by James Salter
“I’m not worried. It’s not that. The whole thing surprises me, that’s all.”
“You thought I was getting married,” he says.
“No.”
“I might.”
“Really?”
“I’ve thought about it,” he says.
“I suppose so.”
He jumps up. The promise of money has given him an appetite. We go down towards the Champ, walking along the blank streets. Autun is silent, but it sleeps like an ancient woman. It hears every scrap of sound without even waking. It is ageless. It can see in the dark.
Buried among other buildings deep in the town–there are alleys one can pass by, cats know the way–above the level of trees and black foliage, the mysterious fragrance, the movement of branches, in a room filled with this same cool air of evening she lies asleep, her pale arms fallen, her lips apart. The varnished, orange doors of the armoire are closed, and a towel is hung, unfolded, by the sink. Her toothbrush–my finger dares to touch it lightly–is no longer damp. On the floor clothes are dropped. I can see her shoes, her limp stockings. Finally I glance at her, and the blood drops out of my heart; her eyes are not shut. She is staring at me. The pure, young white of her eyes, that blue white–I am found by it.
I even have a premonition that we are going to meet her as we walk down for a sandwich. It frightens me. I’m sure she could read what we have done in my face. I am ready to confess it all, I haven’t the slightest instinct to escape or he, but Dean, ah, he would greet her with a smile. The whole difference lies in that. I am not strong enough to love her. One must be selfish.
Watching him eat, I am plagued by this. Gradually I sink into a fine, a delicate hatred. I no longer hear what he says. I am only conscious of my own thoughts and the sound of his teeth chewing bread. He reeks of assurance. We are all at his mercy. We are subject to his friendship, his love. It is the principles of his world to which we respond, which we seek to find in ourselves. It is his power which I cannot even identify, which is flickering, sometimes present and sometimes not–without it he is empty, a body without breath, as ordinary as my own reflection in the mirror–it is this power which guarantees his existence, even afterwards, even when he is gone.
[34]
HE WILL RETURN FOR her. Silence. She looks at him. Then a single word,
“Non.”
“Yes.”
“Non,” she says flatly.
Well, then, he can’t explain it, he says. If she’s going to insist that she knows … She sits watching him, her mouth drawn down, her eyes suspicious. He will send for her, he says.
“When?”
“I don’t know exactly. I have to get the fare.”
“What?”
“The fare. The money for the ticket.”
A quick, bitter shrug.
“Will you just listen?” he says.
She says nothing.
“I don’t have it right now,” he explains.
Her face seems softer, but there is no understanding in it, or at least no agreement. She looks at the floor.
“Listen, I swear to you,” he says. He raises his hand.
She glances up.
“Really,” he says.
“On the head of your mother?”
“Yes.”
She motions with her chin.
“What?”
“Say it,” she says.
“On the head of my mother.”
She sighs. He is sitting beside her on the bed. He lies back and begins to talk of what it will be like. At first she resists, but then he can tell from the way the sound of his voice vanishes, from her very stillness, that she is listening. They will go all over the city, he will show her every part of it. They will walk the great avenues, look in all the stores. Saturday night they stay out very late and go dancing. She has only two kinds of clothes: slacks and a pull to five in–corduroys for him–and one marvelous dress to go out in. Two, he corrects, one for the afternoon, another for evening. And he has a single, fine suit, very dark, grey, black maybe. A bed. A table. A few chairs. Their windows look out on a bridge.
They lie still, breathing softly, their heads on the long bolster still enclosed in its flowered case. The shutters are drawn. Noon has fallen. There is the faint clatter of plates and beyond that, a ritual silence. A radio, perhaps. An occasional car. They sleep.
They awake in a different world. Dean’s eyes drift about vaguely, finally falling upon the clock. An hour has passed. He sits up and quietly begins to remove his clothes, shoes first, then socks. The floor is cool and pleasant beneath his feet.
They pose naked before the mirror. Dean is taller. His body is dark. He stands a bit to the side, like her shadow. The light enters in thin, level strips, gills, which cross the floor. He slips his prick between her legs from behind and she gives it a little hug. She reaches behind her to stroke his balls with her fingertips. He looks like a life-guard. There is a small roll of fat, a marble bannister, perched on his hip.
They make love slowly. He fixes her across the dark flowers and works it in as if wedging a log. Then he has her sit astride him. Her voice is invisible, a whisper from the street.
“It feels as if it’s touching my heart,” she says.
She raises herself slightly, her hands on his waist.
“I think it is,” she says.
Dean smiles. He forces her down a bit. She struggles softly. Then he turns her over and sounds her. It’s like a rain of love. Everywhere his mind turns he is drenched by it. As if in separate rooms, as if engaged in separate acts, they occupy themselves until the last instant and afterwards lie collapsed, the bedclothes scattered about them. Their voices are low, inconsequential. Outside the window, pigeons lurch across the tiles.
They drive to St. Léger, the sun splashing the depths of the car, hitting their knees. The streets vanish behind them. The last curve. They start down the long incline, through the tunnels brief and cool, descending further, under the viaduct its empty chambers blue with air, past the roadsigns and gone. The trees wash by them. The car accelerates, the great axles cracking, the road flying beneath.
Her mother is happy to see them. At the kitchen table they sit and talk, the cat passing rhythmically between Dean’s feet, reversing, leaning against his ankles. It is strangely silent, even with them talking. It’s like the corridor of a hospital or an empty ward. Dean feels the glances of her mother. She looks at him almost shyly. When their eyes meet, she smiles. Her husband is working. The chair in which he usually sits near the wall is empty, a wooden chair with a thin, soiled cushion. Anne-Marie says nothing to her mother about Dean leaving. They talk about the neighbors, the automobile accidents, clothes. The afternoon is homely with gossip. There is nothing to make one believe he is seeing this room for the last time.
It is late when they return. Cars are parked in the square; the birds arc making their last flights before dark. They have dinner at the hotel. The room is crowded. She is enormously affectionate. It infuses her smallest gestures, her smiles. The meal turns, quite by itself, into an occasion, a long intermingling of feelings broken by the arrival of courses. They talk of the past, remembering various places, difficulties, joys. She has a second glass of wine. Outside, a blue evening has fallen. I have eaten here many times, I know the sound of diners’ voices in this large room illuminated by the white of tablecloths, the slow discussions, an occasional laugh. Through it then, when all is finished, I hear the sound of her heels, unhurried, thin, as she finally walks to the door, pauses. The glances follow her like bows. She waits. He comes along after paying, and they go out together to the street. I am left alone at my table–I always imagine this–watching as they turn and pass through the domed room, among the lighted cases, and at last are gone. Unknown lovers. They disappear into the town. I shall never see them again. I sit there. There are at least ten minutes until I can have my dessert. The waiter will have to come, clear away the main course, take my order.
They climb the stairs. Th
e key turns in the door. The simple mechanics of crime. He lies on the bed, naked, as she rakes off her eye make-up. There is the sound of water running. Her face is close to the mirror. She can see him in it, extended, one hand resting inside his thigh.
“You are like a dead king,” she says.
She opens the shutters wide. The lights flooding upward from the church seem to carry a bar of darkness with them, a core of iron, into the mysterious sky. Dean makes love to her with great tenderness, kissing her shoulders, listening to her breath. It’s as if he’s never done it before. He tries to memorize her. His hands touch her carefully. His lips form reverent phrases.
Afterwards they lie for a long time in silence. There is nothing. Their poem is scattered about them. The days have fallen everywhere, they have collapsed like cards. The air has a chill in it. He pulls the covers up. She is so perfectly still she seems asleep. He touches her face. It is wet with tears.
[35]
THE MORNING HE IS to leave, the last morning, comes, as ordinary as any other. They have spent the night together. Dean watches her move about the room, dressing. There is very little to say. Everything is helplessly quiet, unreal. Things seem artificial, actions which are necessary but completely dry. He takes her to work–the town is just stirring–and they park for a few minutes outside. The street is in shadow and quite cool. A few people pass. Finally they say goodbye. Dean starts the car. She stands waiting. He drives off slowly, moving through flats of sunlight that lie along the way. He turns his head. A final wave. The street curves. He is gone.
Suddenly he is driving faster, bursting forth as if from a channel. The air is lucid and sweet. The grey fronts of Autun come alive. On an impulse he stops to buy an orange.
I hear the door open, and he comes in.
“Well…” he finally says.
He sits down. He seems filled with resignation. Then he gets up again.
“What time do you leave?”
“In about two hours,” he says. “I’m going to leave some things here. Is that all right?”
“I don’t know. What do you want me to do with them?” I will not be here long, a few days at the most.
“Nothing. I just don’t want to take them with me,” he says. “Maybe I’ll put them in the car.”
“That would be better.”
“That’s what I’ll do.”
He offers me some segments of orange. We sit eating them. The cool juice fills our mouths. The seeds are heavy and very white. We spit them into our palms.
“Why don’t we go and have something down at the station?” he says.
“All right.”
“I just have to finish packing a little,” he says.
“Do you want me to help you?”
“No. It’s nothing much.”
I watch while he does the last, few things. We drive to the station and sit outside the hotel in the first, hot sunshine. Tourists are loading their cars.
“How do you feel?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “A little nervous.”
Then he shrugs. After a pause, he adds,
“Excited, I guess.”
“I suppose you are.”
“It’s been a long time,” he says. “Do you remember the day when I first came?”
The day he first came…
“I thought I might stay a couple of weeks.” He laughs. “A couple of weeks. It feels like my whole life.”
Yes. It’s true. And mine. These long months. It’s as if I’ve been in prison. My ribs show. My flesh is white, so white I’m ashamed to take off my clothes. And with it is a bitterness that soaks in like brine.
The train leaves at eleven-forty. We weigh his bags in the station. Twenty-two kilos. We multiply it out, he’s a few pounds overweight. When he arrives at the airport he can take some things out and put them in his pockets.
“Except I don’t have anything very heavy,” he says, thinking.
“Shoes.”
“Yes,” he says, “that’ll look great.”
We stand on the empty quai, solitary as gulls. The station is desolate. The clock has straight, black hands which jump when they move. Suddenly I am crushed by the simplicity of it all: he is leaving. We are here waiting for the train. It is the final hour.
At last it appears. It’s silent at first, even drawing close, and it seems not to be slowing. Then the breath of it touches us. The windows peel by, just above our eyes. They separate, slow, come to a stop. We walk to the door. I follow him on, and we find an empty compartment where we put the bags overhead in the rack. I feel impossibly awkward, but there’s not long to wait, a minute or two until the warning whistle. I say goodbye and go down to the platform. The train begins to move. It picks up speed very quickly. I can see him waving. I step back. I wave myself. In that instant I think of her, solitary, her head bent forward to the morning’s work. Her face seems ordinary. Her chin is small. M. Hoquetis asks if she is feeling all right. Oui, monsieur, she says. Is she certain–she looks ill. She tries to smile. Non, monsieur. I cannot imagine what she feels. I can only sense it by her absolute, her utter silence as the train curves, crosses the viaduct high in the morning air.
The Delage sits in sunlight, parked nose in to the curb. I walk around it. The dust of France, black with oil, clings to the brake drums. A film of dead insects coats the lamps. I drive back to the house. It steers like a truck. I imagine people in the cafés to be watching me. I’m a little nervous. Naturally, at the corner it stalls. I try to start it up again. A motorcyclist comes alongside me and stares.
In the middle of the afternoon there is a call from Paris. It’s Dean. The connection is poor–his voice sounds very shrill.
“How’s Paris?”
“God, it’s crowded,” he says. “There are a million tourists here.”
“Really?”
“You ought to see the cars.”
“Did they have your reservation all right?”
“Yes,” he says, “everything is fine. I’m leaving at seven-thirty. They took me for a Frenchman, what a great feeling. I think it’s because I’m wearing my black shirt. Well, maybe it’s because it’s a little dirty…”
“It’s your haircut.”
“You’re right. Listen, thanks for everything. I miss it down there already. I’ll write a long letter.”
“Fine.”
The evening is calm and clear. I am having dinner at the Jobs’. I leave the house about seven. There’s plenty of time. The streets seem strangely quiet, perhaps I am no longer listening. Place du Carrouge. I cross the far side, glancing up. Her shutters are closed. I cannot tell if she is there. She will go home on the weekends now, I know, walking from the station in the dusk, the bicycles weaving past her, the voices soft. She shifts the suitcase from one hand to the other, her walk is a little uneven because of it, almost clumsy. She’s wearing high heels. It takes her almost half an hour, the last part along the bank. The water in the canal lies flat. The light is going. Swallows are cutting across the fields in the dark. Madame Job, her face like an elbow, meets me at the door.
Before he boarded, the sun was already low at Orly. Almost no wind. A vast, malicious calm. In the distance, blue as winter, the dim roofs of the city. Smoke. The east growing dark. Aboard the plane all is brilliance. Dean sits at the window as they move, in the stillness of evening, towards the runway, the great tires bumping over the concrete joints. The seat-belt signs are lighted. The NO SMOKING is on. All of a sudden my imagination begins to panic, to rush from one thing to another. I have followed him so long I am sensitive to dangers. They turn smoothly into the direction for takeoff. All the perfect machinery of flight is beginning its motion. The huge, graceful wings are quivering. The engines roar. And now, at the last moment, it begins to move, slowly, with a majesty I cannot bear, for a long time seeming to go no faster until suddenly it is racing past, raising, clearing the ground. It climbs steeply. The soft darkness of the summer sky receives it. The lights grow fainter, the sound, and f
inally all of France, invisible now, silent, the France of all seasons deep in the silence of night, is left behind.
[36]
WE MEET IN THE Café Foy. It’s like an empty railroad car with its bleak line of booths, its tables in the rear. The light of late afternoon fills it, the provincial calm. The patron is playing dominoes with a friend.
All alone, the day behind her, she walks back to where I am sitting and mechanically extends her hand. A single, downward shake which we are embarrassed by.
“Bonjour,” she says quietly.
“Bonjour.”
She sits with her eyes lowered, the bare table between us. It seems that the day is very white at the doorway, the white of clouded water. The traffic moves by without noise.
Dean was killed in a motor accident on the twelfth of June. There are only a few details. It was raining. It was at night. He was on his way to the country to visit his sister. Splinters of glass strewn everywhere, the rain thudding down. In each direction, waiting to pass, the line of cars, their headlights crowded, long lines, slow-moving like part of a great cortege. I could not believe the news. It seemed impossible, it seemed false, even if I’d expected it all along.
I feel I am looking at her endlessly before we speak–I am able to do it without her even noticing–and I see, as if nothing more had ever happened, the same girl who sat across the table at the Etoile d’Or, because suddenly she is the same, pale, uncertain, somehow resigned. It’s exactly as if we are meeting for the first time. I can’t think of what to say. It’s hopeless. I simply don’t know. Across from me is an ordinary girl, good-looking, not too intelligent perhaps. The silence begins to consume us. We sit in the narrow, empty room. I am facing the window, she the rear. I take her hand. As soon as I touch it, her eyes fill. She begins to cry. I look down. She knew it, she says. When she speaks the tears run down her face. She lets them. We sit without talking.
“Anne-Marie,” I say, “what will you do? Will you stay in town here?”
She shrugs.
“I don’t know,” she murmurs.