Free Light Years by James Salter Page B

knew that, and she felt a warmth in him, not like her father’s but less familiar, less bland. Even when he was doing something with Danny, as he was now, looking at the miniature landscape she had made of pine twigs and stones, his attention and thoughts were not far off, she was sure of it.
    Nedra woke slowly to dreamlike, feathery touches. She struggled to come to the surface, to regain herself. It took half an hour. The afternoon sun was on the curtains, the voice of the day had changed. He held up an arm as if to the light. She held hers beside it. They stared at these arms with a vague, mutual interest.
    “Your hand is smaller.”
    It moved closer to his, as if for comparison.
    “You have better fingers,” he said. They were pale, long, the bone within them showing. “Mine are square.”
    “Mine are square, too,” she said.
    “Mine are squarer.”
    Lunch, brandy, coffee. She loved the isolation, one side on a rising street, of this store that had been abandoned. She was filled with a sense of peace, of accomplishment. She had received goodness, now she radiated it, like a stone warmed for bed in the evening. She left by the side door. The ancient trees had burst the sidewalk, enormous trees, their trunks scarred like reptiles. Only a few leaves had fallen. It was still mild, the last hour of summer.
    He was slight, Jivan, inconsequential. He was devoted to those American emblems of drab middle class, shoes, pastel sweaters, knit ties. She drove his car when her own was broken down. He scolded her for her carelessness with it, the papers it was strewn with, the dents that appeared in the side. She smiled at him, she apologized. She did as she pleased.
    His ambition was to be a man of property. He had the cunning for it. He owned the storefront in which he lived, he was buying a house on ten acres near New City. He accumulated quietly, patiently, like a woman.
    “I’m interested in your house,” Nedra said.
    “Yes, where is it, exactly?” Viri asked.
    It was nothing, Jivan said, a very small house, but the land was nice. It was really a studio more than a house. There was a brook, though, with a ruined stone bridge.
    They were eating dinner. They drank the Mirassou. Franca had half a glass. Her face seemed exceptionally wise in the soft light, her features indestructible.
    “It’s in your blood to have property, isn’t it?” Nedra said.
    “I think it’s how you’re brought up. But, in the blood … there could be something there, too. You know, I remember my father,” he said. “He told me, ‘Jivan, I want you to promise me three things.’ I was just a little boy, and he said, ‘Jivan, first of all, promise me you will never gamble. Never.’ I mean, I was seven, eight years old. And he was saying, never gamble. ‘If you must gamble,’ he said, ‘do it with the king of gamblers. You can find him in the streets, he is naked, he’s lost everything, even his clothes.’
    “ ‘Secondly’—I was still picturing this king, this beggar, but my father went on, ‘Secondly, never visit whores.’ Excuse me, Franca. I was eight years old, I didn’t know what we were even talking about. ‘Never,’ he said, ‘now promise me. If you do visit them, go only in the morning; that’s when they have no paint, no powder, you can see what they are really like, do you understand?’ ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, Father.’ ‘Good,’ he said, ‘and the third thing, now listen: always paint a house before you sell it.’ ”
    He was dark, he was filled with stories like the serpent in myths; each white tooth contained a story and each story a hundred others, they were all within him, intertwined, sleeping. The stranger, flashing with legends, he cannot be overcome. Once they have escaped him, these hymns, these jokes, these lies join with air, they are breathed, they cannot be filtered out. He is like the prow of a ship cutting through seas of sleep. Silence is mysterious, but stories fill us like the