She was lost in the fantasies spreading before her; they flooded her with contentment. At four o’clock, muted, like an intermission bell at a concert, the phone rang. She rose to answer it.
“Nedra?”
She recognized the voice instantly. “Yes.”
“This is André Orlosky.”
6
THE SUN APPEARS, WITHOUT BODY, without heat, its color is pale, serene. The water lies as if dead. The moorings are dark on its surface, the pennants hang limp. The river is English, cool as silver. On the lawn is a body. It is Mark, asleep. He has arrived before daylight, down from New Haven, and lies beneath their window, a collection of long ax-handle limbs within his clothes.
Nedra, risen early, watches him from above. He is sleeping peacefully, she admires this simple act. Her thoughts pour down on him, she imagines him stirring beneath them, becoming animate, his eyes opening slowly, seeing her own. He is young, graceful, filled with abrupt ideas. The seminal overwhelms him, makes him drive long distances, search everywhere. To see him at rest is, for a moment, to be able to weigh and examine him, otherwise he is unapproachable, he runs, laughs, vanishes behind the face of youth.
She lay on the floor and began her exercises: first a profound relaxing, arms, shoulders, knees. She had found a yogi, Vinhara, in the city. She went to him four times a week. He was bald with a long, greasy fringe of black hair. He moved about in flowing clothes. His voice was confident, commanding. “Water purify de body,” he said. “Truth purify de mind.”
He was dark. His nose was broad and pitted, his hands enormous, his ears hairy as a cat’s. Wisdom purify de intellect, meditation purify de soul.
His apartment smelled of incense. The kitchen was filled with dirty pans. He slept on a mattress on the floor. In one corner was a dented dressmaker’s dummy which he sometimes struck with a stick. “Practice,” he explained.
For an hour, feeling warmer, more supple, feeling the parts of her body become manifest as if they were pointed out on a chart, she submitted herself to him. Then, tender, awakened, she walked the few blocks to André’s apartment. He was waiting for her; he knew almost to the minute when she would be there.
“I sometimes think,” she told him, “that if you lived on the West Side, I wouldn’t be doing this.”
“The West Side?”
“Not just there. Anywhere else.”
He had three rooms, clean, carefully furnished, everything in its place. The music was playing: Petrouchka, Mahler. The blinds were already drawn.
To her husband she was understanding, even affectionate, though they slept as if there were an agreement between them; not so much as a foot ever touched. There was an agreement, it was marriage.
“We must speak of it like a dead person,” she told him.
All about them in the morning, entering at every window, in the very air, was the autumn light. The hard yellow apples were on the table, the sections of the newspaper.
“Nedra, it’s obviously not dead.”
“Would you like some toast?”
“Yes, thank you.”
“It is,” she said.
Mark was coming through the door. He had been up in Franca’s room; he had washed his hands, his sleeves were rolled. They sat talking of the weather, of the first, faint yellows which were now in the woods. No leaves had fallen yet. It was dry underfoot. The earth was still warm.
“You don’t have a chill from sleeping out there?” Viri asked.
“No.”
“Well, I often take a nap near that spot,” Viri admitted.
“In the daytime.”
“The grass is beautiful,” Mark said.
Nedra brought them toast and butter, figs, tea. She sat down. “It’s like a burned photograph,” she said calmly. “Some portions of it are there. The main part is gone forever.”
Viri smiled slightly. He did not reply.
“We’re talking about marriage,” she said to Mark.
“Marriage…”
“Do you ever think about it?”
He hesitated. “Yes,” he said finally.
“Probably not very much,” she said. “But once you’re married, you’ll find you think about it a great deal.”
“Good morning, Papa,” Franca said. She was still a little sleepy as she sat down beside them. They welcomed her; she was doelike, warm, her smile said everything, she sat there comfortably. Her life was her own, but it was deeply entwined with these other lives: her gnomelike father’s, with her mother’s brilliant smile. She was like a young tree demure in the sunlight, in a clearing, graceful and alone, but the moss on the earth around, the stones, buried roots, the distant groves, the forest—all of these had their influence and spoke to her still.
On the counter was a glass bowl green as the sea, filled with bleached shells like scraps from the summer. Three photographs, each of a different female eye, were pinned one above the other to the wall. Keys hung in an old gilt frame. There were drawings of birds, beautiful onyx eggs, a framed post card from Gaudí to a man named Francisco Aron.
They were talking about the day ahead as if they had only happiness in common. This gentle hour, this comfortable room, this death. For everything, in fact, every plate and object, utensil, bowl, illustrated what did not exist; they were fragments borne forward from the past, shards of a vanished whole.
We live untruth amid evidence of untruth. How does it accumulate, how does it occur? When Viri mentioned André, whose presence was just beginning to be felt, who did not yet leave telephone messages or sit at their table, Nedra calmly replied that she found him interesting.
They were alone in the kitchen. Autumn filled the air.
“Just how interesting?”
“Oh, Viri, you know.”
“As interesting as Jivan?”
“No,” she said. “To be honest, no.”
“I wish I didn’t find it so disturbing.”
“It’s not that important,” she said.
“These things… I’m sure you realize these things, done openly…”
“Yes?”
“…can have a profound effect upon children.”
“Well, I’ve thought about that,” she admitted.
“You certainly haven’t done anything about it.”
“I’ve done quite a lot.”
“Is that meant to be funny?” he cried. He got up abruptly, his face white, and went into the next room. She could hear him dialing the telephone.
“Viri,” she said through the doorway, “but isn’t it better to be someone who follows her true life and is happy and generous, than an embittered woman who is loyal? Isn’t that so?”
He did not answer.
“Viri?”
“What?” he said. “I’m afraid it makes me ill.”
“It all evens out in the end, really.”
“Does it?”
“It doesn’t make that much difference,” she said.
7
DANNY FELL BY CHANCE, AS A BIRD to a cat.
It was winter. She was with a friend. They met Juan Prisant on the street near the Filmore. He wore a rough white sweater, nothing more. It was cold. The teeth in his bearded mouth were perfect; they were like the soft hands that betray fleeing aristocrats. He was twenty-three. From the first instant she was ready to forget her studies, her dog, her home. He paid no attention to her in that tribute which the stricken have learned to expect. She was too young, she knew, too middle-class; she was not interesting enough for him. She was wearing a coat she hated. She stared at the sidewalk and from time to time dared a glance to reaffirm a face that dazed her with its power. No matter what she did, she could not seem to remember it, she could not stare at it long, like the sun. He radiated an energy which terrified her and drove all other thoughts from her mind.