by James Salter
Bowman turned the page over. He was reading quickly, apprehensive.
I’m not sure how to put it or why it is, but for a while now I’ve had the feeling that we’ve each been going our own way without a lot in common. I’m not talking about a particular thing (?)
Here, his eye skipped ahead. The question mark frightened him, he didn’t know what it meant, but there was nothing. I guess I can’t blame you. And I don’t blame myself. Probably it’s always been this way, but in the beginning I didn’t realize it. I really don’t belong in your world and I don’t think you belong in mine. I feel like probably I should be back where I fit in.
The words unaccountably went through him like something fatal. It was a letter of parting. Two nights before she’d left they’d made love with a pillow doubled beneath her like an innocent naked child with a stomachache, and he felt her become engaged in a way that had never happened before, perhaps because of how they were going about it or perhaps they were entering another level of intimacy, but now he saw with a sudden and poignant regret that he’d been wrong, she had been responding to something else, something known to her alone.
Daddy would probably have a fit if he heard me saying this, but I don’t want anything, any alimony. I don’t want you supporting me for the rest of my life. We haven’t been married for that long. If you could give me three thousand dollars to help me temporarily, that would be fine. Be honest, I’m not wrong, am I? We really weren’t meant for each other. Maybe I’ll find the right man, maybe you’ll find the right woman, at least someone more suited to you.
Her daddy. Bowman had never had a strong masculine figure in his own life to teach him how to be a man, and he had been drawn to his father-in-law despite himself and the real distance between them. There was no connection—he had no idea what his father-in-law thought or would do. He remembered him sitting with almost criminal ease, buttering a piece of toast and drinking coffee at breakfast the morning after the big snowstorm in Virginia when they all slept over. He remembered it clearly afterwards.
The day after having written the letter, Vivian happened to see her uncle Cook coming along the side of the house pushing a wheelbarrow with something heaped in it, and then with a shock she saw a foreleg hanging over the rim. She hurried out as Cook set the wheelbarrow down by the front door.
“What happened? Is he hurt?” she asked anxiously.
“I found him out by the shed,” Cook said.
The dog’s eyes were closed. She took its paw.
“Is he dead?”
“I think so.”
“You’d better call the vet. You’d better tell grand-dad,” Vivian said.
Cook nodded.
“He was just lying there,” he said.
Her grandfather came out to see. He was wearing an old straw hat, like a country lawyer. They could hear Caroline calling out something slurred. Wain stroked the dog’s foot and then slowly, as if thinking of something else, began to gently smooth its fine black coat.
“Should we call Dr. Carter?” Vivian asked.
“No. No,” Wain said. “No use calling him.”
Tears were running down his face. He seemed ashamed of them. Dr. Carter was the bow-legged vet who couldn’t see out of his left eye—he’d been hit on the head one time. He’d hold up a hand, “For instance, I can’t see my hand,” he would say.
Cook was standing silent and, to his father it seemed, emotionless. Wain was remembering what Cook had been like as a boy, mischievous but companionable, and what had gradually happened to him. He had a vision of what was to come, Cook, sullen and still handsome coming down the stairs to face foreclosure, naked legs first, wearing his gray paisley dressing gown, his silver hair uncombed. Tired and looking as if he had a headache, having spent it all.
“Well, what is it you want?” he would say.
Without any idea of what he would do, and Caroline slumped in her wheelchair, past trying to make herself understood.
11
INTERIM
It was bitter at first, being alone, being left. The pillow slip became dirty, he swept up himself. He felt angry but at the same time realized she had been right. They had been living a life of appearances and essentially she had had nothing to do, which included maintaining the apartment. The towels were usually damp, the bedding hastily pulled up, the windowsills had dirt on them. They had quarreled about it. Why didn’t she clean up a little? he asked conversationally.
She disdained to answer.
“Vivian, why don’t you spend a little time cleaning up the place?”
“It’s not my ambition.”
Her use of the word, whatever that meant, annoyed him.
“Your ambition. What do you mean, ambition?”
“It’s not my aim in life,” she said.
“I see. Just what is your aim in life?”
“I’m not saying,” she said.
“And what is mine?”
“I don’t know,” she said dismissively.
He was enraged. He could have broken the table with one blow.
“Damn it! What do you mean you don’t know?”
“I mean I don’t know,” she said.
It was useless trying to talk. He could barely bring himself to lie in bed beside her, the sense of alienation was so strong. It seemed she was radiating it. He was nearly shaking, he couldn’t sleep. Finally he’d taken his pillow and gone to sleep on the couch.
Now there was no longer the presence, even unseen, of another or the awareness of someone else’s moods or habits. The rooms were silent. There was only the framed photograph of her in the bedroom with its faintly Asiatic eyes, the slightly upturned nose and bowed upper lip. At night he sat reading, near his elbow a glass with ice and the amber of whiskey and its subtle aroma. Things she had said remained embedded in his memory, he knew they would not be soon covered over.
“I gave you your chance,” she had told him.
She would say nothing more. His chance, was that what it had been?
“Vivian and I have split up.”
“Ah,” Eddins said. “Sorry to hear it. When did that happen?”
“A week ago.”
“I’m really sorry. Is it permanent?”
“I think so.”
“Ah, God. We looked at you as the gilded couple, polo, private income …”
“There was no private income. Her father is, among other things, very tight-fisted. I can’t even recall if he gave us a wedding present.”
“It’s terrible. What are you going to do? Why don’t you come up to Piermont and stay with us for a while? It’s a working-class place but very nice. There’re a couple of restaurants and some bars. There’s a movie house in Nyack. From the kitchen table, well, in this case the dining table, you can look out at the river.”
“You make it sound very appealing.”
For a moment he was almost tempted, the casual and idyllic life, the old house uphill from town. He could imagine the rhythms, driving in in the brightness of morning and back out at night, sometimes late, the traffic having thinned, the clear night above the trees.
“I’ll be all right,” he said.
“You say that offhandedly but, remember, the door’s really open to you. We’ll even make a place in bed.”
They sat silent for a few moments.
“I remember your wedding,” Eddins said. “The drive through the beautiful country. The fine house. Whatever happened to the judge who liked full-chested women?”
“I haven’t seen the judge for a while,” Bowman said.
Vivian, however, happened to see the judge soon after her return, although “happened” is inexact. Judge Stump had heard the news and extended his sympathies. He invited her, not without some nervousness although he could always explain himself as being a family friend, almost an uncle, to lunch at the Red Fox. He was in a fine gray suit with his hair perfectly cut and groomed. After some polite but, as always with him, jagged conversation, he shared some news he thought sh
e might be interested in. He was buying the Hollis house, the big one, not the nearby farmhouse, on Zulla Road. He said this looking at the tablecloth, then glancing at Vivian.
“I hate that house,” she said. “I’d hate to live in it.”
“Ah,” the wounded judge said.
“Has nothing to do with you,” said Vivian. “It’s just that I’ve never liked that house.”
“Ah. I didn’t know that.”
She spoke her mind, he knew. To some extent, that suited him. She was the most desirable woman he had ever seen. They did not often have the chance to talk, really talk. Gathering his courage, the judge said,
“Well, there are other houses …”
For a moment she was uncertain of what he was saying.
“Judge …”
“John,” he said.
“Are you …?” she began with a smile.
He was not the sort of man to smile disarmingly. He did not smile when pronouncing a sentence or stating a fee, and he wanted, in this case, to clearly show how serious he was, but nevertheless he softened his expression slightly.
“I’ve already gone through one bad marriage,” Vivian said.
The judge had gone through three, though he considered himself blameless.
“Why don’t you think about Jean Clevinger?” Vivian suggested lightly not knowing that Mrs. Clevinger, rich and very lively, had almost from their first meeting rejected the judge out of hand.
“No, no,” he protested, “Jean … we don’t have anything in common. We don’t share the really important, the deep things.”
Vivian didn’t want to hear or even guess what they were.
“I think you and I should just remain friendly,” she said rather boldly.
The judge was far from discouraged by this. He felt satisfied, he had made progress. He could be patient for a bit, now that he had at least made it known. As they rose to leave, he more or less indicated the table and their lunch and suggested,
“Between us, hm? Between us.”
Bowman told his mother the news. He hadn’t wanted to face her disappointment or questions, but it was inevitable. He’d gone home for the weekend, he couldn’t tell her on the phone.
“Vivian and I have separated,” he said.
He felt a twinge of shame, despite himself, as if admitting a failure.
“Oh, my,” Beatrice said.
“Actually, it was her idea.”
“I see. Did she give a reason? What was wrong?”
“I really don’t know the reason. We were just not right for one another.”
“She’ll come back,” Beatrice prophesied.
“I don’t think so.”
There was a silence.
“Is that everything?” his mother asked.
“Everything? I don’t know if it’s everything. Do you mean, is there another man? No. Her mother had a stroke though I’m not sure that has much to do with it. A little, maybe.”
“A stroke? She died?”
“No, she’s in Maryland with her father. Vivian’s helping take care of her.”
“Well, I’m truly sorry,” his mother said, referring to what, he didn’t know.
She was not really sorry, she felt an unworthy joy.
“I hardly knew Vivian,” she said with a tone of regret. “She never let me get close to her. Was it my fault, I wonder? Perhaps I should have tried harder.”
“I don’t know,” he confessed.
He was taking it stoically, Beatrice thought, which might have meant indifference. It would be wonderful if that were the case.
“People deceive you,” she said softly.
“Yes.”
There were things she didn’t know, of course, the letters with their red-and-blue-dashed envelope edges, letters from London, I spend hours trying to stop thinking about you. That particular, thrilling letter was still in his pocket. He kept it there so that he could take it out and read it again from time to time, on the street, if he liked, or at his desk.
“Why does mail from Europe take so long?” he asked an old agent at lunch. “The planes fly across in a matter of hours.”
“It didn’t take that long before the war,” the agent said. “A letter took four days, maybe five. You took it down to the ship before it sailed and it was in London, delivered, five days later. With airplanes, we’ve only lost a day,” he said.
The sun was finally shining in London, she wrote. She was really like a lizard, she longed to lie beside a pool with the sun on her or be a frog on a lily pad, not a big frog, just a slim green one able to swim well. She was a good swimmer, he knew—she had told him that.
She wrote lying in bed, having said no to invitations, I miss you enormously. To her, he wrote, I think of you fourteen times a day. I think only, when can I have you again? There is that half hour of waking every morning when I lie silent, bathed in thoughts of you. I can feel your eyes opening, finding me. He did not know her well enough to express the crude desire he really felt, he longed to but was not yet sure of himself. I love your body, he wanted to write, I’d like to take your clothes off quickly like unwrapping, tearing the paper from a marvelous gift. I’m thinking of you, day-dreaming, imagining. How beautiful you are. My utter darling.
In the end, he wrote these things. He was under the spell of her profile, her brilliant smile, her nakedness, and the wonderful clothes she wore in a privileged, distant world.
You have made me completely alive, she replied.
That summer he heard that Caroline had died, his mother-in-law, former. He had liked her, the inborn aplomb she had when drunk, which was often. Her voice slurred a little but she rode over it as if it were a fleck of tobacco on her tongue, as if she could pause and wipe it away with a finger. She had coughed and then fallen, first into silence and then to the floor, where Vivian had found her, but she was dead either then or by the time the ambulance came. Bowman sent a large order of flowers, lilies and yellow roses, which he remembered her liking, but he never had a response, not even a brief note from Vivian.
12
ESPAÑA
In October they went to Spain. She had been there before, not with her husband but before she was married, with friends. The English loved Spain. Like all northern peoples they loved southern France and Italy, lands of the sun.
The sky of Madrid was a vast, pale blue. Unlike other great cities, Madrid had no river, the grand avenues with their trees were its river, the Calle de Alcalá, Paseo del Prado. On various corners the police stood with their black hats and dark faces. The country was waiting. Franco, the aging dictator, the victor in the savage civil war that preserved a Catholic, conservative Spain, was still in power though preparing for immortality and death. Not far from the city a monumental tomb was being carved into a granite hillside, the Valley of the Fallen. Hundreds of men, prison laborers, were working to complete the sacred place where the great leader of the Falange would lie for eternity beneath a cross forty stories high, visited by tourists, priests, ambassadors, and until the last of them were gone, the brave men who had fought alongside him. Spain had bright skies but was shadowed. In a bookshop Bowman managed to persuade the cautious owner to sell him a copy of Lorca’s Romancero Gitano, which was banned. He read some of it to Enid, who was unimpressed. The Prado was dark, as if it had been neglected or even abandoned, the masterpieces were hard to see. They ate at a restaurant that bullfighters favored, near the arena, also in others filled with noise and open late, and drank afterwards in the Ritz bar where the barman seemed to recognize Enid though she had never stayed there.
They went to Toledo for a day and then on to Seville, where summer lingered and the voice of the city, as the poet said, brought tears. They walked through walled alleyways, she in high heels, bare-shouldered, and sat in the silent darkness as deep chords of a guitar slowly began and the air itself stilled. Chord after ominous chord, the guitarist immobile and grave until a woman in a chair beside him, till then unseen, raised her arms and with a sound lik
e gunshots began to clap her hands and then cry out in a wild voice a single word, Dalé! Over and over she cried, Dalé, dalé! urging on the guitar. Slowly at first she began to chant or intone—she was not singing, she was reciting what had always been known, reciting and repeating, the guitar like drums hypnotic and endless, it was the gypsy siguiriya, she sang as if surrendering her life, as if calling to death. She was from Utrera, she cried, the place Perrate was from, the place Bernarda and Fernanda …
Her hands were up near her face, clapping sharply and rhythmically, her voice was anguished, she was singing in blindness, her eyes closed, her bare arms, silver loops in her ears and long dark hair. The song was her song but it belonged to the Vega, the wide plain with its sun-dark workers and shimmering heat, she was pouring out life’s despair, bitterness, crimes, her clapping fierce and relentless, a place called Utrera, the house in which it had happened, the lover left for dead, and a man in black pants and long hair suddenly came from the darkness, his steel-tipped heels exploding on the wood floor and his arms hung above his head. The woman was singing with even greater intensity amid the relentless chords, the savage, tight beat of the heels, the silver, the black, the man’s lean body bent like an S, the dogs trotting in darkness near the houses, the water running, the sound of the trees.
They sat afterwards in a bar open to the narrow street, barely speaking.
“What did you think?” he said.
She replied only, “My God.”
Afterwards in the room he began to kiss her wildly, her lips, her neck. He slipped the dress straps from her shoulders. You could never have anyone like this. His old, fettered life was behind him, it had been transformed as if by some revelation. They made love as if it were a violent crime, he was holding her by the waist, half woman, half vase, adding weight to the act. She was crying in agony, like a dog near death. They collapsed as if stricken.
