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I was standing at the latticed arch of the summerhouse when I took from my pocket the pebble I had found and offered it to Katya.
“Oh, thank you, sir. I was afraid you had forgotten.” She put it into a little drawstring purse along with the others and dropped it into her reticule. “Did it ever occur to you that you are giving me the world… bit by bit?”
“I hope you don’t feel compromised by the enormous value of the gift.”
“Oh, it isn’t the value of the gift that compromises. It’s the intent behind it. Are your intentions of a compromising nature?”
“Very nearly.”
She laughed. “I must warn you that my integrity is so firm that mere pebbles cannot rock it.”
“That, my dear young lady, was a horrible, horrible pun.” I spoke with an avuncular sternness that allowed me to get away with calling her “dear.”
She frowned and pulled a sour face. “I fear that you lack a proper appreciation for the fine art of punning. It indicates a distasteful seriousness of mind. What are words made for, if not to play with?”
I placed my hand lightly over hers. “It is rumored that some people use them to express feelings of affection.”
Her eyes searched mine with troubled uncertainty. “Ah well… you can’t put much faith in rumors.” Then she slipped her hand from beneath mine and turned aside to look out over the garden, her gaze distant, her attention adrift. The sunlight dappling through the lattice warmed the cupric tones of her hair and reflected from the bodice of her white dress to radiate her face in a diffuse glow. I stood close beside her. The delicate silken down on her cheek… the sweet smell of her hair… the line of her throat… the curve of her breast…
She sighed as though returning reluctantly from some pleasant vision and turned to me. “You know, it was cruel and thoughtless of you to tell my brother and father about the spirit in this garden. Why did you do that?”
The question took me off balance. “I… for no reason at all. Just… you know… small talk. Conversation. Surely you know I would never intentionally do anything to pain you, Katya.”
She looked at me levelly for a moment, measuring, evaluating. Then a faint smile touched the corners of her eyes. “No, of course you wouldn’t. But just the same I do wish you hadn’t mentioned her.”
“I didn’t know she was a secret.”
“Not a secret, exactly. Just something of my own that I wasn’t prepared to share with anyone.”
“But you shared her with me.”
She considered that for a second, as though realizing it for the first time. “That’s true, I did, didn’t I?” She shrugged. “Ah well, there’s no point dwelling on it. The harm’s done.”
“What harm?”
“You saw how Paul reacted to the mention of the spirit, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did. He seemed quite shaken.”
She nodded. “I knew he would be.”
“But why? Surely someone so cynical as your brother doesn’t believe in spirits. Why should he be shaken by the mention of one?”
She frowned and shook her head. “I really don’t know, Jean-Marc. But I knew instinctively that he would be.”
I sighed and broke off a twig from an overhanging bush and began to strip the leaves from it. “Katya? Is it a real spirit?”
“Real spirit? Isn’t that a contradiction of terms?”
“You know perfectly well what I mean. You and Paul delight in making up tales and playing on other peoples credulity. That’s why I ask if this spirit of yours is real.”
“Oh, she’s real enough.”
“Have you actually seen it?”
“Yes. Well… not quite. I’ve almost seen her out of the tail of my eye… a blur of white that vanishes when I focus on it, the way very dim stars do. But I am quite sure she’s here. I can sense her presence in a most palpable way. And it’s not the least a frightening or uncomfortable experience. She’s a gentle spirit… and so terribly sad. So terribly sad.”
“Sad? Why sad?”
“I don’t know. I suppose it was having it all come to an end when she was still so young.”
“Oh? How young is she?”
“Just fifteen and a half.”
I smiled. “Are you sure she’s not fifteen years, five months, and eleven days old? After all, you do have this particular gift for precise measurements.”
She looked at me with operatic seriousness. “Surely you know that it’s very difficult to judge age down to the number of days.”
I chuckled and let the game go, tossing away my stripped twig. “You know, Katya, I understand Paul’s discomfort with the idea of ghosts… spirits. Daydreamer and incurable romantic though you accuse me of being, my grip on reality is mundanely logical. I feel lost and a little uneasy when I consider forces and events that ignore such relationships as cause and effect, deduction and reason. Do you understand what I mean?”
“Are you saying that you don’t believe in the supernatural?”
“I choose not to. I don’t want to. The irrational frightens me. I would feel more at ease in the presence of a brutal and cruel man than I would in the presence of an insane one.”
She frowned. “Paul’s not insane.”
“Oh, no, you misunderstand me. I wasn’t suggesting he is. I was only saying that I share his discomfort with the idea of the supernatural. I’m suggesting that he’s rigidly sane, like me. Inflexibly rational.”
“And you think that’s best?”
“Well… it’s safe.”
She considered this for a moment. “Yes, it’s safe… but limiting.”
We were silent for a time, as I sought a way to phrase the question that had been lurking in my mind all that day. “Katya? It is obvious that there’s something wrong. Something troubling you and your family.”
She responded with surprising frankness. “Yes, of course there is. I would have been surprised if someone as sensitive as you had failed to feel it.”
“Is it something I can help with? Would it be useful to talk about it?”
“Useful? That’s an odd way to express it. But, yes, it might be… useful.” She seemed to struggle with herself, on the verge of sharing something with me, but not quite daring to.
To make it easier for her I said, “You know that you have a sympathetic and… caring… friend in me. Surely you can sense what I feel for you, Katya.”
She shook her head and turned away, as though to arrest my words.
But I pursued the inertia of the moment, fearing it might not come again. “I haven’t dared to give a name to the feelings I have for you… feelings that stir in me at even the most fleeting thought of you—”
“Please, Jean-Marc…”
“—But if I were to give them a name, I know it would be what they call… love.”
“Please…” She rose from the wicker chair as though to flee, but I caught her hand and drew her to me and held her in my arms.
“Katya…”
“No.” She sought to pull away.
“Katya.” A slight shudder passed through her body, then she stiffened and settled her eyes calmly, but distantly, on mine. She did not struggle to escape, but her passive resistance, her immobile indifference, had the effect of chilling my ardor and making me feel quite stupid and boorish to be holding her, not exactly against her will, but against her lack of will. I wanted both to release her and to kiss her, and I didn’t know which to do.
I was young. I kissed her.
Her lips were soft and warm, but totally unresponsive, and when I opened my eyes after the long kiss, she was staring past me… through me.
I dropped my arms to my sides, but she did not move, so it was I who had to step back, disconcerted, miserable.
“I’m sorry, Katya. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s all right.”
“No. It is not all right. It’s just that… I love you so.”
“It’s all right, Jean-Marc.”
But I shook my head and turned away—
—to find myself looking into the eyes of Paul.
He had evidently come down the path silently and had been witness to my embarrassment.
“Part of your bedside manner, Doctor?” His unmodulated voice was chill.
Humiliated, angry, frustrated, I stammered, “I don’t know why I did that. It was stupid of me. I’ll leave immediately, of course.”
“No, Jean-Paul. Don’t leave,” Katya said, a mixture of compassion and anxiety in her voice.
“No, Katya,” Paul said. “Let the good doctor leave. It’s the noblest impulse he’s had in years.”
“Treville,” I said, focusing my anger on him. “If it weren’t for Katya, I should be delighted to bash that insipid smile from your face!”
“I’m sure you would at least try,” he said in an arch, bored voice.
My jaw tight, the veins throbbing in my temples, my fist knotted, I stood before him, detesting with all my soul the calm indifference in his eyes, but at the same time recognizing it as akin to Katya’s vacant expression when I had kissed her. I drew several long breaths in an effort to rein in my passion, then I closed my eyes and let my fist relax. Turning to Katya, who was watching us with apprehension, I spoke with all the control I could bring to bear. “I regret any distress I have caused you, Katya. The simple… if undesirable… fact is that I love you. And I shall never regret that love, no matter how much I regret my unfortunate way of expressing it.” Even as I spoke, I could have killed myself for the artificial, precious wording derived from my practice of rehearsing “clever” expressions in my daydream life. I was sure I was ruining any chance I might have had to win Katya’s affection, but youthful dignity punctured is a terrible thing, capable of thrashing about in an agony of ego and harming that which it most loves.
With a formal—and I am sure buffoonish—bow, I strode up the path, my spine stiff, my mind a chaos of anger and despair.
As I had been brought to Etcheverria in Paul’s surry, I had to walk all the way back to Salies, my misery contrasting bitterly with the beauty of the evening, my pace and anger ebbing with each step until, by the time I reached the village square, my anger was gone, and my emotions were drained and numb.
The last thing in the world I felt prepared to face was a conversation with Doctor Gros, but when he hailed me from his customary table under the yellow electric light of arcades I could think of no way to avoid joining him without advertising my misery and making myself a target of his jests.
“Come, sit here, Montjean,” he commanded at full voice, slapping the seat of the chair beside him. “Take a little glass with me by way of consolation.”
“Consolation?”
“Well, perhaps relief, then. It depends on how your little affair with La Treville was getting on, I suppose. At all events, you have staked fair claim on the local record for brevity in romantic episodes—save, perhaps, for a little matter last summer involving our village priest.”
“I’m sure I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I’ll confess some pleasure at seeing this business over. Your comings and goings had quite captured the imaginations and tongues of the town, totally eclipsing my own reputation for romantic agility, which reputation I have always cherished and promoted.”
As he was expertly clouding my Oxygйnй with a few drops of water, I wondered how news of my contretemps at Etcheverria could have preceded me to Salies, even granting the celerity of rumor for which the village was justly renowned.
“I haven’t the vaguest notion of what you’re talking about, Dr. Gros. But, if you don’t mind, I’d just as soon let the matter rest where it is.”
“Mind? Why should I mind?” Doctor Gros was silent for a moment; then he muttered, “At all events, you still have a week.”
“A week?”
“And prodigious things can be accomplished in a week. God, it is rumored, made everyone in the world in seven days. What an extraordinary sexual feat! True, there was a notably thinner population at the time. Still, if one includes the angels, it was a prodigious feat. You know, I’ve often pondered on the sexual character of the angels, haven’t you? Boys? Girls? Hermaphrodites? Or perhaps they were constructed with no plumbing at all. In which case, their rudimentary functions become something of a miracle. Aha. Anus mirabilis! How’s that? And to think I considered my years of Latin study a waste!”
“What’s all this about a week?”
“Oh, come now, don’t be coy with me. The whole village knows that the Trevilles are moving away one week hence. The young man, the brother, was in town this morning making arrangements. There’s no point in your—” His eyes widened and his voice suddenly lowered. “Oh, my. You didn’t know, did you? I can see it in your face.”
I cleared my throat. “No. In fact, I didn’t know.”
“But, my boy, naturally I assumed… That is, you left town in the company of young Treville this afternoon, so naturally I assumed that he told you of their intention to depart from this tarnished paradise of ours. I am genuinely sorry to be the bearer of sad tidings. Can you forgive me for all that prattle about angels? (Although that bit about anus mirabilis wasn’t half bad.) Here, have another drink at my expense. Punish me economically.”
“Thank you, no. Ah… did young Treville mention where they were going?”
“He did not. And by failing to do so he equipped the village with an infinity of suppositions. Tunis? Martinique? Paris? Pau?—this last destination suggested, as you might suspect, by our banker, a man of uniquely narrow imagination. Is it possible that your young woman withheld this event from you?”
“I’d rather not discuss it further, if you don’t mind.”
“As you wish. It’s up to you, of course. None of my affair.” Doctor Gros sipped his drink and looked across the square with studied indifference. Then suddenly he leaned forward. “You know, it’s possible that she didn’t tell you because she didn’t want to hurt you. It’s even possible that she didn’t know.”
As soon as Gros suggested it, I was convinced this was the case. Katya didn’t know of Paul’s preparations to leave Salies. If she had, she would surely have told me, for of all her qualities none was more characteristic than an open honesty which could amount, at times, to painful frankness. And if she didn’t know, why was Paul keeping it from her? Could it be she would not wish to go? Was she to be taken away against her will?
I excused myself and returned to my room where I sat on the edge of my bed pondering what to do. By the time I fell into a hot, troubled sleep, still fully dressed, I had decided to confront Paul. I would go to Etcheverria and speak to him, however unwelcome I might be. Proper form was of little matter when I was fighting for my happiness and perhaps… I dared to hope… Katya’s as well.
The following morning, I was taking coffee at my usual table beneath the arcades, my brioches lying untouched on the plate as I was still slightly nauseated by a night of wrenching nightmares. I was surprised to look up and see Katya pushing her bicycle across the square towards me. Hatless as usual, wisps of hair dislodged by the wind of her ride, her smile cheerful and radiant, she accepted the chair I pulled out for her.
“Isn’t it a beautiful morning!” she said. “I was awake with the first light and the dew on the meadows sparkled like… well, like diamonds, I suppose. It’s a great pity that certain clichйs are such exact descriptions that they’re difficult to avoid, unless one is willing to sacrifice clarity for originality. Would you order me a cup of coffee?”
Petty though it must seem, I was annoyed that the events that had tortured me all night long seemed not to have touched her at all. I could not help feeling there was something insensitive in her buoyancy, so there was an edge to my voice when I asked, “Does your brother know you’ve come to town?”
“No,” she said simply, as though it were a matter of little concern. “Aren’t you going to eat those brioches?”
“I haven’t much appetite.”
“I’m sorry. May I have them? I’m ravenous.”
“By all means.”
When the waiter had departed, leaving a fresh cup and pots of coffee and hot milk, I pursued, “I’m sure Paul would be furious if he knew you were here.”
She took her first long sip of cafй au lait thirstily, looking into the cup as a child does. “Hmm, that’s good. Yes, I’m sure he would be. But let’s not talk about that. It’s too perfect a morning.”
“No, Katya. I want to talk about it. I’ve passed a dreadful night, and I want to talk about what is happening to me… to us.”
“You know, Jean-Marc, you’re not the only one who has passed a terrible night,” she said with a note of remonstration in her voice.
I could not believe, from the freshness in her face and the clear sparkle of her eye that she had suffered through a white night.
As it turned out, she was not speaking of herself. “When I came down this morning I found Paul asleep on the floor of the salon. He had been drinking and he looked ghastly and somehow pitiful, lying there under the hearth rug he had pulled over himself. I felt quite perfidious, leaving him in that state. But I had to be away from the house. Out into this glorious morning. And too…” She glanced away. “…I wanted to be with you, I suppose.”
It was difficult for me to picture the cool, self-possessed Paul Treville drinking his way through a night of suffering, but the image gave me an odd sense of fellow-feeling with him, not unmixed, I must confess, with a certain satisfaction at his having shared in the pain his high-handedness had caused. But overriding this mixture of sympathy and callous satisfaction was the warming effect of that phrase, “…I wanted to be with you.”
I placed my hand over hers, and she did not withdraw it for a full minute before confessing with a little laugh, “I really don’t know how to drink coffee with my left hand, and I’d feel a fool to spill it.”
I lifted my hand. “Katya, let me be frank with you.”
“That always means you intend to say something unpleasant.”
“No, not at all. Well… perhaps. I don’t understand how you can be in such good spirits while I—and Paul, evidently—am suffering so.”
“It’s something one learns, Jean-Marc. One must learn to empty one’s mind and seek… not joy, exactly… peace, perhaps. How else could one go on?”
“But, for God’s sake, what in your life—in your family-brings you such pain that you have to build barricades against it?”
She sat still for a moment, her eyes lowered as though she were thinking something out. Then she shook her head. “No. It’s not a thing I can talk about. Not even with you.”
“But you can talk about it with me, Katya. You know that I—”
“Hush!” Then, more softly. “Hush, please.”
“Well, you will at least let me say that I am fond of you, won’t you?”
“Yes,” she said, smiling at me with a wistful sadness. “I know you are. And I take pleasure in it.”
“But you are not willing to share this—whatever it is—with me?”
“I’ll share other things with you. When I’m happy, or when I think of a particularly good pun… I’ll share those things with you. That will have to be enough.”
“It’s not enough at all. Good Lord, Katya, we share our happiness with anybody… with total strangers. It’s sharing the sadnesses and pain that matters. Surely you know that.”
“Yes, I know that. It’s one of those truisms that has the misfortune of being true.”
“Well then?”
Her eyes searched mine for a moment. Then she smiled. “You know, Jean-Marc, your eyes are so dark they’re almost black. It must take a tremendous amount of light to fill them.”
I turned away from her, displeased at having the subject changed in that obvious way.
“Please don’t pout, Jean-Marc.”
“I am not pouting.” Unfortunately, there is no way to say that without sounding petulant.
“Listen to me, dear.” This word of affection touched me even through my frustration and despair, particularly as she used the intimate tu form for the first time. “I am sure I shall be able to patch things up with Paul. He is quick to anger, but quick to forgive.”
“That’s because he feels nothing deeply.”
“That is untrue. And it’s unfair. I’ll talk to Paul, and I’m sure he’ll reconsider and allow you to visit Etcheverria. Then we can take our little walks in the garden. And we can chat. And I’ll permit you to applaud my puns. And from time to time I’ll ride my bicycle into Salies and eat up all your brioches. Everything will be all right. You’ll see.”
I shook my head, disconsolate.
“But you must promise to join Paul and me in our little subterfuge. Father must not have the slightest hint that you and I are fond of each other. It won’t be all that difficult. As you know, Papa’s interest in the world around him is rather slight. So smile for me, won’t you? We shall have lots of things to share.”
“But we only have a week!”
She frowned, bewildered. “Only a week? Why? Are you going somewhere?”
“It’s you who are going, Katya! Your family is leaving Etcheverria. Your brother was in town yesterday making the arrangements.”
“Oh,” she said softly. Her fingers found a wisp of hair at her temple and twisted it absently. “Oh, I see.” Her voice was vacant and distant.
“I was sure Paul hadn’t told you.”
“What?” she asked, tugging herself from her thoughts. “Oh, no. No, he didn’t tell me.”
We sat in silence for a time before I asked, “You don’t want to go away, do you?”
“No, of course not. But that’s not the point. If Paul was making arrangements, then we must go.”
“Why, in the name of God?”
“It has happened before. When we had to leave Paris to come here.”
“What happened in Paris?”
She frowned and shook her head curtly.
“What is your family running from?”
She looked at me, then smiled faintly. “Oh, like most families, we have skeletons in our closet. I make no bones about that. Oh, come now, that wasn’t such a bad pun. If it didn’t merit a laugh, it was at least worth a smile. Or, at very least, a groan.”
“I don’t feel like smiling.”
“Don’t take things so seriously, Jean-Marc.” She rose. “Now I must return home. I’m sure Paul will need help with all the details of moving. But you must come take tea with us this afternoon. Please. If we have only a week together, it would be stupid of us not to use it well.”
I sighed and nodded. “Yes, you’re right. I’d be pleased to take tea with you.”
“Good. Until soon?”
“Yes. Until soon.”
She wheeled her bicycle across the square, pausing to bestow a warm smile and a nod of greeting to a brace of ladies who had obviously been gossiping about us and who were flustered at the familiarity of this hatless girl who was clearly no better than she ought to be, with her public morning assignations, the seeming openness of which did not fool them in the least.
At tea, Monsieur Treville was in a cheerful and loquacious mood, which was the salvation of the small talk, as my thoughts were elsewhere, Paul was so icy and withdrawn that he forsook even his habitual baiting of his father’s mental obliquity, and Katya was content to sit back and smile on the three men in turn, rather maternally and distantly, it seemed to me.
“So this is what my children do every afternoon while I toil in the service of Clio, is it? Sit about and drink tea. Prodigal. Well, I suppose it’s harmless enough. But you mustn’t let my ne’er-do-well offspring seduce you away from your studies of the plague, Dr. Marque.” He chuckled at the very idea of any devotee of medieval studies being vulnerable to such temptation.
“Dr. Montjean, Papa,” Katya corrected.
“Montjean? But I am quite sure you referred to him as Dr. Marque last night during supper. I remember quite clearly. Dr. Jean Marque, you said.”
Paul sighed. “It was the night before last, Father. And the doctor was referred to by his first name, Jean-Marc. Jean-Marc Montjean. It’s a hard name to forget… try though one may.”
Monsieur Treville frowned and shook his head in doubt. The possibility that Katya might have used my given name on such short acquaintance did not occur to him. “My children think me a muddy-minded dotterer, Doctor, because I seldom bother to pay attention to their chatter. But my memory is sound as the gold franc—not that the franc’s all that sound just now! Eh?”
“May I ask,” Paul said, “why we are dwelling at such length on the good doctor’s name? Surely we are not that impoverished of conversation.”
Monsieur Treville waved his hand at him. “Ah, but names can be confounding. And important too. We deal with things, not as they are, but as we apprehend them to be. Therefore, to a rather frightening degree, things are what we call them. Take my daughter here, Doctor. Baptized and presented to God under the perfectly satisfactory nomen, Hortense—my own mother’s name. Then one day I looked up from my work and there was a Katya living with me. Just like that, overnight, my Hortense disappeared and was replaced by a Katya.” He reached over and took his daughter’s hand. “But I’ve got used to this changeling who replaced my Hortense. She’s a good enough girl in her own way. Image of her mother, Doctor—well, both of them are, in fact. They had the good fortune to get their features from their mother. A woman of exceptional beauty.” Monsieur Treville’s voice softened and grew distant. “…An exceptional woman… exceptional woman…”
Katya spoke in a bantering tone designed to tug him back from melancholy. “I wish we’d got our brains from you, Papa.”
“What? Oh, you’re both intelligent enough. A little lazy-minded, perhaps. Victims of acedia, perhaps. But perfectly intelligent. Yes, yes, mistakes like this one of the doctor’s name are common enough, even in academics. One scholar makes a mistake—a wrong spelling, perhaps, or something even more egregious—then other scholars copy it, then the next fellow sees it three or four times in different sources, and the error takes on the weight of fact. That’s why one must do his own primary research, as I am sure you have found in your own studies of the Black Death, Doctor.” The bit in his mouth, Monsieur Treville leaned forward and spoke to me confidentially, as an academic ally. “I recall a case involving a noted scholar—member of the Academy, no less, so I’ll withhold his name to avoid scandal. He quoted the population of the village of Alos in 1250 as ‘three thousand souls.’ Three thousand! As everyone knows, Alos had no more than three hundred at the time. But there it was—print upon a page and therefore truth irrefutable! Three thousand! How many future studies will be ruined by that careless extra zero? For instance, if some scholar were to note that a hundred eighty-five residents of Alos were killed by your Great Plague, he would assume that the village had got off lightly. When in fact more than half of the population perished!”
“You really must write an article on the evils of the stray zero, Papa,” Paul said.
“Oh, I have. Not precisely by that title; but I have. And it was well received, if I do say so myself.”
I smiled. “It is difficult for me, sir, to imagine anyone devoting study to Alos.”
“Do you know the village?”
“I know it well. It is one of the three villages that constitute the commune in which I was born.”
“How fascinating,” Paul said without energy.
“Indeed it is,” Monsieur Treville said. “Alos is one of the few places where the pageant of Robert le Diable is still performed.”
“That’s correct, sir. It’s performed each year during the fкte. Just about this time of year, come to think of it.”
“No, really?” Paul said. “Just about this time of year? The famous fкte d’Alos? My, my, my.”
“I’d give a great deal to witness it,” Monsieur Treville said. “Last vestige of that particularly Basque integration of pagan rite with Christian intrusions. I’ve often thought that—hello! What in the world is this?” He indicated an object on the tea tray that had just caught his eye.
“Oh, that’s mine,” Katya said. “A gift from Doctor Montjean. I must have set it on the tray absent-mindedly.”
“But… it looks like an ordinary pebble!”
Katya glanced at me. “Well, one might say that, Papa. But it could also be thought of as a bit of the universe.”
As Monsieur Treville examined the poor pebble closely, I studiously avoided Paul’s eyes, where I knew I would find sarcastic amusement.
“Yes, I suppose it could be thought of that way,” Monsieur Treville mused, returning the pebble to Katya, who slipped it into her reticule unobtrusively. “I had no idea you were also interested in geology, Doctor. Odd mixture of pursuits: geology and medieval plagues. Beware the attraction of the pure sciences. They are pure only in the way an ancient nun is—bloodless, without passion. No, no. Stick to the humanistic studies where, though the truth is more difficult to establish and the proofs are more fragile, yet there is the breath of living man in them.”
“Dr. Marque,” Paul said. “Oh, excuse me. I meant to say, Dr. Montjean. Damn that stray zero! Doctor, don’t you think it’s time you checked my bandages, or whatever it is you do to earn your fee? That is what you came for, isn’t it?”
“Ah… certainly. You will excuse us?”
When I rose, Monsieur Treville rose too, saying that he really must get back to his work. Tea was good enough in its own way, and the conversation had been delightful and informative, but work was work. “You don’t mind being left alone, darling?” he asked Katya.
“Not at all. I’ll just go down to my library and read a little.”
“Library?” Monsieur Treville blinked. “What library?”
“I call the summerhouse at the bottom of the garden my library.”
Monsieur Treville shook his head and let his arms flap against his sides. “There you are, Doctor. A perfect example of the source of error in scholarship. Ten thousand years from now some scholar will read her diaries and make the erroneous conclusion that the ancient word for ‘summerhouse’ was ‘library.’ Then he’ll learn that scholars of our era passed most of their time in their libraries, and he’ll deduce that back in the early part of the twentieth century the climate in Europe was semitropical!” He returned to the house muttering, “Thus error breeds error, which breeds error, which breeds…”
Katya looked after him, smiling. “Isn’t he a darling? Don’t you envy him, living as he does on the gentle rim of reality?”
“I like him very much,” I said. “I can’t understand why the two of you think it necessary to pretend that Katya and I are nearly strangers. It isn’t as though your father were some sort of monster.”
Katya glanced at me with a frown.
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
Paul rose languidly. “I do hope you never consider surgery, Doctor. There’s something lethal in the mindless way you wield a scalpel. Shall we see to these bandages?”
“I doubt your bandages need attention.”
“Nevertheless…” With a gesture he conducted me back into the salon, and I followed him after touching Katya’s shoulder lightly in au revoir. She did not respond.
As I explored the slightly puffy area around Paul’s clavicle with my fingertips I was surprised that he did not wince with pain. “You seem to be a good healer,” I said.
“I’ve always been that. I’ve had ribs broken and still been able to fight within a week.”
“Fight?”
“Yes, fight. Did I fail to mention that I was once amateur kick-boxing champion of Paris?”
“No, you mentioned it. And I was appropriately impressed.”
“I excelled at the sport, not so much because of my physical attributes as because of my absolute will to win and my capacity for pressing home the attack while others were bungling about with considerations of sportsmanship and fair play.”
“Which considerations never hampered you?”
“Not in the least,” he said with slight emphasis.
“I suppose I’m expected to receive that information on its parabolic level?”
“That would be wise.”
“I see. Well, for all your remarkable recuperative abilities, you’ll have to favor this arm for another week or so.”
Paul slipped back into his shirt without help, managing to rebutton it with some awkwardness.
“Of course, I didn’t ask you here merely to have the benefit of your professional negligence.”
“I assumed as much.”
He stood before me for a moment as though uncertain how to start; then he turned away to a small table from which he took up a handsomely engraved pistol from the barrel of which protruded a metal cleaning rod. Rather clumsily, he held the pistol in his captured right hand and worked the rod in and out slowly, as though his mind were elsewhere.
After a full minute of heavy silence I said, “Well?”
“You know, back in Paris target shooting was a passion of mine. I only gave it up because I had collected all the medals and awards available at my shooting club.”
“I am delighted on your behalf that you found a useful avocation.”
Paul set the pistol down carefully and turned to me, his eyelids heavy with contempt. Once again, I was caught off guard by the astonishing way in which his features, individually considered so like Katya’s, could produce so totally different an effect. Although his cheeks were grey his eyes sunken from his night of drinking, and his mouth was pressed thin and flat, their faces were like the same melody played on different instruments—indeed, in different keys. What in her was a lively and interested intelligence was, in him, bitter wit. What in her was dreamy distance was, in him, cold withdrawal. Yet, although his were the darker tones and hers the more pastel, it was she, not he, who seemed transposed into a minor key; it was her melody that had been taken up by the melancholy split reeds.
He smiled wanly. “I suppose my attitude towards you is revealed by my finding reason to inform you that I am both an expert kick-boxer and an excellent shot.”
“The implications had not escaped me.”
“Good. Let me tell you at the outset that I am furious with you, Montjean. You have acted selfishly, and irresponsibly, and perfidiously.”
“Perfidiously? I resent—”
He held up his hand in an annoyed way, waving away my defense. “Yes, perfidiously. Damn it, man! Although I feared you would bring nothing but pain and trouble, I allowed you to visit here, to be with Katya, to enjoy her company. Then I left you alone for a few minutes yesterday and I returned to find you clutching at her!”
“I would not term it ‘clutching at her.’ “
“I don’t give a damn how you would term it! The fact is, against my better judgment I permitted you to visit the house in the hope that you would be satisfied to be in her company within our family setting—properly. And the next thing I know she’s sneaking off to Salies, and you’re having a tawdry little rendezvous at some cheap cafй.”
“Just a moment! I can assure you that—”
“I’m not interested in your assurances! I’m telling you that—”
“You needn’t tell me anything, Treville! It is wrong of you—and cheap—to characterize our having a cup of coffee together as sneaking off for a tawdry little rendezvous. I won’t have it!”
He glared at me. Then he lowered his eyes and drew a long breath. “Yes. Yes, of course. That was stupid phrasing on my part.”
“Indeed it was.” Although I was surprised to hear Paul Treville apologize for anything, I did not intend to let it go at that. “Furthermore, for what it’s worth, I had no idea that Katya intended to come to Salies this morning. It was not a rendezvous. But in all candor I can tell you that if I had known she was coming, I would have been delighted.”
“Very well, let’s pass that point. I am sure you’re right. Katya is an independent and willful woman, and it would be just like her to go to town to see you, even though I had specifically told her not to. But what is even more contemptible than meeting with her in secret away from her home was your meddling in our affairs, scratching around the village for information concerning my activities, then—worst of all—blurting out to Katya my intention to leave this Godforsaken bled, without the slightest concern for the effect such news might have on her! She returned quite shaken, you know.”
“She has a right to know your intentions. Good Lord, it’s her life you’re playing with, not only your own, with all this running from place to place each time the whim takes you!”
“I am not playing with her life. I am not playing at all. I am in deadly earnest. It’s you who are playing, Montjean. Playing the role of the daring lover—the bungling Quixote who doesn’t give a damn who is hurt, so long as his desires are gratified, so long as he can run about scaling walls and rescuing maidens—maidens who do not require and do not desire rescuing!”
“That is still to be seen!”
His eyebrows flashed up. “Oh? Is it really? Has she ever given you the slightest indication that she did not want to stay with her family? That she was unwilling to accept my opinion of what was best for us?”
“Well… not in those words.” Indeed, she had seemed committed to doing whatever Paul thought best. “But I am not sure she knows her own mind in this,” I added weakly.
“But you do? You know her mind? You know what’s best for her? Jesus, man! What gives you the right to interfere in this way?”
“I love her,” I said simply.
Paul did not sneer, as I thought he would. His reaction was yet more devastating. He sighed deeply, closed his eyes, and shook his head with fatigue. “You love her. You love her. God protect us from the well-intentioned!” He slumped into a chair across from me and spoke almost to himself. “Because you love her, you assume you have a right to blunder into our lives, causing hurt and harm you cannot even imagine. Because you love her, you are prepared to expose her to pain and shame. You love her! Christ, man, do you imagine I do not love her? Do you think her father doesn’t love her in his vague way?”
“I’m sure you do.”
“Well then?”
“But I am not sure you are considering the effect it has on a young woman, this packing her up and running off whenever the impulse is upon you. What is it you’re running from?”
“That’s not your affair.”
“My feelings for Katya make it my affair.”
His eyebrows lifted. “Your feelings—? Tell me, Montjean, how old do you think Katya is?”
“How old?” The non sequitur question seemed to me to be totally irrelevant.
“Yes. How old.”
“I don’t see that it matters.”
“There’s much you don’t see. I’ll tell you then: Katya is twenty-six.” He smiled faintly. “I’m in a particularly good position to know her age, as I am only fifteen minutes her junior. I am quite sure you took her to be much younger—nineteen or twenty. Everyone does. We inherited from our mother, if I may say it without appearing vain, both our physical beauty and a tendency to remain young-looking.”
“All right, I confess that I thought her to be younger than twenty-six. But I still don’t see—”
“The point is this: At twenty-six, do you suppose that Katya has not attracted the attentions of other young men than you? Can you imagine that you are the first person to be touched by her charm, her spirit, her freshness?”
“Could it be you are jealous of these men?”
His expression hardened. “My dear fellow, if you cannot avoid being stupid, do at least try to conceal it!” He looked away and collected his thoughts. “The point I was attempting to make is that these young men considered themselves to be in love too. They would rather have died than hurt Katya. And yet, they became the agents for great pain and suffering on her part. But of course, you assume you are unique. There is nothing more commonplace than the assumption that one is unique. But believe me when I tell you that you have already caused great pain, and you are in a position to cause even more.”
“I assure you that—”
“You are forever assuring me of something, Montjean! I have no interest in your assurances. I realize that your intentions are of the best. You lack the imagination required to be genuinely evil. Still, you are not going to tell me that your romantic daydreams have not included anticipations of physical delight, are you? Surely you have pictured Katya alone with you and willing, probably in some romantic setting, perhaps in your rooms?”
“That’s an outrage!” I said, recalling with mortification just such imaginings while awaiting Katya in Salies that first rainy afternoon when she came to collect her bicycle.
“It’s not an outrage at all. You’re a healthy young animal. And certainly you weren’t clutching at her yesterday in the garden in order to achieve a more intellectual level of conversation.”
“It is perfectly natural for love between a man and a woman to have its physical manifestations.”
“I am not denying that. I am only pointing out that somewhere in all your noble impulses to save Katya from the machinations of her evil brother, there is an element of desire and self-gratification that may be clouding your ability to judge what is best for her.”
My jaw tightened and I refused to respond.
“And—damn it, man!—the tragicomedy of all this is that you don’t know—could have no way to know—that it isn’t only a matter of your inflicting pain on Katya. You are yourself in considerable danger!”
“Danger of what kind?”
He drew a deep breath and turned away, and I had the impression that he had said more than he intended to.
“Danger from you and your pistol?” I pursued.
He shrugged. “That is a possibility, I suppose. But let us seek a more civilized means of moderating your nuisance. Are you willing to hear my proposals?”
“By all means. But I don’t consider myself in any way bound to accept them.”
“Pity. Well, naturally I considered forbidding you to come again to this house, and forbidding Katya to go into town to see you. But I don’t fancy the image of myself standing guard at the bottom of the lane, my pistol at the half-cock. And furthermore, it might not be effective. Katya is an independent spirit, both imaginative and resourceful. Worse yet, I shouldn’t be surprised if she imagined herself to be in love with you. Oh, do try to keep that insipid smile off your face, Montjean. After all, she fancied herself in love with those other fellows, too. So here is what I suggest. Let us return—and this time with fidelity—to our original arrangement. For the next week, you may visit us—every afternoon, if you must. For my part, I shall do my best to convince Father that your visits have to do with our newfound friendship, and you will cooperate in that deception. Most important, you will not seek to be alone with Katya. I shall have the delicacy to remain out of earshot as much as possible, so you two may exchange thoughts, memories, and cooings—even witticisms, if you’re up to it. But you must promise not to sneak off by yourselves as you did yesterday, and, above all, you must promise to keep your hands off her.”
“Oh, thank you, sir. I was afraid you had forgotten.” She put it into a little drawstring purse along with the others and dropped it into her reticule. “Did it ever occur to you that you are giving me the world… bit by bit?”
“I hope you don’t feel compromised by the enormous value of the gift.”
“Oh, it isn’t the value of the gift that compromises. It’s the intent behind it. Are your intentions of a compromising nature?”
“Very nearly.”
She laughed. “I must warn you that my integrity is so firm that mere pebbles cannot rock it.”
“That, my dear young lady, was a horrible, horrible pun.” I spoke with an avuncular sternness that allowed me to get away with calling her “dear.”
She frowned and pulled a sour face. “I fear that you lack a proper appreciation for the fine art of punning. It indicates a distasteful seriousness of mind. What are words made for, if not to play with?”
I placed my hand lightly over hers. “It is rumored that some people use them to express feelings of affection.”
Her eyes searched mine with troubled uncertainty. “Ah well… you can’t put much faith in rumors.” Then she slipped her hand from beneath mine and turned aside to look out over the garden, her gaze distant, her attention adrift. The sunlight dappling through the lattice warmed the cupric tones of her hair and reflected from the bodice of her white dress to radiate her face in a diffuse glow. I stood close beside her. The delicate silken down on her cheek… the sweet smell of her hair… the line of her throat… the curve of her breast…
She sighed as though returning reluctantly from some pleasant vision and turned to me. “You know, it was cruel and thoughtless of you to tell my brother and father about the spirit in this garden. Why did you do that?”
The question took me off balance. “I… for no reason at all. Just… you know… small talk. Conversation. Surely you know I would never intentionally do anything to pain you, Katya.”
She looked at me levelly for a moment, measuring, evaluating. Then a faint smile touched the corners of her eyes. “No, of course you wouldn’t. But just the same I do wish you hadn’t mentioned her.”
“I didn’t know she was a secret.”
“Not a secret, exactly. Just something of my own that I wasn’t prepared to share with anyone.”
“But you shared her with me.”
She considered that for a second, as though realizing it for the first time. “That’s true, I did, didn’t I?” She shrugged. “Ah well, there’s no point dwelling on it. The harm’s done.”
“What harm?”
“You saw how Paul reacted to the mention of the spirit, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did. He seemed quite shaken.”
She nodded. “I knew he would be.”
“But why? Surely someone so cynical as your brother doesn’t believe in spirits. Why should he be shaken by the mention of one?”
She frowned and shook her head. “I really don’t know, Jean-Marc. But I knew instinctively that he would be.”
I sighed and broke off a twig from an overhanging bush and began to strip the leaves from it. “Katya? Is it a real spirit?”
“Real spirit? Isn’t that a contradiction of terms?”
“You know perfectly well what I mean. You and Paul delight in making up tales and playing on other peoples credulity. That’s why I ask if this spirit of yours is real.”
“Oh, she’s real enough.”
“Have you actually seen it?”
“Yes. Well… not quite. I’ve almost seen her out of the tail of my eye… a blur of white that vanishes when I focus on it, the way very dim stars do. But I am quite sure she’s here. I can sense her presence in a most palpable way. And it’s not the least a frightening or uncomfortable experience. She’s a gentle spirit… and so terribly sad. So terribly sad.”
“Sad? Why sad?”
“I don’t know. I suppose it was having it all come to an end when she was still so young.”
“Oh? How young is she?”
“Just fifteen and a half.”
I smiled. “Are you sure she’s not fifteen years, five months, and eleven days old? After all, you do have this particular gift for precise measurements.”
She looked at me with operatic seriousness. “Surely you know that it’s very difficult to judge age down to the number of days.”
I chuckled and let the game go, tossing away my stripped twig. “You know, Katya, I understand Paul’s discomfort with the idea of ghosts… spirits. Daydreamer and incurable romantic though you accuse me of being, my grip on reality is mundanely logical. I feel lost and a little uneasy when I consider forces and events that ignore such relationships as cause and effect, deduction and reason. Do you understand what I mean?”
“Are you saying that you don’t believe in the supernatural?”
“I choose not to. I don’t want to. The irrational frightens me. I would feel more at ease in the presence of a brutal and cruel man than I would in the presence of an insane one.”
She frowned. “Paul’s not insane.”
“Oh, no, you misunderstand me. I wasn’t suggesting he is. I was only saying that I share his discomfort with the idea of the supernatural. I’m suggesting that he’s rigidly sane, like me. Inflexibly rational.”
“And you think that’s best?”
“Well… it’s safe.”
She considered this for a moment. “Yes, it’s safe… but limiting.”
We were silent for a time, as I sought a way to phrase the question that had been lurking in my mind all that day. “Katya? It is obvious that there’s something wrong. Something troubling you and your family.”
She responded with surprising frankness. “Yes, of course there is. I would have been surprised if someone as sensitive as you had failed to feel it.”
“Is it something I can help with? Would it be useful to talk about it?”
“Useful? That’s an odd way to express it. But, yes, it might be… useful.” She seemed to struggle with herself, on the verge of sharing something with me, but not quite daring to.
To make it easier for her I said, “You know that you have a sympathetic and… caring… friend in me. Surely you can sense what I feel for you, Katya.”
She shook her head and turned away, as though to arrest my words.
But I pursued the inertia of the moment, fearing it might not come again. “I haven’t dared to give a name to the feelings I have for you… feelings that stir in me at even the most fleeting thought of you—”
“Please, Jean-Marc…”
“—But if I were to give them a name, I know it would be what they call… love.”
“Please…” She rose from the wicker chair as though to flee, but I caught her hand and drew her to me and held her in my arms.
“Katya…”
“No.” She sought to pull away.
“Katya.” A slight shudder passed through her body, then she stiffened and settled her eyes calmly, but distantly, on mine. She did not struggle to escape, but her passive resistance, her immobile indifference, had the effect of chilling my ardor and making me feel quite stupid and boorish to be holding her, not exactly against her will, but against her lack of will. I wanted both to release her and to kiss her, and I didn’t know which to do.
I was young. I kissed her.
Her lips were soft and warm, but totally unresponsive, and when I opened my eyes after the long kiss, she was staring past me… through me.
I dropped my arms to my sides, but she did not move, so it was I who had to step back, disconcerted, miserable.
“I’m sorry, Katya. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s all right.”
“No. It is not all right. It’s just that… I love you so.”
“It’s all right, Jean-Marc.”
But I shook my head and turned away—
—to find myself looking into the eyes of Paul.
He had evidently come down the path silently and had been witness to my embarrassment.
“Part of your bedside manner, Doctor?” His unmodulated voice was chill.
Humiliated, angry, frustrated, I stammered, “I don’t know why I did that. It was stupid of me. I’ll leave immediately, of course.”
“No, Jean-Paul. Don’t leave,” Katya said, a mixture of compassion and anxiety in her voice.
“No, Katya,” Paul said. “Let the good doctor leave. It’s the noblest impulse he’s had in years.”
“Treville,” I said, focusing my anger on him. “If it weren’t for Katya, I should be delighted to bash that insipid smile from your face!”
“I’m sure you would at least try,” he said in an arch, bored voice.
My jaw tight, the veins throbbing in my temples, my fist knotted, I stood before him, detesting with all my soul the calm indifference in his eyes, but at the same time recognizing it as akin to Katya’s vacant expression when I had kissed her. I drew several long breaths in an effort to rein in my passion, then I closed my eyes and let my fist relax. Turning to Katya, who was watching us with apprehension, I spoke with all the control I could bring to bear. “I regret any distress I have caused you, Katya. The simple… if undesirable… fact is that I love you. And I shall never regret that love, no matter how much I regret my unfortunate way of expressing it.” Even as I spoke, I could have killed myself for the artificial, precious wording derived from my practice of rehearsing “clever” expressions in my daydream life. I was sure I was ruining any chance I might have had to win Katya’s affection, but youthful dignity punctured is a terrible thing, capable of thrashing about in an agony of ego and harming that which it most loves.
With a formal—and I am sure buffoonish—bow, I strode up the path, my spine stiff, my mind a chaos of anger and despair.
As I had been brought to Etcheverria in Paul’s surry, I had to walk all the way back to Salies, my misery contrasting bitterly with the beauty of the evening, my pace and anger ebbing with each step until, by the time I reached the village square, my anger was gone, and my emotions were drained and numb.
* * *
The last thing in the world I felt prepared to face was a conversation with Doctor Gros, but when he hailed me from his customary table under the yellow electric light of arcades I could think of no way to avoid joining him without advertising my misery and making myself a target of his jests.
“Come, sit here, Montjean,” he commanded at full voice, slapping the seat of the chair beside him. “Take a little glass with me by way of consolation.”
“Consolation?”
“Well, perhaps relief, then. It depends on how your little affair with La Treville was getting on, I suppose. At all events, you have staked fair claim on the local record for brevity in romantic episodes—save, perhaps, for a little matter last summer involving our village priest.”
“I’m sure I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I’ll confess some pleasure at seeing this business over. Your comings and goings had quite captured the imaginations and tongues of the town, totally eclipsing my own reputation for romantic agility, which reputation I have always cherished and promoted.”
As he was expertly clouding my Oxygйnй with a few drops of water, I wondered how news of my contretemps at Etcheverria could have preceded me to Salies, even granting the celerity of rumor for which the village was justly renowned.
“I haven’t the vaguest notion of what you’re talking about, Dr. Gros. But, if you don’t mind, I’d just as soon let the matter rest where it is.”
“Mind? Why should I mind?” Doctor Gros was silent for a moment; then he muttered, “At all events, you still have a week.”
“A week?”
“And prodigious things can be accomplished in a week. God, it is rumored, made everyone in the world in seven days. What an extraordinary sexual feat! True, there was a notably thinner population at the time. Still, if one includes the angels, it was a prodigious feat. You know, I’ve often pondered on the sexual character of the angels, haven’t you? Boys? Girls? Hermaphrodites? Or perhaps they were constructed with no plumbing at all. In which case, their rudimentary functions become something of a miracle. Aha. Anus mirabilis! How’s that? And to think I considered my years of Latin study a waste!”
“What’s all this about a week?”
“Oh, come now, don’t be coy with me. The whole village knows that the Trevilles are moving away one week hence. The young man, the brother, was in town this morning making arrangements. There’s no point in your—” His eyes widened and his voice suddenly lowered. “Oh, my. You didn’t know, did you? I can see it in your face.”
I cleared my throat. “No. In fact, I didn’t know.”
“But, my boy, naturally I assumed… That is, you left town in the company of young Treville this afternoon, so naturally I assumed that he told you of their intention to depart from this tarnished paradise of ours. I am genuinely sorry to be the bearer of sad tidings. Can you forgive me for all that prattle about angels? (Although that bit about anus mirabilis wasn’t half bad.) Here, have another drink at my expense. Punish me economically.”
“Thank you, no. Ah… did young Treville mention where they were going?”
“He did not. And by failing to do so he equipped the village with an infinity of suppositions. Tunis? Martinique? Paris? Pau?—this last destination suggested, as you might suspect, by our banker, a man of uniquely narrow imagination. Is it possible that your young woman withheld this event from you?”
“I’d rather not discuss it further, if you don’t mind.”
“As you wish. It’s up to you, of course. None of my affair.” Doctor Gros sipped his drink and looked across the square with studied indifference. Then suddenly he leaned forward. “You know, it’s possible that she didn’t tell you because she didn’t want to hurt you. It’s even possible that she didn’t know.”
As soon as Gros suggested it, I was convinced this was the case. Katya didn’t know of Paul’s preparations to leave Salies. If she had, she would surely have told me, for of all her qualities none was more characteristic than an open honesty which could amount, at times, to painful frankness. And if she didn’t know, why was Paul keeping it from her? Could it be she would not wish to go? Was she to be taken away against her will?
I excused myself and returned to my room where I sat on the edge of my bed pondering what to do. By the time I fell into a hot, troubled sleep, still fully dressed, I had decided to confront Paul. I would go to Etcheverria and speak to him, however unwelcome I might be. Proper form was of little matter when I was fighting for my happiness and perhaps… I dared to hope… Katya’s as well.
* * *
The following morning, I was taking coffee at my usual table beneath the arcades, my brioches lying untouched on the plate as I was still slightly nauseated by a night of wrenching nightmares. I was surprised to look up and see Katya pushing her bicycle across the square towards me. Hatless as usual, wisps of hair dislodged by the wind of her ride, her smile cheerful and radiant, she accepted the chair I pulled out for her.
“Isn’t it a beautiful morning!” she said. “I was awake with the first light and the dew on the meadows sparkled like… well, like diamonds, I suppose. It’s a great pity that certain clichйs are such exact descriptions that they’re difficult to avoid, unless one is willing to sacrifice clarity for originality. Would you order me a cup of coffee?”
Petty though it must seem, I was annoyed that the events that had tortured me all night long seemed not to have touched her at all. I could not help feeling there was something insensitive in her buoyancy, so there was an edge to my voice when I asked, “Does your brother know you’ve come to town?”
“No,” she said simply, as though it were a matter of little concern. “Aren’t you going to eat those brioches?”
“I haven’t much appetite.”
“I’m sorry. May I have them? I’m ravenous.”
“By all means.”
When the waiter had departed, leaving a fresh cup and pots of coffee and hot milk, I pursued, “I’m sure Paul would be furious if he knew you were here.”
She took her first long sip of cafй au lait thirstily, looking into the cup as a child does. “Hmm, that’s good. Yes, I’m sure he would be. But let’s not talk about that. It’s too perfect a morning.”
“No, Katya. I want to talk about it. I’ve passed a dreadful night, and I want to talk about what is happening to me… to us.”
“You know, Jean-Marc, you’re not the only one who has passed a terrible night,” she said with a note of remonstration in her voice.
I could not believe, from the freshness in her face and the clear sparkle of her eye that she had suffered through a white night.
As it turned out, she was not speaking of herself. “When I came down this morning I found Paul asleep on the floor of the salon. He had been drinking and he looked ghastly and somehow pitiful, lying there under the hearth rug he had pulled over himself. I felt quite perfidious, leaving him in that state. But I had to be away from the house. Out into this glorious morning. And too…” She glanced away. “…I wanted to be with you, I suppose.”
It was difficult for me to picture the cool, self-possessed Paul Treville drinking his way through a night of suffering, but the image gave me an odd sense of fellow-feeling with him, not unmixed, I must confess, with a certain satisfaction at his having shared in the pain his high-handedness had caused. But overriding this mixture of sympathy and callous satisfaction was the warming effect of that phrase, “…I wanted to be with you.”
I placed my hand over hers, and she did not withdraw it for a full minute before confessing with a little laugh, “I really don’t know how to drink coffee with my left hand, and I’d feel a fool to spill it.”
I lifted my hand. “Katya, let me be frank with you.”
“That always means you intend to say something unpleasant.”
“No, not at all. Well… perhaps. I don’t understand how you can be in such good spirits while I—and Paul, evidently—am suffering so.”
“It’s something one learns, Jean-Marc. One must learn to empty one’s mind and seek… not joy, exactly… peace, perhaps. How else could one go on?”
“But, for God’s sake, what in your life—in your family-brings you such pain that you have to build barricades against it?”
She sat still for a moment, her eyes lowered as though she were thinking something out. Then she shook her head. “No. It’s not a thing I can talk about. Not even with you.”
“But you can talk about it with me, Katya. You know that I—”
“Hush!” Then, more softly. “Hush, please.”
“Well, you will at least let me say that I am fond of you, won’t you?”
“Yes,” she said, smiling at me with a wistful sadness. “I know you are. And I take pleasure in it.”
“But you are not willing to share this—whatever it is—with me?”
“I’ll share other things with you. When I’m happy, or when I think of a particularly good pun… I’ll share those things with you. That will have to be enough.”
“It’s not enough at all. Good Lord, Katya, we share our happiness with anybody… with total strangers. It’s sharing the sadnesses and pain that matters. Surely you know that.”
“Yes, I know that. It’s one of those truisms that has the misfortune of being true.”
“Well then?”
Her eyes searched mine for a moment. Then she smiled. “You know, Jean-Marc, your eyes are so dark they’re almost black. It must take a tremendous amount of light to fill them.”
I turned away from her, displeased at having the subject changed in that obvious way.
“Please don’t pout, Jean-Marc.”
“I am not pouting.” Unfortunately, there is no way to say that without sounding petulant.
“Listen to me, dear.” This word of affection touched me even through my frustration and despair, particularly as she used the intimate tu form for the first time. “I am sure I shall be able to patch things up with Paul. He is quick to anger, but quick to forgive.”
“That’s because he feels nothing deeply.”
“That is untrue. And it’s unfair. I’ll talk to Paul, and I’m sure he’ll reconsider and allow you to visit Etcheverria. Then we can take our little walks in the garden. And we can chat. And I’ll permit you to applaud my puns. And from time to time I’ll ride my bicycle into Salies and eat up all your brioches. Everything will be all right. You’ll see.”
I shook my head, disconsolate.
“But you must promise to join Paul and me in our little subterfuge. Father must not have the slightest hint that you and I are fond of each other. It won’t be all that difficult. As you know, Papa’s interest in the world around him is rather slight. So smile for me, won’t you? We shall have lots of things to share.”
“But we only have a week!”
She frowned, bewildered. “Only a week? Why? Are you going somewhere?”
“It’s you who are going, Katya! Your family is leaving Etcheverria. Your brother was in town yesterday making the arrangements.”
“Oh,” she said softly. Her fingers found a wisp of hair at her temple and twisted it absently. “Oh, I see.” Her voice was vacant and distant.
“I was sure Paul hadn’t told you.”
“What?” she asked, tugging herself from her thoughts. “Oh, no. No, he didn’t tell me.”
We sat in silence for a time before I asked, “You don’t want to go away, do you?”
“No, of course not. But that’s not the point. If Paul was making arrangements, then we must go.”
“Why, in the name of God?”
“It has happened before. When we had to leave Paris to come here.”
“What happened in Paris?”
She frowned and shook her head curtly.
“What is your family running from?”
She looked at me, then smiled faintly. “Oh, like most families, we have skeletons in our closet. I make no bones about that. Oh, come now, that wasn’t such a bad pun. If it didn’t merit a laugh, it was at least worth a smile. Or, at very least, a groan.”
“I don’t feel like smiling.”
“Don’t take things so seriously, Jean-Marc.” She rose. “Now I must return home. I’m sure Paul will need help with all the details of moving. But you must come take tea with us this afternoon. Please. If we have only a week together, it would be stupid of us not to use it well.”
I sighed and nodded. “Yes, you’re right. I’d be pleased to take tea with you.”
“Good. Until soon?”
“Yes. Until soon.”
She wheeled her bicycle across the square, pausing to bestow a warm smile and a nod of greeting to a brace of ladies who had obviously been gossiping about us and who were flustered at the familiarity of this hatless girl who was clearly no better than she ought to be, with her public morning assignations, the seeming openness of which did not fool them in the least.
* * *
At tea, Monsieur Treville was in a cheerful and loquacious mood, which was the salvation of the small talk, as my thoughts were elsewhere, Paul was so icy and withdrawn that he forsook even his habitual baiting of his father’s mental obliquity, and Katya was content to sit back and smile on the three men in turn, rather maternally and distantly, it seemed to me.
“So this is what my children do every afternoon while I toil in the service of Clio, is it? Sit about and drink tea. Prodigal. Well, I suppose it’s harmless enough. But you mustn’t let my ne’er-do-well offspring seduce you away from your studies of the plague, Dr. Marque.” He chuckled at the very idea of any devotee of medieval studies being vulnerable to such temptation.
“Dr. Montjean, Papa,” Katya corrected.
“Montjean? But I am quite sure you referred to him as Dr. Marque last night during supper. I remember quite clearly. Dr. Jean Marque, you said.”
Paul sighed. “It was the night before last, Father. And the doctor was referred to by his first name, Jean-Marc. Jean-Marc Montjean. It’s a hard name to forget… try though one may.”
Monsieur Treville frowned and shook his head in doubt. The possibility that Katya might have used my given name on such short acquaintance did not occur to him. “My children think me a muddy-minded dotterer, Doctor, because I seldom bother to pay attention to their chatter. But my memory is sound as the gold franc—not that the franc’s all that sound just now! Eh?”
“May I ask,” Paul said, “why we are dwelling at such length on the good doctor’s name? Surely we are not that impoverished of conversation.”
Monsieur Treville waved his hand at him. “Ah, but names can be confounding. And important too. We deal with things, not as they are, but as we apprehend them to be. Therefore, to a rather frightening degree, things are what we call them. Take my daughter here, Doctor. Baptized and presented to God under the perfectly satisfactory nomen, Hortense—my own mother’s name. Then one day I looked up from my work and there was a Katya living with me. Just like that, overnight, my Hortense disappeared and was replaced by a Katya.” He reached over and took his daughter’s hand. “But I’ve got used to this changeling who replaced my Hortense. She’s a good enough girl in her own way. Image of her mother, Doctor—well, both of them are, in fact. They had the good fortune to get their features from their mother. A woman of exceptional beauty.” Monsieur Treville’s voice softened and grew distant. “…An exceptional woman… exceptional woman…”
Katya spoke in a bantering tone designed to tug him back from melancholy. “I wish we’d got our brains from you, Papa.”
“What? Oh, you’re both intelligent enough. A little lazy-minded, perhaps. Victims of acedia, perhaps. But perfectly intelligent. Yes, yes, mistakes like this one of the doctor’s name are common enough, even in academics. One scholar makes a mistake—a wrong spelling, perhaps, or something even more egregious—then other scholars copy it, then the next fellow sees it three or four times in different sources, and the error takes on the weight of fact. That’s why one must do his own primary research, as I am sure you have found in your own studies of the Black Death, Doctor.” The bit in his mouth, Monsieur Treville leaned forward and spoke to me confidentially, as an academic ally. “I recall a case involving a noted scholar—member of the Academy, no less, so I’ll withhold his name to avoid scandal. He quoted the population of the village of Alos in 1250 as ‘three thousand souls.’ Three thousand! As everyone knows, Alos had no more than three hundred at the time. But there it was—print upon a page and therefore truth irrefutable! Three thousand! How many future studies will be ruined by that careless extra zero? For instance, if some scholar were to note that a hundred eighty-five residents of Alos were killed by your Great Plague, he would assume that the village had got off lightly. When in fact more than half of the population perished!”
“You really must write an article on the evils of the stray zero, Papa,” Paul said.
“Oh, I have. Not precisely by that title; but I have. And it was well received, if I do say so myself.”
I smiled. “It is difficult for me, sir, to imagine anyone devoting study to Alos.”
“Do you know the village?”
“I know it well. It is one of the three villages that constitute the commune in which I was born.”
“How fascinating,” Paul said without energy.
“Indeed it is,” Monsieur Treville said. “Alos is one of the few places where the pageant of Robert le Diable is still performed.”
“That’s correct, sir. It’s performed each year during the fкte. Just about this time of year, come to think of it.”
“No, really?” Paul said. “Just about this time of year? The famous fкte d’Alos? My, my, my.”
“I’d give a great deal to witness it,” Monsieur Treville said. “Last vestige of that particularly Basque integration of pagan rite with Christian intrusions. I’ve often thought that—hello! What in the world is this?” He indicated an object on the tea tray that had just caught his eye.
“Oh, that’s mine,” Katya said. “A gift from Doctor Montjean. I must have set it on the tray absent-mindedly.”
“But… it looks like an ordinary pebble!”
Katya glanced at me. “Well, one might say that, Papa. But it could also be thought of as a bit of the universe.”
As Monsieur Treville examined the poor pebble closely, I studiously avoided Paul’s eyes, where I knew I would find sarcastic amusement.
“Yes, I suppose it could be thought of that way,” Monsieur Treville mused, returning the pebble to Katya, who slipped it into her reticule unobtrusively. “I had no idea you were also interested in geology, Doctor. Odd mixture of pursuits: geology and medieval plagues. Beware the attraction of the pure sciences. They are pure only in the way an ancient nun is—bloodless, without passion. No, no. Stick to the humanistic studies where, though the truth is more difficult to establish and the proofs are more fragile, yet there is the breath of living man in them.”
“Dr. Marque,” Paul said. “Oh, excuse me. I meant to say, Dr. Montjean. Damn that stray zero! Doctor, don’t you think it’s time you checked my bandages, or whatever it is you do to earn your fee? That is what you came for, isn’t it?”
“Ah… certainly. You will excuse us?”
When I rose, Monsieur Treville rose too, saying that he really must get back to his work. Tea was good enough in its own way, and the conversation had been delightful and informative, but work was work. “You don’t mind being left alone, darling?” he asked Katya.
“Not at all. I’ll just go down to my library and read a little.”
“Library?” Monsieur Treville blinked. “What library?”
“I call the summerhouse at the bottom of the garden my library.”
Monsieur Treville shook his head and let his arms flap against his sides. “There you are, Doctor. A perfect example of the source of error in scholarship. Ten thousand years from now some scholar will read her diaries and make the erroneous conclusion that the ancient word for ‘summerhouse’ was ‘library.’ Then he’ll learn that scholars of our era passed most of their time in their libraries, and he’ll deduce that back in the early part of the twentieth century the climate in Europe was semitropical!” He returned to the house muttering, “Thus error breeds error, which breeds error, which breeds…”
Katya looked after him, smiling. “Isn’t he a darling? Don’t you envy him, living as he does on the gentle rim of reality?”
“I like him very much,” I said. “I can’t understand why the two of you think it necessary to pretend that Katya and I are nearly strangers. It isn’t as though your father were some sort of monster.”
Katya glanced at me with a frown.
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
Paul rose languidly. “I do hope you never consider surgery, Doctor. There’s something lethal in the mindless way you wield a scalpel. Shall we see to these bandages?”
“I doubt your bandages need attention.”
“Nevertheless…” With a gesture he conducted me back into the salon, and I followed him after touching Katya’s shoulder lightly in au revoir. She did not respond.
* * *
As I explored the slightly puffy area around Paul’s clavicle with my fingertips I was surprised that he did not wince with pain. “You seem to be a good healer,” I said.
“I’ve always been that. I’ve had ribs broken and still been able to fight within a week.”
“Fight?”
“Yes, fight. Did I fail to mention that I was once amateur kick-boxing champion of Paris?”
“No, you mentioned it. And I was appropriately impressed.”
“I excelled at the sport, not so much because of my physical attributes as because of my absolute will to win and my capacity for pressing home the attack while others were bungling about with considerations of sportsmanship and fair play.”
“Which considerations never hampered you?”
“Not in the least,” he said with slight emphasis.
“I suppose I’m expected to receive that information on its parabolic level?”
“That would be wise.”
“I see. Well, for all your remarkable recuperative abilities, you’ll have to favor this arm for another week or so.”
Paul slipped back into his shirt without help, managing to rebutton it with some awkwardness.
“Of course, I didn’t ask you here merely to have the benefit of your professional negligence.”
“I assumed as much.”
He stood before me for a moment as though uncertain how to start; then he turned away to a small table from which he took up a handsomely engraved pistol from the barrel of which protruded a metal cleaning rod. Rather clumsily, he held the pistol in his captured right hand and worked the rod in and out slowly, as though his mind were elsewhere.
After a full minute of heavy silence I said, “Well?”
“You know, back in Paris target shooting was a passion of mine. I only gave it up because I had collected all the medals and awards available at my shooting club.”
“I am delighted on your behalf that you found a useful avocation.”
Paul set the pistol down carefully and turned to me, his eyelids heavy with contempt. Once again, I was caught off guard by the astonishing way in which his features, individually considered so like Katya’s, could produce so totally different an effect. Although his cheeks were grey his eyes sunken from his night of drinking, and his mouth was pressed thin and flat, their faces were like the same melody played on different instruments—indeed, in different keys. What in her was a lively and interested intelligence was, in him, bitter wit. What in her was dreamy distance was, in him, cold withdrawal. Yet, although his were the darker tones and hers the more pastel, it was she, not he, who seemed transposed into a minor key; it was her melody that had been taken up by the melancholy split reeds.
He smiled wanly. “I suppose my attitude towards you is revealed by my finding reason to inform you that I am both an expert kick-boxer and an excellent shot.”
“The implications had not escaped me.”
“Good. Let me tell you at the outset that I am furious with you, Montjean. You have acted selfishly, and irresponsibly, and perfidiously.”
“Perfidiously? I resent—”
He held up his hand in an annoyed way, waving away my defense. “Yes, perfidiously. Damn it, man! Although I feared you would bring nothing but pain and trouble, I allowed you to visit here, to be with Katya, to enjoy her company. Then I left you alone for a few minutes yesterday and I returned to find you clutching at her!”
“I would not term it ‘clutching at her.’ “
“I don’t give a damn how you would term it! The fact is, against my better judgment I permitted you to visit the house in the hope that you would be satisfied to be in her company within our family setting—properly. And the next thing I know she’s sneaking off to Salies, and you’re having a tawdry little rendezvous at some cheap cafй.”
“Just a moment! I can assure you that—”
“I’m not interested in your assurances! I’m telling you that—”
“You needn’t tell me anything, Treville! It is wrong of you—and cheap—to characterize our having a cup of coffee together as sneaking off for a tawdry little rendezvous. I won’t have it!”
He glared at me. Then he lowered his eyes and drew a long breath. “Yes. Yes, of course. That was stupid phrasing on my part.”
“Indeed it was.” Although I was surprised to hear Paul Treville apologize for anything, I did not intend to let it go at that. “Furthermore, for what it’s worth, I had no idea that Katya intended to come to Salies this morning. It was not a rendezvous. But in all candor I can tell you that if I had known she was coming, I would have been delighted.”
“Very well, let’s pass that point. I am sure you’re right. Katya is an independent and willful woman, and it would be just like her to go to town to see you, even though I had specifically told her not to. But what is even more contemptible than meeting with her in secret away from her home was your meddling in our affairs, scratching around the village for information concerning my activities, then—worst of all—blurting out to Katya my intention to leave this Godforsaken bled, without the slightest concern for the effect such news might have on her! She returned quite shaken, you know.”
“She has a right to know your intentions. Good Lord, it’s her life you’re playing with, not only your own, with all this running from place to place each time the whim takes you!”
“I am not playing with her life. I am not playing at all. I am in deadly earnest. It’s you who are playing, Montjean. Playing the role of the daring lover—the bungling Quixote who doesn’t give a damn who is hurt, so long as his desires are gratified, so long as he can run about scaling walls and rescuing maidens—maidens who do not require and do not desire rescuing!”
“That is still to be seen!”
His eyebrows flashed up. “Oh? Is it really? Has she ever given you the slightest indication that she did not want to stay with her family? That she was unwilling to accept my opinion of what was best for us?”
“Well… not in those words.” Indeed, she had seemed committed to doing whatever Paul thought best. “But I am not sure she knows her own mind in this,” I added weakly.
“But you do? You know her mind? You know what’s best for her? Jesus, man! What gives you the right to interfere in this way?”
“I love her,” I said simply.
Paul did not sneer, as I thought he would. His reaction was yet more devastating. He sighed deeply, closed his eyes, and shook his head with fatigue. “You love her. You love her. God protect us from the well-intentioned!” He slumped into a chair across from me and spoke almost to himself. “Because you love her, you assume you have a right to blunder into our lives, causing hurt and harm you cannot even imagine. Because you love her, you are prepared to expose her to pain and shame. You love her! Christ, man, do you imagine I do not love her? Do you think her father doesn’t love her in his vague way?”
“I’m sure you do.”
“Well then?”
“But I am not sure you are considering the effect it has on a young woman, this packing her up and running off whenever the impulse is upon you. What is it you’re running from?”
“That’s not your affair.”
“My feelings for Katya make it my affair.”
His eyebrows lifted. “Your feelings—? Tell me, Montjean, how old do you think Katya is?”
“How old?” The non sequitur question seemed to me to be totally irrelevant.
“Yes. How old.”
“I don’t see that it matters.”
“There’s much you don’t see. I’ll tell you then: Katya is twenty-six.” He smiled faintly. “I’m in a particularly good position to know her age, as I am only fifteen minutes her junior. I am quite sure you took her to be much younger—nineteen or twenty. Everyone does. We inherited from our mother, if I may say it without appearing vain, both our physical beauty and a tendency to remain young-looking.”
“All right, I confess that I thought her to be younger than twenty-six. But I still don’t see—”
“The point is this: At twenty-six, do you suppose that Katya has not attracted the attentions of other young men than you? Can you imagine that you are the first person to be touched by her charm, her spirit, her freshness?”
“Could it be you are jealous of these men?”
His expression hardened. “My dear fellow, if you cannot avoid being stupid, do at least try to conceal it!” He looked away and collected his thoughts. “The point I was attempting to make is that these young men considered themselves to be in love too. They would rather have died than hurt Katya. And yet, they became the agents for great pain and suffering on her part. But of course, you assume you are unique. There is nothing more commonplace than the assumption that one is unique. But believe me when I tell you that you have already caused great pain, and you are in a position to cause even more.”
“I assure you that—”
“You are forever assuring me of something, Montjean! I have no interest in your assurances. I realize that your intentions are of the best. You lack the imagination required to be genuinely evil. Still, you are not going to tell me that your romantic daydreams have not included anticipations of physical delight, are you? Surely you have pictured Katya alone with you and willing, probably in some romantic setting, perhaps in your rooms?”
“That’s an outrage!” I said, recalling with mortification just such imaginings while awaiting Katya in Salies that first rainy afternoon when she came to collect her bicycle.
“It’s not an outrage at all. You’re a healthy young animal. And certainly you weren’t clutching at her yesterday in the garden in order to achieve a more intellectual level of conversation.”
“It is perfectly natural for love between a man and a woman to have its physical manifestations.”
“I am not denying that. I am only pointing out that somewhere in all your noble impulses to save Katya from the machinations of her evil brother, there is an element of desire and self-gratification that may be clouding your ability to judge what is best for her.”
My jaw tightened and I refused to respond.
“And—damn it, man!—the tragicomedy of all this is that you don’t know—could have no way to know—that it isn’t only a matter of your inflicting pain on Katya. You are yourself in considerable danger!”
“Danger of what kind?”
He drew a deep breath and turned away, and I had the impression that he had said more than he intended to.
“Danger from you and your pistol?” I pursued.
He shrugged. “That is a possibility, I suppose. But let us seek a more civilized means of moderating your nuisance. Are you willing to hear my proposals?”
“By all means. But I don’t consider myself in any way bound to accept them.”
“Pity. Well, naturally I considered forbidding you to come again to this house, and forbidding Katya to go into town to see you. But I don’t fancy the image of myself standing guard at the bottom of the lane, my pistol at the half-cock. And furthermore, it might not be effective. Katya is an independent spirit, both imaginative and resourceful. Worse yet, I shouldn’t be surprised if she imagined herself to be in love with you. Oh, do try to keep that insipid smile off your face, Montjean. After all, she fancied herself in love with those other fellows, too. So here is what I suggest. Let us return—and this time with fidelity—to our original arrangement. For the next week, you may visit us—every afternoon, if you must. For my part, I shall do my best to convince Father that your visits have to do with our newfound friendship, and you will cooperate in that deception. Most important, you will not seek to be alone with Katya. I shall have the delicacy to remain out of earshot as much as possible, so you two may exchange thoughts, memories, and cooings—even witticisms, if you’re up to it. But you must promise not to sneak off by yourselves as you did yesterday, and, above all, you must promise to keep your hands off her.”