Light Years

by James Salter

  “But that’s over,” she said. “A psychiatrist, he had no practice, he was in research. A very intelligent man, brilliant.”

  “But you never married.”

  “No. I slowly realized that … the answer isn’t in psychiatry. You know, they’re strange, they have very strange ideas. I don’t even want to tell you. He’ll be a famous man,” she said. “He’s writing a book. He’s worked on it for a long time. It’s about unconventional healing. Of course, it has to do with the mind, the power of thought. You know, there are men who can perform what we think of as miracles. There was a famous one in Brazil; we went to see him. He was a clerk in a hospital, but after work he saw patients, they came from all over, from hundreds of miles away. He even operated on them without anesthetic. They didn’t even bleed. It’s the truth. We made a film of it.”

  “I’ve never heard of him.”

  “Oh, the government suppresses everything,” she said. She was intense, certain. “The doctors try to deny him.”

  “But how does he work? What does he say to a patient?”

  “Well, I don’t speak Spanish, but he asks them: What’s wrong? Where does it hurt? He touches them, like a blind man touches all over, and then he stops and he says: It’s here.”

  “Incredible.”

  “Then he cuts, with an ordinary knife.”

  “He sterilizes it?”

  “A kitchen knife. I’ve seen it.”

  They hypnotized one another with talk and admiration. The hours passed slowly, hours when the city sank into afternoon, hours that were theirs alone. Nedra had a taste for the East given to her, perhaps, by Jivan, and now, in the presence of this slim girl who spoke of having nine senses, who complained that she had no breasts, she found herself drawn to it once more. Nichi had small teeth, terrible teeth, she swore, she had just paid her dentist two hundred dollars and even that was a special price.

  “I told him that when I was under the gas, he could do what he liked.”

  “And?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  She was perfectly shaped. She was, as they say so often, like a doll. Her fingers were thin, her toes bony as the feet of a sparrow. In her own apartment she burned incense; her clothes had a faint scent of it. She had a master’s degree in psychology, but aside from her studies had read nothing. Nedra mentioned Ouspensky. No, she had never heard of him. She had never read Proust, Pavese, Lawrence Durrell.

  “What did they write?” she said.

  “And Tolstoy?”

  “Tolstoy. I think I’ve read some Tolstoy.”

  They met in the garden of the Modern Art, the city muted beyond its walls. They had lunch, they talked. Beneath the gleaming black hair burning in the sun, behind the intense eyes, for a moment Nedra saw something which touched her deeply—that rare thing, the idea of a friend one makes when the heart has already begun to close.

  She was like a fruit tree, she thought to herself, past bearing but still strong, like the trees in the sloping orchard of Marcel-Maas long ago. His name had been in the paper recently. He had had an important show, there were articles about him. He was being conceded at last, all he had dreamed and wanted, the things he could not say, the friends he had never had, the acclaim—all of it was laid now at the foot of canvases he had painted. He was safe at last. He existed, he could not disappear. Even his ex-wife was saved by this. She was part of it, she had made her exit before the final act, but she would have it to talk about for as long as she lived—at dinners, in restaurants, in the great, empty rooms of the barn, if she lived there still.

  The young women came to her. Telephone calls, conversations with friends, an occasional letter from Viri. She realized that life consisted of these pebbles. One has to submit to them, she told Nichi. “… walk on them,” she said, “bruise one’s feet.”

  “What do you mean by pebbles? I think I know.”

  “… lie on them, exhausted. Do you know the way your cheek is warmed by the sun they have gathered?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let me read your palm,” Nedra said.

  The hand was narrow, the lines surprisingly deep. It seemed naked, this palm, like that of an older woman. She traced the chief lines. She felt those flat eyes glancing up at her own face with its leanness, its intelligence, its immobility, in fascination and belief, but she acknowledged nothing.

  “Your hand is halfway between emotion and intellect,” she said, “divided between them. You are able to see yourself coldly, even in periods when you are ruled by emotion, but at the same time you are a romantic, you would like to give yourself completely, without thinking. Your intellect is strong.”

  “It’s the emotion I’m worried about.”

  “That there isn’t enough?”

  “Yes.”

  “There’s enough. There’s more than enough. Oh, yes.”

  They were both looking in the small, bare palm.

  “But you know that already,” Nedra murmured. She was creating truth, devising it. The brightness of plants and sunlight was behind her, the air was filled with panels of light in which floated a luminous dust. She did not answer, as she might have, “No, the truth is, you are a woman who will never be satisfied. You will search, but you will never find it.”

  She was close to things which were too powerful. She sensed an ascendancy over this willing girl, she could easily go too far. Suddenly she understood how the prick of a pin in a doll could kill.

  She told this to Eve later as if it were an accident that had been averted.

  “Well, what did you do?”

  “I took her to lunch at L’Étoile.”

  “L’Étoile?”

  “I felt guilty,” Nedra said. “Of course, I didn’t feel quite so guilty when I got the bill. It was thirty dollars.”

  “What did you eat?”

  “I don’t know what makes me spend money like that. I’ve struggled against it.”

  “Occasionally.”

  Nedra smiled. Her teeth were still white, the teeth of a woman well cared for. “No, I’ve tried. For some reason, it’s difficult for me. I know I’m going to die in poverty …”

  “Never.”

  “… without a cent. Having sold everything—jewels, clothes. They’ll be coming to take away the last bits of furniture.”

  “It’s impossible to imagine.”

  “Not for me,” Nedra said.

  4

  VIRI WAS IN ROME, HAVING COME to it slowly, as a scrap of paper comes down to the street. He was living in the Inghilterra. His clothes were pressed, the maids brought his laundry, his shirts folded neatly on top. The maids were named Angela, Luciana, names of fabulous heroines. The room was small, the bathroom large, a strip of heavy darkened brass at its threshold. There was a narrow tub, a white tile floor, a red dot for hot water, blue for cold. In the hallway Angela called to Luciana. Doors were slamming. A porter sighed.

  He had unpacked his things. His shoes were arranged beneath the bed, there were photos on the glass-topped table that served as a desk, the glass amplified the ticking of his watch where it lay. He was in exile in this country of waiters and lame serving girls. He had no real work. He pretended to be visiting, seeing at last all the things he had neglected. He was reading a life of Montaigne. Once or twice he talked of writing a book.

  Dawn. The traffic had started. Already the day was filled with a flat, Italian light like the doors of a theater opened in the morning. He was alone. With the solemnity of a peasant, he broke the five-part rolls, faintly pale and dusted on the bottom, that came with breakfast. In silence he spread the soft curls of butter and drank the tea. The distant city was snarling with cars and the faint insistent tapping of workmen’s hammers on stone.

  In the narrow, neglected streets that he liked to walk along, he looked in antique shop windows filled with reflections of passers-by. In the cool of the interiors, among huge chairs, the dealers sat talking as the morning passed, gesturing with their hands occasionally, unaware of his curious gl
ance.

  He was forty-seven. His hair was thin as he walked in the Roman sunlight. He was lost in the cities of Europe, pigeons huddled in every niche, asleep on the knees of saints. He was a man who waited for the Tribune to be delivered to the kiosks, who ate by himself. When he saw his face in windows, struck by light, he was shocked. It was the face of ancient politicians, of pensioners, the wrinkles looked black as ink. Don’t despise me for being old, he begged.

  He had lunch in a restaurant, sitting near the window. Cold noon, a cold light. Outside the trees had already lost their leaves. It was in the Villa Borghese; the air of the great park was damp and still, the sound of things far off came through it like distant icefalls. Before him was a piece of paper on which he was writing, during the long intervals between courses, a list of those things which could even for a short while, save him, that is to say, pleasures which remained. Wood fires, he had written, The London Times, dinners with friends …

  Time had spoiled for Viri. It reeked in his pockets. He had projects, somewhat vague, appointments, but nothing to do. His eye would not fix on things, it slipped off them like a dying insect. He was staggering, swaying between those times when he had no strength at all, no reason, no urge to struggle, when he felt, ah, if only he could run to death like a fanatic, a believer, delirious, dazed, on those quickened feet that run to love—and then, in the quiet of the early afternoon, seated somewhere, opening the newspaper, he was completely different.

  He stood in the bathroom amid the white chair, the sill of gray marble, the huge frosted windows which seemed to intensify the light. The inward curve of the bidet’s edge, the smoothness of it gave him for a moment a sensation of deepest longing. The curve complemented the portion of the body meant to fit against it, and he weakened as one does at the sight of an empty garment or the underclothes, fresh and minimal, of a loved woman, tossed aside.

  He could not see himself clearly, that was the thing. He knew he had talent, intelligence, that he was not going to perish like a mollusk washed up on shore. All the past, he told himself, all that had been so difficult, that he had struggled with like a traveler with too many bags—idealism, loyalty, all your virtues, your decency—they will be needed when you are old, they will preserve you, keep you alive; that is, they will interest someone. And then, a day later, the disease would strike; it was something he did not recognize or understand. Suddenly he had never been so nervous, frightened, depressed. He had a flash of realizing what a breakdown was: the act of life going out of control. His chest ached, his legs were cold, he kept swallowing, his mind raced foolishly. He looked out on the back courts in the winter afternoon, courts with glassed-in balconies and landings. His only contact with the world, beyond the faint sound of traffic, the voices in the hallway that never ceased, was the black telephone, a frightening instrument shrill as a nightmare and over which abrupt voices came, voices whose mood he could hardly guess. He had no strength, no desire to go out. The thought of people terrified him. He did not want to speak Italian; it was not his language, not his sensibility. He wanted to see his children again, only once, before the end.

  The next day, in the sunshine, everything was better. The sky was mild, people were smiling and friendly. It was as if they could see he was an invalid, the survivor of a wreck.

  He went to the office of two architects with whom he had corresponded. They were young and serious. One of them he had met in New York. The reception room was calm and luxurious, the luxury that is formed of infallible choices. It spoke of order, understanding, he felt immediately at home. The fever had passed.

  The secretary looked up. “Buon giorno.”

  “I’m Mr. Berland.”

  “Good morning, Mr. Berland.” Her face was turned upwards, a small, intelligent face, short hair, black, like the wing of a bird. “We were expecting you,” she said. “Mr. Cagli has someone in his office; it will just be a few minutes.”

  “That’s all right.”

  They looked at one another. It seemed she nodded slightly, in the way of the East. “Have you been in Rome long?” she asked.

  “Several weeks.”

  “Do you like it?”

  “It’s strange; I think I’m not quite accustomed to it yet.”

  “Do you speak Italian?”

  “Well, I’ve started.”

  “Bene,” she said simply.

  “I’m a disgrace to it.”

  “No, I don’t think so. Trova quale più facile, parlare o capire?”

  “Capire.”

  “Sì,” she agreed.

  She smiled. Her mouth was small as a child’s. Her name was Lia Cavalieri. She was thirty-three. She lived near the Protestant Cemetery. Had he been there? she asked. He was slow in replying. He recognized her. “No,” he murmured.

  “Keats is buried there.”

  “Is he? Here in Rome?”

  “Then you haven’t seen his grave? It’s very moving. It’s off in a corner by itself. It has no name on it, you know.”

  “No name?”

  “A beautiful inscription, but no name.”

  She was about to say, “I’ll take you there if you like,” but restrained herself. She said it on his second visit.

  They walked toward the grave on a soft, winter day. The ground was dry underfoot. Far off, near a tree, he could see the two stones. Afterwards they went to lunch.

  Like Montaigne whose life he was reading, he had met an Italian woman during a journey there and fallen in love. All that was missing was the baths of Lucca. Montaigne had been forty-eight. A freshet thought dead had burst forth.

  5

  LIA WAS FROM THE NORTH. HER father had been born in Genoa with its steep necropolis; her mother, more romantically, in Nice. She told him all this. He loved the details of her life, they electrified him. He had entered the period when everything in his own seemed to be repetition, occurring for the second or third time, a performance for which he knew every possibility. She made that forgotten.

  “Nice. Didn’t that once belong to Italy?”

  “Everything did once,” she said.

  The names she told him, the history, the incidents of her childhood—all of it was new, all of it glinted like the energy in the black of her hair. She had a resigned intelligence, she was fastidious, she was shy. The great unhappiness of her life was that she had never married.

  From the moment he had seen her sitting confident and small behind her desk, when he saw her type or use the telephone, he realized how capable she was. But she had ventured nothing, she was merely waiting, all these years she was waiting for a man. She was a kind of brilliant cripple; she could imagine anything, but she could not walk. And he was only slightly better. Though from the first he felt enormously drawn to her, he was uncertain; he had not hunted in so long and had been poor at it even then.

  They went to dinner in a restaurant named for the baker’s daughter, La Fornarina, who had been a mistress of Raffaello. It was winter, the garden was closed. She had wanted to talk to him as soon as she saw him, she said. She had formed an idea of him from having heard him talked about and from letters, but no expectation could explain the closeness and recognition she felt when he entered the reception room for the first time.

  “You are one in a thousand,” she told him. “Yes, you are very special.”

  A warmth flooded through him, a dizziness as if he had fought an enemy. With a word, a glance she embraced him; she had opened the dull sky, the light poured down. It is always an accident that saves us. It is someone we have never seen.

  She knew Rome as a lifelong prisoner knows it. She knew its shops, its sun flats, its streets with a special view. She would show him some of that. His hungers returned to him, his yearnings, his capacity for joy.

  She filled his glass with wine but took only a little for herself which she did not drink. She told him, without the slightest urgency, that she had no power to resist him.

  “I think you know that,” she said. Her hand slid beneath his. The
touch of her fingers took his breath away.

  She had a small car, many pairs of shoes, she said wistfully, some money in Switzerland; she was like a meal all prepared.

  “And you have come to sit down to it,” she said. “Yes, it’s a marvelous dinner, it’s the meal of a lifetime.”

  Zuppa, carne, verdura, formaggi. The procession of worn, white plates upon the tablecloth, the coarse, simple bread, the waiters in their jackets, slightly soiled. The wine had no effect on him, he was too stimulated for it. When she leaned across to help him with the menu, he could feel the warmth of her face. She ate very little, she smoked a few cigarettes, she talked. Her father was a grain dealer. He was conservative, small, bitterly disappointed in her brother. His daughter he had loved perhaps too much; it had sometimes been too heavy, too carnal. He kissed her always on the mouth, deep, unflinching kisses. When her mother died, he used to say, he was going to marry Lia. He was joking, of course, but he once touched her breast on the bus, she had felt revulsion.

  “Am I boring you?”

  “Of course not,” he said.

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m marveling at you. You have such an astonishing vocabulary. How did you learn to speak English so well?”

  “I’ve spoken it for a long time,” she said.

  “Why is that?”

  “I suppose I was waiting for you, amore.”

  Should one describe the act of love which united them, it may have been this night? She had the key to an apartment that belonged to a friend. She unlocked the bolt three times; a narrow, varnished door, one of two, fell open. There were no rugs, the floor was cold. He felt no hesitation, no fear. It was as if he had never seen a woman before; the sight of her nakedness, the darkness of its core overwhelmed him, his mind mumbled devotions, his ears were filled with whispers. The city opened like a garden, the streets received him and poured forth their names. He saw Rome like one of God’s angels, from above, from afar, its lights, its poorest rooms. He blessed it, he fell into its heart. He became its apostle, he believed in its grace.