Dusk a book of short stories. It seems to me there are two types of short stories—the kind that pack in so much information that they read like condensed novels, and the kind that achieve an effect, strike a balance, with the minimum of words and explicit exposition. Haiku stories. The author drops you into the action with no scene setting or preamble. You take in details, assemble a picture in your mind, understand as much of what’s going on as possible, and then it’s over. After reading a volume of such stories, it can be difficult even a day or two later to remember anything much. You work to fix each story in your mind as you’re reading, and just as you get it into focus, you are on to the next.
Dusk contains stories of the second, ephemeral type, and after the first reading I didn’t retain much. Were it not for the self-imposed obligation of writing this blog, it would have vanished from my consciousness like a dream. But now I am in the process of re-reading it, and I am seeing things I had not seen earlier. For example, there is one story named “American Express.” It’s about two New York lawyers who maintain a close friendship for 20-something years. They pull off a coup professionally when quite young and become rich. In the second half of the story they travel to Europe and stay on indefinitely. The time is mid-to-late 20th century—perhaps 1952 to 1972. Of the two, Frank is the clever and dynamic one, and Alan more the sidekick. Over the course of just 21 pages Salter does a number of deft things to make these two individuals real to us. He sketches details, but never fills them in. Information is provided in indirect, often surprising ways. Significant biographical facts are jumbled together with precise, seemingly random observations and details in a way that startles and stimulates the reader. Here is a very long excerpt that deals with one of Frank’s more significant romantic relationships:
As it happened, they never knew the girl at the reception desk with her nearsightedness and wild, full hair. They knew various others, they knew Julie, they knew Catherine, they knew Ames. The best, for nearly two years, was Brenda who had somehow managed to graduate from Marymount and had a walk-through apartment on West Fourth. In a smooth, thin, silver frame was the photograph of her father with his two daughters at the Plaza, Brenda, thirteen, with an odd little smile.
"I wish I'd known you then," Frank told her.
Brenda said, "I bet you do."
It was her voice he liked, the city voice, scornful and warm. They were two of a kind, she liked to say, and in a way it was true. They drank in her favorite places where the owner played the piano and everyone seemed to know her. Still, she counted on him. The city has its incomparable moments—rolling along the wall of the apartment, kissing, bumping like stones. Five in the afternoon, the vanishing light. "No," she was commanding. "No, no, no." He was kissing her throat. "What are you going to do with that beautiful struma of yours?"
"You won't take me to dinner," she said.
"Sure I will."
"Beautiful what?"
She was like a huge dog, leaping from his arms.
"Come here," he coaxed.
She went into the bathroom and began combing her hair. "Which restaurant are we going to?" she called. She would give herself but it was mostly unpredictable. She would do anything her mother hadn't done and would live as her mother lived, in the same kind of apartment, in the same soft chairs. Christmas and the envelopes for the doormen, the snow sweeping past the awning, her children coming home from school. She adored her father. She went on a trip to Hawaii with him and sent back postcards, two or three scorching lines in a large, scrawled hand.
It was summer.
"Anybody here?" Frank called.
He rapped on the door which was ajar. He was carrying his jacket, it was hot.
"All right," he said in a loud voice, "come out with your hands over your head. Alan, cover the back." The party, it seemed, was over. He pushed the door open. There was one lamp on, the room was dark.
"Hey, Bren, are we too late?" he called. She appeared mysteriously in the doorway, bare legged but in heels. "We'd have come earlier but we were working. We couldn't get out of the office. Where is everybody? Where's all the food? Hey, Alan, we're late. There's no food, nothing."
She was leaning against the doorway.
"We tried to get down here," Alan said. "We couldn't get a cab."
Frank had fallen onto the couch. "Bren, don't be mad," he said. "We were working, that's the truth. I should have called. Can you put some music on or something? Is there anything to drink?"
"There's about that much vodka," she finally said.
"Any ice?"
"About two cubes." She pushed off the wall without much enthusiasm. He watched her walk into the kitchen and heard the refrigerator door open.
The sentences give us information but they also imply a thousand different things. When Salter writes “It was summer,” we feel the scene shifting, we know time as passed. After this transition the relationship of Frank and Brenda (all of a half page old) takes on a new tone, a hint of cynicism and evasion.
And then there is the sentence “She would do anything her mother hadn't done and would live as her mother lived, in the same kind of apartment, in the same soft chairs.” What kinds of things would Brenda do that her mother hadn’t?—its an absurd statement that tells us more about Brenda’s determination and nerve than it does about what either woman might or might not do. But then there are those soft chairs, attaching themselves to the tail of that otherwise dramatic sentence. To me they suggest the inertia of living and money and becoming our parents despite ourselves. We try to define ourselves by opposition to our initial circumstances, but eventually we avail ourselves of whatever makes life comfortable—like a soft chair.
But this isn’t even Brenda’s story—she is present here for two or three pages, and then later on for two more.
Elsewhere we meet another of Frank’s lovers, a Mrs. Christie, who is also his client. Mrs. Christie is recently divorced and would like to find somebody new. Here is an episode that Mrs. Christie relates to Frank:
He didn't know what it was like, she told him. Not long ago she'd been introduced to someone by a couple she knew very well. "We'll go to dinner," they said, "you'll love him, you're perfect for him, he likes to talk about books."
They arrived at the apartment and the two women immediately went into the kitchen and began cooking. What did she think of him? She'd only had a glimpse, she said, but she liked him very much, his beautiful bald head, his dressing gown. She had begun to plan what she would do with the apartment which had too much blue in it. The man—Warren was his name—was silent all evening. He'd lost his job, her friend explained in the kitchen. Money was no problem, but he was depressed. "He's had a shock," she said. "He likes you." And in fact he'd asked if he could see her again.
"Why don't you come for tea, tomorrow?" he said.
"I could do that," she said. "Of course. I'll be in the neighborhood," she added.
The next day she arrived at four with a bag filled with books, at least a hundred dollars worth which she'd bought as a present. He was in pajamas. There was no tea. He hardly seemed to know who she was or why she was there. She said she remembered she had to meet someone and left the books. Going down in the elevator she felt suddenly sick to her stomach.
Salter is like Miles Davis, there are sweet lyrical bits that come out of nowhere, transition that are graceful and odd at the same time, melodies that seems to start in the middle, provocative silences. Frank and Alan are improvisers too. Like the story in which they exist, they never seem to look forward. They are without obligations, responsibility or meaningful connections. (It’s hard to say whether they are connected to each other, or just juxtaposed.) Their existences, over the course of 20 pages, seem to dwindle and attenuate. They go to Italy and Frank sees a schoolgirl in her uniform across a town square. He talks her into going for a ride with him and then they are lovers and she is traveling with the two of them in Italy. How old is she? we wonder. Alan says he is going home and Frank, to prevent this, agrees to share the girl with him.
The other Salter book that I wrote about in this blog, Light Years, also ends with an older American man taking up with a much younger Italian woman. Both stories take on a rather sad bitter quality, a sense of life’s vitality at an end. Somehow I imagine Frank commiting suicide eventually. There is no tangible suggestion of this in the story, but that’s the thing about Salter—you’re his collaborator as much as you are his audience. Sometimes he tells you how to fill in the gaps, and sometimes he doesn’t.
