Light Years Read Online Free PDF Page A

tree? The grass then, to start with. Afterwards small rocks, the corner of the building, steps, and then—then a tree. You’re going to be a huge dog, Hadji. You’re going to live with us. We’re going to take you down to the river. We’re going to take you to the sea. Oh, your teeth are sharp!”
    He slept in a fruit basket, on his back like a bear. One morning there was great excitement. Franca saw it first. “His ear is up! His ear is up!” she cried.
    They all ran to see it while he sat, unaware of his triumph. But it fell again in the afternoon.
    He became intelligent, strong, he knew their voices. He was stoic, he was shrewd. In his dark eye one could see a phylum of creatures—horses, mice, cattle, deer. Frogboy, they called him. He lay on the floor with his legs stretched out behind. He watched them, his face resting on his paws.

5
     
    LIFE IS WEATHER. LIFE IS MEALS . Lunches on a blue checked cloth on which salt has spilled. The smell of tobacco. Brie, yellow apples, wood-handled knives.
    It is trips to the city, daily trips. She is like a farm woman who goes to the market. She drove to the city for everything, its streets excited her, winter streets leaking smoke. She drove along Broadway. The sidewalks were white with stains. There were only certain places where she bought food; she was loyal to them, demanding. She parked her car wherever it was convenient, in bus stops, prohibited zones; the urgency of her errands protected her. The car was a little convertible, foreign, green and, unlike other things, neglected.
    January. She drove to the city early, a cold day, the pavements were frozen, the pigeons huddled in the R’S of a FURNITURE sign. The city is a cathedral of possessions; its scent is dreams. Even those who have been rejected by it cannot leave. An ancient woman was sitting on a doorstep, her face coursed by years, her hair disarranged, a hideous woman with her teeth gone. She had an animal in her lap, its eyes running, its muzzle gray. She lowered her head and sat, her cheek against the little dog’s, silent, abandoned. In the next block was a derelict walking on his knees, his face so filthy, so red it seemed covered with wounds. His clothes were rags stained with vomit. He struggled, looking down into his pants as if for blood, oblivious to those who passed. In the theater lobbies were dwarfs, fat men, financial wizards with sullen faces, women in black stockings, furs. There were rings on their aging fingers, gold in their teeth.
    She went to the museum, to her husband’s office, to a shop on Lexington where she stood among the art books, tall, pensive, a woman with long legs, a graceful neck, on her forehead the faintest creases of the decade to come. In a nondescript restaurant she sat down to have a sandwich. She took off her coat. Beneath was an Irish sweater, ordinary, white, hung with necklaces of amber and colored seeds. Men alone at their tables looked at her. She ate calmly. Her mouth was wide and intelligent. She left a tip. She disappeared.
    In the early winter evening she passes Columbia. The traffic is thick but moving. The food stores are crowded, the flashes of the railway above her make blue images lit like executions in the dusk. Home on the long, curving stretches, borne by other cars. By the time she had crossed the river the trees were black. She flew along, in the left lane only, above the limit, tired, happy, filled with plans. Her eyes were burning. On the seat behind her were white and orange bags from Zabar’s, on the floor were gas slips, parking tickets, mail that had never been opened, bills. The road runs along the great cliffs of the west bank; for most of the way there is not a house visible, not a store, nothing except the long galaxy of towns across the river, beginning to shine in the dark.
    She turns from the highway and enters the backwaters, the pools of small life, houses she knows intimately without any idea of who is in them, parked cars she