Light Years Read online

  ACCLAIM FOR

  James Salter

  “No author in so few pages has ever with such icy logic and steaming carnality depicted the inexorable passing of years.”

  —Ned Rorem

  “Salter’s prose is spare, pared down so that the light on the other side of the language nearly shows through and makes the sentences luminous.… Salter’s achievement is that he uses his accomplished English to call our attention to precise moods and images, the feeling-tone of figures caught in landscapes of transcendent prose.”

  —Alan Cheuse, Chicago Tribune

  “There is scarcely a writer alive who could not learn from [Salter’s] passion and precision of language.”

  —Peter Matthiessen

  “Admirers of James Salter’s fiction speak of it reverently, with delicacy, almost in awe. He writes about the fragility of things—families, love, sexuality, success—in prose that is as careful and light as a structure made of eggshells.”

  —Los Angeles Times Books Review

  “Salter inhabits the same rarefied heights as Flannery O’Connor, Paul Bowles, Tennessee Williams and John Cheever.”

  —Washington Post Book World

  “This novel—explicitly moody, tender, elegiac—details the disintegration of a love and the unraveling of a well-knit life by the hearth.… What finally emerges is a narrative that is more thrilling than its cadences, its descriptive felicities or evocations of character. It is the sense we get, in places almost overpowering, that its real protagonist is time.”

  —Sven Birkerts, The Nation

  “Salter is that rare writer who takes us inside worlds we may never be able to experience firsthand.”

  —San Francisco Chronicle

  “Salter is an ultimately modern writer [whose] prose style is simultaneously terse and elegant, with alternately hectic and hypnotic rhythms. The images he uses are complicated and sometimes oblique. [Salter] observes accurately and intensely.”

  —A. R. Gurney, The New York Times Book Review

  “Brilliant … moving [and] full of truth.”

  —Edna O’Brien

  “Among contemporary novelists, I can think of none who has written a novel more beautiful than Light Years. One must take care to read this book as slowly as possible, ruefully foreseeing that it will end. In our minds it will be a nourishing presence always like To the Lighthouse, Tender Is the Night, A Lost Lady—a presence that we will have a hard time imagining our once having had to live without.”

  —Brendan Gill

  JAMES SALTER

  Light Years

  James Salter was born in 1925 and grew up in New York City. Like his father, he attended West Point, and was commissioned in the Air Force in 1945. He served for twelve years in the Pacific, the United States, Europe, and Korea, where he flew over one hundred combat missions as a fighter pilot. He resigned from the Air Force after his first novel came out in 1957, and has earned his living as a writer ever since. His work has received numerous awards, including an award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1982. Many of his short stories have appeared in O. Henry collections and Best American Short Stories; nearly all of them have been published in The Paris Review, Esquire, and Grand Street. His collection Dusk & Other Stories received the PEN/Faulkner Award in 1988.

  ALSO BY JAMES SALTER

  FICTION

  Dusk & Other Stories

  Solo Faces

  A Sport and a Pastime

  The Hunters

  Cassada

  (previously published as The Arm of Flesh)

  Last Night

  NONFICTION

  Gods of Tin

  Burning the Days

  First Vintage International Edition, February 1995

  Copyright © 1975 by James Salter

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright

  Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books,

  a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and

  simultaneously in Canada by Random House of

  Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published

  in hardcover by Random House, Inc.,

  New York, in 1975.

  The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Salter James.

  Light Years.

  I. Title

  PZ4.S177L13 [PS3569.A4622] 813′.5′4 74-29594

  eISBN: 978-0-307-78172-7

  Author photograph © Sally Gall

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Author

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Part Two

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Part Three

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Part Four

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Part Five

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  One

  1

  WE DASH THE BLACK RIVER, ITS flats smooth as stone. Not a ship, not a dinghy, not one cry of white. The water lies broken, cracked from the wind. This great estuary is wide, endless. The river is brackish, blue with the cold. It passes beneath us blurring. The sea birds hang above it, they wheel, disappear. We flash the wide river, a dream of the past. The deeps fall behind, the bottom is paling the surface, we rush by the shallows, boats beached for winter, desolate piers. And on wings like the gulls, soar up, turn, look back.

  The day is white as paper. The windows are chilled. The quarries lie empty, the silver mine drowned. The Hudson is vast here, vast and unmoving. A dark country, a country of sturgeon and carp. In the fall it was silver with shad. The geese flew overhead in their long, shifting V’s. The tide flows in from the sea.

  The Indians sought, they say, a river that “ran both ways.” Here they found it. The salt wedge penetrates as far in as fifty miles; sometimes it reaches Poughkeepsie. There were huge beds of oysters here, seals in the harbor, in the woods inexhaustible game. This great glacial cut with its nuptial bays, the coves of wild celery and rice, this majestic river. The birds, like punctuation, are crossing in level flight. They seem to approach slowly, accelerate, pass overhead like arrows. The sky has no color. A feeling of rain.

  All this was Dutch. Then, like so much else, it was English. The river is a reflection. It bears only silence, a glittering cold. The trees are naked. The eels sleep. The channel is deep enough for ocean liners; they could, if they wished, asto
nish the inner towns. There are turtles and crabs in the marshes, herons, Bonaparte gulls. The sewage pours from the cities further up. The river is filthy, but cleanses itself. The fish are numbed; they drift with the tide.

  Along the banks there are houses of stone, no longer fashionable, and wooden houses, drafty and bare. There are still estates that exist, remnants of the great land parcels of the past. Near the water, a large Victorian, the brick painted white, trees high above it, a walled garden, a decaying greenhouse with ironwork along the roof. A house by the river, too low for the afternoon sun. It was flooded instead with the light of morning, with the eastern light. It was in glory at noon. There are spots where the paint has turned dark, bare spots. The gravel paths are dissolving; birds nest in the sheds.

  We strolled in the garden, eating the small, bitter apples. The trees were dry and gnarled. The lights in the kitchen were on.

  A car comes up the driveway, back from the city. The driver goes inside, only for a moment until he’s heard the news: the pony has gotten loose.

  He is furious. “Where is she? Who left the door unlatched?”

  “Oh God, Viri. I don’t know.”

  In a room with many plants, a kind of solarium, there is a lizard, a brown snake, a box turtle asleep. The entry step is deep, the turtle cannot leave. He sleeps on the gravel, his feet drawn up close. His nails are the color of ivory, they curl, they are long. The snake sleeps, the lizard sleeps.

  Viri has his coat collar up and is trudging uphill. “Ursula!” he calls. He whistles.

  The light has gone. The grass is dry; it creaks underfoot. There was no sun all day. Calling the pony’s name, he advances toward the far corners, the road, the adjoining fields. A stillness everywhere. It begins to rain. He sees the one-eyed dog that belongs to a neighbor, a kind of husky, his muzzle gray. The eye is closed completely, sealed, covered with fur so long ago was it lost, as if it never existed.

  “Ursula!” he cries.

  “She’s here,” his wife says when he returns.

  The pony is near the kitchen door, tranquil, dark, eating an apple. He touches her lips. She bites him absent-mindedly on the wrist. Her eyes are black, lustrous, with the long, crazy lashes of a drunken woman. Her coat is thick, her breath very sweet.

  “Ursula,” he says. Her ears turn slightly, then forget. “Where have you been? Who unlocked your stall?” She has no interest in him.

  “Have you learned to do that?” He touches an ear; it is warm, strong as a shoe. He leads her to the shed, whose door is ajar. Outside the kitchen he stamps dirt from his shoes.

  The lights are on everywhere: a vast, illuminated house. Dead flies the size of beans lie behind the velvet curtains, the wallpaper has corner bulges, the window glass distorts. It is an aviary they live in, a honeycomb. The roofs are thick slate, the rooms are like shops. It gives off no sound, this house; in the darkness it is like a ship. Within, if one listens, there is everything: water, faint voices, the slow, measured rending of grain.

  In the principal bath, with its stains, sponges, soaps the color of tea, books, water-curled copies of Vogue, he steams in peace. The water is above his knees; it penetrates to the bone. There is carpeting on the floor, a basket of smooth stones, an empty glass of the deepest blue.

  “Papa,” they call through the door.

  “Yes.” He is reading the Times.

  “Where was Ursula?”

  “Ursula?”

  “Where was she?”

  “I don’t know,” he says. “She went out for a walk.” They wait for something further. He is a storyteller, a man of wonders. They listen for sounds, expecting the door to open.

  “But where was she?”

  “Her legs were wet,” he announces.

  “Her legs?”

  “I think she was swimming.”

  “No, Daddy, really.”

  “She was trying to get the onions on the bottom.”

  “There are no onions there.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “There are?”

  “That’s where they grow.”

  They explain it to each other outside the door. It’s true, they decide. They wait for him, two little girls squatting like beggars.

  “Papa, come out,” they say. “We want to talk to you.” He puts aside the paper and sinks one last time into the embrace of the bath.

  “Papa?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you coming out?”

  The pony fascinates them. It frightens them. They are ready to run if it makes an unexpected sound. Patient, silent, it stands in its stall; a grazing animal, it eats for hours. Its muzzle has a nimbus of fine hair, its teeth are browned.

  “Their teeth never stop growing,” the man who sold her to them said. He was a drunkard, his clothes were torn. “They keep growing out and getting wore down.”

  “What would happen if she didn’t eat?”

  “If she didn’t eat?”

  “What would happen to her teeth?”

  “Make sure she eats,” he said.

  They often watch her; they listen to her jaws. This mythical beast, fragrant in the darkness, is greater than they are, stronger, more clever. They long to approach her, to win her love.

  2

  IT WAS THE AUTUMN OF 1958. Their children were seven and five. On the river, the color of slate, the light poured down. A soft light, God’s idleness. In the distance the new bridge gleamed like a statement, like a line in a letter which makes one stop.

  Nedra was working in the kitchen, her rings set aside. She was tall, preoccupied; her neck was bare. When she paused to read a recipe, her head bent, she was stunning in her concentration, her air of obedience. She wore her wrist watch, her best shoes. Beneath the apron, she was dressed for the evening. People were coming for dinner.

  She had trimmed the stems of flowers spread on the wood of the counter and begun to arrange them. Before her were scissors, paper-thin boxes of cheese, French knives. On her shoulders there was perfume. I am going to describe her life from the inside outward, from its core, the house as well, rooms in which life was gathered, rooms in the morning sunlight, the floors spread with Oriental rugs that had been her mother-in-law’s, apricot, rouge and tan, rugs which though worn seemed to drink the sun, to collect its warmth; books, potpourris, cushions in colors of Matisse, objects glistening like evidence, many of which might, had they been possessed by ancient peoples, have been placed in tombs for another life: clear crystal dice, pieces of staghorn, amber beads, boxes, sculptures, wooden balls, magazines in which were photographs of women to whom she compared herself.

  Who cleans this large house, who scrubs the floors? She does everything, this woman, she does nothing. She is dressed in her oat-colored sweater, slim as a pike, her long hair fastened, the fire crackling. Her real concern is the heart of existence: meals, bed linen, clothing. The rest means nothing; it is managed somehow. She has a wide mouth, the mouth of an actress, thrilling, bright. Dark smudges in her armpits, mint on her breath. Her nature is extravagant. She buys on impulse, she visits Bendel’s as she would a friend’s, gathering up five or six dresses and entering a booth, not bothering to draw the curtain fully, a glimpse of her undressing, lean arms, lean trunk, bikini underpants. Yes, she scrubs floors, collects dirty clothes. She is twenty-eight. Her dreams still cling to her, adorn her; she is confident, composed, she is related to long-necked creatures, ruminants, abandoned saints. She is careful, hard to approach. Her life is concealed. It is through the smoke and conversation of many dinners that one sees her: country dinners, dinners at the Russian Tea Room, the Café Chauveron with Viri’s clients, the St. Regis, the Minotaur.

  Guests were driving from the city, Peter Daro and his wife.

  “What time are they coming?”

  “About seven,” Viri said.

  “Have you opened the wine?”

  “Not yet.”

  The water was running, her hands were wet.

  “Here, take this tray,” she said. “Th
e children want to eat by the fire. Tell them a story.”

  She stood for a moment surveying her preparations. She glanced at her watch.

  The Daros arrived in darkness. The doors of their car slammed faintly. A few moments later they appeared at the entrance, their faces bright.

  “Here’s a small gift,” Peter said.

  “Viri, Peter’s brought wine.”

  “Let me take your coats.”

  The evening was cold. In the rooms, the feel of autumn.

  “That’s a beautiful drive,” Peter said, smoothing his clothes. “I love to take that drive. As soon as you cross the bridge, you’re in trees, in darkness, the city is gone.”

  “It’s almost primeval,” Catherine said.

  “And you’re on your way to the beautiful house of the Berlands.” He smiled. What confidence, what success there is in a man’s face at thirty.

  “You look wonderful, both of you,” Viri told them.

  “Catherine really loves this house.”

  “So do I.” Nedra smiled.

  November evening, immemorial, clear. Smoked brook trout, mutton, an endive salad, a Margaux open on the sideboard. The dinner was served beneath a print of Chagall, the mermaid over the bay of Nice. The signature was probably false, but as Peter had said before, what difference did it make, it was as good as Chagall’s own, perhaps even better, with just the right degree of carelessness. And the poster, after all, was an issue of thousands, this angel afloat in pure night, the great majority of them not even distinguished by a signature of any kind, however fraudulent.

  “Do you like trout?” Nedra asked, holding the dish.

  “I don’t know which I like more, catching or eating them.”

  “Do you really know how to catch them?”

  “There are times I’ve wondered,” he said. He was helping himself generously. “You know, I’ve fished everywhere. The trout fisherman is a very special fellow, solitary, perverse. Nedra, this is delicious.”