Dusk and Other Stories

by James Salter

  “No,” she says.

  Inge’s car is a blue Volkswagen, the blue of certain airmail envelopes. One fender is dented in.

  “You haven’t seen my car,” she says. “What do you think? Did I get a good bargain? I don’t know anything about cars. This is my first. I bought it from someone I know, a painter, but it was in an accident. The motor is scorched.

  “I know how to drive,” she says. “It’s better if someone sits next to me, though. Can you drive?”

  “Of course,” he says.

  He gets behind the wheel and starts the engine. Nico is sitting in the back.

  “How does it feel to you?” Inge says.

  “I’ll tell you in a minute.”

  Although it’s only a year old, the car has a certain shabbiness. The material on the ceiling is faded. Even the steering wheel seems abused. After they have driven a few blocks, Malcolm says, “It seems all right.”

  “Yes?”

  “The brakes are a little weak.”

  “They are?”

  “I think they need new linings.”

  “I just had it greased,” she says.

  Malcolm looks at her. She is quite serious.

  “Turn left here,” she says.

  She directs him through the city. There is a little traffic now but he seldom stops. Many intersections in Barcelona are widened out in the shape of an octagon. There are only a few red lights. They drive through vast neighborhoods of old apartments, past factories, the first vacant fields at the edge of town. Inge turns in her seat to look back to Nico.

  “I’m sick of this place,” she says. “I want to go to Rome.”

  They are passing the airport. The road to the sea is crowded. All the scattered traffic of the city has funneled onto it, buses, trucks, innumerable small cars.

  “They don’t even know how to drive,” Inge says. “What are they doing? Can’t you pass?

  “Oh, come on,” she says. She reaches across him to blow the horn.

  “No use doing that,” Malcolm says.

  Inge blows it again.

  “They can’t move.”

  “Oh, they make me furious,” she cries.

  Two children in the car ahead have turned around. Their faces are pale and reflective in the small rear window.

  “Have you been to Sitges?” Inge says.

  “Cadaques.”

  “Ah,” she says. “Yes. Beautiful. There you have to know someone with a villa.”

  The sun is white. The land lies beneath it the color of straw. The road runs parallel to the coast past cheap bathing beaches, campgrounds, houses, hotels. Between the road and the sea is the railroad with small tunnels built beneath it for bathers to reach the water. After a while this begins to disappear. They drive along almost deserted stretches.

  “In Sitges,” Inge says, “are all the blond girls of Europe. Sweden, Germany, Holland. You’ll see.”

  Malcolm watches the road.

  “The brown eyes of the Spaniards are irresistible to them,” she says.

  She reaches across him to blow the horn.

  “Look at them! Look at them crawling along!

  “They come here full of hopes,” Inge says. “They save their money, they buy little bathing suits you could put in a spoon, and what happens? They get loved for one night, perhaps, that’s all. The Spanish don’t know how to treat women.”

  Nico is silent in the back. On her face is the calm expression which means she is bored.

  “They know nothing,” Inge says.

  Sitges is a little town with damp hotels, the green shutters, the dying grass of a beach resort. There are cars parked everywhere. The streets are lined with them. Finally they find a place two blocks from the sea.

  “Be sure it’s locked,” Inge says.

  “Nobody’s going to steal it,” Malcolm tells her.

  “Now you don’t think it’s so nice,” she says.

  They walk along the pavement, the surface of which seems to have buckled in the heat. All around are the flat, undecorated facades of houses built too close together. Despite the cars, the town is strangely vacant. It’s two o’clock. Everyone is at lunch.

  Malcolm has a pair of shorts made from rough cotton, the blue glazed cotton of the Tauregs. They have a little belt, slim as a finger, which goes only halfway around. He feels powerful as he puts them on. He has a runner’s body, a body without flaws, the body of a martyr in a Flemish painting. One can see vessels laid like cord beneath the surface of his limbs. The cabins have a concrete back wall and hemp underfoot. His clothes hang shapeless from a peg. He steps into the corridor. The women are still undressing, he does not know behind which door. There is a small mirror hung from a nail. He smooths his hair and waits. Outside is the sun.

  The sea begins with a sloping course of pebbles sharp as nails. Malcolm goes in first. Nico follows without a word. The water is cool. He feels it climb his legs, touch the edge of his suit and then with a swell—he tries to leap high enough—embrace him. He dives. He comes up smiling. The taste of salt is on his lips. Nico has dived, too. She emerges close by, softly, and draws her wetted hair behind her with one hand. She stands with her eyes half-closed, not knowing exactly where she is. He slips an arm around her waist. She smiles. She possesses a certain, sure instinct of when she is most beautiful. For a moment they are in serene dependence. He lifts her in his arms and carries her, helped by the sea, toward the deep. Her head rests on his shoulder. Inge lies on the beach in her bikini reading Stern.

  “What’s wrong with Inge?” he says.

  “Everything.”

  “No, doesn’t she want to come in?”

  “She’s having her period,” Nico says.

  They lie down beside her on separate towels. She is, Malcolm notices, very brown. Nico can never get that way no matter how long she stays outside. It is almost a kind of stubbornness as if he, himself, were offering her the sun and she would not accept.

  She got this tan in a single day, Inge tells them. A single day! It seems unbelievable. She looks at her arms and legs as if confirming it. Yes, it’s true. Naked on the rocks at Cadaques. She looks down at her stomach and in doing so induces it to reveal several plump, girlish rolls.

  “You’re getting fat,” Nico says.

  Inge laughs. “They are my savings,” she says.

  They seem like that, like belts, like part of some costume she is wearing. When she lies back, they are gone. Her limbs are clean. Her stomach, like the rest of her, is covered with a faint, golden down. Two Spanish youths are strolling past along the sea.

  She is talking to the sky. If she goes to America, she recites, is it worthwhile to bring her car? After all, she got it at a very good price, she could probably sell it if she didn’t want to keep it and make some money.

  “America is full of Volkswagens,” Malcolm says.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s filled with German cars, everyone has one.”

  “They must like them,” she decides. “The Mercedes is a good car.”

  “Greatly admired,” Malcolm says.

  “That’s the car I would like. I would like a couple of them. When I have money, that will be my hobby,” she says. “I’d like to live in Tangier.”

  “Quite a beach there.”

  “Yes? I will be black as an Arab.”

  “Better wear your suit,” Malcolm says.

  Inge smiles.

  Nico seems asleep. They lie there silent, their feet pointed to the sun. The strength of it has gone. There are only passing moments of warmth when the wind dies all the way and the sun is flat upon them, weak but flooding. An hour of melancholy is approaching, the hour when everything is ended.

  At six o’clock Nico sits up. She is cold.

  “Come,” Inge says, “we’ll go for a walk up the beach.”

  She insists on it. The sun has not set. She becomes very playful.

  “Come,” she says, “it’s the good section, all the big villas are there. We’ll walk alon
g and make the old men happy.”

  “I don’t want to make anyone happy,” Nico says, hugging her arms.

  “It isn’t so easy,” Inge assures her.

  Nico goes along sullenly. She is holding her elbows. The wind is from the shore. There are little waves now which seem to break in silence. The sound they make is soft, as if forgotten. Nico is wearing a gray tank suit with an open back, and while Inge plays before the houses of the rich, she looks at the sand.

  Inge goes into the sea. Come, she says, it’s warm. She is laughing and happy, her gaiety is stronger than the hour, stronger than the cold. Malcolm walks slowly in behind her. The water is warm. It seems purer as well. And it is empty, as far in each direction as one can see. They are bathing in it alone. The waves swell and lift them gently. The water runs over them, laving the soul.

  At the entrance to the cabins the young Spanish boys stand around waiting for a glimpse if the shower door is opened too soon. They wear blue woolen trunks. Also black. Their feet appear to have very long toes. There is only one shower and in it a single, whitened tap. The water is cold. Inge goes first. Her suit appears, one small piece and then the other, draped over the top of the door. Malcolm waits. He can hear the soft slap and passage of her hands, the sudden shattering of the water on concrete when she moves aside. The boys at the door exalt him. He glances out. They are talking in low voices. They reach out to tease each other, to make an appearance of play.

  The streets of Sitges have changed. An hour has struck which announces evening, and everywhere there are strolling crowds. It’s difficult to stay together. Malcolm has an arm around each of them. They drift to his touch like horses. Inge smiles. People will think the three of them do it together, she says.

  They stop at a café. It isn’t a good one, Inge complains.

  “It’s the best,” Nico says simply. It is one of her qualities that she can tell at a glance, wherever she goes, which is the right place, the right restaurant, hotel.

  “No,” Inge insists.

  Nico seems not to care. They wander on separated now, and Malcolm whispers, “What is she looking for?”

  “Don’t you know?” Nico says.

  “You see these boys?” Inge says. They are seated in another place, a bar. All around them, tanned limbs, hair faded from the long, baking afternoons, young men sit with the sweet stare of indolence.

  “They have no money,” she says. “None of them could take you to dinner. Not one of them. They have nothing. This is Spain,” she says.

  Nico chooses the place for dinner. She has become a lesser person during the day. The presence of this friend, this girl she casually shared a life with during the days they both were struggling to find themselves in the city, before she knew anybody or even the names of streets, when she was so sick that they wrote out a cable to her father together—they had no telephone—this sudden revelation of Inge seems to have deprived the past of decency. All at once she is pierced by a certainty that Malcolm feels contempt for her. Her confidence, without which she is nothing, has gone. The tablecloth seems white and dazzling. It seems to be illuminating the three of them with remorseless light. The knives and forks are laid out as if for surgery. The plates lie cold. She is not hungry but she doesn’t dare refuse to eat. Inge is talking about her boyfriend.

  “He is terrible,” she says, “he is heartless. But I understand him. I know what he wants. Anyway, a woman can’t hope to be everything to a man. It isn’t natural. A man needs a number of women.”

  “You’re crazy,” Nico says flatly.

  “It’s true.”

  The statement is all that was needed to demoralize her. Malcolm is inspecting the strap of his watch. It seems to Nico he is permitting all this. He is stupid, she thinks. This girl is from a low background and he finds that interesting. She thinks because they go to bed with her they will marry her. Of course not. Never. Nothing, Nico thinks, could be farther from the truth, though even as she thinks she knows she may be wrong.

  They go to Chez Swann for a coffee. Nico sits apart. She is tired, she says. She curls up on one of the couches and goes to sleep. She is exhausted. The evening has become quite cool.

  A voice awakens her, music, a marvelous voice amid occasional phrases of the guitar. Nico hears it in her sleep and sits up. Malcolm and Inge are talking. The song is like something long-awaited, something she has been searching for. She reaches over and touches his arm.

  “Listen,” she says.

  “What?”

  “Listen,” she says, “it’s Maria Pradera.”

  “Maria Pradera?”

  “The words are beautiful,” Nico says.

  Simple phrases. She repeats them, as if they were litany. Mysterious repetitions: dark-haired mother … dark-haired child. The eloquence of the poor, worn smooth and pure as a stone.

  Malcolm listens patiently but he hears nothing. She can see it: he has changed, he has been poisoned while she slept with stories of a hideous Spain fed bit by bit until now they are drifting through his veins, a Spain devised by a woman who knows she can never be more than part of what a man needs. Inge is calm. She believes in herself. She believes in her right to exist, to command.

  The road is dark. They have opened the roof to the night, a night so dense with stars that they seem to be pouring into the car. Nico, in the back, feels frightened. Inge is talking. She reaches over to blow the horn at cars which are going too slow. Malcolm laughs at it. There are private rooms in Barcelona where, with her lover, Inge spent winter afternoons before a warm, crackling fire. There are houses where they made love on blankets of fur. Of course, he was nice then. She had visions of the Polo Club, of dinner parties in the best houses.

  The streets of the city are almost deserted. It is nearly midnight, Sunday midnight. The day in the sun has wearied them, the sea has drained them of strength. They drive to General Mitre and say good night through the windows of the car. The elevator rises very slowly. They are hung with silence. They look at the floor like gamblers who have lost.

  The apartment is dark. Nico turns on a light and then vanishes. Malcolm washes his hands. He dries them. The rooms seem very still. He begins to walk through them slowly and finds her, as if she had fallen, on her knees in the doorway to the terrace.

  Malcolm looks at the cage. Kalil has fallen to the floor.

  “Give him a little brandy on the corner of a handkerchief,” he says.

  She has opened the cage door.

  “He’s dead,” she says.

  “Let me see.”

  He is stiff. The small feet are curled and dry as twigs. He seems lighter somehow. The breath has left his feathers. A heart no bigger than an orange seed has ceased to beat. The cage sits empty in the cold doorway. There seems nothing to say. Malcolm closes the door.

  Later, in bed, he listens to her sobs. He tries to comfort her but he cannot. Her back is turned to him. She will not answer.

  She has small breasts and large nipples. Also, as she herself says, a rather large behind. Her father has three secretaries. Hamburg is close to the sea.

  TWENTY MINUTES

  This happened near Carbondale to a woman named Jane Vare. I met her once at a party. She was sitting on a couch with her arms stretched out on either side and a drink in one hand. We talked about dogs.

  She had an old greyhound. She’d bought him to save his life, she said. At the tracks they put them down rather than feed them when they stopped winning, sometimes three or four together, threw them in the back of a truck and drove to the dump. This dog was named Phil. He was stiff and nearly blind, but she admired his dignity. He sometimes lifted his leg against the wall, almost as high as the door handle, but he had a fine face.

  Tack on the kitchen table, mud on the wide-board floor. In she strode like a young groom in a worn jacket and boots. She had what they called a good seat and ribbons layered like feathers on the wall. Her father had lived in Ireland where they rode into the dining room on Sunday morning and the host died falle
n on the bed in full attire. Her own life had become like that. Money and dents in the side of her nearly new Swedish car. Her husband had been gone for a year.

  Around Carbondale the river drops down and widens. There’s a spidery trestle bridge, many times repainted, and they used to mine coal.

  It was late in the afternoon and a shower had passed. The light was silvery and strange. Cars emerging from the rain drove with their headlights on and the windshield wipers going. The yellow road machinery parked along the shoulder seemed unnaturally bright.

  It was the hour after work when irrigation water glistens high in the air, the hills have begun to darken and the meadows are like ponds.

  She was riding alone up along the ridge. She was on a horse named Fiume, big, well formed, but not very smart. He didn’t hear things and sometimes stumbled when he walked. They had gone as far as the reservoir and then come back, riding to the west where the sun was going down. He could run, this horse. His hooves were pounding. The back of her shirt was filled with wind, the saddle was creaking, his huge neck was dark with sweat. They came along the ditch and toward a gate—they jumped it all the time.

  At the last moment something happened. It took just an instant. He may have crossed his legs or hit a hole but he suddenly gave way. She went over his head and as if in slow motion he came after. He was upside down—she lay there watching him float toward her. He landed on her open lap.

  It was as if she’d been hit by a car. She was stunned but felt unhurt. For a minute she imagined she might stand up and brush herself off.

  The horse had gotten up. His legs were dirty and there was dirt on his back. In the silence she could hear the clink of the bridle and even the water flowing in the ditch. All around her were meadows and stillness. She felt sick to her stomach. It was all broken down there—she knew it although she could feel nothing. She knew she had some time. Twenty minutes, they always said.

  The horse was pulling at some grass. She rose to her elbows and was immediately dizzy. “God damn you!” she called. She was nearly crying. “Git! Go home!” Someone might see the empty saddle. She closed her eyes and tried to think. Somehow she could not believe it—nothing that had happened was true.