Falconer+-+John+Cheever

Falconer 66
cafés with faraway looks in their eyes because they have heard the
music of the spheres. So I placed my line, knowing all the time
that with your coordination you could place a line much better
than I, while you sat on the banks with your hands folded in your
lap as if you wished you had brought your embroidery although
you can’t, so far as I know, sew on a button. So then I hooked and
landed a big salmon and then there was a thunderstorm and we
got soaked and then we stripped and swam in the stream, which
was warmer than the rain, and then they served the salmon that
night at the manor with a lemon in its mouth but what I intended
to say is that you weren’t aggressive and as I recall we never
quarreled. I remember once looking at you in some hotel room
and thinking that if I love her so absolutely we must quarrel and if
I didn’t dare to quarrel perhaps I didn’t dare to love. But I loved
you and we didn’t quarrel and I can’t ever remember our
quarreling, never, never, not even when I was about to shoot all
my guns and you took your tongue out of my mouth and said that
I still hadn’t told you whether you should wear a long dress or a
short dress to the Pinhams’ birthday party. Never.
“And I remember some mountainous place in the winter on the
eve of a holiday where thousands of people had gathered to ski
and where thousands more were expected on the late planes and
trains. And I remember ski places, those overheated rooms and the
books that people leave behind them and the galvanic excitement
of physicalness. We were in bed then, when there was, around
midnight, a sudden rise in temperature. The thawing snow on the
roof made a dripping sound—a water torture for the innkeeper
and killjoy music for everyone else. So in the morning it was very
warm by whatever standards or measures used in whatever
country it was. The snow was sticky enough for snowballs and I
formed one and fired it at a tree, hitting or missing I don’t
remember, but beyond the snowball we saw the warm blue sky
and the snow melting everywhere. But it would be colder on the
mountains whose white slopes and summits surrounded us. We