[37]
MANY FRAGMENTS COME TO me, are discovered, reappear. I wander about the room picking up or remembering things which are narcotic, which induce me to dream—the details, the relics of love, suffused with an aching beauty. In the back of a drawer I find the lost portion of the list they made in Nancy, names of hotels. It fits the other piece exactly. On it, the curious, dead words: Obelisk. Suez. Tous les Oiseaux du Monde. There is just one in her writing: Ritz.
The sunlight of that icy morning falls on my face through enormous windows, through flats of glass with tiny flaws, purified by bitter, Sunday silence. The smoke floats blue in the cheap bars at dawn. The veterans cough. Nancy, where she was born, where she learned to write in that young, undistinguished hand:
…there is nothing that is not yours, all I think, all I am able to feel. I am embarrassed only that I do not know enough. But I don’t care if you never belong to me, I only want to belong to you, just be hard with me, strict, but don’t leave, just do like if you were with another girl—Please. I will die otherwise. I understand now that we can die of love.
I receive a letter from his father, sent on to me in Paris, asking me to forward the personal effects. Cristina will take care of that, she says. I assure her there isn’t much. As for the car, it’s a curious thing—it’s registered in the name of Pritchard, 16 bis rue Jadin, and they know him. He’s off in Greece for the summer, they think, but they’ll handle that, too. Perhaps. It’s parked under the trees near the house and locked, but like a very old man fading, it has already begun to crumble before one’s eyes. The tires seem smooth. There are leaves fallen on the hood, the whitened roof. Around the wheels one can detect the first, faint discoloring of chrome. The leather inside, seen through windows which are themselves streaked blue, is dry and cracked. There it sits, this stilled machine, the electric clock on the dash ticking unheard, slowly draining the last of life. And one day the clock is wrong. The hands are frozen. It is ended.
Silence. A silence which comes over my life as well, I am not unwilling to express it. It is not the great squares of Europe that seem desolate to me, but the myriad small towns closed tight against the traveler, towns as still as the countryside itself. The shutters of the houses are all drawn. Only occasionally can one see the slimmest leak of light. The fields are becoming dark, the swallows shooting across them. I drive through these towns quickly. I am out of them before evening, before the neon of the cinemas comes on, before the lonely meals. I never spend the night.
But of course, in one sense, Dean never died—his existence is superior to such accidents. One must have heroes, which is to say, one must create them. And they become real through our envy, our devotion. It is we who give them their majesty, their power, which we ourselves could never possess. And in turn, they give some back. But they are mortal, these heroes, just as we are. They do not last forever. They fade. They vanish. They are surpassed, forgotten—one hears of them no more.
As for Anne-Marie, she lives in Troyes now, or did. She is married. I suppose there are children. They walk together on Sundays, the sunlight falling upon them. They visit friends, talk, go home in the evening, deep in the life we all agree is so greatly to be desired.
A Biography of James Salter
James Salter (b. 1925) is a novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter, best known for his critically acclaimed classic novels A Sport and a Pastime (1967) and Light Years (1976). Though his earliest novels centered on life in the military, Salter’s subject matter has been diverse, and his potent, lyrical prose has earned him praise from critics, readers, and fellow novelists.
Salter was born James Horowitz on June 10, 1925, in Passaic, New Jersey. He grew up in New York City where his father, George, was an economist and real estate broker. Throughout his youth Salter was a sheltered only child, good student, and avid reader. He attended public schools in New York, leading to his graduation from Horace Mann at the age of seventeen.
In 1942 Salter followed in the footsteps of his father and entered West Point, where he graduated as a pilot in 1945. He was stationed in the Philippines in 1946, followed by Japan and Hawaii. After returning to school for a master’s degree at Georgetown University, he volunteered for duty in the Korean War, where he joined a fighter wing that was charged with the task of countering enemy MiG jet fighters. He logged over one hundred combat missions. The experience provided the basis of his first novel, The Hunters (1956), which he wrote while still serving in the Air Force. The book realistically portrayed the lives of pilots during war and quickly became a classic of aviation literature. It was made into a film starring Robert Mitchum in 1958.
Prior to the publication of his first novel, Salter married Ann Altemus, with whom he eventually had four children. With the success of his first novel—and with his growing family—Salter made the difficult decision to leave the military and throw himself into writing fulltime. He published a second novel, The Arm of Flesh in 1961.
In 1967, Salter’s third novel, A Sport and a Pastime, forever changed the trajectory of his career. While his first two books had earned him a reputation for candid depictions of military life, the third entered new territory, describing an Ivy League dropout who begins an affair with a young shopgirl in provincial France. Powerful and sensual, A Sport and a Pastime shocked readers and drew praise from critics for its sophisticated style. Two more novels followed: Light Years (1975), about a deteriorating marriage, and Solo Faces (1979), about the classic American loner and romantic figure, in this case a mountain climber.
Salter has published many award-winning short stories, and his collection Dusk and Other Stories received the PEN/Faulkner Award in 1988. He also worked for a number of years as a screenwriter, starting with the script for Downhill Racer (1969), starring Robert Redford. It was during this time that Salter and his wife divorced. He later met journalist and playwright Kay Eldredge, with whom he has one son.
Salter lives with Eldredge in New York City and Colorado.
