Light Years Read Free Page A

complexion?”
    “Black.”
    “How is that?” Nedra asked.
    “Well, as a friend of mine would say, it’s because the count has a big cock.”
    “You do know a lot about Ireland.”
    “I’d like to live there,” Peter said.
    A slight pause. “What do you like best of all?” she said.
    “Best of all? Are you serious? I would rather spend a day fishing than anything in the world.”
    “I don’t like getting up so early,” Nedra said.
    “You don’t have to get up early.”
    “I thought you did.”
    “I promise you, no.”
    The bottles of wine were finished. The color of their emptiness was the color in cathedral naves.
    “You have to wear boots and all that,” she said.
    “That’s only for trout.”
    “They’re always filling with water and drowning people.”
    “Occasionally,” he said. “You don’t know what you’re missing.”
    She reached in back of her head, as if not listening, unfastened her hair and shook it behind her.
    “I have a marvelous shampoo,” she announced. “It comes from Sweden. I get it at Bonwit Teller’s. It’s really grand.”
    She was feeling the wine, the soft light. Her work was finished. The coffee and Grand Marnier she left to Viri.
    They sat on the couches near the fire. Nedra went to the phonograph. “Listen to this,” she said. “I’ll tell you when it comes.”
    A record began of Greek songs. “It’s the next one,” she explained. They waited. The passionate, wailing music beat against them. “Listen. It’s a song about a girl whose father wants her to marry one of her nice suitors …”
    She moved her hips. She smiled. She slipped off her shoes and sat with her legs drawn up beneath her.
    “… but she doesn’t want to. She wants to marry the town drunk because he will make marvelous love to her every night.”
    Peter watched her. There were moments when it seemed she revealed everything. In her chin was an indentation, clear, round as a shot. A mark of intelligence, of nakedness, which she wore like a jewel. He tried to imagine scenes that went on in this house, but was hindered by her laughter. It was a disclaimer, a garment she could leave behind, like empty stockings, like a bather’s robe on the beach.
    They sat in the soft cushions talking until midnight. Nedra drank freely, holding out her glass to have it refilled. She was carrying on a separate conversation with Peter, as if the two of them were closest, as if she understood him utterly. All the rooms and closures here were hers, the spoons, the fabrics, the floor beneath one’s feet. It was her province, her serai where she could walk barelegged, where she was free to sleep, her arms naked, her hair strewn about her. When she said good night her face seemed already washed, as if in preparation. The wine had made her sleepy.
    “The next time you marry,” Catherine said as she drove home with her husband, “you should marry someone like her.”
    “What do you mean by that?”
    “Don’t be frightened. I just mean it’s obvious you’d like to go through all that …”
    “Catherine, don’t be foolish.”
    “… and I think you should.”
    “She’s a very generous woman, that’s all.”
    “Generous?”
    “I’m using it in the sense of abundant, rich.”
    “She’s the most selfish woman on earth.”

3
     
    HE WAS A JEW, THE MOST ELEGANT Jew, the most romantic, a hint of weariness in his features, the intelligent features everyone envied, his hair dry, his clothes oddly threadbare—that is to say, not overly cared for, a button missing, the edge of a cuff stained, his breath faintly bad like the breath of an uncle who is no longer well. He was small. He had soft hands, and no sense of money, almost none at all. He was an albino in that, a freak. A Jew without money is like a dog without teeth. The urgency of it, yes, he often knew that but its presence was all accident, like rain, it came or it did not. He was innocent of any real instinct.
    His friends were Arnaud,