by James Salter
“Oh, hell.” She had never heard him complain. Only about certain people. “I’m just a caretaker. She’s my wife. What are you going to do, come up to her sometime and tell her everything?”
“I wouldn’t do that.”
“I hope not,” he said.
When the door closed she did not turn. She heard the car start outside and saw the reflection of the headlights. She stood in front of the mirror and looked at her face coldly. Forty-six. It was there in her neck and beneath her eyes. She would never be any younger. She should have pleaded, she thought. She should have told him all she was feeling, all that suddenly choked her heart. The summer with its hope and long days was gone. She had the urge to follow him, to drive past his house. The lights would be on. She would see someone through the windows.
That night she heard the branches tapping against the house and the window frames rattle. She sat alone and thought of the geese, she could hear them out there. It had gotten cold. The wind was blowing their feathers. They lived a long time, ten or fifteen years, they said. The one they had seen on the lawn might still be alive, settled back into the fields with the others, in from the ocean where they went to be safe, the survivors of bloody ambushes. Somewhere in the wet grass, she imagined, lay one of them, dark sodden breast, graceful neck still extended, great wings striving to beat, bloody sounds coming from the holes in its beak. She went around and turned on lights. The rain was coming down, the sea was crashing, a comrade lay dead in the whirling darkness.
VIA NEGATIVA
There is a kind of minor writer who is found in a room of the library signing his novel. His index finger is the color of tea, his smile filled with bad teeth. He knows literature, however. His sad bones are made of it. He knows what was written and where writers died. His opinions are cold but accurate. They are pure, at least there is that.
He’s unknown, though not without a few admirers. They are really like marriage, uninteresting, but what else is there? His life is his journals. In them somewhere is a line from the astrologer: your natural companions are women. Occasionally, perhaps. No more than that. His hair is thin. His clothes are a little out of style. He is aware, however, that there is a great, a final glory which falls on certain figures barely noticed in their time, touches them in obscurity and re-creates their lives. His heroes are Musil and, of course, Gerard Manley Hopkins. Bunin.
There are writers like P in an expensive suit and fine English shoes who come walking down the street in eye-splintering sunlight, the crowd seeming to part for them, to leave an opening like the eye of a storm.
“I hear you got a fortune for your book.”
“What? Don’t believe it,” they say, though everyone knows.
On close examination, the shoes are even handmade. Their owner has a rich head of hair. His face is powerful, his brow, his long nose. A suffering face, strong as a door. He recognizes his questioner as someone who has published several stories. He only has a moment to talk.
“Money doesn’t mean anything,” he says. “Look at me. I can’t even get a decent haircut.”
He’s serious. He doesn’t smile. When he came back from London and was asked to endorse a novel by a young acquaintance he said, let him do it the way I did, on his own. They all want something, he said.
And there are old writers who owe their eminence to the New Yorker and travel in wealthy circles like W, who was famous at twenty. Some critics now feel his work is shallow and too derivative—he had been a friend of the greatest writer of our time, a writer who inspired countless imitators, perhaps it would be better to say one of the great writers, not everyone is in agreement, and I don’t want to get into arguments. They broke up later anyway, W didn’t like to say why.
His first, much-published story—everyone knows it—brought him at least fifty women over the years, he used to say. His wife was aware of it. In the end he broke with her, too. He was not a man who kept his looks. Small veins began to appear in his cheeks. His eyes became red. He insulted people, even waiters in restaurants. Still, in his youth he was said to have been very generous, very brave. He was against injustice. He gave money to the Loyalists in Spain.
Morning. The dentists are laying out their picks. In the doorways, as the sun hits them, the bums begin to groan. Nile went on the bus to visit his mother, the words of Victor Hugo about all the armies in the world being unable to stop an idea whose time has come on an advertisement above his head. His hair was uncombed. His face had the arrogance, the bruised lips of someone determined to live without money. His mother met him at the door and took this pale face in her hands. She stepped back to see better. She was trembling slightly with a steady, rhythmic movement.
“Your teeth,” she said.
He covered them with his tongue. His aunt came from the kitchen to embrace him.
“Where have you been?” she cried. “Guess what we’re having for lunch.”
Like many fat women, she liked to laugh. She was twice a widow, but one drink was enough to make her dance. She went to set the table. Passing the window, she glanced out. There was a movie house across the street.
“Degenerates,” she said.
Nile sat between them, pulling his chair close to the table with little scrapes. They had not bothered to dress. The warmth of family lunches when the only interest is food. He was always hungry when he came. He ate a slice of bread heavy with butter as he talked. There was scrod and sautéed onions on a huge dish. Voices everywhere—the television was going, the radio in the kitchen. His mouth was full as he answered their questions.
“It’s a little flat,” his mother announced. “Did you cook it the same way?”
“Exactly the same,” his aunt said. She tasted it herself. “It may need salt.”
“You don’t put salt on seafood,” his mother said.
Nile kept eating. The fish fell apart beneath his fork, moist and white, he could taste the faint iodine of the sea. He knew the very market where it had been displayed on ice, the Jewish owner who did not shave. His aunt was watching him.
“Do you know something?” she said.
“What?”
She was not speaking to him. She had made a discovery.
“For a minute then, while he was eating, he looked just like his father.”
A sudden, sweet pause opened in the room, a depth that had not been there when they were talking only of immorality and the danger of the blacks. His mother looked at him reverently.
“Did you hear that?” she asked. Her voice was hushed, she longed for the myths of the past. Her eyes had darkness around them, her flesh was old.
“How do you look like him?” She wanted to hear it recited.
“I don’t,” he said.
They did not hear him. They were arguing about his childhood, various details of it, poems he had memorized, his beautiful hair. What a good student he had been. How grown-up when he ate, the fork too large for his hand. His chin was like his father’s, they said. The shape of his head.
“In the back,” his aunt said.
“A beautiful head,” his mother confirmed. “You have a perfect head, did you know that?”
Afterward he lay on the couch and listened as they cleared the dishes. He closed his eyes. Everything was familiar to him, phrases he had heard before, quarrels about the past, even the smell of the cushions beneath his head. In the bedroom was a collection of photographs in ill-fitting frames. In them, if one traced the progression, was a face growing older and older, more and more unpromising. Had he really written all those earnest letters preserved in shoe boxes together with schoolbooks and folded programs? He was sleeping in the museum of his life.
He left at four. The doorman was reading the newspaper, his collar unbuttoned, the air surrounding him rich with odors of cooking. He didn’t bother to look up as Nile went out. He was absorbed in a description of two young women whose bound bodies had been found on the bank of a canal. There were no pictures, only those from a high school yearbook. It was
June. The street was lined with cars, the gutters melting.
The shops were closed. In their windows, abandoned to afternoon, were displays of books, cosmetics, leather clothes. He lingered before them. A great longing for money, a thirst rose in him, a desire to be recognized. He was walking for the hundredth time on streets which in no way acknowledged him, past endless apartments, consulates, banks. He came to the fifties, behind the great hotels. The streets were dank, like servants’ quarters. Paper lay everywhere, envelopes, empty packages of cigarettes.
In Jeanine’s apartment it was better. The floor was polished. Her breath seemed sweet.
“Have you been out?” he asked her.
“No, not yet.”
“The streets are melting,” he said. “You weren’t working, were you?”
“I was reading.”
From her windows one could see the second-floor salon in the rear of the Plaza in which hairdressers worked. It was red, with mirrors that multiplied its secrets. Naked, on certain afternoons, they had watched its silent acts.
“What are you reading?” he asked.
“Gogol.”
“Gogol …” He closed his eyes and began to recite, “In the carriage sat a gentleman, not handsome but not bad-looking, not too stout and not too thin, not old, but not so very young …”
“What a memory you have.”
“Listen, what novel is this? For a long time I used to go to bed early …”
“That’s too easy,” she said.
She was sitting on the couch, her legs drawn up beneath her, the book near her hand.
“I guess it is,” he said. “Did you know this about Gogol? He died a virgin.”
“Is that true?”
“The Russians are a little curious that way,” he said. “Chekhov himself thought once a year was sufficient for a writer.”
He had told her that before, he realized.
“Not everyone agrees with that,” he murmured. “You know who I saw on the street yesterday? Dressed like a banker. Even his shoes.”
“Who?”
Nile described him. After a moment she knew who he must be talking about.
“He’s written a new book,” she said.
“So I hear. I thought he was going to hold out his ring for me to kiss. I said, listen, tell me one thing, honestly: all the money, the attention …”
“You didn’t.”
Nile smiled. The teeth his mother wept over were revealed.
“He was terrified. He knew what I was going to say. He had everything, everybody was talking about him, and all I had was a pin. A needle. If I pushed, it would go straight to the heart.”
She had a boy’s face and arms with a faint shadow of muscle. Her fingernails were bitten clean. The afternoon light which had somehow found its way into the room gleamed from her knees. She was from Montana. When they first met, Nile had seen her as complaisant, which excited him, even stupid, but he discovered it was only a vast distance, perhaps of childhood, which surrounded her. She revealed herself in simple, unexpected acts, like a farmboy undressing. As she sat on the couch, one arm was exposed beside her. Within its elbow he could see the long, rich artery curved down to her wrist. It was full. It lay without beating.
She had been married. Her past astonished him. Her body bore no trace of it, not even a memory, it seemed. All she had learned was how to live alone. In the bathroom were soaps with the name printed on them, soaps that had never been wet. There were fresh towels, flowers in a blue glass. The bed was flat and smooth. There were books, fruit, announcements stuck in the edge of the mirror.
“What did you actually ask him?” she said.
“Do you have any wine?” Nile said. While she was gone, he continued in a louder voice, “He’s afraid of me. He’s afraid of me because I’ve accomplished nothing.”
He looked up. Plaster was flaking from the ceiling.
“You know what Cocteau said,” he called. “There’s a fame worse than failure. I asked him if he thought he really deserved it all.”
“And what did he say?”
“I don’t remember. What’s this?” He took the bottle of sea-colored glass she carried. The label was slightly stained. “A Pauillac. I don’t remember this. Did I buy it?”
“No.”
“I didn’t think so.” He smelled it. “Very good. Someone gave it to you,” he suggested.
She filled his glass.
“Do you want to go to a film?” he asked.
“I don’t think so.”
He looked at the wine.
“No?” he said.
She was silent. After a moment she said, “I can’t.”
He began to inspect titles in the bookcase near him, many he had never read.
“How’s your mother?” he asked. “I like your mother.” He opened one of the books. “Do you write to her?”
“Sometimes.”
“You know, Viking is interested in me,” he said abruptly. “They’re interested in my stories. They want me to expand Lovenights.”
“I’ve always liked that story,” she said.
“I’m already working. I’m getting up very early. They want me to have a photograph made.”
“Who did you see at Viking?”
“I forget his name. He’s, uh … dark hair, he’s about my size. I should know his name. Well, what’s the difference?”
She went into the bedroom to change her clothes. He started to follow her.
“Don’t,” she said.
He sat down again. He could hear occasional, ordinary sounds, drawers opening and being shut, periods of silence. It was as if she were packing.
“Where are you going?” he called, looking at the floor.
She was brushing her hair. He could hear the swift, rhythmic strokes. She was facing herself in the mirror, not even aware of him. He was like a letter lying on the table, the half-read Gogol, like the wine. When she emerged, he could not look at her. He sat slouched, like a passionate child.
“Jeanine,” he said, “I know I’ve disappointed you. But it’s true about Viking.”
“I know.”
“I’ll be very busy. … Do you have to go just now?”
“I’m a bit late.”
“No, you’re not,” he said. “Please.”
She could not answer.
“Anyway, I have to go home and work,” he said. “Where are you going?”
“I’ll be back by eleven,” she said. “Why don’t you call me?”
She tried to touch his hair.
“There’s more wine,” she said. She no longer believed in him. In things he might say, yes, but not in him. She had lost her faith.
“Jeanine …”
“Good-bye, Nile,” she said. It was the way she ended telephone calls.
She was going to the nineties, to dinner in an apartment she had not seen. Her arms were bare. Her face seemed very young.
When the door closed, panic seized him. He was suddenly desperate. His thoughts seemed to fly away, to scatter like birds. It was a deathlike hour. On television, the journalists were answering complex questions. The streets were still. He began to go through her things. First the closets. The drawers. He found her letters. He sat down to read them, letters from her brother, her lawyer, people he did not know. He began pulling forth everything, shirts, underclothes, long clinging weeds which were stockings. He kicked her shoes away, spilled open boxes. He broke her necklaces, pieces rained to the floor. The wildness, the release of a murderer filled him. As she sat there in the nineties, sometimes speaking a little, the men nearby uncertain, seeking to hold her glance, he whipped her like a yelping dog from room to room, pushing her into walls, tearing her clothes. She was stumbling, crying, he felt the horror of his acts. He had no right to them—why did this justify everything?
He was bathed in sweat, breathless, afraid to stay. He closed the door softly. There were old newspapers piled in the hall, the faint sounds from other apartments, children returning from e
rrands to the store.
In the street he saw on every side, in darkening windows, in reflections, as if suddenly it were visible to him, a kind of chaos. It welcomed, it acclaimed him. The huge tires of buses roared past. It was the last hour of light. He felt the solitude of crime. He stopped, like an addict, in a phone booth. His legs were weak. No, beneath the weakness was something else. For a moment he saw unknown depths to himself, he glittered with images. It seemed he was attracting the glances of women who passed. They recognize me, he thought, they smell me in the dark like mares. He smiled at them with the cracked lips of an incorrigible. He cared nothing for them, only for the power to disturb. He was bending their love toward him, a stupid love, a love without which he could not breathe.
It was late when he arrived home. He closed the door. Darkness. He turned on the light. He had no sense of belonging there. He looked at himself in the bathroom mirror. There was a skylight over his head, the panes were black. He sat beneath the small, nude photograph of a girl he had once lived with, the edges were curled, and began to play, the G was sticking, the piano was out of tune. In Bach there was not only order and coherence but more, a code, a repetition which everything depended on. After a while he felt a pounding beneath his feet, the broom of the idiot on the floor below. He continued to play. The pounding grew louder. If he had a car … Suddenly the idea broke over him as if it were the one thing he had been trying to think of: a car. He would be speeding from the city to find himself at dawn on long, country roads. Vermont, no, further, Newfoundland, where the coast was still deserted. That was it, a car, he saw it plainly. He saw it parked in the gentle light of daybreak, its body stained from the journey, a faintly battered body that had survived some terrible, early crash.
All is chance or nothing is chance. That evening Jeanine met a man who longed, he said, to perform an act of great and unending generosity, like Genet’s in giving his house to a former lover.
“Did he do that?” she asked.
“They say.”
It was P. The room was filled with people, and he was speaking to her, quite naturally, as if they had met before. She did not wonder what to say to him, she did not have to say anything. He was quite near. The fine wrinkles in his brow were visible, wrinkles not yet deepened.