Dusk and Other Stories - James Salter [48]
He tried to remember the curious word already dissolving in his mind. The lights inside the house had begun to appear in the blue evening.
“It’s the one great act of his life.”
The hotel she had spoken of was small with small rooms and letters in yellow across the facade. There were many buildings like it. From the cool flank of the cathedral it was visible amid them, below and a little downstream. Also through the windows of antique shops and alleys.
Two days later he saw her from a distance. She was unmistakable. She moved with a kind of negligent grace, like a dancer whose career is ended. The crowd ignored her.
“Oh,” she greeted him, “yes, hello.”
Her voice seemed vague. He was sure she did not recognize him. He didn’t know exactly what to say.
“I was thinking about some of the things you told me …” he began.
She stood with people pushing past, her arms filled with packages. The street was hot. She did not understand who he was, he was certain of it. She was performing simple errands, those of a remote and saintly couple.
“Forgive me,” she said, “I’m really not myself.”
“We met at Sarren’s,” he explained.
“Yes, I know.”
A silence followed. He wanted to say something quite simple to her but she was preventing it.
She had been to the museum. When Hedges worked he had to be alone, sometimes she would find him asleep on the floor.
“He’s crazy,” she said. “Now he’s sure there’ll be a war. Everything’s going to be destroyed.”
Her own words seemed to disinterest her. The crowd was pulling her away.
“Can I walk with you for a minute?” he asked. “Are you going toward the bridge?”
She looked both ways.
“Yes,” she decided.
They went down the narrow streets. She said nothing. She glanced in shop windows. She had a mouth which curved downward, a serving girl’s mouth, a girl from small towns.
“Are you interested in painting?” he heard her say.
“Yes.”
In the museum there were Holbeins and Hodlers, El Grecos, Max Ernst. The silence of long salons. In them one understood what it meant to be great.
“Do you want to go tomorrow?” she said. “No, tomorrow we’re going somewhere. Perhaps the day after?”
That day he woke early, already nervous. The room seemed empty. The sky was yellow with light. The surface of the river, between stone banks, was incandescent. The water rushed in fragments white as fire, at their center one could not even look.
By nine the sky had faded, the river was broken into silver. At ten it was brown, the color of soup. Barges and old-fashioned steamers were working slowly upstream or going swiftly down. The piers of the bridges trailed small wakes.
A river is the soul of a city, only water and air can purify. At Basel, the Rhine lies between well-established stone banks. The trees are carefully trimmed, the old houses hidden behind them.
He looked for her everywhere. He crossed the Rheinbrucke and, watching faces, went to the open market through the crowds. He searched among the stalls. Women were buying flowers, they boarded streetcars and sat with the bunches in their laps. In the Borse restaurant fat men were eating, their small ears close to their heads.
She was nowhere to be found. He even entered the cathedral, expecting for a moment to find her waiting. There was no one. The city was turning to stone. The pure hour of sunlight had passed, there was nothing left now but a raging afternoon that burned his feet. The clocks struck three. He gave up and returned to the hotel. There was an edge of white paper in his box. It was a note, she would meet him at four.
In excitement he lay down to think. She had not forgotten. He read it again. Were they really meeting in secret? He was not certain what that meant. Hedges was forty, he had almost no friends, his wife was somewhere back in Connecticut, he had left her, he had renounced the past. If he