James Salter - A Sport and a Pastime

“Phillip?”

There is no answer. She approaches the bed. His hands rise silently in the dark to receive her, to draw her down.

“Pretending you are asleep,” she says. “You are a naughty child.”

“No.”

He has turned her over to admire her, those pale cheeks, firm as calves. He caresses her, slips his hand between her legs.

“It’s nourishing,” he says.

“Comment?”

“Je t’aime,” he says.

They lie on their sides. The clock is ticking. The metal of the heater cracks like glass. Downstairs the Corsicans are talking. Their passionate voices echo through the stairwell. The street door closes.

“Wait a minute,” he whispers.

She is on top of him.

“I don’t have anything.”

“It’s all right,” she says.

“Are you sure?”

She is struggling. He is in agony.

“Anne-Marie?”

“Si!” she insists. He half releases her, half guides.

It begins slowly, his hands on her waist. It seems he is crowning his life.

PAST AND HAUNTING IMAGES of France, reflected over and over again like facets of an inexhaustible stone. I walk through the silent house, the tall rooms chilled with winter light, the furnishings crossed by it, the windows. The quality of stillness is everywhere. There is no single detail that provides it. It exists like a veiled face.

Images of the towns. Sens. The famous cathedral which is reflected in the splendor of Canterbury itself rises over the icy river, over the still streets. One sees it in the distance, St. Etienne: the centuries have bleached its stone like powder and the heads are all missing from statues of the blessed, but still it appears from far off to warn travelers of the presence of God. Built as one of the first of a great, Gothic family that rose throughout France, it endures like a white myth. The little shops have grown close around it, cinemas, restaurants. Still, it cannot be touched. Beneath the noon sun the roof, which is typically Burgundian, gleams in the strange design of snakeskin, banded into diamonds, black and green, ocher, red. The sun splashes it like water. The brilliance seems to spread.

Sens. They have fallen asleep. Dean wakes first, in the early afternoon. He unfastens her stockings and slowly rolls them off. Her skirt is next and then her underpants. She opens her eyes. The garter belt he leaves on, to confirm her nakedness. He rests his head there. After a while, finding a more comfortable position, he lies between her legs, her pelvis for a pillow, her knees within his grasp. He listens to the traffic. He turns his head a little to see if she is asleep. She is looking down at him calmly. Beneath his ear it is wet.

He has money, everything is changed. There are close to nine hundred francs in immaculate bills from the sale of his return ticket on the airlines, the beauty of bank notes being counted made him weak. He didn’t fold them. He carried them out flat, in the stiff packets of ten pinned at the corner. He can speak the language suddenly with them in his possession. He can see himself clearly, he can think of many things. They are important, these inexhaustible ten-franc notes. They are the essence of invention. They are the warrants of his life.

In the restaurant they arrive a little early. The tables are empty, the headwaiter is standing alone. They are led past a fireplace where a huge log is slowly burning, the flames no bigger than one’s hand. On a broad table, great hams reveal their rich interiors, plates of cooked fishes, mushrooms, adornings of fruit. They are seated in a booth across from one another. She is touching a fever blister on her chin.

“Do we take the prix-fixe?” she asks.

“I don’t know,” he says. He is reading.

She keeps touching herself.

“Stop that.”

She obeys.

In the next booth an elegant trio is arriving: a man with silvery hair, a perfectly groomed, well-born man and two women, his wife and mother probably. Dean can see them behind her head, they are accepting the menus. The headwaiter talks to them. They smile. He looks down again.

“Are you very hungry?” he says.

“Ah, oui.”

“It’s an enormous dinner.” His head is still down. “I don’t even think you can eat it all.”

“Oh, j’ai faim,” she pleads.

“All right.”

In back of her they are conversing warmly in a splendid French of which he can hear not a word. His glances are long, too long, but he cannot withhold them. He feels himself becoming sullen. She turns to see what he is looking at, and Dean is suddenly filled with humiliation. She begins to do something beneath the table, to pick at her fingernails which have remnants of polish.

“Please,” he says.

She glances up. There are terrible moments in which one sees love with cold eyes. Her face is a shopgirl’s, Dean can see it plainly, pretty but cheap. He is overwhelmed with impatience. He wants only to be gone from here. They have somehow made him into a delinquent. Anne-Marie says nothing. She can smell his anger. Her hands are hidden in her lap.

They eat slowly, finding little to say. The meal is too big. She loses her appetite and cannot finish, which only annoys him more, and he eats her dessert. She sits silently, pale as a schoolgirl.

“You shouldn’t have ordered it all,” he says.

She reaches up and removes the little earrings hooked through the lobes of her ears, as if preparing for bed.

“I knew you wouldn’t eat it,” he says.

Afterwards they walk around town for a bit. Everything is quiet. She seems withdrawn. Near the cathedral she lags, moving very slowly.

“What’s wrong?”

Her voice is quite weak.

“Rien.”

He waits for her.

“Do you feel sick?” he insists.

She seems close to tears. She shakes her head reluctantly and standing there, suddenly, beside the looming nave, vomits up the whole meal at her feet, frogs’ legs and oysters splashing onto the stones. She retches and gasps for air. Dean steadies her. He glances around and is relieved to find no one watching.

“How do you feel? Do you want to sit down?”

She merely breathes in exhaustion.

“Ton mouchoir,” she asks feebly.

He produces it. She holds it to her mouth and then wipes the corners. She tries to smile. She is worried about her shoes. They are perhaps stained. She leans against him and lifts her feet, one after the other, to see.

“They’re all right,” he tells her. “Would you like some tea?”

“Non. Merci.”

“I think it’d be good for you.”

“Non,” she breathes.

She is ashamed, but purified as well. Her whitened face has lost its harshness and clinging to his arm she follows, chastened, along the dark streets.

The next morning she is recovered. His prick is hard. She takes it in her hand. They always sleep naked. Their flesh is innocent and warm. In the end she is arranged across the pillows, a ritual she accepts without a word. It is half an hour before they fall apart, spent, and call for breakfast. She eats both her rolls and one of his.

In the afternoon they see a Laurel and Hardy movie, a relic of thirty years before. The theatre is a closet. The seats are like torn magazines. Later they walk along the river. The water is grey and seems not to be flowing. She goes down the bank to pick some cattails for her room. Dean waits on the path. He can see her choosing the ones to take, filling her arms. What if she becomes pregnant, he wonders. The clouds are heavy, their bases dark as lead. The thought has come quietly, but it embeds itself in him. He dares not say it aloud. Suddenly he is certain he doesn’t want to marry her. Still, if she were to have a baby, what could he do? He couldn’t simply leave. His feet are cold. His cheeks feel dry. The chill of the afternoon seems to have entered his soul. She is walking along down at the water’s edge. Dean follows above, slowly, wondering how it can end.

NOW, IN THE WHITE afternoon, past the bare trees of the avenue, the car glints along. There is almost no traffic. The town seems abandoned. He turns down Boulevard Mazagran, turns again, and then stops, parking carelessly, at a slight angle to the wall, outside the Jobs’.

Dean has begun tutoring three times a week. It came about rather unexpectedly, although the idea must have been flickering in Madame Job’s mind for some time. When she asked me about it, what my opinion would be, I was taken by surprise. I had no chance to adjust myself.

“A tutor?” I said. “Of what?”

“But English, naturally.”

“Well,” I said, “I don’t know. I suppose if he were interested he might be able to.”

“Comme il est gentil,” she pleaded. She was thin as a ferret.

“You can always try it.”

“Do you think?”

“Oh, yes. Why not?”

She tried to hide her pleasure. It annoyed me.

He is completely the young student for her, brilliant and clean. Her children adore him. He fashions a set of those cards with a picture on one side and the word on the back. His drawings are very clever, of course. The automobile is his, the one outside, except even longer and slightly uneven. The chicken looks like Claude Picquet.

His life assumes a nineteenth-century air. He rises at eight or eight-thirty and has coffee. Then he reads the morning paper to strengthen his vocabulary. The headlines are underscored these days, the front pages filled with fragments of that terrible divorce, Algeria, which is in its final agony. Many French still cling to the possibility of triumph, the dominance of will. La guerre est la domaine de la force morale. They are like widows, dispossessed tenants, martyrs, maniacs. In the last frenzy, desperate schemes appear. The violence becomes grotesque. Citizens, some with decorations in their lapels, are machine-gunned in the streets. The assassins are practically children. They are sickened by their act. They sit on the curbstone and weep.