All That Is

by James Salter

  He had walked to school on Morris Avenue, Summit High School, a very good school, so well regarded that Ivy League colleges would accept without question any student the principal recommended. Before the war, that did not seem extraordinary, it was simply the way of things. In those days, Japan existed only in newsreels and cheap goods marked Made in Japan. No one, no ordinary person dreamed that this curious, distant country out of Gilbert and Sullivan was as dangerous as an open razor and had the discipline and daring to do the unthinkable, cross in strength and absolute secrecy the most northern Pacific to attack at dawn on a quiet morning the unsuspecting American fleet in Pearl Harbor, an almost fatal blow. Pearl Harbor, no one even knew where Pearl Harbor was, they had only a vague idea. When the grave news was broadcast in America interrupting the quiet Sunday afternoon, it was accompanied with no details and almost made no sense. The Japanese. Attacking. The complete unexpectedness.

  He had been a schoolboy. His mother was in her thirties. He barely remembered his father. It was a somewhat shameful thing to have divorced parents. He knew only one other boy like himself, a strange boy named Edwin Semmler with a large head, extremely shy and an outstanding student—he was called The Brain. Everyone in the class or almost everyone had gone to the senior prom and the parties at the hotel, almost everyone but not Semmler. No one expected him to. No one knew much about him, he averted his head when walking past people. Bowman had several times tried to talk to him without much success. As it turned out, he was killed in the war. He was in the infantry, it was hard to imagine. Kenneth Keogh hadn’t been killed, but it was almost as bad. He’d also been in the infantry, as a sergeant, and had come through the war unharmed. During the Occupation, in barracks, he’d been hit in the spine by a bullet accidentally fired by someone cleaning a rifle and he was paralyzed from the waist down. In a wheelchair he took the train to work in New York every day, Bowman had seen him several times, the same Kenneth Keogh but with legs of rags.

  On Essex Road in a white house above a steep lawn lived the most unimaginable girl in town, Jackie Ettinger, who was a year or two older and too glorious to know. She hadn’t stayed, she’d gone away to school in Connecticut and become a model. She was eighteen when he was sixteen. Another world. She’d been taken to the Brook, a supper club—he had never been inside it. Later she had gotten married. Even now, were he to meet her, even with all he now was, he would have been at a loss for words. She had been a figure in his imagination for a long time. When he had been in midshipman’s school, he had thought of her and even later when he was living in the little room without a bath off Central Park West, a shabby room, and first heard that she was married. He was the boy left behind in some poem he had read that was in the form of a letter written by a girl who had gone off into society. Her father had become rich, and now, back from a dance she was writing a letter at midnight to a boy she once knew and had kept track of and who still had her heart.

  What had become of all of them? They had gone into business. Several were lawyers. Richter was a surgeon. He wondered about his favorite teacher, Mr. Boose, younger than the other teachers, earnest and made fun of behind his back, Boozie, they called him. He would be retired by now if he had stayed at the school. He had written to Bowman several times during the war.

  There was an afternoon when his mother did not recognize him. She asked him who he was.

  “I’m Philip. Your son.”

  She looked at him and then looked away.

  “You’re not Philip,” she said, as if refusing to become involved in a game.

  “Mother, I really am.”

  “No. I’d like to see my son,” she said to Dorothy.

  The incident, although unreal, was very disturbing. It seemed to cut the tie between them, as if she were renouncing him. He would not let her do it.

  “I’m not Philip,” he said, “but I’m your good friend.”

  She seemed to accept it. Her confusion was his, he realized, his to understand. She was becoming strange, unknowing, and she plainly felt alone. He thought of Vivian and her loyalty to her mother, whom he had liked. That had been a touching thing. He thought of his own mother and how he had loved her, what she had been like on the many mornings, the meals they had had together, that she had prepared for him. He knew they must take care of her and not leave her now.

  But in November, Beatrice slipped and fell in the bathtub breaking her wrist and hip. Dorothy hadn’t been able to lift her out of the tub, they had to call an ambulance. The fall had been frightening. Beatrice was in pain and knew what had happened. She bore the routine of the hospital with some confusion but without complaint. The nurses were patient with her.

  Bowman came immediately. The hospital had whispering hallways and closed doors to many of the rooms. He found his mother weakened and quiet. She was afraid that she might not leave the hospital.

  “Of course, you’ll leave,” he assured her. “I talked to the doctor. You’ll be fine.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  They sat silent for a while.

  “I’m having a lot of trouble,” she said. “I can’t seem to do things, I don’t know why. When you die,” she said, “what do you think happens to you?”

  “You’re not going to die.”

  “I know, but what do you think happens?”

  “Something glorious.”

  “Oh, Philip. Only you would say something like that. Do you know what I think?”

  “What?”

  “I think that whatever you believe will happen is what happens.”

  He recognized the truth in it.

  “Yes, I think you’re right. What do you believe will happen?”

  “Oh, I’d like to think that I’ll be in some beautiful place.”

  “Like what?”

  She hesitated.

  “Like Rochester,” she said and laughed.

  Her attention span was shorter after she left the hospital and she was in reality only part of the time. She was also more fearful. Dorothy could only with difficulty take care of her at home, and it would inevitably become worse.

  To Bowman, the idea of a nursing home was repellent, it meant he was abandoning her. The home was a place for the aged no one would care for any longer. Nothing was left for them as they lay waiting or shuffling along the corridors or were wheeled, head lolling, from place to place. They might live like this for years. Beatrice might be tired, she might be depressed, but she was not like them. She had grown old, but not to become that. It was worse than dying. As she had said, what happened was what you believed would happen. You were yourself until the end, until the very last moment. In the nursing home, what you believed was left behind.

  17

  CHRISTINE

  In London, Bernard Wiberg looked more and more like a lord, which many in knowing circles said he soon might be. He was resplendent in his dark, bespoke suits, and his self-regard, while great, was no greater than his success. For books meant to be taken seriously he was the favored and hoped-for publisher, and for books written to make money, he had an unerring eye. If he bought a book, it was always at an advantageous price, no matter how high that might be. Books he paid little for managed to gain a following, and books that he was obliged to pay a great deal for always earned out. It didn’t matter what things cost, it was what they were worth.

  He was soon to be married, so it was said, to a former ballerina who was often in photographs in glamorous magazines, at parties or dinners. She was a woman who seemed to live a superior life, and as Lady Wiberg she could expect this to continue. At the opera or ballet, Wiberg was a figure of style, in white tie when the occasion called for it, and his household retained its elegance. He’d dined with the Duke and Duchess of Windsor in France, tremendous protocol, everyone had to be there before the royal couple entered. He was encouraged by Catarina, the ex-dancer, to give occasional after-theater suppers, soirées, she liked to call them, the dining table laid with plates of cold beef, pâté, and pastries, and wine with w
ell-known labels. Intimately and just between them she called him her cochon. In his bathrobe or white braces he could be Falstaff or Figaro with her and she had an irresistible laugh.

  Enid remained his friend, more so when his fiancée was in Bolzano visiting her family or was involved with a production somewhere, no longer as a performer, but she was developing a reputation as a consultant, even as a choreographer. Enid had become involved in films, first as an assistant to a producer, making reservations for him at restaurants and on airplanes and being present at dinners. She spent some time on location of a film being shot, learning about continuity and what a script girl did. The crew were friendly, but she was a stylish-looking outsider, also in the evening when they gathered and drank. At a pause in the conversation, the American director, in front of everyone, asked her offhandedly, “So, tell me, Enid, do you fuck?”

  “I’d be a fool if I didn’t,” she cooly answered and in a way that seemed to exclude him.

  He did not pursue it further. Her reply was often repeated.

  Bowman had been in London for the Book Fair, and his homeward flight had been delayed. He landed in New York at nine in the evening. It was half an hour before he had his bags and went out to get a cab. There was a crowd, he had to share a cab with someone also going to the West Side, a woman with three or four pieces of luggage. She moved her legs to give him more room. She was sitting back in what might have been a coat with the sleeves lying as if open. They rode in silence. Bowman was prepared to keep to himself without looking at her again. In the city, strange women were not always as they appeared. There were women with grievances, disturbed women, women avidly seeking men.

  As they came to the expressway, she said,

  “Where are you coming from?”

  It was the way she said it. She almost seemed to know him.

  “London,” he said, looking at her more closely for the first time. “And you?”

  “From Athens.”

  “That’s a long flight,” he commented.

  “They’re all long. I don’t like to fly. I’m always afraid the plane is going to crash.”

  “I don’t think you have to be afraid of crashing. It’s quick. It’s all over in a second.”

  “It’s what happens before that, when you know you’re about to crash.”

  “I suppose so, but how would you prefer to die?”

  “Some other way,” she said.

  In the light from oncoming cars he could see her dark hair and lipstick that made him take her for Greek. The expressway paralleled Manhattan, which was like a long necklace of light across the river. At the far end was the financial district and then, from midtown on up, the countless tall buildings, the great boxes of light. It was like a dream, trying to imagine it all, the windows and entire floors that never went dark, the world you wanted to be in.

  “Do you live in Athens?” he asked.

  “No,” she said easily, “I was taking my daughter to visit her father.”

  “I’ve never been to Greece.”

  “That’s a pity. It’s a marvelous country. When you go, go to the islands.”

  “Any one in particular?”

  “There are so many,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “There are places that time seems never to have touched, absolutely unspoiled.”

  They looked at one another without speaking. He did not know what she might be seeing. She had clear, smooth features.

  “The people have something you don’t find here,” she said. “They have a joy of life.”

  “That’s nonsense,” he said.

  She ignored it.

  “Were you in London on business?”

  “Yes, business. The London Book Fair.”

  “Are you a publisher?”

  “Not really. I’m an editor. A publisher has different responsibilities.”

  “What sort of books do you edit?”

  “Mainly novels,” he said.

  “The friend I’m staying with was in a novel. She’s rather proud of it. Eve was her name in the book. That’s not her name.”

  “Which book is that?”

  “You know, I forget the title. I only read the parts about her. She knew the author. So, tell me your name,” she said after a pause.

  Her own name was Christine, Christine Vassilaros. She was not Greek, she was married to a Greek man, a businessman, from whom she had separated. Her friend, Kennedy, the one who’d been written about, was also separated and living in a rent-controlled apartment that was a grand relic of life before the two World Wars and the time between them. I’m not giving up the apartment, she had said. It was like an apartment in Havana, bygone and only sparsely furnished, on Eighty-Fifth Street.

  They arrived at Bowman’s street first. He handed her something more than half the fare.

  “It was very nice of you to share the cab,” he said. “Can I call you sometime?” he straightforwardly asked.

  She wrote down a telephone number on the back of an airline stub.

  “Here,” she said.

  And she pressed it in his hand.

  As the cab left, he had an exalted feeling. The taillights going down the street, bearing her away. It had been like theater, a glorious first act. The doorman greeted him.

  “Good evening, sir.”

  “Yes, good evening.”

  I’ve met the most wonderful woman, he wanted to say. He had met her by chance. He thought about it excitedly while going upstairs, and then in the apartment. She was married, she had said, but that was understandable—at a certain point in life, it seemed everyone was. At a certain point also you began to feel that you knew everyone, there was no one new, and you were going to spend the rest of your life among familiar people, women especially. It was not that she had been friendly, it was that but more. He felt like trying the telephone number, but that was foolish. She wouldn’t have even arrived at her street yet. He was already impatient. He must somehow not seem it.

  When she came to lunch a day later, he knew it was all in vain. She was younger than he thought, but he could not be sure. They sat facing one another. She had the neck of a woman of twenty, and her face had only the faintest lines from expressions, from her smile. There was almost a physical thrill to her. He didn’t want to succumb to it, but he was unable to prevent it, her bare neck and arms. She was certainly aware of it. Don’t become intoxicated, she seemed to say. He could look at her so closely. Her gleaming dark hair. Her upper lip was arched. She held her fork with a kind of languor as if ready to discard it, but she ate with generous mouthfuls as she talked, not diverted from the food. Her other hand was raised and half-closed, as if drying her nails. Long, disdainful fingers. It turned out she had lived in New York, on Waverly Place, she and her husband, for a number of years.

  “Six,” she said. She had worked as a broker.

  He was looking at her. You wanted to watch her.

  “It was beautiful,” she said. “That’s a nice part of the city.”

  “You know New York then,” he said feeling jealous.

  “Very well.”

  She didn’t say much more or much about her husband. His business was in Athens, that was all. They’d been living in Europe.

  “In Athens?”

  “But we’re separated.”

  “Are you still on good terms?”

  “Well …”

  “Intimate terms?” he found himself asking.

  She smiled. “Hardly,” she said.

  He felt he could say anything to her, tell her anything. There was a kind of complicity, even if nascent, between them.

  “How old is your daughter?” he asked.

  She was fifteen. He was astonished to hear that.

  “Fifteen! You don’t look as if you could have a fifteen-year-old daughter,” he said and added casually, “how old are you?”

  She made a slight, disapproving expression.

  “Thirty-two?”

  “I was born during the war,” she
said. “Not at the beginning of it,” she added.

  He was aware of his own age, but she didn’t bother to ask it. Her daughter’s name was Anet.

  “How is that spelled?” he said.

  It was a beautiful name.

  “She’s a marvelous girl. I’m mad about her,” she said.

  “Well, your daughter …”

  “It’s not just that. Do you have children?”

  “No,” he said.

  He almost felt he’d fallen short in her eyes. He was visibly older, he was single, he had no family.

  “But that’s a very nice name,” he repeated. “Some names are like magic. Unforgettable.”

  “That’s true.”

  “Vronsky,” he said as an example.

  “Not a very good name for a girl.”

  “No, of course not. Unforgettable, but not good.”

  “I’d almost have another child just to name it. If you were to have a child, what would you name it?” she asked.

  “That’s something I’ve never really thought about. If it was a boy …”

  “Yes,” she said. “A boy.”

  “If it was a boy, Agamemnon.”

  “Ah. Yes,” she said. “Of course. Achilles is a good name, too. Agamemnon sounds a little more like a horse.”

  “He’d be a wonderful boy,” Bowman argued.

  “I’m sure he’d be. With that name he’d have to be. And what would you name a girl? I’m almost afraid to ask.”

  “A girl? Quisqueya,” he said.

  “I see you’re a traditionalist. What was that name, again?”

  “Quisqueya.”

  “It must be some figure in history or a novel.”

  “It’s a Peruvian name.”

  “Peruvian? Really?”

  “No, I made that up,” he confessed.

  “Anyway, it goes very well with Bowman.”

  “Quisqueya Bowman,” he said. “Well, let’s just keep it in mind.”

  “And her sister, Vronsky.”

  “Yes.”